{"id":47608,"date":"2022-08-04T11:55:47","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T09:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/?p=47608"},"modified":"2025-11-18T14:07:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T12:07:12","slug":"leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership for the Future: The Ambidextrous Leader"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Leadership for the Future: The Ambidextrous Leader | Oxford Sa\u00efd\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HAiJ8NVa3Ec?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Within business, we\u2019re trying to achieve more things than ever before. We can&#8217;t just deliver value today; we also need to prepare to capture the value of tomorrow. That calls for an ambidextrous leader: someone who is equipped to drive strategic change <em>and <\/em>facilitate growth in tough market conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-transcript\">Transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a sense that things are changing in the workplace and it\u2019s axiomatic to say that, you know, change is a constant, and that, for sure, is true. But I think one of the areas where we feel there is the greatest change is the sense that what it is that employees value is changing. In a quite lazy way, we often ascribe this to a generational shift, or change in what employees want. We talk an awful lot about millennials, increasingly xennials. We talk about these different generations and what they want, but actually it\u2019s far more nuanced than that. I think there is a sense of new things emerging as being a priority to talent, to people that we want to attract into our organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there are also some things which have always been important and will always continue to be important. The implication being that, for employers, actually the challenge of engaging the best people has never been greater. Simply, we want more things than we\u2019ve ever wanted before. And we see that in a variety of interesting respects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Increasingly, we talk about this idea of ambidextrous leadership and a really key word there to tackle, first of all, is this idea of leadership. And we\u2019re not talking about ambidextrous management. We\u2019re talking about ambidextrous leadership, and we say there is a difference between leadership and management \u2013 essentially along the lines of the following: managers execute, they\u2019re responsible for implementation. They are responsible for tactical, day-to-day operationalisation of strategy and implementation for effectively delivering results. Leaders don\u2019t simply execute \u2013 that\u2019s not their priority. Their priority traditionally is to actually evaluate the current state and to wish to move towards some better, improved future state and to manage the process of change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the big changes in organisations is that\u2019s no longer a senior role; that\u2019s actually now increasingly an \u2018everybody\u2019 role, in some form or another. And the link with ambidexterity is really around this idea that ambidexterity is an attempt or an effort to capture the capability, to be able to, on the one hand, deliver today\u2019s results. On the other hand, at the same time, to explore opportunities for the future, to build in the capability to innovate, so that we aren\u2019t just delivering today, but we\u2019re also starting to prepare to capture the value for tomorrow, and to build that in as a continuous process. And the idea that that ambidextrous leader can be simply one person, increasingly, is just simply not true \u2013 because no individual, no matter how heroic, can have the cognitive bandwidth to manage that process of understanding the complexity and wanting to encourage change. So, increasingly, we are asking all of our people \u2013 to some degree or another \u2013 to become both good at delivering results, but good at leading change, and to be able to switch between those roles almost instantaneously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So for me, it\u2019s a really exciting mix. Theoretically, because it means that this traditional distinction between management and leadership has become blurred, but also this traditional distinction between execution and change has become blurred. And what we have in the centre is this notion of ambidextrous leadership \u2013 doing well today, but also preparing to do well tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Within business, we\u2019re trying to achieve more things than ever before. We can&#8217;t just deliver value today; we also need to prepare to capture the value of tomorrow. That calls for an ambidextrous leader: someone who is equipped to drive strategic change and facilitate growth in tough market conditions. Transcript There is a sense that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":47609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[122,127],"article-format":[],"class_list":["post-47608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career-advice","tag-business-management","tag-career-advice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.2 (Yoast SEO v26.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Leadership for the Future: The Ambidextrous Leader - GetSmarter Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jonathan Trevor, Guest Expert on the Oxford Women\u2019s Leadership Development Programme, discusses the need for a new kind of leader.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Leadership for the Future: The Ambidextrous Leader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jonathan Trevor, Guest Expert on the Oxford Women\u2019s Leadership Development Programme, discusses the need for a new kind of leader.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"GetSmarter Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-08-04T09:55:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-18T12:07:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/getsmarter_blog_header-banner_-Leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"844\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aaminah Allie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"GetSmarter Staff\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/getsmarter_blog_header-banner_-Leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/getsmarter_blog_header-banner_-Leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader.jpg\",\"width\":1500,\"height\":844},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\/leadership-for-the-future-the-ambidextrous-leader\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Blog\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.getsmarter.com\/blog\"}]}]}<\/script>\n<meta property=\"og:video\" content=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HAiJ8NVa3Ec\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:type\" content=\"text\/html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:duration\" content=\"215\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:width\" content=\"480\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:video:height\" content=\"270\" \/>\n<meta property=\"ya:ovs:adult\" content=\"false\" \/>\n<meta property=\"ya:ovs:upload_date\" content=\"2022-08-04T09:55:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"ya:ovs:allow_embed\" content=\"true\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Leadership for the Future: The Ambidextrous Leader - 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