CUES 116: The Evolution to Modern Leadership—an Interview with Laurie Maddalena, MBA, CPCC, PHR

Emerging leaders have a great opportunity to impact organizational cultures in a way that supports the evolution to modern leadership, says Laurie Maddalena, MBA, CPCC, PHR, in this episode.

“They bring in these expectations and these values that I think are more modern,” says Maddalena, a certified executive coach, leadership consultant and founder of CUES Supplier member Envision Excellence LLC in the Washington, D.C., area, which provides coaching to participants in the CUES Emerge program. “We need more of this modern type of leader” who is focused on getting results through people rather than on just getting results at all costs.

During the show, Maddalena talks about how generational, technological and family trends are pushing the evolution of leadership. 

“The reason … I bring those up is because those impact our workplaces … our cultures and what people expect now compared to 25-30 years ago,” she says. “And that type of leader doesn't work anymore, the traditional command and control, more results-focused, very little empathy, check your personal life at the door. It doesn't resonate with today's generations and what people's expectations aren't work today.”

Despite all the changes, Maddalena emphasizes the importance of leaders building trust with employees.

“Trust is built over time,” she explains, “and it's the small actions we take or sometimes don't … that build trust and cohesion or break trust and cohesion down …. The first way you develop trust is to get to know each individual on your team and understand that they have their own goals, their own preferences and needs beyond the workplace, and get to know them as people and what's important to them and then learn to adjust your management style to be able to ignite ownership in them and bring out their best.

“Another (way to build trust) is to model great leadership,” she continues. “If we're expecting our employees to follow through and be on time and serve our members exceptionally, we also need to be modeling that behavior for employees.

“A huge way to build trust to make sure that we're developing them, coaching them, taking an interest in our employees, investing our time and energy in them,” she adds, noting that young people in particular want meaningful work.

Maddalena says most organizations aren’t making the shift to modern leadership fast enough to be exceptional workplaces. In the show, she gives several suggestions for evolving your leadership, including letting go of promoting people into leadership based on technical ability rather than leadership ability and making sure to teach leaders how to lead.

The show also gets into:

How Maddalena  identified the key shift toward modern leadershipWhy some credit union employees were actually more satisfied with their work during the pandemic than beforeThe pandemic's silver lining for the evolution of leadership

Links for this show:

Laurie Maddalena on LinkedInEnvision Excellence LLCCUES EmergeMaddalena’s  video on kind leadership and podcast on how modern leaders must be facilitators, not fixersShow transcript