To test the real-world value of this model, I wanted to compare it to leadership frameworks used by consultancies such as CDP, Korn Ferry and Egon Zehnder. More importantly, I wanted to compare it to the actual leadership frameworks used by global companies. I therefore conducted an analysis of over fifty different leadership frameworks, including those of various FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies and of organisations such as the British Civil Service and the US Army. On the right of the table below you will see the key elements from these leadership frameworks (they tend to be, unsurprisingly, pretty similar) and how they fit under each element of the ‘Space’ model.
| Create space to … | Is linked to these leadership capabilities … |
| Think | Decision making, problem solving, strategic thinking, creativity, innovation |
| Connect | Collaboration, inspiring, motivating, developing, influencing, connecting, self-awareness, self-satisfaction, parts of drive, EQ, teamwork |
| Do | Executing, parts of mobilising, high performance, managing change, transformation, delivery |
| Be | Better work-life balance, personal meaning and purpose, sustainability, resilience |
This table illustrates the power of this book’s central insight. Most business people want to get better at the capabilities listed in the right-hand column. Indeed, companies spend nearly $10bn a year trying to help their employees improve these. However, unless you first help create the space for people to do the things on the left-hand side you will not have enabled them to grow the capabilities on the right-hand side. Again, creating space comes first; the development this unlocks comes later.
My old consultancy had assessed over 50,000 leaders in the last twenty-five years and has an unrivalled database of the results. This allowed them to benchmark how each person compared to their leadership framework in comparison with various norms (e.g. senior leader). While working there, for example, I was helping a FTSE 100 construction company assess people who might step up to be their next CEO. We were able to compare the individuals concerned against other people at their level in the FTSE 100, and also against their peers in the construction and building industries. I also helped one of Europe’s biggest telecoms companies to identify and develop their most likely next CEO. Again, we were able to compare the person to hundreds of ‘successor CEOs’ that the firm had assessed over the last two decades.
The problem I faced was that the framework that we used there didn’t draw out space as a discrete area. Instead it looked at more traditional leadership capabilities such as strategic framing etc., so I had no alternative but to go back to the raw data – the assessments themselves. I therefore examined 1000 random reports that had been written by around fifty consultants from all over the world, about leaders in every region – Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Middle-East – within the last five years.* As well as containing a psychological profile of the assessee, each contained approximately half a dozen strengths and roughly the same number of development areas. The reports were anonymised (all names and identifying information removed) and I sat down for several days of reading. I noted where any report’s development areas contained words and phrases relating to space, including the word ‘space’ itself as well as related concepts such as ‘stepping back…’ or ‘making room to…’.
Here are some examples of relevant actual development areas, written by a wide range of different assessors.
Space to Think:
He could take time to step back and think about the business from a long term, macro perspective.
She needs to find the space to reflect and learn from her experiences.
Going forward he will need to create space to focus more on longer term strategy and how he can have an impact that goes beyond his formal remit.
Space to Connect:
She is encouraged to consider the discretionary commitment she might inspire in her team if she allowed herself to identify and express her feelings more overtly rather than trying to control them.
He would benefit from taking the time to build richer, deeper relationships with people, rather than approaching others with what tends to be a tactical and transactional style which limits true connection.
He needs to find the time and willingness to step back from his own preoccupations and really connect with his team, so he understands their potential to take things off his shoulders …
Space to Do:
She is adept at plate spinning but it risks distracting her attention from the really key, longer-term deliverables.
It will pay him to more consciously give [his team] a bit more space and see his own role as supporting their success.
She would benefit from standing back from being quite so involved in day-to-day actions and, instead, getting herself more organised around/thoughtful about how she sets up her work agenda and how she manages people and responsibilities over the longer term.
It is worth noting that there were few references relating to ‘Space to Be’ in the assessments, although there were some to work-life balance and resilience. It is also worth noting the very low frequency of words and ideas relating to space in the strengths section of the reports. In my view this is because space acts as the prerequisite for strengths to flourish, therefore it is the consequent strengths that are noted by assessors (rather than the space that enables these to happen).
In total the reports contained more than 4,500 development areas. An examination of the data derived from them led me to conclude that the issue of ‘space’ is an issue across all types of businesses, in every culture and at all senior levels. Indeed virtually all (93 per cent) of the individuals assessed appear to have had a development need related to creating space in some form or another. The number of people with at least one development area relating to each theme broke down as follows:
| Theme | Percentage of reports highlighting this area |
| Space to think | 46% |
| Space to connect | 75% |
| Space to do | 32% |
| Space to be | 11% |
| None of the above | 7% |
| At least one of the above | 93% |
So three-quarters of all global executives assessed (and, by implication, all global executives per se) need to create more space to connect. Nearly half need to create more space to think, a third space to do and roughly 10 per cent the space to be. I was glad to find this evidence for my ideas.
As I was finishing my analysis I was involved in a programme assessing executives working for one of Europe’s biggest operations/facilities management companies. I had assessed the UK leadership team and my colleagues had assessed the teams in other countries. When the aggregate analysis of all the executives came through, which I had had no involvement in preparing, lo and behold, the main recommendation was that the executives needed to learn to step back and create space for deeper, more strategic thinking.
* I am grateful to the then Chairman of YSC, Gurnek Bains, for allowing me access to the reports he had analysed for his own book, Cultural DNA – The Psychology of Globalisation.