Boundary Spanning Leadership

About the Author

Chris Ernst is a senior enterprise faculty member for the Center for Creative Leadership, the leading global nonprofit institution dedicated exclusively to leadership. He co-authored Success for the New Global Manager: How to Work Across Distances, Countries and Cultures. Donna Chrobot-Mason is an associate professor in the psychology department at the University of Cincinnati and director of the Center for Organizational Leadership. She has presented at nearly 50 conferences and has published numerous journal articles on diversity and leadership topics. Together, they have combined their expertise to write Boundary Spanning Leadership: Six Practices for Solving Problems, Driving Innovation, and Transforming Organizations.

Main Idea

Boundary Spanning Leadership by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason explores how leaders can bridge organizational boundaries to drive innovation and achieve remarkable results. The book introduces six practices – buffering, reflecting, connecting, mobilizing, weaving, and transforming – that help leaders span boundaries to foster collaboration and integration within diverse groups. These practices, collectively called the Nexus Effect, enable leaders to create a cohesive, agile, and inclusive organization capable of responding to complex challenges.

Table of Contents

1. Introducing Boundary Spanning Leadership
2. Flipping the VUCA Forces
3. Creating a New Normal
4. Step Back to Lead Forward: Seven Pause Practices
5. Pause to Grow Personal Leadership
6. Pause to Grow Others
7. Pause to Grow Cultures of Innovation
8. Three After Words: Pause It Forward

Introducing Boundary Spanning Leadership

The authors introduce the concept of boundary spanning leadership as the ability to create direction, alignment, and commitment across various organizational boundaries. This form of leadership is essential in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). By adopting boundary spanning practices, leaders can transform fragmented groups into cohesive, high-performing teams.

"Boundary spanning leadership is about creating direction, alignment, and commitment across boundaries in service of a higher vision or goal." - Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason

Ernst and Chrobot-Mason highlight the necessity for leaders to adapt to a changing leadership landscape. They emphasize that today's challenges require leaders to go beyond traditional boundaries and embrace new frontiers where diverse expertise, experiences, and identities collide. Boundary spanning leadership involves bridging these divides and creating a unified direction, aligning resources and activities, and fostering a deep commitment to collective success.

The authors draw on a decade of global research and practice from the Center for Creative Leadership to illustrate how boundary spanning leadership can address the critical gap in effective collaboration across boundaries. Through compelling stories and practical tools, they demonstrate how leaders can employ the six boundary spanning practices to catalyze collaboration, drive innovation, and transform their organizations.

Flipping the VUCA Forces

The concept of VUCA, borrowed from the Army War College, describes the chaotic environment leaders operate in today. Ernst and Chrobot-Mason suggest flipping these forces to bring about Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. This transformation is achieved through the power of pause, helping leaders sort through complexity and connect with what truly matters.

The VUCA environment presents significant challenges for leaders. Ernst and Chrobot-Mason argue that by flipping these forces, leaders can transform volatility into vision, uncertainty into understanding, complexity into clarity, and ambiguity into agility. This shift is essential for navigating today's fast-paced and interconnected world.