Demonstrating “Leadership & Commitment” is not new
Your Top Management is correct. Demonstrating “Leadership & Commitment” is not new. It’s been there in the previous versions and they had been demonstrating it through involvement in planning, decision making, reviewing, monitoring, etc. So why we are now getting excited about this “Leadership & Commitment” phrases? Emphasis is probably the word. In the new 2015 version, there is a dedicated clause 5.1 on “Leadership and Commitment” listing down the areas which the Top Management can demonstrates, e.g. taking accountabilities for effectiveness, ensuring adequate resources, ensuring intended results, promoting improvements, etc.
Management Staff and Leader could be different in terms of the ways they do things. The former is mostly about managing processes objectively to meet the goal. Leadership on the other hand is about demonstrating certain quality of behaviours to meet the goal. See below brief illustrations:
Examples of Leadership’s Demonstration
As such, in relation to clause 5.1, your Top Management will need to explicitly showcase their Leadership and Commitment through visible and “hands on” involvements.
So, what can your Top Management do? The following shows some examples to demonstrate the involvement in “Leadership & Commitment”
