Applied Leadership Lesson # 11: Don’t Follow The Leader – Be The Leader

What kind of leader are you? What kind of leaders surround you? What are the best books and sources on leadership? What kind of leader do you think you should strive to be? What is the most effective leadership style? Is the answer autocratic, adaptive, democratic, strategic, visionary, servant, transformational, charismatic, teaming and facilitative, transactional, innovative, command-and-control, Laissez-Faire, pace setter, situational, or hypervigilant, or dozens of other published styles?

These and other questions are very perplexing to anyone in a leadership position, and the answers are not linear, universal, or easy – Because the answers are 80% human-dependent. In fact, the answers to these questions come from a lifelong journey of leadership experiences that develop one’s own unique behaviors, choices, and actions about leadership. This lifelong journey encompasses the active practice of all types of leadership styles in all types of different scenarios. Major inputs to this journey are the organizations, cultures, managers, peers, subordinates, assignments, challenges, victories and defeats, setbacks, company politics, professional development, performance review practices, and other developmental experiences. Outside influences include industry disruptions, global competitiveness, emerging technology, and changing talent resources/requirements to name a few. One learns that different styles are successful in some situations and environments, while others are detrimental to the cause. The best leaders learn intuitively how to turn on a dime and to use whatever in the moment it takes to achieve mutual success.

Leadership Development Is Lifelong

It’s helpful to envision leadership development as having a sort of Maslow’s Hierarchy. Leaders tend to rise through this hierarchy at varying degrees of achievement. I like to view this as a dynamic hierarchy where leaders may move up and down and side to side over their careers. The vertical dimension represents “self” or emotional intelligence growth, while the horizontal dimension represents the depth and scope of accumulated knowledge and experiences along the way.   But the pyramid of learning gets narrower at the top, right? – Not true. The best leaders continue to live in ,communicate, and engage the lower stages of the hierarchy to grow others and increase their own accumulated knowledge. They are not arm chair and numbers leaders – their people matter! By the way, this is my own view of things based on my own experiences and observations. I welcome your observations and comments. Refer to the illustration below.

Basics

When an individual contributor is promoted into a management position, the first emphasis is on getting everything done, meeting deadlines and performance expectations, handling the human situations in the area and other basics. This stage is a more task-focused role that involves managing people to achieve success in a silo, function, or small segment of the organization. Examples might include a first line supervisor or department unit manager. 

This is a leader’s first learning experiences at intentionally or unintentionally trying out different leadership styles to manage resources, and learning what works and doesn’t work so well. Early leaders seek frequent guidance and feedback since they are in the infancy stage of leadership. Many of these leaders become involved in cross-functional teaming and special value stream improvement projects which expands their knowledge of the organization’s processes and practices beyond his or her immediate area. Leaders that make a narrow and quick vertical ascent usually have less empathy and awareness about the organizational elements that they lead.

Role Security

This next stage of leadership often arises from promotions from the Basics phase. An individual is recognized for his or her accomplishments and ability to get things done through people. They long for acceptance until they are trusted by their superiors to take on broader roles and the accompanying increase in authority and accountability in the organization. These leaders are often well liked and fair because at this point they are openly displaying honesty, trust, mutual respect, dignity, clear expectations, and other essential leadership values.

Examples might include a plant manager, controller, engineering manager, or purchasing manager. These leaders are comfortable and more competent at managing a wider diversity of people with different skills. They are also competent interfacing with other customer and supplier organizations of their own roles (e.g., sales and marketing, cost accounting, order entry. customer service, outside suppliers, customers, facilities and maintenance, etc.) because in their larger roles it is a dependency for success.

Organization

At this stage, executive leadership recognizes the champions of the organization. I call this the stage of champions where the up and coming leaders have demonstrated a successful track record and are part of an informal, higher order team. There exists a strong style, cultural fit, and level of trust among this group of leaders, and they have grown to become the “Go-To” leaders of the organization. These people are highly valued because they are the cohesive elements of the organization.

Examples include senior managers, directors, or vice president level roles in organizations. These leaders are responsible for a large piece of the organization which includes multiple functions and levels of resources. They also have other leaders reporting to them and have responsibility for large budgets and the P&L segments of their area. This stage of leadership has learned to work like a fine tuned machine at achieving performance goals and expectations from the executive team. Individuals in these organizations expect and seek upward promotion opportunities within their own group or within another related group of the organization. 

Esteem

In our diagram, esteem a sense of value about what leaders are doing within their “self” and how they are projecting that sense of self worth across their organizations. At this stage, leaders are role models and perceived as winners to those who work for them. The key to self and organizational esteem is dependent upon at least two things: 

•  A wealth of knowledge with various leadership styles through situational experiences, and
• Mastery of leadership best practices attributes and behaviors which we will discuss later in this post.

Obviously this is a challenging and often the weak side of leadership. Projection of self equals culture - good or bad. It’s not intentional – People become leaders based on their technical and discipline accomplishments, and the esteem stuff remains hidden under the radar. They have ground their way to the top using their own success formula and believe and expect the same activities from their subordinates. However it is very present in cultural norms and often the reasons why great talent moves on - and why organizations function as mediocre organizations. It’s not the content of work so much as it is the style and actions of leadership.

Actualization

Again in this stage, actualization is related to both self and organizational actualization. motive to realize one's full potential. Actualization is the expression of one's moral compass, creativity, quest for a higher order of enlightenment (culture change), pursuit of higher knowledge and professional recognition, and the desire to give back and positively transform culture through their own projections of actualization. Actualization drives full engagement and empowerment, self-exploration and discovery, self-management, and self-realization to realize the leader’s and the organization’s full potential.

This stage is beyond Esteem and even a greater challenge of leadership. Like the statement above, it is not intentional. Much of today’s opposing forces include short term financial performance, and the impersonal forces of technology which are also shortening horizons and driving a higher degree of instant gratification and immediate response – Often without thinking about the cultural niceties of great leadership. When people in organizations are running around overloaded with their hair on fire, there's no time or interest in Esteem or Actualization.

What’s Wrong With This Diagram?

Leadership is not linear, nor is it a standard style recipe for success. Leadership is an extremely creative and lifelong human development endeavor. If you do not look at leadership this way, you will probably make a lot of money but feel empty during and at the end of the game. Leadership is a passion, not a title.

There’s a larger problem. The world has changed. The pace is warp speed, full of industry disruptions and global competition coming out of nowhere. Technology is both inevitable and a great evolution that needs to be better integrated into the human side of business and organizations. I know many great technology individuals with great leadership and people personalities. Too many technology folks are burying their head in their tablets and iPhones, accepting everything that comes through instantly as truth, real causals and facts. Personal communication, professional courtesy, and many other essential values of working together are becoming casualties of these great movements. Nevertheless, we need to continuously evolve and adapt the basics of leadership to the new realities of daily work.

So how do we fix this and improve future leaders. By chopping off the top two tiers of the pyramid diagram and integrating these competencies into leadership development from the get-go. This is in itself a challenge: They may not be seen by individuals or Wall Street as critical skills, but they make or break leadership down the road. For example, finding, developing, and retaining great talent is critical to success. Organizations are losing their best people because of leadership.

How To Become A Great Leader

Let’s put aside Maslow and all the great leadership gurus for a moment and concentrate on you! If you want to become a great leader, you will never succeed by following the standard protocol mold within your organization. As an individual you need to overcome fears and develop your “self “ as early as possible in your career. It’s never too late to learn, develop, and benefit from your professional development efforts. View my other Applied Leadership Series posts for additional insights.

In order to evolve to an effective, adaptive situational style of leadership, it helps to better understand and quantify these specific leadership behaviors and attributes. Organizational awareness, an open mind, objectivity, and a desire to grow are prerequisites in this developmental process. Behavioral awareness, alignment, and reinforcement are the underpinning for creating a cultural foundation of excellence and leadership greatness.

Understand And "Live" Best Practice Leadership Behaviors 

Recognizing that we are not dealing with an exact science here, we developed a Best Practice Leadership Behaviors assessment within our Operating Transformation Reference Model. This is a soft control evaluation technique that is simple to use and helpful in building individual and group awareness about certain improvement-detracting behaviors. It’s another data point; There are plenty of other assessments out there. Many are short-lived academic exercises. The difference is that this assessment is based on years of practical, real world leadership experience - And the results are used proactively and tactically to help leaders to grow and become better leaders now. Again, leadership is a never ending journey.

Best practice leadership behaviors can be grouped into five major categories:

1. Vision

2. Knowledge

3. Passion

4. Discipline

5. Conscience

Within each of these categories is a set of behavioral attributes and detailed descriptions that positively contribute to adaptive systematic improvement and personal leadership success. Each attribute is scored on a Likert scale. This is a quick and simple, attribute-based scan of leadership behaviors and is not limited to the executive suite. Often it serves more as an awareness and self-help exercise to improve a particular leadership style, or to better understand and resolve organizational conflicts. Without getting deeper into the details, here is a sample output from the Leadership Best Practices Assessment. 

Interventions Are Healthy

Intervention is a large role in leadership development. This is not a negative activity but a very healthy organizational development process. Most organizations proactively reinforce cultural expectations and the accepted code of conduct. However, there are a number of reasons why executives, managers, and associates temporarily abandon these values. Many of these reasons are directly attributable to executive leadership behaviors, choices, and actions. Over time, these diversions become accepted because nothing is done about them. Executives set the stage for leadership in their organizations by their own behaviors, choices, and actions.

Leadership development must incorporate a strong intervention role. We are not insinuating a "Gestapo" role here. We are talking about systematic interventions where leaders view these diversions in terms of the whole system, vs. reprimanding an individual for doing what they thought they were supposed to do. Leadership's role in adaptive systematic improvement is to set up and maintain a positive environment for success, to create the right behavioral, leadership, and improvement KATA. Leaders and managers must learn to act as counselor, mentor, personal coach, technical advisor, coordinator, educator, barrier and deadlock buster. They must learn to ask the right questions and get their people to think, vs. giving answers or direct orders. They must practice the conscious habit of continuous power hits to their organizations. Power hits are the quick, informal, conscious 15-second messages that reinforce commitment, interest, expectations, and recognition for achievement.

Leadership can never be a 100% democracy. Some leaders can only work comfortably with a high degree of followers’ participation in decision making.  There is no single model of leadership. The specific situation helps determine the most effective style of interactions. Sometimes leaders must exhibit the maturity, character, and risk to handle problems that require immediate solutions without consulting managers or followers. The best and only course of great leadership is to learn to be you. Always be prepared that being you is often pioneering - Sometimes you win, and sometimes you end up with a butt full of arrows and many humbling experiences. These are all valuable leadership growth experiences. Years ago I had a life-altering experience when Dr. Land of Polaroid once said to a group of us in a meeting, "A mistake is never a mistake if you learn a good lesson from it." I've been carrying that valuable lesson around for over four decades.

Summary

There are great leaders, average leaders, and horrible leaders . . . We've all worked with them if you work long enough. Working with great leaders is a great development experience that often turns into personal friendships. Not at all a criticism, but most leaders are average, more maintenance and caretaker focused on daily activities and performance. Sometimes the posse catches up to the horrible leaders, and sometimes you are powerless to change these situations. Sometimes the problem is you! But you always have the power to develop and change your "self." Positive and negative learning experiences are still learning experiences.

The basics of great leadership remain the same, however, we must continually evolve and adapt leadership development to the realities of modern times. Leadership is a never-ending process of professional development based on one’s awareness, conscience, and ability to grow. Leaders cannot be successful at leading any major strategic improvement or transformation initiatives if they have not mastered the basic fundamentals of being a leader. In short, leaders cannot translate the grandest vision into reality without these basic essentials.

Decades of leading executives and their organizations through major change initiatives is more situational than anything else. No single style mentioned in this post is all inclusive and all encompassing. Yet all styles work in certain situations when powered by a leader who knows how to combine values, personality, and style and use it to their advantage. It’s the old adage about messaging and communication - “It’s not what you say but how you say it,” both verbally and in body language. 

These leadership styles are all outcome styles. One cannot come to work one day after reading a few blogs and become an outstanding teaming and facilitator-type leader, or instantly adapt some other style. Nor does leadership experience come automatically with a MBA. Behind each of these styles are skills, human interactions, and experiences which cannot be acquired instantly through Google. It takes subject matter competencies plus years of engagement in a variety of situations to develop into an effective leader. Not all leaders are equal – Some thrive on learning and development, some thrive on meeting the numbers and taking care of their own financial needs, some become complacent and comfortable at a certain developmental level, and some fall down or out of the hierarchy. By the way, the latter is not necessarily bad if you have the persistence, determination to be you.

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