Four insights into leadership that I learnt from cycling.

I feel a little ashamed to admit it, but I’ve become a ‘mamil’ (a middle-aged male in Lycra). I think the slight embarrassment comes from the predictability of joining a good number of middle-aged males (mostly but not completely) in this pastime as well as the fact that my long-term practice of being a jogger (albeit a slower one) has well and truly come to end.

The truth is that I really enjoy cycling with a peloton (group of cyclists). It’s great exercise, being in the outdoors is rejuvenating and of course the camaraderie that comes from being with others is rewarding (it must be one of the most cost effective preventative mental health measures going round).

Like so many things in life, it’s also a great metaphor for leadership. I might be stretching the metaphor but let me run it by you. In cycling you will often have a cycling captain who provides oversight for a group of cyclists but throughout the ride, the leaders are the two people up the front of the peloton. Their role is to look ahead and navigate directions, to keep an eye out for obstacles (cars, potholes or for where I ride, wildlife), use hand signals to communicate important messages and to also regulate the pace so the whole group stays together.

What’s also interesting is that there are invariably two riders up the front of the group and over the course of a ride others will come to the front to takeover and share the load given the extra work you are doing without the benefit of drafting (you can save about 30% of your energy by following another rider). The importance of these leadership roles in cycling is critical. When you are in the middle of a group of riders, all you can see is the back of the person in front of you (generally you are about 30cm behind the rider in front of you), so you are completely reliant on the effectiveness of the riders up front as well as how well the other cyclists in the group follow their instructions.

There’s so much in here about great leadership! Great leaders:

• Set a direction and keep their team on track. A leader is a great navigator, they set direction and most importantly, regularly communicate their progress to reaching the destination with their team. I’m always surprised at how infrequently leaders talk to their people about their strategy once it is being operationalised. I get it, things get busy but in my experience team members are keen to know what the plan is and how things are progressing and it’s an excellent way to maintain high levels of engagement.
• Look ahead to see what’s coming. This is so important because so much of organisational life draws you to focus inward to manage internal activity. A leader who is not looking outward and interpreting the world for their team is only managing for the priorities of today and not tomorrow. Our contemporary world is incredibly changeable and if as a leader you are not focused on this, who else in your organisation is?
• Regulate the speed of change to keep everyone together. Leaders that don’t monitor the pace of change that comes from their leadership run the risk of people falling away or staying but not being fully engaged and productive or even being obstructive. Whilst sometimes good change means that you will have to lose good people, it’s still critical to keep your group together by pacing your change and making it sustainable.
• Share their leadership responsibility with others so they can go further. A leader who thinks they can lead alone is kidding themselves. Great leadership is distributed in and across an organisation. Sure, we can all think of leaders who have singe handedly driven enormous amounts of change but more often than not it takes a team to make real change stick over the long term. So, it’s far better to create a strong leadership culture where others in your team are empowered to lead change in line with your overall direction.

What do you think? Am I stretching the metaphor a little too far?