It's time to 'ship the right skills...

In the last issue I talked about shifting the pressure on leaders - we need to stop relying on them for direction, vision, motivation, purpose, inspiration and other great-for-cv words that teams need to grow and thrive.

But we absolutely need leadership.

Leadership is a set of skills. Skills that aren't attached to a job title, but instead are deployed in a certain way, at a certain time, in a certain context.

Up front, so there's no misunderstanding, I don't subscribe to the idea that leadership is about setting a direction and then inspiring everyone to make things happen. No matter how nicely worded, how charismatic, how open leadership is, used this way it always creates a two tier environment - people who do to others and people who have it done to them.

Leadership is about using skills to shape the future. A future that you and others want to belong to.

Communicating, building relationships, developing creativity, exploring and resolving conflicts, creating conditions people want to spend time in… this is the context in which leadership should be used. And in teams of the future, the context in which it must be used.

When you are intentionally using these skills to shape the future for yourself and those around you, you are displaying leadership. Like all skills it can be used poorly, shaping that future in a negative way, but ultimately whenever you exercise a skill that has an impact on others - including yourself - you will shape the future in some way.

But leadership can't get us there on it's own. It's one part of the whole.

“Leadership as an innate or learned quality is a false dichotomy – leadership is a choice.” Steven Covey

To create the teams of the future we must lean into other skills. Skills that have sat on the periphery, not given the attention they deserve, skills that have been demoted whilst the myth of one has allowed our egos to be stroked and cuddled.

We need other 'ship skills.

Specifically we need followership and teamship.

Followership is when you intentionally deploy certain skills to advance yourself and others in pursuit of a common purpose.

Teamship is the set of skills you deploy to willing come together and explore, reflect, and play in a way that allows progress to happen safely.

And as a reminder, in context with these two skills, leadership shapes the future of the team you belong to.

When you put them together, it’s easy to see how they interact. It’s easy to see how necessary each of them are to ensure a team can do what it needs to do - better, safer, happier.

When you know where you’re going and you say you have an idea about improving things, you’re using followership. When you take action to speed things up…followership. When you do that course that helps you grow…followership.?

You don’t follow a person (the word for that is cult), you follow a purpose.

When you are using followership you are not a sheep. You are not passive. You are not weak, dependant, or unthinking.

Quite the opposite.

Teams of the future will have moved beyond these myths.

And they’ll have used teamship to do that.

I like the definition of teamship above - coming willingly together to explore, reflect and play, safely - but there’s one that I find myself using more and more. It seems to click with people.

Teamship is about writing the rules of how you’ll work together, together - and rewriting them when you need to.

The only real solid definition of teamship comes from Sir Clive Woodward. It’s hard to find any other mention of it, so it’s definitely is not getting the attention it deserves.?

Why?

Because people still believe taking risks with a team is costly. That it takes a form of coercion for people to come together. That it’s all about rewards or punishments.

Because some people can hide or take a free-ride in a team. So people don’t commit.

Because, because, because…

I could say it comes down to trust but that would be too easy. Trust is in there, but it’s simply one part of a complex, human environment. The most important thing is it's once again about context. It’s about how personal values and shared interests interact - and appreciating that they interact in different ways at different times.

If you’re sharing what’s important to you right now, and why that matters to you and the team… then you’re displaying teamship skills.

If you’re asking how you can play a part in what matters to someone else, and thinking about how that could be useful to you… then you’re displaying followership skills.

And the fact that everyone feels able to do this…well, that means leadership is is being displayed by the right people at the right time in the right way.

Are you looking at all three ‘Ship skills?

What's happened since we last chatted?

An episode of Kul Mahay 's Human Centred Leadership podcast went live just before Xmas where we got into a deep discussion about the Era of Who. It wasn’t a Doctor Who fancast (unfortunately); we we talked about what it really means to put people first, and why who? is the missing question.

A brilliant chat with Carolyn Hobdey saw out 2022. She wrote her thesis on Followership and we gelled over how ignored it’s been, how important it is, and how powerful it can be for the individual and the team. Lots to come from Carolyn (and hopefully me too!) on the subject.

In Speak Up, Listen Down, David Howell talks about what it's really like to work in the Police Service (he name drops Barak Obama) and how he went about being curious about the status-quo. It wasn't always welcome, and he shares how you can use that experience to grow in ways that go way beyond your usual 'leadership' bunk. My fave book in a long while.