Leading Others, My Thoughts, And Experiences.

I have just finished module two out of ten of the transformational leadership course I am currently taking as recommended by UNICEF for all its leaders. In the module, there were six lessons; what transformational leadership is all about in the context of leading teams, creating a strong compelling vision, knowing, and developing your team, creating psychological safety: a work climate of trust and role model, and mentoring, and coaching.

For the past few weeks, these six lessons have really reminded me of who I must be as a leader, and it has truly been transformational. As I reflected on my learning from this module, I could not help but reflect on times when I have failed to be a proper leader and the lessons I learnt from the failures. The quote from Lao Tzu: “To lead people walk behind them “really stood out for me and I will reflect a little bit on this.

Team managers are identified into leadership positions in organizations, when this happens, it is usually important to shed the manager skin when stepping into leadership roles. This is because though it may seem like synonyms, leaders are different from managers. As a summary again for my first-time readers, Leaders are called, managers are recruited, leaders have competency and character. Leaders grow people through work, and managers achieve work through people, leadership is a journey of continuous learning.

We are required to come with leadership qualities when we step into leadership roles. This is because organizations these days are looking for transformational leaders and not managers.

To expound on Lao Tzu’s quote above, the four Is of transformational leadership will be used to explain my experiences and thoughts. Simon Sinek puts it very clearly “there are only two ways to influence human behaviors’: you can manipulate it, or you can inspire it “.

The four Is of transformational leadership are Inspirational motivation, idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Leaders are required to inspire the staff they lead, to mentally stimulate them by involving them in discussions concerning their work and even their performance.

?Leaders are called upon to influence their teams not by what they say, but by how they act and finally leaders are called upon to really treat staff under their care as individuals. This is so that they can have a sense of belonging and can count on their leaders for support.

My reflections on the four Is of leadership really hit me because as leaders, at times we tend to treat people as a group and forget that they are unique. We tend to talk more in meetings and not allowing team members to talk, thus dominating the conversation, and loving only our voice in the room thus not giving room for others.

?We tend not to see the individual who is slow in performance, have special needs that may need specialized individual care. We just treat them as part of the team and do not listen to their concerns, as such they feel unsupported and have no sense of belonging in our teams.

Lao is calling on us leaders like me to take the back seat and watch how our teams will grow if we coach them well. Our teams will thrive if we ask the what, who, when, how, and not the WHY.

Leaders are always tempted to ask why things go wrong, and this puts the staff in the defensive mood. If we dig deeper to understand the how, the when, the who etc., we will engage in deeper conversations that we would not have if we had just stuck on the why. As leaders, we are urged to ask open ended questions to allow our teams to really respond with depth without fear of being judged or being sidelined.

This really means we must build trust with our teams when we collaborate with them, and this really starts when we build ?an environment where staff feel psychologically safe. Where they can speak up without fear of retaliation and where there is a strong climate of trust. This can be done by the way we include the whole team in discussions, how we make them to have a sense of belonging and how they can be fearless in the way they give their views.

This is important as people feel psychologically safe in an environment where they trust and where there is mutual respect. It starts with knowing the teams’ strengths and weaknesses, their career paths, what triggers them, what they are passionate about etc.

Leaders are required to enable ?staff under their care to bring their heads, hands, and heart to work. You ideally want your staff to bring their head to work, that is their cognitive abilities and qualifications that the individual brings at work.

?You want them to bring their heart, which is their personality, personal attributes, their passion and what moves them. You want them to bring their hands to work, which is their proficiency, their competencies, their skills, and experiences. Leaders must be guided by empathy, and this is what our teams really want from us.

?They want to know that they can trust us with their most vulnerable issues, and we would not use it against them or judge them.

Reflecting then on Lao’s quote, “to lead people walk behind them,” I thought I should expand on this by using Dr Mary Wackeke’s quote which says, “A well -cultivated leader will cultivate the team.”

This is why as leaders; we are required to drive the team but from behind. This is because we want to make the teams to know that they have it and ?can do it. One of the 7 Es of coaching states the coachee holds the solution and not us the leaders or the coach. Jesus was ahead of his time when he said, to lead, you must be a servant and to enter his kingdom, you have to be like a child.

Though my experiences have been that most leaders in my life have showed transformational leadership skills, as well as non-transformational leadership skills, my overall experiences have been great.

I have been opportune to have collaborated with amazing leaders in the private sector, the international NGO, and the UN.

The take home is that leaders like me MUST create healthy working environments for staff under our CARE. As we walk through this leadership path, lets note that our job is to be at the back and not the front.

Venatius Fon

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