The Three Easiest Dials of Leadership

Yesterday, I saw one of those LinkedIn attempts to get people to add their thoughts to an article, but I decided I'd write my own letter to you instead. I didn't want a paragraph. I wanted 500 words. So, here are some thoughts on how to develop executives and leaders at all levels.

I thought about it, and there are three main dials I think are worth turning when it comes to leaders and executives. This is about the work. This mentions nothing about developing talent, about learning business acumen, understanding things like technology and change management, all that. These are just three main dials that are easy to understand and useful to learn how to turn.

The Two Main Dials

A lot of what I observe in leadership at all levels (but for sure at executive levels) falls into two categories more than any others:

• Level of involvement
• Communication

In the first case, sometimes leaders do too much, get their hands too dirty. They need to trust and hand off responsibility to the levels where others can add to the awesome. Other times, leaders can be way too hands off. This one causes problems when people suddenly find themselves trying to guess what the boss wants. This NEVER works well, never feels good for those struggling with this, and often leads to terribly ineffective operations. It's great to delegate. It's not wonderful to be far too hands off that you can't even speak to what's going on under your area of responsibility. And very much so, it's important to build leaders all the way out. Give EVERYONE some level of leadership.

As for communication, if you've read more than two of my letters on here, you know this is where I spend a lot of time and attention. People have this strange lack of communication. With leadership, for instance, I see a lot of leaders not clearly communicate intentions and expectations. They'll tell me things like, "Wow, he never gives me status updates." I'll ask, "Have you asked for them?" Silence. The easiest way to help people understand this detail is "is anyone here a mind reader? No. Cool. Let's all communicate our wants and needs very clearly." Everyone. Not just leaders.

Leadership is about making something happen. Let's say it's music. If you're a garage band, you can do your own thing and try to sync it up. If you've got an orchestra, you have strings and horns and woodwinds and percussion and all that stuff and there's a conductor, but also the section heads, and everyone has their roles, etc. It requires coordination.

That's the third dial to turn.

Coordination

Leaders execute the vision of the CEO and/or the Board. In smart companies, executives develop leaders who can carry out their part of this mission, and those leaders develop teams of leaders who feel empowered to own their contributions to the solution.

With companies of more than one person, coordination becomes part of this. Who's doing X? When will it be done? Do we have to tell anyone before we do our part? What do we need from other people?

Coordination is vital. But what I see sometimes is that some executives and leaders at different levels want deep, highly detailed, incredibly expansive gatherings of data to aid in their coordination. It's like driving a car, but instead of having a gas gauge, there's an area to perform a mathematical calculation about the displacement of volume in an internal combustion engine.

A week or two ago, I saw a team rowing a boat.

On this boat in the picture above, there are six oars, six rowers, one coxswain (the guy in the back guiding the action). There are only a few commands required in rowing, but heaven help you if you're not in sync with everyone else in that little rhythm. This can break down quickly.

I've watched very simple projects get gummed up by adding three or four coxswains to the boat. I've also seen projects where a rower thinks they are ALSO a coxswain.

With executives, there's an important step of leadership where it's important to know that their leaders have ways to coordinate with other leaders and other departments without a lot of friction and overhead.

You Can Do This At Every Level

You can think about those three dials at every level including individual contributor:

• Level of involvement (what's your area of control and how deep should you be in it)
• Communication (am I giving everyone what they need to succeed)
• Coordination (am I on top of things, but not too mired in the systems that manage the action)

If you're an individual contributor, these three dials are still useful. You have to "do the thing," but it's good to know your own perspective on those three dials.

As leaders, we have to learn how deep into the weeds we should get for our various levels. Some managers and directors and even VPs should be VERY deep. When someone has a C in their title and they're "hands on machines" level deep, that's rarely a great sign. But sometimes, that's what has to happen.

This post is about thinking about yourself and how you approach those dials, and it's about consider the team you work with, and thinking about how you might develop your business with them by showing them how better to operate those dials.

As with most things I share, it's open to further consideration. Your mileage may vary.

How do YOU see it?

Chris...