Trophic Cascade: Leading From The Back of The Room

Confession: one of the most difficult things for me to overcome is dominating the airtime when in a group I lead. In other groups, especially among peers, I tend to naturally take a listening position - content to give my full attention and weigh in if it adds value to the discussion.

Among my own team, especially if I'm the senior member of the group, it is natural for me to "lead" discussions. There are times that your voice is needed up front: times of crisis; defending against assaults to your team's culture; and other moments where you act as a shield to your group.

It takes much concerted effort and preparation for me to be a more conscientious facilitator versus speaker. A lesson I've learned and continue to relearn originated in my role as a sales training specialist where I routinely taught, coached, and facilitated small and large group learning events.

The lesson (conveyed well in the book Training From The Back of The Room by Sharon L. Bownman) is to flip the traditional paradigm of training where trainers talk and learners listen. When those you lead are able to speak and teach - they learn. Every transformative professional landscape is changed by a cascade and not by a direct cause and effect.

Trophic Cascade

Take a moment to watch this short video about how the reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone National Park changed its physical geography.

The essential leader doesn't transform organizations, industries, or the world. They transform the environments in which their people think and behave. Like wolves are to their ecosystem, leaders change their ecosystem by changing the behaviors of those they lead.

The Test of Power is to Give It Away

To empower means to give authority or power to someone. No one can truly be free in a professional capacity unless they have agency - the authority to act and specifically the room to make thoughtful mistakes (not careless ones).

It takes much longer to get there, but when leaders allow their teams to arrive at solutions, the lessons are encoded as a new building blocks for future behavior. When leaders become the de facto instructional voice in the room, the team only acts as far as their leader's ideas. Try to incorporate this framework for giving away your power in the leadership relationship.

1. Routinize Coaching - schedule regular coaching sessions with your direct reports. Impromptu coaching tends to focus solely on corrections (i.e. "what went wrong"), whereas regular coaching sessions make room for learning as something proactive not reactive. If you're not coaching during their moments of success, then you're not really coaching.
2. Prepare Empowerment - throwing someone into the deep-end to see if they sink or swim is the laziest path to watching your team drown. Help your team to practice decision-making, role-play tough discussions, and build the skills to act with more authority. Enter coaching sessions with prepared questions. It is more harmful to half-ass your coaching than to not do it at all.
3. Humble Expert - assume you don't know the answer. Asking questions to someone and giving them the impression that you already know the answer and are just leading them to it isn't inspiring. It is demeaning and patronizing. Ask questions like a hiking expert who is leading a group in a hike of a place that they haven't seen either. Their (your) expertise is not knowing the way. It's knowing how to find the way.

Give Yourself Some Grace

We all screw up as leaders. Acting in good faith doesn't mean you'll do everything right. In fact, it usually means you'll mess up a lot. Keep in mind that you are learning how to lead as much as they are learning how to be led and/or become leaders.

I recently read a LinkedIn post that really resonated with me. It was something to effect of "Only mediocre leaders don't ask for help. The greatest leaders are great, because they ask for help." I'm sure this isn't exactly how the post went, but it's what I took away from it.

Authenticity wins. Let your team know about your own learning journey. Let them know if you're working with a coach. It won't worry them. It'll impress them.

I frequently let my team in on the process of how I'm leading them. There are times I literally show the framework I'm using. This not only lets them know that I'm coming from a place of learning myself but it also helps them to know how to keep me accountable to them.

When leaders withhold their process from others, it comes across as keeping the answer sheet secret to a quiz they made up. Transparency isn't a cherry on top. It's the ice cream in the trust sundae.

Leading from the back of the room isn't about relinquishing your voice. It's simply trusting that what you have to say will instead be embodied by your team's actions.

Lead well, my friends. Live your legacy today.

James Lee