I had a conversation with a good friend and former colleague about leadership this week. She is examining her requirements for a strategic leader role in her company. We talked about a wide range of factors to consider when attracting and retaining a leader that would be an ideal fit for her high potential startup company. As is usually the case with my friend, we explored beyond the confines of our intended topic. Then we found ourselves debating an age old question.
What is leadership anyway?
We talked about whether she should access outside leadership training, which seminars might be the best, and our mutual experiences with leadership development. We’ve both had experience with programs that checked the box of completing individual or team training within a development plan year, yet missed the mark in terms of having a measurable impact on the performance of ourselves or of our teams. Many of these programs had been similar. It seemed that one was built from the structure of another, and the five or three or seven point list of leadership principles seemed to show up in every training, book, and seminar. Why was that?
I shared with my friend that in my view, many of these programs have been well intended but misguided. In my early career, most of the books and training resources I had accessed had been focused on the wrong outcome. How I could rise to the top of my company and become CEO. There are fewer learning resources available, even today, that help a rising manager become an effective leader of her team. Right now. As we talked about this idea my friend glanced at her bookshelf. The first book she spotted was a book about how to become the CEO. Many of the other books on her shelf were the same book wrapped in a different cover.
I have the same bookshelf in my office.
As we talked further, I told my friend, “You already know what leadership is.” It’s the culture inspired by a leader’s behaviors. Behaviors that are imitated by the people around that leader. Culture is the accumulation of small acts across the organization. It’s not a slide or a poster with asserted values in attractive font. The true measure of the leader is how their team sustains and regenerates that living culture through their daily behaviors. It is the accumulation of those behaviors that becomes the reflection of the leader in the still pond. It is easier to see in the rear view mirror than it is to outline a process to create it.
So how does it happen? How do leaders become leaders?
Just as culture is that accumulation of behaviors over time that form an identity for the organization or team, so is leadership a continuous collection of behaviors by an individual. In order to project the image of compassionate leadership onto that still pond, you need to behave in a way that constructs the picture of yourself that you want.
Understand first what your role as leader does not mean. It does not mean that you are suddenly the smartest person in the room. You are not the functional knowledge expert for any topic that arises. Many leaders, and frankly many team members, make this misperception. Since you have risen to the top, your team expects you to have all the answers. Perfection. Any indication that you don’t, or situations when you blatantly make the wrong call, can be hazardous to your perceived prowess as leader. Don’t perpetuate your persona as all-knowing and all-powerful soothsayer if it exists. Disarm your team of any notion that there is no question you can’t handle. Because there are many.
Be clear with your team what your role as leader does mean. You are the chief decision facilitator. That doesn’t mean you make all the decisions. It means that your number one priority is to ensure that great decisions get made. Sometimes that will happen through consensus, consultative, or directive approaches. You’ll take a vote on some questions, ask for input and decide on others, and make the call on your own in situations calling for your decisiveness. But you remain committed to keeping the team moving forward by avoiding paralysis by analysis.
Favor core principles and values over boilerplate management practices. Put that list of five essential management tactics back in the drawer. Work with your team to align on the handful of core principles you’ll all sign up to sustain. Winning as a team. Service to customers. Rigorous focus on improvement of your products and processes. These must be organic and unique to your business and your team. If you only do one thing with excellence as leader, this should be the thing. The principles you and your team align on will become your identity. Your brand. When nobody else is around, they will make it easy for your team members to decide between options on any challenge before them. It will be clear which options are true to the core principles you have instilled.
Finally, you must remain completely transparent with your team. Commit yourself to continuous learning. Make your team aware of that commitment through your actions. Treat successes and failures as unique learning opportunities, and not as validation or repudiation of your worth as leader. Be available and vulnerable at all times. Be completely present, whether you have an audience of one or one hundred and one. Stay attentive whether you are working through a crisis or a mundane repetitive process. Look for the learning that is lurking in the shadows. Be responsive to those who ask something of you. Avoid discounting or prioritizing requests for your time and assistance. If someone has asked for your help, you are their top priority. Respond to that request in kind. Be reflective. The lessons of leadership are held in the stories of your experiences. Find your quiet space to allow those stories to surface and allow them to become chapters in your personal book on leadership.
My friend and I both left our conversation with more insights and more questions that when we entered it. We’ve had similar conversations before, so that in and of itself was not a surprise.
What was surprising to both of us was the fact that as many times as we’ve thought about going deeper on our understanding of leadership, we’ve each found ourselves going back to that familiar bookshelf.
If you really want to understand leadership, truly compassionate leadership, look beyond your bookshelf. Just ask yourself what it is.
You already know the answer.
Lead well.
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