I’ve been thinking about leadership this week as I develop the ‘Leadership Lounge’ idea I mentioned last week, and so I’m going to share some ideas and musings with you. (I’m Working Out Loud here, so it might not be quite up to my usual standard of concision and perspicacity😮).
Myth No. 1
Leading is done by the chosen few of the leadership class
I actually have a bit of a problem with the words ‘Leadership’ and ‘Leaders’. We conflate them with the positions of higher status in a formal hierarchy. ‘Leaders’ are the high priests of ‘Leadership’, only they can practice this mystical activity, only they have the qualities and the purity to be able to do ‘Leadership’. Those of us of humbler status are incapable of such high acts, we cannot lead but must defer to those who do and submit to followership.
This is bollocks, of course. Leadership, if it is a thing, is about the act of leading. We are all capable of leading. It’s something we all do in our lives, in many different and varied ways, at many different times. We all follow too, even those who are hailed as ‘Leaders’.
If it’s about anything, it’s about the dance between leading and following that we all take part in. We should all be taught how to lead and how to follow, how to do the dance better.
So my opening position on leading is that is something everyone can and should do and we should be taught how to be better at it. We should not restrict it to some cadre of people with the ‘right’ social traits and connections, some blessed elite. It’s partly about fairness but it’s also about potential. We need to realise everyone’s potential to lead, restricting ourselves to the capabilities of a small group of people who are mostly in it through chance is just stupid.
Myth No.2
Leaders look and behave in a particular way
I’ve never been on a leadership course or, until comparatively recently, read a leadership book. I learnt how to do it as I went along, through observation and reflection, through trial and error.
I looked at the people above me and mostly thought “I’m not doing it like them!”. I looked at the people I liked being led by and thought about what I could learn from their approach. I thought about how I liked to be treated and led and how I could create those feelings in the people I led.
I tried stuff out and noticed when I felt comfortable and when I didn’t, when stuff landed and when it was rejected, when it worked as expected and when it went somewhere surprising.
As a result, I developed a way of leading that worked for me, that aligned with my values and beliefs and that leveraged my strengths. I was always pretty comfortable leading because the way I did it was very much an extension of my personality, a version of my self that felt true. Even in difficult moments, I felt grounded and connected with who I was and was able to deal with the challenges.
My second point, then, is that should develop their own way to lead an it should be a natural extension of themselves, in the way that being a brother or a father or any of the other roles we play is just another facet of who we are.
My friend Emma Taggart, who coaches introverted leaders, put up a rant this week about the way that people she worked with were often told that they needed to ‘start acting differently’ when they were promoted. They were told to behave ‘more like a leader’ (translation: more like the stereotypical loud, assertive, directional extrovert). This is causing people a lot of discomfort and inner turmoil but is also nonsensical. As Emma points out, if you’re selecting someone because they are successful being who they are, why on earth would you insist they change? If you make them pretend they are someone else, they are going to fail.
This is one of the biggest struggles people have with ‘becoming a leader’. They feel they have to change, they have to conform to the cultural perception of ‘what a leader is like’ in their organisation, or the latest leadership model being pushed by the HR department. Trying to be someone you are not is extremely draining , especially when you are not clear exactly who it is you are pretending to be. It puts you into conflict with yourself, leading to confusion, poor performance and psychological harm.
We need to let people find a way to lead that is suited to them, just like I was able to, because that will enable them to lead without effort and to do their best work.
Myth No.3
You have to be a particular type of leader with a defined style of leadership
My style of leading was quite different from the predominant style of the environments I found myself in, which was typically the macho, highly directive, competitive and aggressive style that relied on fear and bullying to get people to do things.
I was much more laid-back, collegiate and coaching-oriented. I was focused on the objective and sought to enrol people into joining me to work towards it. I relied on persuasion rather than coercion. And I was bloody good at it, leading several teams to successful delivery of the end goals.
But I wasn’t a pushover, as some discovered to their cost when they assumed I was. Whilst my preference was to work collectively and collaboratively and progress through agreement and co-creation, there were times when that wasn’t possible.
There were occasions when we were in crisis and I had to be very directive because there wasn’t time for debate or explanation. There were occasions where someone was being obstructive and I had to remove them to stop the project floundering. There were some people who I couldn’t work with as I wanted and I had to lay the law down to them.
So whilst I had my preferred style of leading, I had a couple of other styles too. If circumstances demanded it, I could be dictatorial, I could be unbending.
Leading is situational. We’re not always sailing in calm waters, sometimes we encounter storms. Whoever is leading has to adapt and respond to the situation. In chaos, we may need to be a tyrant whilst we find a way out.
If the way you lead is developed from your values and beliefs, you will be able to move between these styles without too much conflict because you know you are still being true to who you are.
Without that foundation, having to change style can throw you into turmoil and make you appear indecisive and untrustworthy. However, failing adapt to the situation and doggedly sticking to your style will lead you into trouble too.
Myth No.4
Leadership is a thing done by individuals
I believe leadership is more of a baton that should be passed from person to person, as needed. In a high performing team, every member will lead at some point, because the most appropriate person for that situation will come forward. That’s why it’s important that organisations invest in everyone to develop their ability to lead.
That poses the question, however, about whether leadership is something that an individual does or whether it’s a communal activity. Perhaps the problem with the way we approach ‘Leadership Development’ is that we focus on the individual but the individual always operates within a social context. A leader can do nothing without followers. Followers are also leading, in different contexts. Leaders must at times be followers. So we are back to the dance, between leading and following.
What is the purpose of the dance? It is, surely, to advance society, to advance humanity. A leader can’t do that on their own. Yet we seem to be teaching leaders that they can dance alone and then wondering why they aren’t much cop and the dance is a bit rubbish.
My mate Geoff Marlow often shares the Peter Senge definition:
“Leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future”
Senge clearly defines it as a community activity, not something solely in the domain of the individual. If you only teach a small elite how to ‘lead’ then you massively limit the capacity of the community to shape its future. The logical conclusion from Senge’s definition is that we need to teach everyone in the community.
That way everyone is ready to receive the baton and carry it for their part of the race. In a high-performing team it’s often hard to tell who is ‘in charge’ or what the status of the individuals is because the leadership passes seamlessly between them as the most appropriate person leads each activity. That’s something we should seek to make all teams capable of.
These ideas of leading align with my advocacy of self-organising teams and more democratic ways of organising.
When people write about ‘Leadership’ they often contrast the resources put into Leadership Development (10,000s of books, videos and coursed, billions of dollars spent globally) with the paucity of the output and the crisis in leadership we experience. It’s a somewhat hackneyed point but it’s still valid. How can this massive industry continue to fail on such an epic scale?
Perhaps the problem is that are teaching Leadership to individuals when it is, in fact, a collective activity. Leadership is a team sport.
Mambo No.9
I am indebted to Dr. Richard Claydon, Geoff and the rest of my colleagues in the Drinking Dialogues community for all they have shared with me and taught me over the past couple of years. It has greatly enriched my thinking around this and many other topics. I have plagiarised their ideas, probably badly, for which I can only apologise!
If you are a team leader, or maybe just in a team where you feel you need to step up, and would like talk about how you can lead, then drop me an email or DM me on LinkedIN or Twitter. (All messages will be in complete confidence).
This is the sort of stuff I’m thinking of talking about in my ‘Leadership Lounge’ zoom sessions (coming soon-ish). If you think you’d be interested in taking part, let me know and I’ll keep you posted.