The Spectrums of Leadership

In the last article we talked about the Foundations of Leadership. These are the basic skills that you must have in place before you can start thinking about the spectrums. If you lack self-awareness or fail to understand the context of the situation you are in, then it’s hard to think about adjusting your behaviour.

Leadership is all about behaviour but behaviour is based upon context.

We believe that leadership is about understanding yourself (self-awareness), understanding the context (situational awareness) and then choosing a way of behaving that generates the best outcome.

Most people will tell you that leadership is all about empowering your team, delegating responsibility and giving them the freedom to make decisions. Whilst I wouldn’t disagree, there are situations where empowering people can be a mistake. If you walked across the road with someone and saw another person get hit by a car, chances are that you wouldn’t want to be empowered to provide first aid and call the ambulance. You might prefer to be told what to do. The context in this situation requires a strong command and control leadership style – that is an entirely appropriate response to the situation. The problem is that most people over use this style of leadership leading people to feel micromanaged or ’told what to do’.

The car crash example highlights the spectrum of control. On one end, it’s about ‘devolving control and sharing responsibility with your team.’ On the other end it is about ’retaining control and making the decisions on their behalf’.

People will naturally sit towards one end of the spectrum. I know that I like to have control. I have high standards and I believe that the quality of the work I do is important. That’s useful in many respects but when I am leading an experienced team of people, I have to work hard to devolve responsibility to them. I have to be force myself to be clear and exacting on what my expectations are so that I set them up for success.

This where self-awareness and an understanding of the context is useful. If I fail to devolve responsibility, my teams would argue that I am a micromanager.

There are a number of spectrums of behaviour that we believe leaders need to know about.

Confidence and Humility

My daughter, Charlotte Yapp came into this world on 18 May 2013. The birth was challenging and after a many hours in labour, the decision was taken to deliver her via an emergency c-section. My wife was whisked off into surgery whilst I stood there not really knowing what to do. When I was bought into the Operating Theatre, I remember it being a hive of activity. People were moving around quickly and efficiently attaching machines and preparing themselves for what would come next. I remember at one stage starting to feel quite nervous about the whole process. I was alone and didn’t really know what was going on. I timidly approached a surgeon to ask ‘what was going on, was everything okay?’ He told me, ‘you hear that noise? That’s the baby’s heart beat. If that starts to slow, I’ll have the child out of your wife in 30 seconds…’

I remember this moment so vividly. I was shocked by his confidence, some might have described it as arrogance. But it was exactly what I needed to hear. Someone was paying attention, someone was in control and someone could step in and recover the situation if anything changed. When someone demonstrates confidence in their abilities, it provides reassurance. They might not know what to do but the effect that they have on those around them can be remarkable.

But there are times when humility is essential. There are certain circumstances where leaders need to express an element of humility in order to get the best out of the situation. If you’re planning a team activity or creating a team vision, it makes sense for you to share your thoughts with your team and ask them for their input. You don’t necessarily have to use all of their ideas. You still retain the responsibility for the decision. But the act of asking them ‘how would you approach this?’ does two things. One, it gets them thinking like you so if anything happens to you, they’ve started to think about how to do your role. This is an important development opportunity that should not be missed. Two, ‘people nurse what they birth’. If they feel part of the planning process, they’re far more likely to execute the plan because they feel a deeper sense of ownership for it’s delivery and success.

Challenging and Supportive

Leaders get the best out of people through a combination of challenge and support. Too much challenge and you become ’the hard taskmaster’ who thrashes the team. Too much support and you become ’the friendly boss’ who doesn’t help people to fulfil their potential. This is something that changes on an almost daily basis. Some of your people will want to be pushed to fulfil their potential, the challenge is knowing when to ‘hold back’ and take the pressure off. Sometimes leadership is about saving people from themselves.

Others will need much more support from their leadership. It’s a stereotype and an extreme example but the young ambitious 20-something year old with a thirst for promotion is likely to require a different approach to someone who is older, for example a parent going through a divorce. Leaders need to be able to adjust the level of challenge and support they provide their people based on what they need.

Standard Processes and Creativity

Standards are important. We define them as ’the one best way of doing something at a given point in time’. The ‘best way’ can be measured against a variety of factors but often comes down to a choice between time, cost and quality. Standards ensure that expectations are clear and consistently met. The continuous meeting of these expectations keep customers happy. When you go into Starbucks and ask for a coffee, you don’t get that barista’s version of what a good coffee tastes like, you get the Starbucks version. If you go into any of their coffee shops, the coffee will taste the same. This means that your expectations are met every time, consequently, you’re satisfied by the experience. Whenever you get frustrated with an organisation, it is because your expectations are not met.

But there has to be a way in which standards can be improved. What works today and what delights a customer now, might not always delight them in the future. Leaders need to find a ways to improve the status quo. This requires them to consider where and how they will make room for experiments so that improvements can be discovered and used to improve standards.

Dick Fosbury is a great example of someone who changed the standard for how people compete in the high jump. If you want to find a competitive edge, you need to find ways of doing things differently.

Big Picture and ‘In the Detail’

Leaders are required to balance an understanding of the big picture and being ‘in the detail’. Most people are promoted into leadership roles because they understand the detail. Often they stick at this end of the spectrum because it is an area they’re good at and they understand. Considering the big picture is about thinking about the long-term, 3-5 years out, not next month. It is about creating a compelling vision for the future and enrolling people so that they want to deliver that vision. It is about repeating the same messages over and over again so that people internalise them and know how their personal/team objectives contribute towards making that happen. This doesn’t mean that leaders can afford to completely ignore the detail. They have to know and understand what is going on in their organisation so that they can appropriately challenge and guide people to achieve the vision.

Empathetic and Detached

Most people would recognise that empathy is a key leadership skill. Leaders need to be able to put themselves in the shoes of other people so that they can understand the world from their perspective. This helps them appeal to the heart of those who are impacted by their leadership. However, they do need to learn how to detach themselves so that they’re able to make tough decisions. On a simple level, the ability for a leader to detach creates the space for them to have difficult conversations with people. This isn’t one of the more enjoyable parts about leading a team, but sometimes it has to be done. If you’re leading an organisation that needs to dramatically cut costs, you might need to make people redundant. If you’re too empathetic, you’ll find any excuse not to do this which could fatally damage the organisation. In Naval warfare, a Sailor might have to close a water tight door and send men to their deaths in order to save the ship. Leaders of companies might have to do the same in less dramatic circumstances. This is why leaders need to understand why ‘being friendly’ with their team members is fine, but ‘becoming friends’ can make it hard to have difficult conversations and make decisions for the good of the entire organisation.

Data-based and Intuitive Decision-Making

The past twenty years have seen an exponential increase in the volume of data that is being collected. Data is undoubtedly helpful as it can give us a clearer understanding of a situation and therefore support us to make better decisions. But more data does not necessarily mean that we make better decisions. We still need the ability to trust our intuition, that innate sense of judgement that tells us something is or isn’t right. Nasa was an organisation built upon ‘data-based decision making’. The mantra was, ‘if you can’t prove it with data, then we’re not interested.’ This culture, this way of collective thinking was one of the key factors that was responsible for the Challenger disaster. The engineers didn’t have enough data to draw any significant conclusions. They couldn’t prove something that they felt. As a consequence, their concerns were not taken seriously. The shuttle launched and exploded, leading to the deaths of 7 people.

This is why leadership is so complex. It is about ‘good judgement’, choosing to behave in a way that gets the best (or least worst) outcome from a given situation. It is about behaviour. Behaviour that inspires people by setting the example.

Simplistic leadership models are easy to understand but they don’t work because they don’t take context into account.

I would invite you to consider the context that you are facing, your team, the challenges you have in front of you. Consider your natural approach to situations, and think about whether it’s working – whether you’re choosing the best way to behave and act. Whether or not you’re getting the outcomes that you want.

Lastly, I wish you the best of luck. Leadership is tough, most people get promoted because they’re good at doing a job. They get given a team and are expected to just get on with it. That’s a bit like a great musician being promoted to lead the orchestra, the jobs are different but the expectation is that people can ‘just do it’.

As Jim Collins stated, ‘leadership cannot be taught, but it can be learnt’.

It’s a reflective activity requiring you to look at yourself, look at your behaviour, and think about how you can improve every single day. I hope that some of these thoughts help shape your thoughts on the subject.