Three Legs to the Leadership Stool
Leadership boils down to getting good at 3 things.
· Leading things: numbers, process, outcomes, systems, etc.
· Leading others: whether one DR or scaffolds of teams, we lead others.
And finally,
· Leading yourself: Your most difficult employee – is you.
Are you leading from urgent or important, learning and working on your blind spots, listening more than talking, all-in accountability…and oh so much more…
There are so many models of leadership, frameworks of leadership, leadership development programs, etc. One could dive in and literally, never ever come out….
More is not always better.
Sometimes, it’s just more.
From spending decades in education and the behavior science field, my experience has taught me that we are organizing beings. We like to group, collect, sort, and organize stuff!
When it comes to information, our brain is categorizing and sorting all the time. It’s a cognitive shortcut that helps us improve our performance. Don’t believe me? Go look in your sock or silver ware drawers.
And so, when it comes to leadership, we should expect no different.
Companies looking to develop leaders must label and categorize three essential ingredients to effectively and uniquely coach new leaders at any company.
These ingredients include:
1. Leadership Domains – there are three, I covered them at the top of the episode.
2. Competencies/skills – under each domain there are specific (and often overlapping) competencies and skills (the specific things we do, we get good at, we become fluent in) that help us excel in a particular domain.
3. And underneath all of these are our principles. Our leadership principles. The beliefs we hold about how we lead. Specifically lead. At “THIS” company.
This is where it gets personal. And this is where most companies fail.
Every company has a personality.
A culture.
This extends to their leadership culture. However, most companies fail to define the guiding principles of their leadership culture.
Therefore, there are two types of leadership culture in any company.
1. The accidental version.
2. The intentional version.
Which do YOU have, I wonder??
Let’s run down a few characteristics of each so you can identify where your company may be at this time:
An Accidental leadership Culture:
· Leadership development is idiosyncratic – left up to each manager or team lead.
· There are no defined leadership principles that unite all leaders in common philosophy, behavior, or mindset.
· Everyone can decide their own leadership training goals, select whatever courses they want, and are not responsible to bring back learnings to the collective
· Each year is Groundhog Day – starting over, starting again, no connection or building upon previous.
An Intentional Leadership Culture
· Leadership development is planned at the individual and group levels.
· Leadership is defined at the principle and behavioral levels. You know ‘what leadership means at the company as opposed to another company.
· Multiple sources of data are used to develop leadership development targets (surveys, feedback, direct measures, etc.)
· Every year builds on the last year with multi-year plans for individuals and divisions to improve leadership performance to reach pre-determined measurable levels.
o New leaders are brought into existing development and caught up on missing skills.
There has already been a war for talent.
The next battle that exists will be for the very survival of the company.
What happens when there is nothing after the top layer of leadership?
I read recently that only 12% of companies are confident in the next tier of leadership to take over.
Said differently, 88% of companies believe they have no one to take over.
This is a crisis of leadership.
We need to level up.
Leadership is influence. Bottom line.
What do YOU want THAT influence to look like at YOUR company?
We can influence others many different ways.
How are you thinking about this topic? Are you thinking about it?
How are you leading your leaders? If you had to build it from scratch, is this how you’d do it?
And finally, what is your listening look like in this area? What are you open to?
Where are you standing?
It matters where you stand when you think, lead, and listen.
Finding and exploring a deeper understanding of where you are (and even being brave enough to stand in new places) can have a profound impact on influence you wield as a leader.
Let’s build intentional leadership cultures.
Over a series of podcasts I’ll explore in depth each of three ingredients for an intentional leadership culture and invite some specific guests to help us understand what it takes, and how to excel, at intentional leadership development.
I hope you’ll join me.
For citations and definitions from today’s episode, please check out the show notes.
