Leadership
“There are leaders and there are those who lead” - Simon Sinek
There are many definitions of leadership, Kevin Kruse has produced a nice simple analysis of what leadership is and isn’t which I find helpful (you can read his whole article here). From his experience and research as a leadership coach he believes:
Leadership has nothing to do with titles, seniority or one’s position in the hierarchy (the position doesn’t give you the ability)
Leadership has nothing to do with personal attributes (good leaders are made rather than born and there’s lots of different ways to do it)
Leadership isn’t management (more on this below)
Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximises the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal
Under his definition, leadership stems from social influence, not simply having a position of authority or power. Leadership requires others, but does not require ‘underlings’, sometimes the strongest leader in a situation has no staff reporting to them and is not the person ‘at the top’. But it’s a social and human trait, as it can’t be done alone, that seeks to maximise the performance of others rather than for personal gain. Kevin’s definition makes no mention of personality traits, attributes, or even a title; there are many styles, and many paths to effective leadership. Lastly it includes a deliberate goal, not just influence with no intended outcome. As I fear power without a focus, without purpose is a slippery slope into tyranny and abuse.
But leadership comes in many forms. and Itay Talgam’s wonderful TED talk demonstrates this perfectly:
Don’t talk about winning or losing, just play your position well for your colleagues and the result will be what it is. If we all play our positions well, we will all get through this together.
Bob Chapman
5 Levels of Leadership
From Jim Collins’ excellent book that coined the term: Good to Great
Jim Collins’ research, conducted over many years looked at over 1,400 and identified 11 that tracked along with everyone else in their category until one point where they hit and inflection point and started to pull away in an unassailable lead over their competition. This is the notion of Good to Great. They were good companies before, but something made them great. One of the factors was the appearance of a “level 5 leader”…
What are the 5 levels of leadership?
Level 1: Someone good at their job,
Level 2: Someone with Level 1 attributes but is also good at team working
Level 3: Someone with Level 2 attributes but is also good at managing and coordinating a team
Level 4: Someone with Level 3 attributes but is also good at creating a compelling vision
Level 5: Someone with Level 4 attributes but is also incredibly driven to succeed whilst also being paradoxically humble to not take personal credit for the accomplishment.
A level 5 leader creates superb results but is modest and never boastful. Demonstrates an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to product long-term results, no matter how difficult, but channels ambition into the company. Setting up successors for even greater success, not just rewarding themselves.
“Looks in the mirror for responsibility, but out the window to apportion credit.”
Poor results and bad luck are things they could have avoided, but good results is thanks to others and good luck. These sometimes conflicting personal attributes meant that almost all (10 out of 11) good to great leaders found in their study were promoted from within the organisation. Hired guns rarely showed the qualities needed to transition from Level 4 to Level 5.
For 20 years Kimberley-Clark had been a good company but nothing particularly noteworthy or remarkable. Then Darwin Smith took over the leadership of Kimberley-Clark in 1971 and for the next 20 years managed to steer them away from the pack and into a position where they were outperforming the general market by 4 to 1. The performance curve became almost exponential
In Jim’s own words:
“Level 5 leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organization and its purpose, not themselves. While Level 5 leaders can come in many personality packages, they are often self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and even shy. Every good-to-great transition in our research began with a Level 5 leader who motivated the enterprise more with inspired standards than inspiring personality.”
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership
Colin Powell
First who, then what.
Counter-conventional advice, and the difference between a Level 4 and a Level 5 Leader
Level 4 Leaders: “a genius with a thousand helpers”?
“Those who build great organizations make sure they have the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats before they figure out where to drive the bus. They always think first about who and then about what. When facing chaos and uncertainty you cannot possibly predict what's coming around the corner, your best "strategy" is to have a busload of people who can adapt to and perform brilliantly no matter what comes next. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”
So Level 5 Leaders make sure they have an amazing, varied and diverse team so that they are ready for whatever the future holds. Whereas level 4 leaders define a strong vision and therefore hope to attract a great team based on this. So whilst this may be an effective strategy (and level 4 leaders are by no means bad leaders) they will struggle to grow beyond this point if the vision turns out to be flawed or need changing because the situation changes.
This is a fascinating insight and brings into question so much conventional advice for new leaders and entrepreneurs that encourages them to first define a clear vision and then get your team to rally around that.
You can’t win in the marketplace without first winning in the workplace.
Doug Conant
Leadership for an Infinite Game.
Short term ‘winning’ vs long term growth and success
The world is infinite, life is infinite, even if your life is not. As a result you can’t ‘win’ business or a task… so why does everyone treat it as if you can? Leadership also needs to infinite.
A Just Cause [7:52] - A cause so just that you’re willing to sacrifice your own short term interests in order to pursue the cause. Every infinite leader offer’s their followers a cause that empowers them.
Trusting Teams [9:54] - A great leader creates an environment where people can work at their best, be honest with their mistakes, ask for help when they need it and care for each other. When you have a culture where people fear breaking the rules more than doing the right thing you have problem. “Leadership is not about being ‘in-charge’, it is about taking care of those ‘in-our-charge.”
A Worthy Rival [16:25] - Someone who is as good or better than us at our own work. Their existence reveals to us our weaknesses and where we can improve. The goal is not to beat them, the goal is to learn from them. “People (or organisations) we admire that push us to be better versions of ourselves”.
A Capacity for Existential Flexibility [19:38] - The ability and courage to massively change direction, to burn down everything you’ve done before if you discover a better way to do address your ‘just cause’. Look at the risks of architectural innovation for more insight into this idea. Only an infinite minded play has the capacity and bravery to make these kind of decisions.
The Courage to Lead [23:20] - All of the above is “unbelievable difficult”… all the incentives systems in industry are short term, personal and unhelpful for becoming infinitely minded and therefore having the courage to make difficult decisions.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the person who points out how someone stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends themselves in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if they fail, at least fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
We imagine a society where people think of others first. No one objects morally to people more senior receiving more, that is the deal we make, we give them these benefits so that in our time of need they will step up and do what is right. What we object to is when these people, betray our trust and sacrifice the group for their own benefit.
Simon Sinek
Leadership or Management?
Good leaders create followers… Great leaders create leaders.
Rabbi Lord Sacks
Managers are in a position of authority and they may be terrible leaders. But does that matter and how might you distinguish between the two? For me they are traits on a spectrum, at one end is pure management and at the other is pure leadership. In the middle there’s a mix of both.
Routine problems need a manager, novel problems need a leader.
I draw the distinction that all projects, tasks and activities can be divided into whether you are addressing a routine or a novel (complex) problem.
Routine problems, things that you’ve done many times before, something everyone (experienced enough) can do day in day out. Problems like this may need a manager, someone to simply manage the process and make sure it all gets done.
Novel problems on the other hand have unpredictable, variable, uncertain, behavioural or psychology based outcomes. Novel problems are complex (involving an unknown number of unknowns), may involve emotion and irrational behaviour. Problems like these need more leadership qualities in their managers. Qualities such as vision, strategy, big picture thinking, inspiration, openness etc…
So what I’ve seen and what I’ve experienced is that the quality of a manager’s leadership depends on the problem they are trying to tackle. If your role requires keeping things running smoothly and the way they have always run, then you should focus on your management skills; budgeting, planning, time management, coordination, people skills etc…
If your role is about dealing with uncertainty, a constantly changing landscape, changing requirements or unknown objectives. Then your success is determined by your ability to lead rather than as a manager.
What tends to happen is that management near the bottom of an organisation is more often dealing with routine problems, coordinating efforts on known problems. The higher you climb the more complex and novel the problems being faced become. At the top of most large organisations you’ll find people with much more of a leadership role and very little management.
Leadership is a privilege
Bob Chapman