Tag: leadership

Killing the Golden Goose: From Waste to Potential

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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The origins of management have embedded a fixed mindset of human potential in management practice. The resulting efficiency narrative leaves us fearing volatility and battling the threat of waste. We need to embrace the opportunity of a growth mindset and lead the development of human potential.   

Golden Goose Co Limited

Imagine you were entrusted management of 12 golden geese. Because the eggs they produce are all golden they won’t breed. As the manager of the golden geese all you can manage is their efficiency of production. Achieving the daily maximum of eggs is all that is possible.  

The manager of Golden Goose Co Limited lives in fear of any volatility in performance, any change in circumstances or any threat to the geese.  The most likely outcome from that change is a drop in production. The golden goose manager’s job in life is fight the geese’s inevitable extinction and deliver maximum efficiency of production in the meantime.

Which Management Narrative: Waste or Potential?

Human potential is not a golden goose. We are intelligent & creative, we can improve, learn, innovate, collaborate and grow. However, early management thinkers like Frederick Winslow Taylor viewed the challenge of management of maximising the efficiency of the labour resource, treating employees as a golden goose with a maximum limit of contribution. Time and motion, performance management and other tools were developed to maximise the fixed contribution from a resource that wasn’t expected to develop beyond a limited skill set of contributions.

The idea that management faces a threat of lost employee productivity and must do battle to maximise efficiency of production is a major narrative of management. As John Hagel has outlined, threat based narratives can build a strong unity of culture, but at the cost of conservatism and a focus on preservation.

Tim Kastelle recently highlighted that management is often deeply concerned at any sign of volatility of performance.  As the manager of Golden Goose Co Limited, volatility would get you fired. We go to enormous lengths to embed our desire to eradicate volatility from management, even to the extent where often the implicit purpose of our organisational structures and practices is to embed execution of only the current business model.

The management mindset of efficiency with an implicit fixed mindset of human productivity is akin to Carol Dweck’s Fixed mindset of intelligence.  The consequences for management behaviour are similar avoiding challenges, ignoring valuable feedback and feeling threatened by competitive success.

United in their battle against waste, managers with this traditional mindset are battling the extinction of the golden goose under the forces of disruption. Nothing more.

Growing Potential is the Work of Leaders

The rapidly changing and disruptive environment in which we work means we need to start managing the ability of human potential to grow.  We need a new growth mindset and to develop a new opportunity narrative for management that embraces human potential.

Any work that can be automated will be automated, including more and more sophisticated knowledge work. The role of leaders is increasingly less about the focus on managing waste as the golden goose approach is being disrupted by the innovation of others. Increasingly Harold Jarche argues leaders should manage talent. Leadership is the technology of human potential.

Managers need to start embracing this leadership and focusing on the opportunity narrative that is embedded in human history. We have shown consistently that human creativity is the best source of productivity improvement. Focusing on improving effectiveness, defined as success in producing an outcome, allows a far greater contribution from the people involved in the work and keeps our attention focused on best ways to realise the goals, not the processes.

The productivity improvement from creativity and potential far exceeds that of human management. Ongoing experiments like scientific learning, our global networks and our start-up culture prove the human potential to improve outcomes through learning, creativity and innovation. The Toyota Management System shows that human potential can and will grow in the exact industrial manufacturing context that Ford and Taylor helped invent, when given the opportunity by the management system.

When managers focus on growing human potential to improve effectiveness, this growth mindset redefines the game and pushes changes in the other systems that define our modern organisations. Purpose and goals come first. Engagement is no longer an after thought. Experimentation is a core practice. Collaboration and cooperation are seen as human opportunities to work and not sources of waste & distraction. Volatility is embraced as a source of potential learning. Most importantly of all the new narrative respects and embraces the potential of all in organisations to lead and to contribute.

That is a future of work worth seeing. So let’s kill the golden goose mindset of management and focus instead on leading the potential of people.

 

Image source: http://pixabay.com/en/geese-birds-birds-flying-waterfoul-258749/

Governance is a Leadership Conversation

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

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Governance best practice requires a vibrant conversation that shares the diverse insights & experience of directors so that organisations can make better decisions. We need to focus as much on the quality of the conversations and the networks of the directors as we do their experience and expertise.

Directors are chosen for their experience, insights and expertise. The role of a director participating in a governance process is to bring their personal capabilities to bear helping the management of the organisation to make better decisions. However, experience, insights and expertise will go to waste if the directors are not part of an effective conversation and if their networks are not keeping them up to date.

Focus on the conversation at board level

A vibrant conversation is one with rich and relevant contributions from all parties. A vibrant conversation is engaging because it is an exercise in joint learning. Directors and management working together to understand how best to proceed leveraging their collective insights and experience. Both the chair and management need to help facilitate this process of learning and encourage an engaging and effective conversation.

If a board conversation is predictable, agenda driven, runs to only the papers or dominated by a few voices, particularly those of management or a chair, then there is a good chance that the governance process is failing. Disrupting a comfortable board to improve its function takes leadership, tact and courage.

Questions matter as much as expertise. Questions are also a powerful source of disruption to patterned thinking. While a director brings expertise, that capability is more engagingly used to frame provocative questions for the board and management to consider. Great questions prompt reflection, draw out new perspectives and can change the understanding of all involved in the conversation. Well framed questions respect others ability to contribute and to learn.

Questions also highlight the potential of conflict to frame and define an issue. If everyone is in agreement all the time, then nobody is required around the table. The role of a governance process is to interrupt this experience with relevant pushback. One of the benefits of a diversity in a governance process is it is more likely to surface other relevant questions and perspectives to be considered.

The learning nature of any governance conversation should extend to the effectiveness of the conversation. Double-loop learning that looks at the process as well as the content accelerates effectiveness. The best question to finish any discussion at board level should be “How can we have a better conversation next time?”

Broaden the Conversation with Networks

The second way to improve the governance process is to broaden the inputs to the conversation at board level. The networks of the directors and other stakeholders around the organisation can be a critical source of other views and considerations.

If a board is considering a highly technical issue, they may well reach out to engage experts, peers or friends who has deeper expertise in that area. Board processes should encourage this leverage of the networks around directors and the organisation as a regular exercise. In our rapidly changing networked era, the networks from which directors may gather insights can stretch globally mediated by technology. Leveraging and improving this flow of knowledge will help directors and organisations stay current on latest thinking and also diversify their thinking. Being well networked as a director is an antidote to disruption.

Stakeholders around an organisation are also an important network for directors to consider in the governance process.  How often do directors engage with customers, suppliers, communities and other key stakeholders of the organisation? Do directors have access to critical information from these conversation?  For example, reading verbatim customer complaints can be a rich source of insight for a board that is not captured in metrics of customer satisfaction. Stakeholder engagement also creates new awareness of accountabilities that can be critical to improving performance in an organisation.

Governance is a Leadership Conversation

Playing a governance role should not be easy or risk free. All participants in a governance process need to be helping make conversations more effective for the organisation. Governance is a leadership role and as leaders boards need to consider the effectiveness of their conversations and the value of their networks.

Change the Conversation

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

A large part of the history of our technology has been the effort to use technology to control human behaviour. Technology transformation is often sold on the potential to better make humans do things that they should be doing. The failure of so many transformational technology programs is proof that human behavioural changes are a subtler and more elusive challenge. Changing the conversation is as important as changing the process.

The Business Case for Technology Transformation

Leadership mindsets from the industrial era often lead to the management question:

“What can we do to make people do the right thing?’.

Technology transformation is sold on a promise of offering the answer. Too commonly management will choose a new technology system or process as delivering a way to make people ‘do better’. For example:

  • Customer Relationship Management systems will deliver better conversations with customers and better sales force productivity
  • Human resources systems will deliver better talent, engagement and performance conversations and better compliance with required processes
  • Business Process Management systems will enable better and more granular control of the processes that people use to do the work
  • Enterprise collaboration tools will make an organisation more collaborative
  • Knowledge management tools will make organisations better informed
  • Better analytical tools using big data will deliver better decisions in organisations  

However, these technologies are usually only an infrastructure to support new behaviours and new conversations. Their capabilities underpin human behaviour. New processes will encourage change. New data capture and reporting may help measure activity. Without a willingness to change to new behaviours from users, the systems alone cannot make change without risk of major disruption or disengagement.

Technology rarely can require a new behaviour or a new conversation. Human creativity enables remarkable ways to cling to old ways in the face of new technology. Even to the extent that these technologies deliver better measurement of human activity, organisations are often frustrated to discover that the ability to measure and target activity simply generates activities to solely meet the measures, not behavioural change. Quantities are achieved as the cost of both productivity and quality. 

Change the Conversation 

Changing the leadership question can have a dramatic impact on how an organisation makes decisions. Here’s a different question for management to ask about a transformation of technology:

‘What do our people need to better deliver our goals?’

There are a number of advantages that flow from changing the conversation around change and transformation in this way:

  • Engaging your users: Instead of assuming management or a technology vendor has the answers, the question opens up a conversations for people who do the work to contribute and learn. Treat your employees as skilled knowledge workers and respect their creativity and opinions. These people will have the best context on what is causing the issues and what support they need.  Engaging their input will be the most powerful element of change in performance. At the end of the day, the behaviours that need to change are theirs.
  • Change the leadership conversation: Shifting from a control mindset to one that is about realising the potential of the team is a powerful change in an organisational conversation. A transformation can be a key way to help accelerate this change in mindset. If employees feel trusted and are free to share, many people will highlight the way that the leaders themselves may need to change as part of that transformation too.  The best change begins with those seeking to drive change.
  • You may not need new tools or a new process: How many systems have been implemented to solve issues which were simply a lack of clarity of purpose or objectives of work? Do people need new skills or capabilities instead of new systems? Do people need new freedoms, approaches & leadership support to respond in an agile way to market needs? Consider alternatives and additional elements to enable the behaviour changes that arise.
  • Inconsistent demands on people:  Engaging your people in change will highlight areas where you are being inconsistent. In a siloed organisation systems often work at cross purposes. Are you sure that all the other elements of your systems & culture reinforce the right goals? For example, it is common for people in sales and service roles to experience that their time is used up with low value compliance tasks. As a result high value customer tasks will get pushed from the system. Forcing additional compliance will only make that worse. If performance management systems and the real leadership conversations in your organisation work against your new system, it is dead before it is even deployed.
  • Engaging outside the organisation: Do your customers want to give you the data that you need for your new CRM or analytics system? Does the change in sales approach or work process improve their experience as well? Will great talent be rewarded by working in your performance management system? Are you sure you can articulate the value of these changes to external stakeholders? Your people will need to do so. Your people’s reluctance to do your view of ‘the right thing’ might be saving you from broader issues with customers or other stakeholders.
  • Pace of change: Changing systems takes time. When will the system need to change again to adapt to a rapidly changing market? Are your people holding back because they can see the next change coming? Are you better to focus on your ability to change behaviours in more agile ways than through changing technology systems?

Technology transformation can be a powerful enabler of organisational change. However, it is merely an enabler. Changing the leadership conversation is often the critical element to ensuring the success of a transformational change.

Image source: http://pixabay.com/en/ravens-black-birds-conversation-236333/

The Future of Leadership – Reading

Posted on by simongterry in Leadership

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Leadership is the technology of human potential. We know that leadership needs new concepts to adapt to a network era. Without the right new leadership concepts, we won’t realise the human potential of the future of work.

Change Agents Worldwide is offering solutions and development opportunities for change leaders looking to make the transition to network era. I am excited to work with an extraordinary team of change agents to bring that about. Leadership can come from any role, so building capabilities matters for all individuals and for all teams.  The opportunities are tailored to people’s personal goals, needs and position in the organisation.

Getting Here

Creating the future of leadership in a network era takes a diverse series of influences. The list below is the set of books, articles and blogs that have most influenced my personal learning. Like all such lists it is partial and personal. There are too many great thinkers and leaders whose work I have not had the time to read or the space to include here. I have included a long list under categories to enable people to dip into sources that they may not have seen before.

If you are looking for some great places to start, here my list:

General Leadership Agenda:

Leadership Stories

The Rationale For Change

Adaptive Leadership Techniques:

Discovering Purpose & Authenticity:

Personal and Organisational Learning:

Working Out Loud:

Network Leadership:

Systems & Design Thinking

Communication:

Community Building

Any list like this is partial. These are the works on leadership that I go back to again and again as inspirations. This list clearly could be far more diverse and far longer. 

Whose leadership inspires you? Who has been left out of this list? What materials should people read or engage with to design the future of leadership in the future of work?  

I look forward to seeing your additional ideas and suggestions in the comments.

Notes

Change Agents Worldwide has a free e-book with essays on steps companies can take to be ready for the future of work.

* In an earlier version of this post Stowe Boyd’s Manisfesto was incorrectly referred to as The Manifesto for the New World of Work. The post has now been amended.

The Future of Work is The Future of Leadership

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An insight about the future of work dropped this morning as I discussed leadership in the network era with Harold Jarche and Jon Husband, colleagues from Change Agents Worldwide. 

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The Future of Work is the Future of Leadership

The future belongs not to the leadership of technology. The future belongs to the technology of leadership.

Our opportunity is not incremental improvement in the leadership of change to implement network technologies. Our opportunity is a much more important transformation of the critical human technology of leadership for the network era. Only new leadership capabilities & concepts will enable us to realise the potential of the future of work

Realising Human Potential is What Matters

If you are one of the thought leaders, consultants or vendors working to bring about the adoption of social collaboration technology, you know there is a raging debate about what changes in social and network technology means for organisations. However, there is much that is unclear in the debate about the future of work.  Social Business is dead, not dead or even not enough. The biggest challenge is adoption, lack of executive buy-in, return on investment or even organisation’s success. You need a collaboration layer, you need purposeful collaboration or you need cooperation instead.

If you are a manager in an organisation trying to achieve outcomes in a rapidly changing business climate, you most likely missed this entire conversation. The debate about the impact of social collaboration technology is not even on your radar (unless a consultant or vendor has caused you to reflect on it for a moment before you returned to the daily challenge of running your business).

What matters most to managers is more effective human collaboration – collaboration that improves the performance of your business for your customers and delivering better work experience for your people. Managers everywhere wish there were better ways to tap the talents, innovation and engagement of their people to help deliver better outcomes. That is at the heart of the discussion of employee engagement in our organisations.

The technology that engages people and realises potential is called leadership. That’s why so many investments are made by organisations in leadership development and in a push for leadership in every role. Leadership is the most effective technology to solve for the management wish.

Network Era Leadership Realises Human Potential

Work is a human task. Leadership is the work of mobilising others to action. Leadership is how we help people to realise their human potential. Much of our network and collaboration technology is just an infrastructure for the work and leadership required. The network can magnify the culture of the organisation, but we need the right leadership models for managers to realise the potential of a network era of work.

Traditional management & leadership approaches inherit many of their concepts from process models borrowed from the industrial era. In this mindset human potential is measured in productivity terms.  The command and control culture focuses on using the right processes to drive human productivity and align that productivity with the right tasks. The engines of human potential (engagement, knowledge creation, experimentation, innovation & enablement) are driven out as sources of volatility & waste. What many call leadership is better described as a process of command of people with an efficiency mindset. That is not leadership at all.

These traditional management concepts also get baked into organisational systems. We have built much technology to explicitly or implicitly reflect these industrial models of management and work. Look inside any organisation and you will find plenty of systems designed from the top-down that reinforce hierarchical command and control. Pull out your system process maps and look for your employee’s ability to do exception handling. In many cases there is no exception process. Exceptions are handled in hacks. 

Transparency, responsiveness, the ability to work across silos and effectiveness are often surrendered to tight control of process, narrow measurement of process outcomes, compliance and efficiency. Critical systems in customer management and human resources systems offer some of the most striking examples of these constraints and are widely copied from organisation to organisation. To the frustration of everyone, managers and people must work around these systems to collaborate and cooperate effectively while managing waves of top down change management to bring them back to compliance with process.

The disruption of the networked era is evidence of the scale of change that networks are bringing to our lives. ‘Kodak Moment’ has an entirely new meaning today. This pace of change focuses our attention on a need for change in the concepts of leadership & organisation to support a changing world of work.

We need not focus much on the threats of this era. The opportunities of new models of work and leadership are greater. New network technologies give a glimpse of the potential for leaders to better leverage the people of organisations for work and innovation.  However, realising the potential of human collaborative and cooperative knowledge work in networks demands new leadership models.

We Know How to Start Leading in the Network Era

Each new era brings social changes and requires new more effective concepts. We updated the concepts of leadership and management at the birth of the industrial era, leveraging existing concepts from the military and other spheres of human life. Now people need to work to develop new models to leverage the infrastructure delivered by networks and collaboration technology.

The good news is that many of these concepts are already clear and have been developed by practitioners to the point where they are capable of application in everyday work. These practices now work highly effectively and can be taught. Managers now need to pick these up and build the capability in their people to lead in new ways, using:

  • Deeper self-awareness and understanding of human behaviour and drivers of high performance
  • A greater focus on systems and a wider view of outcomes and stakeholders
  • Purpose & Trust to enable leadership & followership in every role
  • Experimentation & Adaptation
  • Collaboration & Cooperation
  • Network models of work organisation like Wirearchy, Pods and Swarms
  • Social work and learning, such as personal knowledge management, working out loud.

However, we cannot expect managers do to all the work alone. We will need to support them with learning, coaching and the opportunity to practice the new skills and mindsets.  We need to change the organisational systems and processes that hold back this opportunity to better leverage human potential.  

Making these changes is the great challenge of leadership is in the new network era. It is the work I will be focused on with my colleagues in Change Agents Worldwide as we help others to navigate these changes.

The future of work is the future of leadership for everyone in organisations. Building a better more effective model of leadership will help realise the human potential of this future. Join the effort in your organisation to build a new technology of leadership to make this possible.

The Dread Pirate Roberts Problem

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Man in Black: I can’t afford to make exceptions. Once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft, people begin to disobey you, and then it’s nothing but work, work, work all the time.  

– From the film ‘The Princess Bride’

Many middle managers have the Dread Pirate Roberts Problem. Changing our organisations will require them to break from moulds of leadership that they have inherited with their roles. Middle managers need to invent the new path forward to more responsive organisations or disappear in the disruption of digital networks.

The Dread Pirate Roberts Problem of Middle Management

Man in Black: The name was the important thing for inspiring the necessary fear. No one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Wesley.

In the film ‘The Princess Bride” we discover that the Dread Pirate Roberts that has been terrorising the seas for 20 years is not a person, it is a role. The title Dread Pirate Roberts has been handed down from one player of that role to the next. Each player carries on the traditions and techniques of the role to maintain their effectiveness. When they tire of the role, they retire passing it on to the next person to play Dread Pirate Roberts with terror, ruthless efficiency and no exceptions.

Middle managers can experience the same challenge as the successors of the Dread Pirate Roberts. The role that they take on as managers in a hierarchy comes with cultural expectations that have been built up over years by their predecessors. Culture is an expectation as to patterns of interactions between people. The culture creates expectations of how managers will act, use their power and demonstrate leadership. In many cases those expectations can be no less fearsome than those of the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Many middle managers have not seen or been trained in any other models of management and leadership than those that have prevailed in the role or organisation. Asking or expecting these managers to break from these deep cultural expectations on their own is a vain hope. Even if they are given the skills to act differently, they will find their teams and stakeholders are disappointed that they no longer behave as the Dread Pirate Roberts should.  

The system pressure to return to type in this situation can be strong. Performance management & talent systems reward ‘strong leadership’, usually defined culturally by the existing role of manager. The risk of adopting another model is that any volatility of performance will be seen as failure of the new practice. Personal influence in the networks of ‘strong leaders’ can erode. Struggling to come to grips with new practices managers find management and leadership becomes ‘work, work, work all the time’. It hard not to see why many choose to just continue the traditions, enjoy the rewards and hang out for their chance to retire and pass on the role.

Why does Middle Management Need to Change its Approach?

Digital disruption and networked ways of working are threatening organisations and putting pressure on the traditional function of middle management roles. The role of middle managers as creators and filters of knowledge disappears as knowledge becomes a flow in networks and technology automates the functions.

Middle managers are increasingly facing a need to realise people’s potential in collaboration and create more responsive organisations. More and more organisations are focused on the fact that the poor engagement of people in traditional command and control models is a massive waste of human potential. Every disengaged employee is someone not helping to push the organising forward. More knowledge work demands better use of people’s purpose, passion, creativity and intelligence. Organisations increasingly want leadership in every role, a direct threat to command and control models. Managers need to leverage new mindsets, new questions and gather new knowledge & expertise from networks.

Embedding a New Model

However, when these changes require new management and leadership models, the Dread Pirate Roberts problem arises. A middle manager who is expected to manage by control and power will find a shift to the role of an engaging leader, let alone a network navigator, challenging and confronting. They are going to need to give up their traditional models of influence, perceptions of how they create value and ‘work, work, work’ to influence teams and stakeholders that a new approach works.

Middle managers need to accept the work & the risks. Leadership is work. In the new era of network disruption, leadership can’t be safe. Managers need to accept that they are the change management. Influence is critical and middle level managers need to use their networks and authority to lead that change collectively.

Senior organisational leaders can authorise and support these changes. Senior leaders can help reduce the work and risk of change. However, they cannot make change easier for middle managers. Senior leaders can’t order a change in culture. It will take a new shared story of leadership in the organisation, new capabilities & practices, new systems, and consistent role modelling for a new model of leadership to embed. Social collaboration inside organisations can help managers to accelerate this cultural change by acting as infrastructure of culture magnifying the change in culture and role modelling effective behaviours.

Middle managers need to embrace the opportunities to be leaders, culture change agents and to explore the network navigator role, particularly in networks in and around their organisation. These roles may well be the only functions of a middle manager in a future organisation. By experimenting and working collaboratively with their teams and leaders in this way they will discover the right path forward for their organisation & build critical capabilities for the years ahead.

Perhaps then all the managers playing the role of Dread Pirate Roberts in organisations can happily retire and hang up their boots.

Don’t blame the Leadership. Lead.

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Unconnected & unresponsive organisations often find themselves in a trap.

Disengaged employees look up to a Chief Executive Officer and blame them for the lack of a better workplace. At the same time the CEO often wants a more engaged workforce but has no idea how to make the change in an effective way.

The longer this goes on the greater the risk that in this circumstance the CEO pulls the lever on the traditional response and announces a top-down transformation program. With the CEO and the transformation team having accepted the responsibility to drive change, everyone sits back and waits to see how the CEO’s pet project goes.

Many will have seen that moment when the arms start crossing defensively in the auditorium as the CEO announces the change. If the organisation started with disengagement now it has disengagement, along with a healthy dose of apathy & cynicism.

Change from the top

There are few models of change that don’t emphasise the importance of senior management support for change. It has become a litmus test of change in many organisations to inquire about the level and seniority of executive support. Senior management are powerful stakeholders in any change and change takes both collaboration and power.

However none of the change models that work, place all responsibility for change on senior leadership. Senior leadership should support and align change in the organisation to the desired direction.  Nobody said they, or their proxies, had to do it all.

Looking up is disengaging

We have our jobs and our place in the hierarchy. We have power, capability and influence to drive change. Waiting for senior leaders to get the changes required is the most disengaging experience for capable leaders across the organisation.

Looking up can take many forms. Some times it is a simple as feeling the need to have some indication of the ability to proceed. Other times it is created by approval processes on the resources or people required to make change happen. Some times we don’t even know we have referred something up for approval until we challenge why we aren’t acting now.

Creating an environment where people look up for authority will only worsen any engagement issues. Lack of engagement will worsen the problems in the workplace. Instead, give people the authority, trust and confidence in direction to act on their own.

Follow & Act

Take guidance from senior leaders. Support the change they seek to drive. Be a good follower.

Yes, necessary, but not sufficient for real & effective change.

Take it as your responsibility to respond to what you see needs work. Connect with others to encourage them to join you in this important work. Start new conversations that help everyone to understand the changes needed and push change forward.  These simple steps make you a networked change agent.

Understand the strategy and align the changes that you are pushing to where senior leaders are heading.  If you don’t understand ask for clarification, not approval.

Ask for forgiveness, not approval. You will learn and grow as you act. If you are doing the needful to bring about change your organisation and colleagues will not mind.  

Mostly you will get thanks from a grateful CEO.

Leaders don’t know

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Every leader faces a challenge. People expect them to know the answer.

Knowing as a leadership challenge

Every day in each leadership interaction whether with one person or thousands of people the same moment occurs. People look at their leader and hope that the leader has the answer. The question is irrelevant. The leader is expected to supply the answer. The leader is expected to make things easier by taking the problem away. In this moment, a leader’s authority is tied to their capability to perform as an answer delivery machine.

Leadership doesn’t work that way. Often supplying any answer is exactly the wrong response. Supplying an answer can disengage, foster work avoidance or leave the leader holding all responsibility going forward. It can be a lonely and challenging place to be trapped in a question against the weight of expectation of the team. 

The pressure to supply the answer and be a source of all expertise is a common factor in the imposter syndrome many leaders experience. Not knowing enough to answer all the questions makes people doubt their capabilities. The feeling that they are an imposter is more than a thing. Imposter syndrome is almost an epidemic.

Why leaders don’t know

If you don’t feel some doubt at leading in a time of great change and complexity then you are extraordinarily talented and well informed. Just take care that you are not one of the leaders who are either delusional or pathological There are some reasons why knowing is a challenge: 

  • Leaders shouldn’t know – role: A leader’s role is not to be an answer person. Their role is to create conversations that engage, deepening understanding, set context and shape direction. Leaders need to hold others in tension so that they do the work necessary to move towards answers.  If you are providing answers all you can expect is compliance or at best agreement. You won’t get engagement or creativity.
  • Leaders can’t know – context: No matter how well they measure their business, no matter how deep their expertise, a leader can’t have all the context required to make a good decision. They should be focused on other things most of the time. They will have a different context to the person on the spot with a problem.
  • Leaders shouldn’t know – waste: Every time you stop to ask a leader everything comes to a halt. The process of asking takes time. That time could be better spent solving and building the team’s capability in the process. Even if the leader does know the answer, that time and the process required to extract information is a waste.  You can’t create agility with a bottleneck of a leader.
  • Leaders can’t know – uncertainty: Often the answer is not clear and will only be revealed in action. Requiring a leader to declare a certain position or outcome in this case is pointless and only serves to undermine the leader.
  • Leaders shouldn’t know – capability: Giving answers rarely teaches people how to find their own. Leaders need to build their people’s capability to answer, learn & lead themselves

Knowledge is a flow

Leaders don’t need to know a particular stock of knowledge. Leaders need to know how to help others to share and develop knowledge as an ongoing flow. Then leaders need to help people translate knowledge to action.

  • Teams know some: In a majority of cases when asking a leader what to do, the person asking has a well-formed view of what to do. They have the context. They understand the challenge well. With a sense of authority, they would have acted by now. If the team doesn’t know the answer itself, they likely know where to start.
  • Stakeholders know more: Leaders who help their teams engage externally with the system & stakeholders around the business, enrich the team’s understanding of what to do next.  What a team is missing, the system around will be able to add. In the conflict between the answer of the team and the broader stakeholders is exactly where the problem and the insight lies.
  • Knowledge is evolving: Knowledge needs to be constantly tested and updated in action. Leaders can make sure that teams understand to track and learn from the experiments that they make applying knowledge. The lessons from those experiments move everyone’s insight forward. 

Next time people expect you as a leader to supply all the answers, lead them & their stakeholders to engagement with better questions instead.

Leaders Create Paths not Stone Walls

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The most enduring & strongest form of leadership is the ability to constantly change yourself and change with your team.

Leaders as stone walls

In the western districts of Victoria, historical stone walls can be found.  These stone walls built by convicts and early settlers are carefully assembled piles of the volcanic rock that can be found in those soils.  These walls were built with are no foundations and no mortar. The walls stand where they stand, but they are lost when they fall down or must be moved. We lack the patience or skills to work replace them. Their strength comes only from the careful effort to lock all the pieces together under the force of gravity.

Some managers see demonstrating strength as the critical component of leadership.  These managers come across as carefully constructed and as immovable as one of these old stone walls. With strongly fixed views on the way things should be, they work hard to hold all the pieces of their world just so. They demonstrate a formidable power to resist and to hold their position. However, when they reach this point of strength, these leaders find they are no longer able to move without crumbling.

Managers like this confuse leadership with control and power. They focus on their own strength and consistency because they think it is necessary to maintain their power. Threatened by uncertainty and change they demonstrate consistency to deliver certainty to their teams. The burden of consistency falls on the manager alone.

But this view is self-fulfilling only on the downside, if you define strength by your inability to be changed, like a stone wall you will fall apart irreparably, if you need to change. There is no upside from this kind of consistency. It takes you nowhere in a world of rapid change. You will find yourself and your team irrelevant as you remain fiercely rooted to the spot.  Eventually someone needs to knocks you down to create a new path. The strength of consistency becomes fragility to external change.

Leadership as a path

Leadership is not about control, certainty and stasis. Leadership is work. Leadership is about influence and movement. More specifically it is about engaging others in change and encouraging them to work at the challenges and opportunities in front of them. Leaders create leadership in others, they don’t bear the burden alone.

You can’t lead as an immovable wall, however carefully constructed that wall may be. The work of leadership requires constant adaptation to change and that change will change the leader in the process. Leader and team evolve as they respond to new challenges and develop new approaches of working together.

The real strength of leadership is the inner purpose, self-awareness and connection to others that holds you and your team together as you all face into major change. It is that confidence, that enables leaders to empower their team to demonstrate their own potential to lead and to make change happen. 

Leaders help people to travel new and better paths. This means that they must embrace the change needed to move their teams forward.