Thinking Like a Leader: Three Big Shifts
Leadership
development often focuses on doing — the mastering and use of
certain desirable skills and behaviors that concretely show someone to beleading.
Competency-based models can provide lists of such skills, as well as attributes
of their practice. But where leadership effectiveness really starts is
with thinking — adopting a mental model that makes it possible
to acquire those skills and demonstrate those behaviors in the first place.
Mastering leadership thinking can be challenging, but it is absolutely
essential. I may adopt the exact stance and handgrip of Jordan Spieth,
but I’m unlikely to win the Masters — while there may be a (wide) gap in our
athletic abilities, there is an even larger one in our mental capacity for the
game of golf.
Leadership thinking can be learned
but is difficult to teach. It is a matter of asking questions and presenting
challenges that help someone discover the mental model that enables their “best
leader” to emerge. It requires not just competency, but demonstrated
proficiency. And proficiency only comes with practice, feedback, and analysis.
Journaling and other reflective exercises are good for processing and absorbing both successes and failures. As Peter Drucker said,
“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will
come even more effective action.”
In my experience,
there are three big mental shifts that aspiring leaders must make in order to
develop thinking capacity and capability:
Shift 1: From
linearity to complexity.
Management
systems and processes tend to be linear. They assume that similar inputs will
result in similar outputs. In many situations, this holds true. Leadership,
however, requires a more nuanced view of the world because it involves people:
what motivates them, what their interests are, and how engaged they become.
Mechanical systems may be linear but as soon as the human element becomes
involved, the system becomes both complex and adaptive. It is dynamic — similar
inputs may bring about wildly divergent outputs.
As a leader, you come
to understand that relationships between the system components are paramount,
rather than the components themselves. Discerning these dynamics is essential
to achieving your desired outcome, which means you think about connectivity,
and the extent and robustness of those connections. You accept that these
relationships contain some performance factors you control and some you don’t —
you are part of the system, but likely not its gravitational center — and that
effective influence can amplify your impact on those beyond your direct
purview.
When things go well or
when you hit a bump along your leadership road, ask yourself which direct and
indirect relationships were at play. Where did your attention to positive
connectivity pay dividends and where might you have done better?
Shift 2: From “focus”
as a noun to “focus” as a verb.
There is always temptation to set static goals — annual
growth rate, net profit, or customer acquisition costs, for example — but once
you accept that you are operating in a dynamic and adaptive environment, you
begin to realize such goals have limitations. As a leader, you must continually
recalibrate to ensure that you have established the right goals and that they
not only include financial measures but also purpose (understanding the problem
your customer has hired you to help solve) and values (the bedrock principles
that guide your activities).
Clarity is a constant
challenge, particularly in large organizations with multiple business units and
geographic theaters of operations: Associates and executives come and go;
competitors thrust and parry; customers evolve; technology disrupts. You must
balance short- and long-term interests as well as the needs of diverse
stakeholders. Each of these can create distortions and distractions. When you
gain clarity on purpose, values, and performance, you foster agility throughout
the organization. You enable order without having to control every action and
decision. That’s leadership.
As you contemplate the
outcomes you achieve — for better or worse — ask yourself about clarity. Ask
others and accept their honest feedback. Often, poor signal-to-noise ratio in
internal feedback loops results in less clarity than you imagine.
Shift 3: From they to you.
For too long, individuals have looked to their
organizations to tell them how to develop as leaders, and this competency model
has dictated the training agenda. According to Jay
Conger of the Marshall School of Business and Douglas Ready of MIT’s Sloan
School, competency models offer the
advantages of “clarity, consistency, and connectivity [with other HR
processes].” But Conger and Ready also point out that competency models have
significant limitations because they tend to be complicated, often with 30 to
50 components; conceptual in that they usually are based on a leadership ideal; and are built on current realities rather than
future needs.
Let me add to their
analysis that the traditional model was designed to assess and mold people
based on the needs of the enterprise — what the company wants. The models do
not fully consider the individuality of each person being pushed through the
Play-Doh mold and how that person might make a distinct leadership mark. They
also tend not to include some of what we at the NPLI have found to be important leader characteristics,
such as embracing complexity, exhibiting curiosity, and actively recruiting
strong people to your team. These are tough to assess with standard pre- and
post-training tools.
Ask yourself: What are you doing
to improve your leadership capacity and capability? What are you doing
to push your boundaries and test your limitations? How are you getting
ready for where you ultimately want to be beyond the next rung of the ladder?
You are likely to work in many
contexts and will not spend your entire career in a single firm (or find all of
your leadership opportunities in your work life). In other words, you need to
take responsibility for understanding your strengths and weaknesses and
discerning where and how you can make your most meaningful leadership
contributions. Most important, you must take ownership of your own leadership
development. With the mindset of a true leader, you can take the best of what your company offers — and then seek out more.
Eric J. McNulty is the director of research at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative and writes frequently about leadership and resilience.
http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Thinking-Like-a-Leader-Three-Big-Shifts?gko=7648c
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