Professor Graham Jones, founder of Top Performance Consulting, outlines how we can ensure the future health of our organisations through ‘real’ leadership.
My experience of coaching numerous senior leaders has led to my realisation that there are two broad sets of motives for being a leader that drive different behaviours and lead to different impacts on organisations. I have consequently identified two types of leader, which I call ‘real’ and ‘safe’.
‘Real’and ‘safe’ leaders
At the extreme,‘safe’ leaders are driven so much by their needs for rewards, status and power that they are unwilling to put themselves on the line because of the threat of losing their position if they get it wrong. ‘Safe’ leaders are risk-averse and will sit tight in the hope that more favourable conditions are just around the corner. There is little or no innovation and challenging orthodoxy during their tenure since their focus is almost exclusively on micro-managing the short term. In tough times, their focus is on cutting costs and probably putting a halt to development activities like coaching.
What lies at the core of the ‘safe’ leader is mainly about role security. This leader really values the prestige, status, authority and financial package that comes with leadership. There is a lot to lose for this leader, so much so that, particularly in tough times, his or her main focus will be staying out of the firing line—not taking risks, to them, means ensuring no mistakes. They withdraw into a safety zone.
‘Real’leaders, on the other hand, are driven by the challenge and opportunity to put themselves out there and make a difference. They become more prominent in tough times, are highly visible and make things happen. Sure, they have to focus on and manage the short-term challenges, but their mind is more on investing for the future. They view the current difficulties as being a time when development is most needed—this is the time to nurture and retain talent in order to gain competitive advantage in the longer term.
‘Real’ leaders focus on what they can control and make things happen; they make and stand by their decisions and ‘tell it how it is’. Their skills are probably even more prominent as they strive to lead the organisation and support their people through turbulent times. This is where their personal resources are so important: their resilience, optimism balanced with realism, strength of character, care and determination will be very evident. But so, too, will the fact that they are human beings like everyone else. They also have doubts and worries and there is no point hiding them. ‘Real’ leaders are authentic and their impact in organisations is much more a function of how they are than what they do.
How do you create a ‘real’ leadership culture?
‘Real’leaders hold the key to the future health of all organisations. Yet, too often, organisations allow ‘safe’ leaders to perpetuate the status quo and hinder progress and innovation. Many organisations still make the mistake of promoting people to leadership positions based on criteria related to functional expertise rather than leadership capability. Organisations should place greater emphasis on identifying a ‘real’ leadership mindset when assessing leadership potential: this will ensure that future leaders’ motives have people at their core, and also that they possess a strong capability to deal with the pressures that accompany the role.
Organisations can also move towards a ‘real’ leadership culture by emphasising and rewarding innovation. They should create environments which encourage calculated risks and tolerate responsible mistakes if they are to embrace true innovation.
Challenging ‘safe’ leaders and supporting ‘real’ leaders
The essence of creating a ‘real’ leadership culture lies in supporting those leaders who strive to spend most of their time at the‘real’ end of the continuum, and challenging those who are stuck at the ‘safe’ end.
Challenging ‘safe’ leadersis difficult! They are likely to exhibit classic symptoms either of denial (‘Leave me alone to be the good leader I already am’) or resistance (‘I’m far too busy to attend that leadership programme’).
Here are a few ideas on how to challenge these ‘safe’ leaders:
- Get them to create and communicate visions to their teams. This will ensure they are proactive in focusing on the future, become visible and own it.
- Ensure they receive impactful developmental feedback on a regular basis rather than once a year during performance reviews. Find a way of ensuring they receive 360 degree feedback on their leadership that makes an impact and will compel them to action.
- Provide them with a challenging coach who has permission to push them outside the boundaries of their safety zone, encouraging risk-taking, making the tough decisions they’ve been avoiding and getting them to think beyond what they believe has worked in the past.
- Help them set goals that will drive their day-to-day leadership behaviours rather than the annual review goals that get lost and forgotten for 12 months. These should be in the form of process goals around ‘how to be’ as opposed to ‘what to do’ as a leader.
Supporting ‘real’ leadersis equally difficult because it provides a different type of challenge. These leaders want to explore and experiment as part of their continuous growth. They want to be stretched and feel constantly at the cutting edge of leadership.
Here are a few ideas on how to support ‘real’ leaders:
- Provide them with access to the latest thinking on leadership. Send them to thought leadership conferences and seminars where they can feed off like-minded leaders from other organisations.
- Find ways of providing them with a voice in the organisation by facilitating access to the most senior leaders in the organisation. They want to share their innovative views and ideas with their bosses. They are also keen to provide feedback on what is and what is not working.
- ‘Real’leaders are hungry for feedback so ensure that processes are in place outside the formal performance reviews.
- Provide access to a coach who can help them with their feelings of loneliness and isolation; their high visibility means they will experience these feelings from time to time. The coach should also support their development of mental toughness to enable these leaders to thrive under pressure.
- Provide them with a mentor who they can bounce ideas off, keeping them stimulated.
Conclusion
The future health of organisations has never been more important than right now. ‘Real’ leaders hold the key to the wellbeing of all organisations, whether measured in terms of bottom-line or employee engagement. Allow ‘safe’ leaders to dominate your organisation at your peril!
Leading sports performance psychologist Professor Graham Jones is the founder of Top Performance Consulting, which advises and supports individuals, teams and departments operating in small start-up businesses through to large corporations on how to achieve and sustain high performance. Graham’s experience of consulting with top level performers spans more than 20 years and includes working with Olympic and World champions from a variety of sports, elite military fighting force personnel, and senior leaders and their teams in FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies. http://www.tpc.uk.net/
