Leadership is something each and every one of us reflects on through our careers.
I’m sure you have asked yourself the question many times ‘what do I think is great leadership’? There are so many examples of great leaders, but it’s sometimes harder to pick out the strong leadership principles we can adopt into our own life.
In this post, I share three personal perspectives on leadership principles that shifted the way I think, and may be helpful to you too.
Leadership As Consistent Practice
In a recent interview Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why, spoke about how leadership is often observed over the long term, not the short term. He uses analogies to illustrate his point.
“When did you first know you loved your wife?”. The chances are it wasn’t at a specific moment, but instead it was felt overtime. Similarly, if we went to the gym and expect to see results instantly, we’d likely never go back. Instead, physical fitness is seen over time, after a regular practice of attending.
In Sinek’s view, leadership is the same, “there’s nothing I can tell you, you have to do, so that people will trust you…it’s an accumulation of lots and lots of little things that any one by themselves is innocuous and useless….if you do it consistently and do it in combination with lots of other little things, like saying good morning to someone…..it’s those things that you do over and over and over; people will say ‘I love my job’.”
In this, Sinek suggests we challenge our assumptions about leadership.
Leadership is not something that is observable only in the moment, but rather can also be seen overtime, in the hundreds of small things that have occurred over an extended period. If we act in this way, leadership is not only about the highly visible and infrequent moment, it is about every moment, practiced on a consistent basis. It involves us assuming a perspective of continuous improvement and action.
Leadership As Interdependence & Cooperation
In his book the Culture Code, Daniel Coyle argues that the very best leaders are those who are comfortable questioning themselves and allowing others within their teams to do the same.
In so doing, leaders are able to better tap into the collective wisdom of teams, troubleshoot issues that they themselves do not see, and take advantage of emerging opportunities.
This shift involves establishing the right conditions where teams move away from an authority bias toward greater interdependence and cooperation. As leaders we cannot simply tell our teams to function like this, we have to provide them with the signals and environment that indicate it’s okay to do so.
Coyle provides plenty examples of this, from SEAL teams operating in high pressure situations, through to airline pilots who wrestle with highly unlikely and potentially catastrophic events, sharing split-second information and to avoid disaster.
In companies, we sometimes confuse the terms consensus with cooperation, where consensus is occasionally labelled as group thinking or agreement for the sake of it. What Coyle talks about is very different, where cooperation and interdependence is actually about people having the courage to say when something is wrong, based on their expertise and previous experiences. Creating bravery within our teams for people to speak their mind so we can pursue common goals is fundamentally what leadership is about, isn’t it?
This requires building leadership at all levels of a company, and starts with the leader establishing the conditions where this can occur and having the strength to be open to ideas. The impact of these subtle redefinitions and adjustments in leadership cannot be underestimated.
Leadership As Repeatable Rituals For Best Success
In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande documents how a simple checklist was rolled out to a pilot group of hospitals in both developed and underdeveloped nations, to curb the rising tide of millions of surgical complications that occur worldwide.
While the checklist was important, the way it was executed was equally so, often involving a simple principle that upturned the contemporary practice of many hospitals – if the pre-surgery checklist had not been satisfied, the nurse in charge could prevent the surgeon from proceeding with the operation.
This change inverts the unspoken hierarchy, allowing the person whose responsibility it is to sequence the checklist, to put patient-care above all else. But beyond being a formulaic, process-driven step, it also reminds all people in the specific surgery that they are part of a team where each person is accountable, and that it is not their role to simply ‘follow the leader’.
The way the checklist is implemented creates a continuous practice of leadership as Simon Sinek suggests, and also fosters the interdependence and cooperation that Coyle observed in high performing teams. Gawande’s checklist does many others things to reinforce these principles, such as also asking each person in the surgical team to introduce themselves to one another at the start of the case.
In this way the checklist is a guide for everyone, no matter what their role, to adhere to a regular pattern of what works and provides the very best outcomes. It brings together the collective intelligence of both experts and the data of thousands of earlier cases to deliver a repeatable pattern that increases the likelihood for success and reduces unnecessary risks. The checklist also asks experts to pause their spontaneous perspective of what may be right, and to consider a tool that has been proven to work.
As a result of the checklist, in several years major complications in eight hospitals fell by 36 percent, infections halved and death from surgery fell by 47 percent. Improvements weren’t just observed in developing nations, but also in some of the best hospitals in the world.
According to Gawande, “we have an opportunity, not just in medicine but in virtually any endeavour. Even amongst the most expert among us can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in place.”
Continuously Refining Our View Of Leadership
These examples remind us that great leadership requires us to continually refine our pre-conceptions about what leadership is and what it isn’t.
They serve as a call to take a broader and longer term view of leadership, that could include everything from how leaders work with teams through to ensuring a strong diversity of leadership styles in teams.
Elsewhere I’ve looked at wider concepts, such as resilience in leadership, how leaders can mentor others, questions leaders may ask of new staff, and also how mission and vision statements can help leaders define the purpose of companies; but these are just some directions, and I’m sure you will have many of your own.
As individuals you and I can also take simple steps to affect change in our own lives, by:
- reviewing our assumptions about what great leadership represents
- continually building upon our view of leadership through reflection and taking note of the times we have been in the presence of great leadership or exhibited strong leadership ourselves
- fostering diverse leadership styles within the organisations where we work, so that these may become exemplars, in which emerging talent may see themselves and plan for their future
- seek the views of others and create an environment where others can contribute their expertise without caution or fear
If you found this article useful or would like to share your view on leadership, please considering leaving a comment below.
