What is Leadership? according to Catalyst6.
It’s been said that to define “Leadership” is difficult as it has many and varied definitions. Some would place leadership in the same bucket as art, politics, religion, or relationships in that it can be difficult to reach consensus on an exact definition. This year alone over 1500 books will be written with the word “leadership” in their title, all with some common themes and the writer’s own spin or nuance.
What we do know is that there are basic truths about Leadership that help us understand it as a concept.
Leadership is a responsibility. By the very definition of the word, leaders will have followers, so we think good leaders should care about the well-being, growth and direction of their followers. Having a title does not make you a leader, it is your actions, how you show up, take responsibility and set the right example that makes you a leader.
Leadership is about nurturing and maintaining trusting, long term relationships in order to get things done.
Leadership involves goal attainment, setting the right direction, vision or purpose and providing meaningful work for followers. There’s a concept called FLOW which we will elaborate on in future posts which means an individual being happily, consistently motivated and content at work. We think we should aim for whole “organisations” to be in a state of FLOW in order to be at their most productive.
Leadership involves making the necessary changes to the organisations operating environment. This ensures the organisation has the right systems, processes and architecture to match the external changes going on in its ecosystem and to ensure its people can execute their plans.
Lastly, leadership is contextual. It is a dynamic process, for example, the skills required to be a good leader can change with the level of seniority or with the type of market conditions that prevail. For example Winston Churchill was a great war time leader, however he often struggled in more peaceful times.
At Catalyst6 we have attempted to define Leadership in practical termsto help our clients improve their productivity. Firstly as individuals, then in their teams and lastly in the design and management of their supporting environments. To that end we have defined Leadership under 3 core pillars, Leading Self, Leading Others and Leading the Business.
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Over many years as we continued to deepen our understanding of evidence based approaches to Leadership we were drawn to the work of two of America’s top Leadership experts Dr Jack Zenger and Dr Joseph Folkman. They have developed their leadership competency model based on insights built on hard data, statistical analysis and facts. Zenger Folkman’s work has helped thousands of businesses to understand the leadership competencies that equate to success. Their empirical research has demonstrated 16 different leadership competencies clustered into the 5 areas of character, personal capability, focus on results, leading change and interpersonal skills. When we consider these areas through the Catalyst6 leadership lens of Leading Self, Others and the Business all of the leadership competencies that make up these areas overlap and relate to our 3 core pillars.
In terms of Leading Self one area identified is “character”. Described as displaying high integrity and honesty. Some consultants refer to this as “authenticity”. There’s little doubt that this competency is a crucial element of leadership and therefore the number one goal within our pillar of Leading Self. You could call integrity being “consistently honest” the most important word here being consistency. Being true to yourself and consistently turning up as who you really are is seen as being authentic.
Self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-control all play a role in being an authentic leader. You have to know yourself to stand by your principles, you have to exercise self-control when things don’t go to plan, you have to be selflessa lot of the time and leave your ego at the door. In our work at Catalyst6 we have witnessed leaders make poor decisions based on self-protection either through wanting to win, or wanting to be liked. Authentic leaders with character don’t need to prove themselves to anyone, they are comfortable in their own skin.
We will elaborate more on Leading Self in future blogs covering the development of personal capability as a leader - which involves problem solving, analysing issues and taking Initiative.
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When we describe Leading Others we have indicated it relates to Leading Self, that is, if you don't lead yourself well, then it's also difficult to lead others well.
Setting an example and being authentic helps in leading others and building relationships.
Leading others is primarily about building trusted relationships with your followers and the various nuances and skills required to build those trusted relationships. Susan Scott, author of the book Fierce Conversations says, “the conversation is the relationship, and the relationship is the conversation.” Susan uses the word, “Fierce” not to reflect aggression, more so to talk about the courage needed to have good constructive conversation and debate.
To have trusted relationships leaders must be able to feel comfortable being vulnerable in front of their people and vice versa. Fear is the killer of trust. When people feel threatened they often retreat or they attack. When fear enters the conversation it generally goes backwards and is counter-productive. The interpersonal skills of the leader come into play here. How good a listener are you? How intuitive are you? Are you a good communicator? Another of the key competencies Zenger and Folkman discuss is the ability to communicate powerfully and prolifically.
So, the quality of our communication, the use of good conversation techniques in the right context will help us in Leading Others as best as we can. In future Catalyst6 blogs we will discuss how to have difficult conversations at work, how to give constructive feedback and to have constructive coaching conversations, and how to improve your persuasive communication skills.
Each will involve the use of simple tools to support you in Leading Others by focusing on results. This can be achieved by building relationships of trust, establishing stretch goals and taking responsibility for your team’s performance/initiatives and outcomes.
Finally let’s now take a glimpse at Leading the Business while again pointing out that Leading the Business hinges on Leading Self and Leading Others.
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There’s no doubt that some leaders are more focused on task orientated work elements (Leading the Business) than relationship orientated elements (Leading Others). Others are better at the people side than the task side of things. The best leaders seem to find balance between relationship and task, either via personal learning, personal growth and discipline or by strategic people management, i.e. deploying additional human capital to fill the competency they lack. Zenger and Folkman’s leading the business competencies includes setting a strategic direction, goals and the measurement of success or failure; championing change and innovation, and connection with the outside world.
There are various skills which enable these things to happen, for example to set a strategic vision and direction you have to be good at communicating powerfully and prolifically.
Catalyst6 helps clients develop and then cascade their strategy to their people via many channels using simple yet powerful techniques.
To set the right strategic vision you will most likely need good analytical and problem-solving skills and be able to hold people accountable to run a project. To design new products or systems you may need innovation skills, “creativity with purpose” to be able to make the right changes in ground up design or problem solving.
With its relationships to both Leading Self and to Leading Others the third core pillar of effective leadership is Leading the Business. A word of caution though. We can find many examples of where a company’s board of directors has paid too much attention to the Leading the Business competencies when recruiting a new CEO. They then pay the price of their new recruit, who unable to lead themselves or others effectively, fails to execute the best strategic plan for the business. Remember Character is Zenger and Folkman’s central leadership attribute.
We look forward to bringing you more on our 3 core leadership pillars of Leading Self, Leading Others and Leading the Business in our upcoming BLOGs.