Different Kinds of Leaders

Organizations require different kinds of leaders, depending on the strategic goals and the external environment. Think of it as a recipe with two ingredients:

1) sustaining leadership - the ability to identify and maintain the systems and processes that have made the organization successful in the past 

2) change leadership - the ability to envision and implement new systems and processes to re-align the organization to current realities   

By identifying what the situation calls for, you can recruit and develop leaders with the right mix of these two components.
 
Types of Leaders

1. Systems Implementer – a leader who will operationalize a proven model for success, monitoring quality and eliminating deviations to ensure continuity from the past to the future (low change leader: 4 parts sustaining leadership and 0 parts change leadership)

2. Linear Improver – a leader who identifies and implements planned incremental improvements in order to better fulfill the current vision and mission (low-medium change leader: 3 parts sustaining leadership and 1 part change leadership)

3. Creative Culture-Builder - a leader who champions and implements a system for soliciting, incentivizing, evaluating and funding creative ideas from within the organization (medium change leader: 2 parts sustaining leadership and 2 parts change leadership)

4. Collaborative Improviser – a leader who affirms past success, but sponsors innovative "skunk works" projects to jumpstart a new direction that is better aligned with the demands of the external environment (medium-high change leader: 1 part sustaining leadership and 3 parts change leadership)

5. Radical Change Leader – a leader who recognizes that the organization will fail without a dramatic shift of direction; is willing to make intuitive, decisive and unpopular moves to turn the organization around (high change leader; 0 parts sustaining leadership and 4 parts change leadership
  
Discovery Questions
1.  What kind of leader are you? How many parts of sustaining leadership are in your toolkit? How many parts of change leadership?  

2. How well matched is your leadership type for the needs of your organization during this time of its development? What can you do to eliminate any gaps?

3. How can you better align your leadership recruitment and development strategy to attract and retain the types of leaders most needed by your organization?

Communicating Change
Q: We work so hard to communicate the change strategy to our teams and organization. We use emails, team meetings, town hall meetings and social media.  But the message is not  getting through. The associates involved in key projects do not seem to understand our ultimate objectives. And they are not engaged in implementing tasks with the big picture in mind. How can we reach them?   
A: All of your communication methods are valid. But there is one medium for communicating change that seems to be missing. If you really want to get your messages heard and acted upon, you must tap into the Informal Power Structure.

The Informal Power Structure

To impact the entire team or organization with your change message, look for people who are players in the Informal Power Structure. If you can get the ringleaders in this network to buy in to the strategy, you can be assured that they will pass along their attitude of commitment to others in their sphere of influence. And if they are skeptical, there is a good chance others will follow their lead.

If you want buy-in to the change initiative, it is not enough to communicate your expectations through formal communication channels. Commitment comes when leaders sit down with the ringleaders of the Informal Power Structure and work out a course of action that everyone can support.    
 
Discovery Questions
1. Draw a diagram of the formal lines of authority within your organization. Who are the major players? Where has the change initiative gotten stuck? Where is the change strategy working well?

2. Now identify the major hubs in the Informal Power structure. Who are the major players? What interests do they represent? What is each ringleader's current level of commitment to the change?  

3. How can you connect and build trust within the Informal Power Structure? How can you get the ringleaders to tell you what their resistance is? What do they know about how things really work in the organization? How can you use this knowledge to gain commitment to your change strategy?

An Overwhelming Job Description
The skill set required of leaders today is mind-boggling. Not only do you have to be adept at guiding complex projects with multiple stakeholders through to completion with a reduced budget, you are also expected to have flawless people skills in doing so. 

Some organizations are developing competency models to help leaders define the skills required and then master them. I have seen models with as many as 10 overarching competencies (each with a subset of skills). No wonder leaders are overwhelmed.
 
A Meaningful Model

What is needed to help leaders successfully navigate their role in a continuously changing work environment is a simplified model. One way to envision the leadership role is to picture it as having two components:

- Energy
- Direction

In short, what organizations need leaders to do is to manage two things:

- The energy level of their team
- The direction that energy is moving

When a team's gas tank is next to empty, the leader's role is to find out what is draining the energy and remedy it. A team cannot be productive without a continuous, daily refueling  so that the gauge indicates a full tank. Things that can drain a team's energy include lack of appreciation, inefficient process, conflict, and ineffective meetings.

Once the team's energy is restored, the leader needs to ensure that all that energy is moving to complete projects aligned with the organizational vision and strategic objectives. Effective leaders use tools such as carefully crafted measures, cross-functional process and consistent feedback to keep energy flowing in the right direction. Skillful leaders do not need to over-manage their teams; they set direction and parameters and then allow their teams to innovate and learn their way to the desired destination. When things are off track, the measures set off the alarm, alerting team members to self-correct and realign.
 
Discovery Questions
1  What is the current energy level of your team or organization? What practices do you have in place to monitor team energy, diagnose drains and restore positive energy flow?

2  What processes do you have in place to clarify goals, measure results and provide feedback?

3  What percentage of your time do you spend on each of these two components of leadership? How well is this percentage working for you?