We humans love to plan. We plan our workday, our home life, what we’ll do and who we’ll see. We set objectives and decide on strategies to maximise delivery. But when was the last time you planned how you will be?
It might sound like an odd question, but think about it for a minute. You wouldn’t execute a bond without planning. So, why wouldn’t we plan how to lead? When the difference between great contributors and great leaders is the ability to deliver through others, planning our leadership style is one of the best ways to make progress on the journey to great leadership.
Just like good delegation, good management is mindful. It might look like it just happens, but once you start to understand the mechanics of leadership styles, you can flex your behavioural choices to maximise your team’s performance. Your first step is to choose a working model for leadership styles to help you plan your leadership interventions.
There are many models of leadership and you or your company may already have one you prefer. My personal favourite is Daniel Goleman’s six versions described in his book, Leadership That Gets Results. In the book, Goleman lays out the following leadership styles: Commanding, Visionary, Affiliative, Democratic, Pacesetting and Coaching.
The Commanding style is all about control: “Do this now”. Visionary leaders say: “Come with me – it’s going to be great”, while Affiliative leaders strive for harmony, putting people first.
Democratic leadership gives everyone a vote. Pacesetting leaders are out in front, sleeves rolled up, doing awesome work and expecting their teams to keep up.
Coaching leaders answer questions with questions. “I don’t know how to do this” elicits the response “Where do you think you would start?”, followed by some suggestions to try.
All styles have their place. But overusing one style makes us rigid leaders who only succeed some of the time. Take Commanding, for example. This might be familiar to many of us – hierarchical and manager dominant, Commanding leadership is useful because it’s quick. “Do this and come back to me.” But it trains people to come back to you over and over again.
I won’t spend this article elaborating more on the styles. Goleman does a much better job and his book is mercifully short, so I’ll leave you to pick your model for yourself. The important thing is to do just that.
So, let’s assume you have a model in mind. Now you need to plan how you’ll deploy it.
To do that, grab a pen and jot down your team’s three biggest deliverables over the next six weeks.
Think about who is on point for each task. What do you know about that person? What are their strengths? What leadership style would best enhance those strengths and compensate for their weaknesses? What elements are there to the project? And what will those elements require of the person delivering them?
So, which style would work best for each phase of the project? As the work evolves, how can you best support that team member in getting a great result?
Great managers are generous with their knowledge and create opportunities for other people to shine
Imagine you are the head of treasury and your analyst, Sam, is overseeing a capital injection into an overseas subsidiary.
Sam is a diligent, meticulous person, if a little shy and under-confident. He is excellent at building one-on-one relationships, but finds speaking in groups harder. You could be purely delivery-focused and only talk to Sam about meeting project milestones. Or, you could plan your management style, tying the project to the overall departmental objective to set direction in the first instance using the Visionary style, then planning to be more Democratic whenever you join Sam’s project meetings to make sure he has the opportunity to lead.
In one-to-one conversations, you plan to adopt a Coaching style to give him the space and support to think through his options. You’re also aware that on the day the injection settles, you’ll need to be willing to move into Commanding if things get a bit tight.
Given the potential for negative interpretation, you and Sam talk about that in advance and agree that you’ll take that role if the need arises.
Because you’ve spent time observing yourself and have created a positive feedback culture in your team (see The Treasurer, for a refresher), you know you’re at risk of stepping in and taking the lead, particularly as your natural leadership style is Pacesetting. And you know that given Sam’s quieter nature, you could be tempted to step in and rescue him.
So, you will also contract with Sam that he can call you out if you start to step in, using the Affiliative style to create the psychological safety needed for Sam to feel comfortable to do this.
Great managers are generous with their knowledge and create opportunities for other people to shine. So, another question for you: how can you maximise Sam’s learning opportunity while he delivers the work for you?
Sharing the way you think and why you are making the decisions you are making is another great way of building capability in your team. Yes, it will take you and Sam a bit more time,
but it will build your working relationship and make him more effective and less reliant on you in the future.
Your leadership aim is to always give people the appropriate support for the task. If it’s the first time a person has carried out a capital injection, you can expect to manage them more closely. But if this is Sam’s 21st capital injection, this could patronise and alienate him.
To decide how much support is needed, I think of a two-by-two matrix with level of task challenge on one axis and level of support on the other. If the task is low challenge and I give low support, Sam could be demotivated if he works for too long on this type of work.
High challenge task with low support will cause stress. Low challenge but high support will patronise.
The sweet spot for management is high challenge, high support.
I think of this like scaffolding. You give the support while the new learning is being built, and then as the task becomes more familiar, you take the scaffolding off, before thinking about how to give individuals their next challenge once they’re comfortable and thirsty for new learning.
So, there it is: a leadership plan for the project. You might have to flex as you go, because the one thing you can guarantee about a plan is that it will change, so accept this and be willing to go with the flow a little.
Here’s my challenge to you: make the rest of 2020 a time for mindful management. Tell your team what you’re doing and ask them to help you in your experiment. Seek feedback along the way. Then, the next month, take what you learned and do it all again, but better.
Together, you’ll work out which styles work best for you all in given situations. Outputs will improve. Objectives will be met. And by the end of 2020, you’ll know exactly why you’re a good manager and where your growth opportunities lie.
Amanda Bradley FCT is an executive coach at Liberty EQ
This article was taken from the June/July 2020 issue of The Treasurer magazine. For more great insights, log in to view the full issue or sign up for eAffiliate membership