I have come to the conclusion that right now there are a lot of cotton-candy leaders who are offering sweetness without substance. These individuals are choosing popularity instead of accountability and status instead of results. We need more leaders right now, but the shift from being a manager to becoming a leader is not quick or easy. To help me explain this concept, I am going to utilize the following article: Watkins, Michael D., “How Managers Become Leaders:The seven seismic shifts of perspective and responsibility”, Harvard Business Review, June 2012. I also will add in my own thoughts.
One important thing to becoming a leader is to shift from being a problem solver to an agenda setter. As Watkins writes, “Many managers are promoted to senior levels on the strength of their ability to fix problems. When they become enterprise leaders, however, they must focus less on solving problems and more on defining which problems the organization should be tackling.”
On one hand this seems simplistic, but it is not. We get a lot of kudos for being problem solvers. We get a lot done as problem solvers and everyone loves us and wants us to be a part of things. The problem with of this level of work is that people become dependent on us. All our time is consumed by other peoples’ problems. All roads lead to us, and we become the hub of execution.
The solution to this situation is greater than our ability to delegate, motivate people, and promote teamwork. Setting the agenda for a team, a department or a division requires us to figure out what are the goals for the team, the department or division. We also need to figure out what are the problems that need to be solved by the team, the department or division. Next, we must prioritize which goals and problems need to be addressed and communicate those priorities in a way that people can respond from clarity rather than fear. In short, we need to set the agenda, and then hold people accountable for getting them done.
Hermina Ibarra in her book, Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015) notes that leader can be a hub or a bridge. For example, when a leader is a hub, they set goals for the team, assign roles to your people, assign tasks, and monitor progress toward goals When they do these things well, the leader creates a good climate inside the team, the department or the division.
When a leader focuses on being a bridge, they align team goals with organizational priorities, funnel critical information and resources into the team to ensure progress toward goals, and get the support of key allies outside the team. When this is done well, the leader enhances the external visibility and reputation of the team.
However, the best leaders I have met focus on bridge building within their agenda setting. Here, they build bridges to relational space, i.e. hubs that are focused on people working together with other people. Rather than getting caught in the fallacy of centrality where I, as a singular individual, needs to be at the center of everything, the best hubs are relationship centric spaces.
Furthermore, before you set the agenda, you also have to build capacity, and create healthy team relationships. Then, the agenda will be executable. It’s not problem solving that is the secret as much as relationship building!
Still, some people want to skip building people centered bridges and hubs. Instead, they want to build a tunnel, i.e. a linear pathway, through the problems and obstacles before the organization. As John Paul Lederach writes, “The difficulty is how do you tunnel through an active volcano?” As he continues, tunnel vision looses “peripheral vision”, i.e “the capacity to situate oneself in a changing environment with a sense of direction and purpose and at the same time develop an ability to see and move with the unexpected.” He continues, “people with tunnel vision can only see forward.” From my experience, successful leaders can see forward, backward, and sideways.
Another challenge for people right now is project management. So many say we should “forget all this people stuff” and instead focus on project management. As they point out to me, a goal is a project and we just need to manage it better. However, Lederach’s research and experience points out that “It is important to recognize that the project mentality assumes two important but rarely accurate truisms: (1) Social change is linear; and (2) social change is best measured by visible and verifiable results.”
As a consultant, executive coach and trainer for over thirty years, I like results. As leaders, we focus on outcomes, especially successes. However, we rarely study the processes leading up to an outcome. Furthermore, we reward people who solve problems, but do not reward those who prevent them. as noted by Emre Soyer and Robin H. Hogarth in their article, “Fooled By Experience”, which can be found in the May 2015 issue of the Harvard Business Review.
For me, I like connections even better, i.e. people to people, people to systems, systems to systems, people to environment/context, and people to history, i.e. remembered history, shared history, and lived through istory. With these connections, we as leaders can create clarity and capacity for multiple results over time.
Another shift that managers need to make to become a leader, according to Watkins, is to move from being a warrior to being a diplomat. In our old roles as warriors, we spent a great deal of time “marshaling the troops to defeat the competition.” We routinely put on the battle armor , picked up the horn, summoned the troops and led the charge. We took no prisoners, defeated the enemy, and celebrated victory.
However, as a leader, there is not enough time in the day to do all of that. Now, we have to deal with various stakeholders rather than the competition. We have to interact with them and address their concerns. In these situations, we need to use the tools of diplomacy, i.e. negotiation, persuasion, conflict resolution and alliance building, in order to shape the the external business environment to support our strategic objectives. Therefore, as a diplomat leader we need to understand how decisions are being made, develop strategy, recruit and retain key people, and play the long game as in 5-7 years rather than monthly, quarterly or even yearly goals.
Finally, to successfully shift from being a manager to being a leader, we need to move from being a bricklayer to an architect. Most people when becoming a supervisor or manager want to do two things: they want to get things done better and they don’t want to make any mistakes. The challenge is that they do not think about impact or precedence. Instead, they think action, change and survival. Therefore, they default to old ways of doing things. When we shift from being a supervisor or a manager to a leader as architect, we need to focus on how all of the above pieces fit together
This week, I encourage you to read the following article: Watkins, Michael D., “How Managers Become Leaders: The seven seismic shifts of perspective and responsibility”, Harvard Business Review, June 2012. Then, share it with others. I am sure you will have much to discuss together after you have read it.
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