What’s Your Personal Leadership Philosophy?
Leadership is a complex topic. People even more so.
Having a Personal Leadership Philosophy (a PLP) helps to navigate the common and not so common situations we have to deal with.
It does this by distilling leadership actions to five main types of behaviour.
We can define and modify these as we learn and grow. Nothing is set in stone and, as we gain more experience, we realise, sometimes with embarrassment, how much we have learned since we had our first leadership role.
Why do I need a PLP? Having a PLP has some very practical advantages:
- It will save you time — Establishing a PLP allows you to bring your values to the role, defining what you will prioritise and how you will demonstrate them in your behaviours. In time, you won’t have to think about what to do in a situation, it will be self evident.
- It will establish a foundation — This means your team and colleagues will know what your stance is on certain topics. It allows people to follow you (the true measure of a good leader) confidently knowing you won’t flip on foundational beliefs. And because if this …
- … it will build trust — People trust leaders who are consistent, who know what they want and believe. This acts as a catalyst to the team’s performance. A team confident in their leader will provide discretionary effort when required, without instruction or request. They will go the extra mile because the leader goes the extra mile.
Three Domains to develop your PLP
Where you derive your power — is it the role itself, being the “boss”? Or is it the expertise you provide to help develop the team to be better. Is it in the ability to build strong and productive relationships? — Think how you want your team and colleagues to interact with you. If it’s predominantly because you’re the boss, I’d work on the other two with the priority being on building better relationships.
How do you view people’s efforts?” — Are you an X or a Y person (i.e. Douglas McGregor’s theory)? — One extreme is that people need to be coerced to work, we need to use carrots & sticks to motivate and then watch over them. People are inherently lazy and need to be pushed. Basically this position is where the leader doesn’t trust their team. — The other other camp feels that people want to do a good job and will work to achieve that without the carrot or stick, just provide them with interesting work, a good working environment with good people around them. — In terms of developing your philosophy, think which environment you want and work to create it.
Dictator or Developer — The Dictator says it’s my way or the highway. The thing to watch for here is whether you ask for input but generally ignore it. The team will learn this over time, some maybe a little slower than others but, in time, people can tell. You now have an uphill battle. — It can be challenging, especially for new leaders with lots of great ideas, to put the ego on the back burner and allow the team to come up with ideas and then implement them. The energy the team will bring to the implementation will be almost “magical”. And you, as their leader, will have a lot more time and energy on your hands. — If your major goal is to develop your people, a key role in good leadership, then you will have the world at your feet. People, who are developing bring discretionary effort to work. This make the leaders a lot job easier. — To develop your team, simply ask them what they want and be open and honest about what you can and can’t do. They will realise you won’t make promises you can’t keep (so don’t!).
An Idea: The 5@5
One of the most successful strategies I’ve employed as a leader is the 5@5. The idea is to have a staff member drop into the office at 5:00pm (use whatever works for you) and answer five questions which they’ve had to ponder on for a day or so.
At 5:00pm they arrived at my office and 15 minutes to answer the questions. I would cut them off mid word at the 15 minute mark (I told them as much and it was always done with good humour, not a threat!!)
The five questions weren’t magical but they helped provide insight as to what was happening on the shop floor. The first time I implemented this I was heading up a 120 seat, 24 hour contact center.
The questions were: — what do you like about your job? — what do you dislike about your job? — what is one thing you’d change about working here? — what is one thing you’d keep about working here? — pretend I’m not the boss, just a colleague, what is the one thing you’d feel most important to tell me? (at this point I removed my tie and all semblance of “position”, I needed them to be honest)
This worked remarkably well. When I left the role I was speaking to someone who had not had the opportunity to have a 5@5 discussion and I apologized we hadn’t got to talk. Their response was something like: “That’s fine, just knowing you were doing something like this was all that mattered. Thank you.” Blew me away!
Developing the PLP
Developing a PLP is always going to be a work in progress and there is no “one size fits all”.
As you are on the leadership journey, new information will come to hand that you’ll need to adjust to. And while one of the benefits is building trust that your team will know where you stand on certain issues, you may need to change your mind occasionally. If your beliefs are fundamental, though, it’s likely massive change won’t be necessary or common.
To reinforce that point, I was listening to a podcast a couple of years ago where one of the guests said that when someone enters medical school, they are told something along the lines of “50% of what we teach you will be proven wrong in the years ahead. The problem is we don’t know which 50%!”
