Leadership Development

What do we mean by leadership?

To begin, three starting assumptions:

• Leadership is not a single entity; it needs to manifest differently according to the context and specific situation. Leading a team of four technical specialists is a very different challenge to leading a national organisation of 10,000 people. Whilst there may be some common features in each situation, leadership quite rightly looks and feels different in each.

• Leadership is relational – it’s impossible to lead without followers. This implies that leadership is less about the individual leader’s behaviour and personal characteristics, and more about how these behaviours and characteristics are perceived and understood by those who might follow. (I recently met the scout leader who had been a profound and important influence on me between the ages of 11 and 14. I remembered him as an inspirational, creative leader, who I often thought of in later life as demonstrating ‘transformational leadership’. Thirty years later I was struck by how different he was from my memory - but then again, we’d probably both changed a lot!)
  

• Leadership involves a dynamic interplay with the skills of management. Few senior people in organisations have the luxury of ONLY leading or ONLY managing. In reality, both skill-sets are valid and necessary.

We see leadership less as a collection of competencies or personal qualities, and more as a function of

• the context within which an individual works
  
• the individual’s ability for sense-making
  
• intelligence and capability
  
• motivation to lead
  
• opportunity to lead.

Sense Making

Much is made of the importance of vision; yet in our experience it is rare to find a vision that extends much beyond a laminated wall chart. Most people we meet in organisations are either cynical about the idea of a vision (“so what happened to the last one?”) or are daunted by the prospect of having to create one, knowing that the next re-organisation or strategic review will render it redundant. Although there are powerful historical examples that suggest that a clear and compelling vision can galvanise and focus a group’s actions, in practice it seems that ‘vision’ has come to mean a static, and often hackneyed, set of words that lack power or meaning.

We believe it is much more important for leaders to be able to make sense of a particular context so that it is meaningful and engaging. This sense-making is an on-going process and requires an acute awareness of the relevant industry-specific, social, political, environmental, economic and even spiritual domains. It also requires the ability to see emergent patterns and perceive, or even guess at, the implications for their organisation’s future success.

Yet sense-making of this kind is not enough to create leadership, for it does not yet necessarily include others in the organisation. Most of us make sense of our experience through conversations and stories – and wise leaders ensure that the stories being told create a useful and engaging understanding of an organisation, its challenges, and its future. If this understanding allows people to feel engaged and committed, to see how their role and contribution is a part of the narrative, then the process of leadership is present.

Capability

We see individual capability (by which we mean a combination of intelligence, ego –maturity and awareness) as a critical factor in leadership. The work of researchers like Jacques, Torbert and Cooke-Greuter provide useful maps of how human capability evolves over a life-span, and how it influences and shapes leadership. Such capability underpins the sense-making we described above, and allows for different types of sense-making, and hence different types of leadership, to occur within different levels of an organisation. It becomes important to foster a good match between an individual’s capabilities and the leadership sense-making requirements of their role. In our experience, poor leadership is often due to a mismatch between the individual and the role’s demands.

Intelligence also contributes, not just in a narrow ‘IQ’ sense but through spatial, technical, kinaesthetic, musical senses too. Alistair Mant has written as eloquently as anyone on this topic, describing the requirement as ‘broadband intelligence’ that crosses multiple domains. He also makes the point that leadership potential is limited by the degree of psychological noise or interference carried by an individual. As human beings, each person carries a unique psychological history developed through early interactions with parents, siblings, and others. This history shapes the nature of identity, motivations, and relationships, which in turn shapes an individual’s access to a range of leadership styles. The process of identifying, then dis-identifying with, psychological history is central to healthy growth and the access to positive leadership qualities.

Desire and Opportunity

The desire to lead is but one expression of an individual’s psychological story. There are many motives for wanting to lead (desire for validation, power, growth, acceptance and love amongst them) but without a motive, it’s unlikely an individual will apply their personal capabilities to a leadership process. Likewise, the leadership process requires an opportunity for expression. This presents an on-going challenge to organisations which must create opportunities for people to stretch themselves within the leadership process.

How then to develop leadership?

Having said that leadership is not a single entity, our experience suggests that the following actions each play a role in developing an individual’s capacity to create leadership:

• Increase personal awareness.
  
• Reduce the impact of psychological ‘noise’.
  
• Provide working and learning opportunities that appropriately stretch personal capabilities.
• Increase understanding and knowledge of the leadership context, including the acquisition of technical and business knowledge.
• Develop skills in pattern recognition and reframing.
• Refine inter-personal and communication skills.
• Povide role and developmentally appropriate leadership frameworks that promote action and reflection.

There are many interventions that can deliver these principles singly or in combination. We’ve found that a coaching relationship is critical to help an aspiring leader integrate new experiences and skills and apply them in their working life. It’s also valuable to engage in real work with the client, so that new skills and capabilities are developed in context and in relation to a real need.

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