THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT

Leadership styles often reflect the times and contexts within which they are exercised. The Industrial Revolution largely saw a dictatorial leadership style where what the leader said (the factory owner) was expected to be followed unquestioningly. Employees were a resource. In opposition to this, powerful workers’ groups and trade unions sprang up, at which point the best leaders realised there was a shift in power.

We are now living in a more pluralistic society where choices and freedoms for most are virtually limitless. With the advent of technology and rapidly changing workplaces, leadership theory has expanded to reflect this and includes a wide range of approaches to achieving highly effective leadership:

• servant leadership
• authentic leadership
• brave leadership
• integrated leadership.

The main point is this: in order to lead effectively, you need to be finely attuned to the context within which you lead. That is not the same thing as being wholly reactive to the context – especially if it is not conducive to great work – but to lead in opposition to, or denial of, the context would be short-sighted at best and career-limiting at worst.

EVOLUTION: IS BEING A LEADER IN YOUR GENES?

Were you born a natural leader or does nurture play a stronger part than genetics in shaping your ability to lead? This is an age-old question upon which the following paragraphs shed some light.

The genus Homo, which includes modern humans, is about 2.5 million years old and, from the earliest days, people lived in small bands of family and extended family. Basic decision making was a critical skill to ensure survival and would have been accompanied by friction and conflict. From within these small groups, certain individuals would have emerged as those who could manage conflict, keep the group together and help shape the decision making that was required to survive.

Furthermore, people would have to be brought together at specific times when a task required more than one person such as hunting or building a shelter. At times like these, leaders would have emerged who were good at drawing a disparate band of individuals into a more efficient group (Bloom, 2000). The individuals that emerged at these key points were the earliest form of leader.

What has the impact been on our genetic code over the last 2.5 million years of some individuals taking these leadership roles? According to some researchers, the role of a leader is deeply embedded in human psychology, as is the concept of follower (van Vugt & Ronay, 2014). Indeed, recent research has identified that there is, in fact, a genetic link to leadership. The results show that leadership is associated with a tiny bit of genetic code, creatively referred to as rs4950 (De Neve, Mikhaylov, Dawes, Christakis & Fowler, 2013). It seems, then, that the latest thinking identifies an element of genetic influence on your ability to lead.

As we have seen, being a highly effective leader is the result of a combination of both nature and nurture. If we were pushed, we would say that the balance is skewed in favour of the work you do on yourself, the skills you learn and the context in which you lead. In other words, in relation to becoming a leader, nurture trumps nature (probably).

Leadership is not dependent upon your position in your organisation,
but is largely a product of your mindset rather than a specific number of people you have responsibility for or the job title you have. You can demonstrate great leadership, whether you were born with a set of leadership capabilities or have to rely on learning them.

The challenges will be partly from the context in which you find yourself leading – the culture within which you do your work and your own motivation and beliefs around the importance of leading well. The good news is that, once you decide that you will commit to becoming a great leader, it is within your gift to achieve it. You can work on your own identity and combine that with developing a skill set. You can start this process right here, right now.

WHAT IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY OF LEADERSHIP?

This is the question Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) asks Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon), captain of the South Africa rugby team, during a superb scene in the film Invictus, the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa.

Highly developed leaders appear to be able to articulate a clear personal philosophy of leadership. This may be influenced by their past experiences, or cultural, political or psychological factors. Developing a coherent and acceptable story of how you want to lead is an essential step if you are to lead with confidence. Your philosophy of leadership exists within you but may still need to be discovered. Developing and growing Leader iD means identifying the leadership qualities that you have that others will be drawn to follow and beginning to use and develop them consciously.

The figure above shows how developing great leadership requires attention in all three elements: the leader, their followers and a context within which to lead.

Leadership is a process of social interaction, both with followers and in the organisational context. Therefore, development takes place at the intersection of these three elements, as illustrated above. No single element alone can provide the stimulus for leadership growth (or delivery of results).

This figure shows developed leadership capability as the leader increases their relationship between themself and their followers and the context.

Quiet reflection is useful for development only when there is action to reflect upon. Action without reflection ensures that learning occurs only sub-consciously, if at all. Ignoring the context you are leading in suggests a one-size-fits-all approach based on the assumption that you can translate what worked elsewhere into a new environment and ‘press go’. Only by paying attention to all three domains can you ensure that learning takes place and that an appropriate Leader iD be constructed that – based on your core ‘self’ – will deliver results.

Answering these questions is not easy, is it? Neither is developing and growing your Leader iD. We know from experience and research that leadership is a visible pattern of behaviours and thought processes that can be learned by anyone. However, not everyone wants to or is ready to do the work necessary. What does getting to work look like then? Let’s explore.

LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Learning and development often are used interchangeably in organisations to describe the work of the department that bears this name. However, there is a growing body of research that suggests that, whilst there is a strong connection between the two, there is also an important distinction.

Learning, in terms of growing your Leader iD, relates to a process of discovering new ways of doing things. Often, this is stimulated by the need to solve new problems or test out new approaches, such as those recommended in this book. This learning typically leads to adding more knowledge, skills and competencies.

When we talk about ‘development’ we really mean growing the capacity to adapt to increasingly complex environments in a way that is sustainable.

We all have the potential to develop throughout life – just as we are able to change physically, we are able to change and adapt the way we view and respond to the environment in which we find ourselves. A more highly developed leader is, typically, able to think with greater clarity where there are increasing levels of complexity and uncertainty. Whilst research suggests that less than 1% of us have the potential to operate at the very highest levels of development consistently, we all have the capability to develop, to some extent, under the right conditions. We may do this in the following situations:

• Where we encounter new, complex and disruptive experiences that require us to break out of traditional work habits in order to succeed.
• When we are exposed to people with different views of the world, whether cultural, through training or from a different background.
• Through the integration of new perspectives brought about by learning through experience.

THINKING ABOUT DOING IS NOT DOING!

Intentions and plans, no matter how noble, are not action. Your Leader iD will develop through a combination of thought and action – practice. That is to say, whilst there is a direct link between volume of practice to learning and progress, what appears to matter even more is what this practice consists of. In order to develop your leadership capacity, you will be required to see practice as an opportunity to stretch and test yourself. Practising the right things, with a high degree of frequency and intensity, leads to improved leadership performance.

So, developing your Leader iD requires you to allocate significant amounts of time to practise but also to be clear on:

• what specifically you should be practising
• how specifically you should be practising it
• the specific skills, or other abilities, that you need to acquire.

The best leaders are learners who understand the importance of focused practice and implement it to fulfil their potential, often appearing to be achieving step-change improvements continuously. However, when you talk with them you begin to realise that this is an illusion. Development rarely comes in giant leaps. Growth occurs through a high number of small improvements that, over time, add up to something big. They are making the best possible choices about where to focus their attention in order to get the best possible return for their effort.

CHOICE AND CHANGE

By reading this book you are taking control of your own development – we want to encourage this as it is critical. People develop as leaders fastest when they feel responsible for their own progress, rather than waiting for HR, their manager, trainer or coach to prompt them. We want you to jump out of the passenger seat and into the driver’s seat of your own development.

A strong leader is fixated with ensuring that their talent is developed to the maximum extent possible. They see it as their own responsibility to make the most of who they are. You will be an excellent leader or an average one based on the choices you make – not the choices of others.

WAKING UP AND GROWING UP

Waking up in leadership terms means setting aside any desire for controlling others and opening yourself up to the possibility that your version of reality may be only one interpretation. Effective leaders are open to fresh perspectives and become much more flexible in their approach. They are open to learning and place a high value on relationships with others. The quality of their thinking and problem solving increases. Their ability to see the broader impact of their work and its higher meaning is enhanced.

For many leaders we talk to, the process of waking up and beginning to grow up begins with stepping out of who you think you are and allowing yourself to explore and experience who else you might be – the leader you want to be. Others describe waking up as the realisation that they can choose to look at those who they lead through different channels (or lenses):

• Channel one: where you see physical bodies in front of you that are all different but distinguishable only by their physical characteristics, such as tall, slim, good looking, handsome, balding, well dressed, etc.
• Channel two: where you see people’s roles, performance, contribution and the ‘human resource’.
• Channel three: where what you see when you look at others is a whole human being (just like you) looking back at you. You notice their strengths, hopes, dreams and emotions and can begin to make real connections with them.

You can develop the ability to change channels at will and that requires you to notice which channel you are on first. This sounds easy but it takes practice, particularly in the heat of everyday working life.

LOOKING IN AND LOOKING OUT

Herminia Ibarra, Professor of Leadership at INSEAD, has spent several years studying how people come to define themselves as leaders. She suggests that they do this through doing the work of leadership, which stimulates an internal and an external process – one effecting the other. By doing leadership work they build their reputation and credibility, which in itself can change how they see themselves.

We can advance our own depth as leaders by looking inside and understanding our nature, drives, motivation, thought patterns and intuitions – and looking out by engaging with others, new concepts and ideologies, in order to generate fresh insights that will add meaning to our work with followers. How we show up in the rational objective world is built on our internal world – energy, feelings and thoughts – and often these are fuelled by our experience and the way we process these experiences.

Exceptional leaders systematically seek to understand and develop every factor that contributes to achieving their goals. They acquire knowledge and, more importantly, take action based on that knowledge to ensure that increased understanding is put to maximum use. This learning ‘in the thick of it’ results from a structured and disciplined approach to reviewing progress regularly in order to establish lessons learned. They ask themselves questions at the end of every day, or after key events, such as:

• What was my intended outcome?
• What was my actual outcome?
• What behaviours of mine contributed to this outcome?
• What new things did I learn about ‘how’ and ‘where’ I/we may need to focus in the future?
• What did I reinforce that I already knew?
• What do I still need to find out?
• What do I want to sustain or improve for next time?

It is an illusion that the best leaders are constantly on the run – bouncing from one meeting to another, one call to the next, constantly responding to emails. They are all highly productive individuals that don’t lack energy, but they place a high value on making time for reflecting on what is working, what isn’t and how they can get better. And then they create the time and space for others to do the same.

BEING A LEADER AND DOING LEADERSHIP

Being a leader refers to demonstrating the personal qualities associated with leadership strength, such as compassion, determination and learning. Doing leadership is concerned with evoking excellence in others through describing success vividly, developing it in others through coaching and showing appreciation for excellent performance. Being is about possessing the qualities of a leader and doing is the practice of leadership.

Developing your Leader iD requires that you pay attention to both and in doing so grow the capability to adapt and get results in multiple contexts and social situations. Our Leader iD diagnostic provides you with the opportunity to consider both sides of this equation and the relationship between the two.

NOTICING

It is often the case that the awareness resulting from paying attention to what is happening to you, to those around you when you are in their presence and the environment in which you are operating, provides the catalyst for change. This is the basis upon which you choose to try some new approaches. Noticing when things need to change can result from internal recognition or from external sources, such as feedback.

Pay attention to what is happening around you and you will quickly get a sense of what needs to be done. Your priorities emerge from these needs when considered alongside the context you are leading in and the goals of the business. Learning to step back to witness what is happening and observing yourself in action is key here. ‘Ah, isn’t that interesting’ is a more useful reflection rather than simply reacting to what is happening in front of you.

By completing our Leader iD diagnostic in the next chapter you will also develop greater awareness of your leadership strengths and weaknesses. From there you will be encouraged to prioritise and pay attention to some specific thought processes and behaviours that will set you on your way to developing your Leader iD.

DEVELOPING

Developing a leader’s self can follow on effectively only from ‘noticing’. This work is undertaken individually as you explore your values and sense of purpose and their impact on how you lead and how you want to show up as a leader. A developing leader will notice how they go about their business day to day – what is working and what isn’t – and experiment in order to discover new and more effective ways to achieve higher levels of leadership performance and a greater understanding of self.

This work is also focused on exploring five key areas of self in relation to Leader iD. In our model and throughout this book we are inviting you to pay attention to the following in particular:

• determination
• perspective
• balance
• discovery
• compassion.

In this phase of the model you are waking up to new possibilities. You become aware that there is a different way of making sense of the world and that doing things in a new way is possible. The Leader iD diagnostic opens up this area for you and provides the insight necessary for you to prioritise your self-development.

WORKING

Working is the externalising phase of the internal work undertaken in the ‘developing’ phase. Greater mindfulness and reflection help leaders act and review in order to make continuous improvement to their leadership.

This is where we invite you to get to work on the external practices of leadership that form our model. How are you going to:

• embody
• advocate
• appreciate
• develop

in your context and do so in ways that are consistent with your developing sense of the leader you want to be? Parts 2 and 3 will provide you with insights to help you get started. It will ensure that your assumptions about leadership are analysed and challenged. It will encourage you to develop new assumptions and test them out as being new possibilities for your Leader iD.

LEADING

Learning about yourself and about leadership are not the same as leading. Leaders extend their work beyond themselves to generate excellence in organisational results and in those they lead. Leading is about doing – doing something every day to learn something more about leading.

This is about experimentation with different leadership selves and discovering the leader you want to be, gauging the impact you have on others and the work they do. Ultimately, this is about deliberate practice and acting on the work done in the previous three phases of the model.

Leadership ID develops after considerable practice and effort in the field, when new ideas about what works get stronger and start to dominate the previous views. A new level of leadership approach starts to make more sense than the old one.