Becoming a model leader
Much has been said and written about what makes an ideal leader. Judith Nicol of Athene Coaching has developed an innovative leadership model based on the consultancy's work with clients in senior roles at major companies. Here, she outlines this new approach and the benefits it can bring to both individuals and their organisations.
Leadership is rarely a constant, whatever the context. As the world around us becomes more sophisticated and we experience it in increasingly diverse and complex ways, there is a growing need for our leaders to be able to flex their leadership style according to the context they find themselves in. We believe that in growing and ambitious organisations, it is actually not acceptable for our senior leaders to act and behave according to a tightly defined set of characteristics and be unable to adapt their style in different situations. It is limiting for them and the organisation they serve.
Most leaders will have undertaken some form of psychometric assessment as they progress through organisations. Therefore they have some awareness of their preferences in terms of behaviour, emotions and thinking style. But it is our experience that a lot of the sophistication and richness of the feedback gets lost in translation. Individuals tend to take away a fixed point of where they typically prefer to operate, rather than a sense of how they might expand their leadership range.
Similarly, many organisations have done work to identify leadership competencies in their people. Again, there is a tendency to describe leadership behaviour using a list of nouns, adjectives or adverbs. This works well but we are suggesting there is much to be gained from encouraging our leaders to think about extending their leadership range across continuums, rather than being measured against a fixed competence. This will encourage them to develop self-awareness and the flexibility to act in a way that serves them and their organisation according to the situation.
Leadership range starts with the notions of 'Hard Power' and 'Soft Power' at opposite ends of the model. 'Hard Power' is typically the behaviours we associate with leading a business in a traditional way. It is a focused, results oriented, no nonsense kind of approach to business, where the results are king and sometimes justify the means of getting them. Typically, this has more of a masculine energy to it. That is not to say that only men exhibit this kind of leadership behaviour!
'Soft Power' is typically a less direct way of getting results but tends to be more inclusive and caring. There is something bigger than delivering profit and getting things done. We would argue that this typically has more feminine energy, but again we do not contend that only women practice it.
We strongly believe that leaders can develop the self-awareness to be able to increase their leadership range across continuums of seemingly polar opposite leadership facets - for example intuition/intellect; control/enabling; clarity/ ambiguity. In so doing, they are actively contributing to and encouraging an organisational culture which feels inclusive and enabling for all. This will have, amongst other things, a big impact on the likelihood of successfully retaining senior women and enabling them to move into influential roles in the organisation.
The work on Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goldman has had a profound impact. Most senior leaders will now, intellectually at least, understand the value of EI, in other words that kind of intelligence which (in Goldman terms) is not about technical competence or IQ. Although Goldman talks about self-awareness and self-management, most leaders would intuitively say that when we talk about EI, it is represented in the 'Soft Power' part of the model. They tend to associate it with the more nurturing, listening kind of approach and with the domain of emotions.
But self-awareness is not just about our emotions, as it is often represented. The world has moved on and modern leadership requires a higher level of self-awareness that is not simply activity specific but is the absolute bedrock of being a leader. This includes how the leader builds opinion and strategy, how decisions are made, what kind of conversations take place, how relationships are built inside and outside of the organisation, how activity is co-ordinated; what role model they set to their teams.
In our view, Hard Power and Soft Power are not bad and good or good and bad respectively, but are both essential to organisational successes. It is the degree to which leaders have the self-awareness to harness both Soft Power and Hard Power appropriately that distinguishes truly flexible integrated and authentic leadership. Ideally, our leaders should not only score highly in Hard Power and Soft Power attributes, but also - and more importantly - be able to synthesise both appropriately. They can only do this if they build self-awareness and are able to make a choice between the different attributes.
Where leaders score highly on Hard Power and Soft Power attributes but are not able to synthesise them, organisations will experience a lurching from one side to the other, which can feel very uncomfortable, unpredictable and therefore unsafe. For example if one day, the leader is managing the business with his intellect and the next day with his intuition, there is no consistency or coming together of the two. It feels quite random and knee jerk. That is because the leader is acting according to established patterns that have become the norm for him. When he is at choice in the centre part of the model, he has the self awareness to choose whether he wants to lead with intuition, intellect or a combination of the two.
This integration of hard and soft power opposites will make organisations significantly different places to be. They will feel more consistent, more inclusive and more predictable. There will be room for full and appropriate expression across both spectrums and people will neither feel they are trying to operate in an old style hard-nosed kind of culture which lacks empathy and people skills, nor in a soft and fluffy organisation which lacks commercial metal.
Taking this new approach will fundamentally improve both business and personal outcomes for organisations, as they develop and nurture leaders who can blend seemingly opposite ends of the power spectrum.
Judith Nicol is Chairman of Warren Partners. She has been coaching some of our most senior leaders since establishing her leadership coaching practice eight years ago, and has developed the Athene Integrated Power Model™ judith@athenecoaching.com
Autumn 2009
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