leadership land: How to turn the core leadership functions into skills

In this Article I shall consider each of the main eight leadership functions in turn, and help you to identify ways in which you can perform them better.

Remember always that because the three areas of task, team and individual overlap so much any function will tend to affect all three circles. Take planning, for example. At first sight that appears to be solely a task function. Yet there is nothing like a bad plan to break up a team or frustrate an individual: it hits all three circles. Another general factor to bear in mind is that as I have mentioned already – leadership exists on different levels:

■ team leadership: you are leading a team of about five to 20 people;

■ operational leadership: you are leading a significant unit in the business ororganisation, composed of a number ofteams whose leaders report to you;

■ strategic leadership: you are leading a whole business or organisation, with overall accountability for the two levels of leadership below you.

Not only the three circles but the eight functions also apply at all these levels, although in different ways. In the brief discussions of each function below I shall sometimes indicate these differences, but my focus here is upon the first level – the team leadership role.

The functional approach to leadership set out here is also sometimes called action-centred leadership. A function is one of a group of related actions contributing to development or maintenance, just as each part of the body has its function in relation to the whole. ‘Function’ comes from a Latin word meaning performance. Sometimes it is used more widely to mean what I have called role – the special kind of activity proper to a professional position. Are you functional as a leader? In other words, are you capable of performing the regular functions expected of a leader?

Defining the task

‘Task’ is a very general word. It simply means ‘something that needs to be done’, usually something that you are required to do. Generally speaking, people in teams or organisations have some idea of what they are there to do, but that general sense needs to be focused on to an objective that is:

■ clear;

■ concrete;

■ time-limited;

■ realistic;

■ challenging;

■ capable of evaluation.

By the last point I mean that there is a simple ‘success criterion’ that will enable you – and the team – to know that the objective has been achieved. If your target or goal is to reach the top of Mount Everest, for example, you will know when you attain it.

In many other areas of human endeavour, of course, the success criteria are far less obvious. Leadership is also about answering the question why as well as what. A boss may tell you what to do in a specific way, but a leader will explain or convey to you why as a first and important step on the road to your free and willing cooperation – the hallmark of all true leadership. There is an overlap here with motivation, or giving others a sufficient reason or grounds for action, which we shall discuss shortly. Here I want to stay within the task circle and suggest that all leaders should be able to relate an objective to the wider aims and purpose of the organisation. In other words, they need to be able to think – How to turn the core leadership functions into skills and often to speak – in terms of a set of directions. When they do so they will be moving from the particular to the more general, from the concrete to the more abstract.

Gaia plc are in the business of profitably making and selling drilling equipment. You could call that their purpose, the reason they exist. They have three aims in their current strategy: to improve the quality of their best-selling range of oil and gas deep-sea drills, to capture 40 per cent of the world market over the next five years (at present they have 23 per cent) and to develop a range of new products for the gem-mining market, where high profits can be made. Mike Wilson is a team leader at their Aberdeen factory. The key objective for his team this week is to assemble a prototype drill to be part of the company’s tender for business in the new oilfields off the Falkland Islands. By the end of the week the assembled drill has to be tested against five key quality criteria and a report written on the results. It has to be in the production director’s hands by 6 pm on Friday.

If you were in Mike Wilson’s shoes you could explain why the week’s objective is important in terms of the company’s aims. Equally, those aims have been identified and are being tackled in order to achieve the corporate purpose.

Coming the other way down Jacob’s Ladder, you will be answering the question how. How are we in Gaia going to stay at the leading edge of profitably making and selling drilling equipment? Answer: by moving forward along the open-ended but directional paths indicated by our aims – improving quality, increasing market share and creating new products.

Modern English lead is related to Old English words meaning ‘a way, journey’ and ‘to travel’. It is a journey word. If you are not on a journey, don’t bother with leadership – just settle for management.

Checklist: defining the task

Are you clear about the objectives of your group now and for the next few years/months, and have you agreed them with your boss?

Do you fully understand the wider aims and purpose of the organisation?

Can you relate the objectives of your group to those larger, more general intentions?

Does your present main objective have sufficient specificity? Is it defined in terms of time? Is it as concrete or tangible as you can make it?

Will the group be able to know soon for themselves if you succeed or fail? Does it have swift feedback of results?

Yes No

Hence leaders at all levels should stimulate and focus a sense of direction. ‘Vision’ literally means to see where you are going. Allied with some creative thinking, it can provide a new direction for a group or an organisation. Change always brings the necessity to think very hard about your purpose, as well as your aims and objectives, in the context of the rapid changes in markets, technology, and economic and social life. That kind of thinking is the prime responsibility of strategic leaders, but if they are wise they will involve their operational and team leaders in this process as well. You need to understand the why behind the objectives you are being asked to achieve (see ‘Checklist: defining the task’).

Planning

Planning means building a mental bridge from where you are now to where you want to be when you have achieved the objective before you. The function of planning meets the group’s need to accomplish its task by answering the question how. But the ‘how’ question soon leads to ‘When does this or that have to happen?’ and ‘Who does what?’

From the leadership perspective, the key issue is how far you should make the plan yourself or how far you should share the planning function with your team. Again there is a distinction here between leadership and management, at least in its older form. F W Taylor, the founder of ‘scientific management’, popularised the idea that things went better when there was a clear distinction between work on the one hand, such as making widgets, and the functions of planning and controlling on the other. The latter were the preserves of managers and supervisors. Do you agree?

There is a useful way of looking at the planning function as a cake that can be sliced in different proportions, as illustrated in Figure 4.1.

In this Article I shall consider each of the main eight leadership functions in turn, and help you to identify ways in which you can perform them better.

■ team leadership: you are leading a team of about five to 20 people;

■ operational leadership: you are leading a significant unit in the business ororganisation, composed of a number ofteams whose leaders report to you;

■ strategic leadership: you are leading a whole business or organisation, with overall accountability for the two levels of leadership below you.

Defining the task

■ clear;

■ concrete;

■ time-limited;

■ realistic;

■ challenging;

■ capable of evaluation.

Checklist: defining the task

Are you clear about the objectives of your group now and for the next few years/months, and have you agreed them with your boss?

Do you fully understand the wider aims and purpose of the organisation?

Can you relate the objectives of your group to those larger, more general intentions?

Does your present main objective have sufficient specificity? Is it defined in terms of time? Is it as concrete or tangible as you can make it?

Will the group be able to know soon for themselves if you succeed or fail? Does it have swift feedback of results?

Yes No

Planning

There is a useful way of looking at the planning function as a cake that can be sliced in different proportions, as illustrated in Figure 4.1.

■ Esteem – these needs fall into two closely related categories: self-esteem and the esteem of others. The first includes our need to respect ourselves, to feel personal worth, adequacy and competence. The second embraces our need for respect, praise, recognition and status in the eyes of others.

■ Self-actualisation – the need to achieve as much as possible and to develop one’s gifts or potential to the full.

Maslow makes two interesting points. First, if one of our stronger needs is threatened, we jump down the steps of the hierarchy to defend it. You do not worry about status (see ‘esteem’), for example, if you are starving (see ‘physiological’).

Therefore if you appear to threaten people’s security by your proposed changes, then as a leader you should expect a stoutly defended response. Secondly, a satisfied need ceases to motivate. When one area of need is met, the people concerned become aware of another set of needs within them. These in turn now begin to motivate them.

There is obviously much in this theory. When the physiological and safety needs in particular have been satisfied they do not move us so strongly. How far this principle extends up the hierarchy is a matter for discussion.

Maslow’s theory and other approaches based upon it are, I suggest, only a half-truth. Fifty per cent of our motivation comes from within us, as our unique pattern of individual needs unfolds inside ourselves and points us in certain directions. But the other 50 per cent comes from outside ourselves, and especially from the leadership that we encounter. I am not stating this 50:50 principle as a mathematical formula: it is just a way of saying that a very significant part of our motivation lies beyond us. Therefore as a leader you can have an immense effect upon the motivation of those around you. How do you do it? See ‘Key principles for motivating others’ below for some suggestions.

Inspiration is not quite the same as motivation. ‘To inspire’ means literally ‘to breathe into’ – ‘inspiration’ is a cousin of ‘respiration’. Breath was once thought to be life – God’s breath.

So all inspiration was originally thought to be divine, and leadership itself – at least in its outstanding forms – was regarded as a divine gift.

What is it in a leader that inspires you? Enthusiasm, example, professional ability – there are many strands. But inspiration is found not only in the leader: the situation and the other people involved also contribute to a moment when hearts are lifted and spirits take on new life. Have you ever reflected on how fortunate you are to have people working in your team who have these seeds of greatness in them? Your task is to locate, release and channel their greatness. It calls for all that is best in you.

Key principles for motivating others

■ Be motivated yourself. If you are not fully committed and enthusiastic, how can you expect others to be?

■ Select people who are highly motivated. It is not easy to motivate the unwilling. Choose those who have the seeds of high motivation within them.

■ Set realistic and challenging targets. The better the team and its individual members, the more they will respond to objectives that stretch them, providing these are realistic.

■ Remember that progress motivates. If you never give people feedback on how they are progressing, you will soon demotivate them.

■ Provide fair rewards. Not easy. Do you reward the whole team, or each individual, or both? Either way, the perception of unfair rewards certainly works against motivation.

■ Give recognition. This costs you nothing, but praise and recognition based upon performance are the oxygen of the human spirit.

Organising

Just as the language of leadership qualities is a bit imprecise – ‘perseverance’, ‘tenacity’ and ‘stickability’ mean, for instance, roughly the same thing – so the language of functions is also imprecise. Organising is the function of arranging or forming into a coherent whole. It can mean systematic planning as well, but that is a function we have already covered. It encompasses the structuring – or restructuring – that has to be done if people are to work in harness as a team, with each element performing its proper part in an effective whole. You may, for example, break a larger group down into smaller subgroups.

At first sight you may think that the organising function belongs more to the strategic and operational levels of leadership rather than to your role as a team leader. You are probably right as far as such factors as the size and structure of your group are concerned, or indeed its relations with other groups in the organisation. But here I suggest that the organising function concerns more than structuring or restructuring the architecture of organisations. If someone is described as a ‘good organiser’, what is meant by that phrase?

Much of the ground here has been covered already, such as being clear about the objectives, making a workable plan and structuring the group so as to facilitate two-way communication, teamwork and the appropriate measure of control. But there are three other aspects to be considered: systems, administration and time management.

Systems

Organisers tend to organise things by introducing systems. A ‘system’ is almost a synonym for an ‘organisation’: a set of interrelated parts making up a whole. But ‘system’ can refer to processes – orderly or structured ways of doing things – as well as social structures.

Now you cannot run anything (even a fish and chip shop) without systems: production systems, selling systems, financial systems and so on. In large organisations there is a variety of other systems, such as an appraisal system or a quality control system.

A good leader understands the importance and value of systems. Almost by definition it is impossible to think of organisations that do not have systems or definite ways of doing things, although they are not always immediately apparent.

Good leaders respect and work through the systems, changing them if need be. But they are not bound by them, like prisoners shackled in chains. They know when a system is becoming counterproductive.

Moreover, every system – if you think about it – requires teamwork to make it effective. So we come back to that core metafunction of leadership: building and maintaining the team.

Have you noticed, too, that systems do not learn? Only people learn! Indeed, left to themselves systems are subject to one of the laws of thermodynamics: they run down and atrophy. To keep systems – the very essence of a corporate body – fit and healthy, good leadership at all levels is needed.

Administration

Administration is usually linked to management skills rather than leadership skills. You may be able to recall a leader you have met who was full of entrepreneurial spirit, enthusiasm and drive, a motivator of others but completely useless as an organiser and administrator. Indeed, ‘industrial administration’ was once the name for what we now call ‘management’. The only relic of those days is the MBA – Master of Business Administration. Administration, as we all know, involves paperwork and is primarily concerned with the day-to-day running of things. It usually includes financial administration of various kinds and levels.

Now the key thing to remember is that administration is always secondary to something else. It is a servant function. Minister is the Latin word for ‘servant’; it comes from the familiar minus, ‘less’ (as opposed to the magister, ‘master’, derived from magis, ‘more’).

In the old days, when organisations were overstaffed, you as the leader (alias magister) could delegate all the day-to-day paperwork to your staff. But these days leaders – equipped with personal computers – will often have to do a great deal more administration than in the past, especially at team leader level. So being a good administrator is now a part of being a good leader.

Taking on this administrative responsibility of leadership is a way of becoming a good facilitator, for you are thereby freeing the team as a whole and its individual members to be effective, creative and innovative. That does not mean to say that you should do all the administration – far from it. You need to delegate so that you have time to think and time to lead. But you should perform the administration that cannot be delegated (either because of its nature or because you lack anyone to delegate it to) in such a way that you are providing a good example. If you are late and sloppy doing the paperwork in returns, how can you expect others to be on time with their returns? Make sure that your team has a reputation for excellence in all administrative matters.

Lastly, seeing yourself in part as an administrator helps to create real teamwork in the organisation. For you will come to appreciate more and more the contributions of those in the ‘back room’ of the enterprise, those who are primarily administrators. Their work may be more mundane and more behind-the-scenes, but it is vital to the success of the organization as a whole and to your team in particular. Remember to share your success with these invisible members of your team!

Time management

Leaders need time to think, time for people – customers as well as team members – and time to grow the business. Therefore they should be skilled managers of their own time. If you cannot organise yourself, how can you organise anyone or anything else? Administering that scarce resource, your own time, is the priority for any leader.

Exercise

Keep a log of how you spend your time over a two-week period, if possible charting every half-hour at work. Then go through it putting a ‘T’ for ‘Task’, ‘TM’ for ‘Team Maintenance’, and ‘I’ for ‘Individual Needs’ beside each item. You may of course put more than one of these code letters beside each item.

This exercise, properly done, will give you an idea of how much of your key resource – time – is not being spent in your core role as a leader.

Now ask yourself, ‘What am I being paid to do?’

Time management is made up of applying some underlying principles – know your purpose, aims and objectives, for example – and some practical policies and tips. Learning to say no, which sounds so simple, can save you a bundle of time.

Checklist for testing your organizing function ability

Can you organise your personal and business life in ways that would improve your effectivness as a leader?

Can you delegate sufficiently?

Can you identify improvements in your time management?

Is the size and make-up correct?

Should a sub-team be set up?

Are opportunities and procedures in place to ensure participation in decision making?

Do you restructure and change individuals’ jobs as appropriate?

Do you have a clear idea of its purpose and how the parts should work together to achieve it?

Are effective systems in place for training, recruitment and dismissal?

Do you carry out surveys into the size of teams, number of leadership levels, growth of unnecessary complexity, line and staff cooperation and properly working communications systems?

Are you good at administration, recognising the performance of administrators and ensuring that administrative systems facilitate excellent performance from teams and individuals?

Yes No

Providing an example

‘Leadership is example,’ someone once said to me. Certainly it is impossible to think of leadership without example. It may take many shapes and forms, but it has to be there.

In the context of communication, you can think of example as a prime means of communicating a message through ‘body language’ or non-verbal communication. Or, as the modern management proverb puts it, you have to ‘walk the talk’.

A short course on leadership

The six most important words…

‘I admit I made a mistake.’

The five most important words…

‘I am proud of you.’

The four most important words…

‘What is your opinion?’

The three most important words…

‘If you please.’

The two most important words…

‘Thank you.’

The one most important word…

‘We.’

And the last, least important, word…

‘I.’

Remember that you cannot avoid being an example of some kind or other, simply because the people who work with you will always observe what you are and what you do as well as what you say. ‘A manager will take six months to get to know his staff,’ goes a Japanese maxim, ‘but they will take only six days to get to know him.’ Example, in other words, is just you. But you do have some discretion as to whether it will be a good or poor example.

Exercise

Look back over your career and see if you can identify two people who have been astounding examples of good and bad leadership.

List on paper the non-verbal ways in which these examples were expressed. What, in each case, were the effects on you? Did others notice their example? What effects did their example have on the group or organisation?

As a general principle, we notice bad example more than good. It shouts at us more. It is always a pleasure to see good example, however, even if others seem impervious to it. It is always a sign of integrity: that wholeness that binds together what you say with what you do. A hypocrite – one who publicly preaches one thing and acts quite differently in private life – is neither setting an example nor expressing integrity.

‘Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,’ wrote Shakespeare, ‘show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, whilst… himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.’ There you have it.

How to turn the core leadership functions into skills ‘Pastor’ means ‘shepherd’. In ancient times the role of the shepherd was a model for leadership. For the shepherd had to lead his flock – or hers, because women as well as men herded sheep – on a journey to pasture (task), hold it together as a unity when wolves threatened (team maintenance) and care for each sheep (individual needs). The word ‘good’ in the New Testament phrase ‘I am the good shepherd’ means in the original Greek ‘skilled’ or ‘competent’, not ‘good’ in the moral sense.

Checklist to test if you set a good example

Do you ask others to do what you would be unwilling to do yourself?

Do people comment on the good example you set in your work?

Does your (bad) example conflict with what all are trying to do?

Can you quote when you last deliberately set out to give a lead by example?

Can you think of ways you could lead by example?

Do you mention the importance of example to team leaders who report to you?

Yes No

Now, as I have already mentioned, there is a distinction between ‘good leadership’ and being a ‘leader for good’, although it is not one I would want to press too far. You should set yourself the ideal of being both. For only ‘leadership for good’ works with human nature in the long run.

What is a good example? Again, the three-circle model can help us. Look at ‘Key questions for good leadership’ in the box below.

One very powerful form of leading by example is sharing fully in the dangers, hardships and privations experienced by the team. What do you think of the chief executive and board of directors of an ailing, publicly quoted company who voted themselves a 60 per cent pay rise while downsizing the workforce and insisting that the remaining staff accepted only 2 percent (less than the rate of inflation)?

Key questions for good leadership

■ Task. The core action of going out in front on the journey in order to show the way is a form of leading by example. How can you ‘lead from the front’ in your field?

■ Team. As a builder and maintainer of the team you need to maintain or change group standards – the invisible rules that hold groups together. How can you develop your team’s standards through the power of example?

■ Individual. Think of each team member as a leader in his or her own right. Each should be a leader in his or her technical or professional role, and a ‘three-circle’ contributor.

You can see now the importance of this function of providing an example, but can it be done with skill? At first sight, no, for skill implies a conscious learning of an art. To set an example consciously in order to influence others seems to be rather manipulative. That is why I talk about providing an example, rather than setting one. For you can provide an example in an unselfconscious way, as an expression of who you are as opposed to something done for a carefully calculated effect. If example becomes a habit, you will not think about it – still less congratulate yourself on being such a good leader!

It follows that if you are going to lead effectively by example as much as by other means you will need at least modesty if not humility – that rarest of all qualities in leadership, found only in the best. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu summed it up in the sixth century before the Christian era:

A leader is best

When people barely know that he exists;

Not so good when people obey and acclaim him;

Worst when they despise him.

Fail to honour people,

They fail to honour you.

But of a good leader, who talks little,

When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,

They will all say, ‘We did this ourselves.’

Yes, and perhaps one day they will add about you as their leader, ‘And you made a difference.’ That is the true reward of leadership.

leadership land

Thursday, 11 December 2014

How to turn the core leadership functions into skills

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Thursday, 11 December 2014

How to turn the core leadership functions into skills

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