Tag Archives: Purpose

The leader’s personal role

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Leaders are persons first – and there are three key aspects of how the leaders affect the organizations they lead:

First they are role models.  The combine two disparate characteristics at the same time – determination and humility. They have to believe in the integrity of the purpose and mission of the organization they lead, and give others a sense of hope and meaning.  To do this requires being a good listener. It also means being able to foster dialogue.  Good leaders avoid grandiosity – a real temptation when one is at the head of the pack.

Second they have to be fast learners – students as well as mentors.  And it’s not just the ability to recognize the brutal facts; one has also to confront them.  To understand the realities it’s not just enough to know the facts and figures and the processes. Leaders also have to have respect for human beings. Finally  have to be focused on the big picture and the future, while they allow others to focus on their areas of specialization.

Third, they have to avoid the temptation to think that it is all about their personal charisma.  Instead, leaders have to be trustees of community potential. This is extraordinarily demanding and the next post will suggest some  actions that will help them do that.

Exercising Leadership

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In the last twenty years there are new perspectives on both structure and process.

Remember all those wonderful software programs in the eighties that allowed one to design org charts. You don’t see as many of them these days, but the charts that they developed still hang around in our consciousness. It might be better to put the leader in the centre rather than at the top. I actually saw a chart like this as a model for an Arts Company in the nineties. A the centre was a split circle with the music director and general manager. Surrounding them in concentic circles were the core musiciams, the extras, the technical crews, the marketers – all with key tasks but with different roles and responsibilities. Arts projects are like that – highly specialized configurations of talent and skills brought together in appropriate roles and time trames with a focus on the creation. We are a long way from that in other worlds but the possibility is there.

Titles matter less, responsibilities more. Self-management is key. The suggestion is that it may matter more to manage up and across than down. Direct reports can come last if the others are management tasks are working well.So much depends on the people – the right people in the right seats.

Helping people to face reality may be the real task of leadership. And so often it means asking the right questions rather than having the right answers. In that regard, the reminder that “What you see is all there is” also comes to mind. So we have to have good research and honest advice. Both require hard work both in acquiring and receiving them

 

Leadership – the Road Ahead

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As promised, here is the start of a series on leadership. It is based on research that I undertook two years ago and also gives me an opportunity to reflect on what I learned since then.

There are several things to consider:
How have our views of the world changed?
What are the roles of vision and mission?
How is leadership exercised?
What are the necessary personal qualities?
How must the leader develop once he or she assumes the role?

All of these were of interest and took me on an extensive journey through the writings of the past two decades. So a revisit will involve not only those findings but what has been learned since.

Leading from Any Chair

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Chairs The above chairs probably aren’t the kind that Ben Zander has in mind. (They are a welcome spot to sit on my city balcony). Ben is an orchestra conductor and the chairs that he is talking about might be occupied by violinists, trumpeters, or clarinet players. There is a lovely moment in a video of one of his concerts, where he gives the baton to a young musician and joins the cellists as a player in their row.

Leading is really about interdependence. He says that he conducted for 20 years before it came home to him that he was the only one on the stage who didn’t make a sound. His was a comment about real leadership – that the role of the leader is to enable others to do their best – not to be a star or primadonna. When he changed his perspective he realized that the results of his conducting results were much superior. It is a lesson for us all. to learn.