Leadership is a leap – is it not?

John Kotter, Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School,  summarises it powerfully: management is about coping with complexity, leadership is about coping with change. From a neurological perspective, the requirement also shifts from a predominantly left brain to right brain focus.

The transition could not be more different if we tried!

How many managers are prepared for the significant change in skills and competencies that leadership roles require of them? How can organisations better support emerging leaders in making this ‘career change’ a successful and fulfilling one?

The first area of focus is learning how to inspire your team to follow you. To achieve that, emerging leaders need self knowledge of who they are, how they show up to others and their own, personal drivers. Identifying their strengths, skills and most importantly their values forms the bedrock from which to develop their executive presence – their own personal brand.

Add to that, the ability to ask powerful questions and to listen actively to the answers. As a leader, you can no longer be head down in the details – the subject matter expert. You need your people to be the data experts while you take a longer term, meta-view. The Google Earth equivalent is for the leader to look at cities and countries, while management look at property lines and patios. How can you inspire them to look at data in the right way and plan effectively? By asking positive, productive questions  – Jackie Stavros and Cheri Torres call it ‘Appreciative Enquiry’* to fuel productive and meaningful engagement. Learning how to ask powerful questions and listen effectively to the answers is a critical business and leadership skill. Not only do you empower your team, you also motivate them by communicating them that their opinion matters. Management is about what people do, Leadership is about how people feel.

The long term meta view is also needed to anticipate and lead change. Creating a vision for a business is very different to the managerial role of planning. Planning is a deductive task, designed to produce orderly results. Direction setting is inductive. It requires leaders to gather a broad range of data and look for patterns, relationships and linkages from which to derive a vision and strategies. It is a tough, exhausting process of gathering and analyzing data. It requires leaders to be broad based strategic thinkers who are willing to take risks.

Leadership is part art, part science.  Books and lectures can help. The most powerful way of learning is through a combination of mentoring and coaching to support leaders in developing and practicing the skills that they need to make the difference in the world that they want to make.

* Conversations Worth Having – Jackie Stavros & Cheri Torres.