Leadership is power. We love to be in control and with visibility. That’s why people race to it in politics, in homes, in business, and even in casual circles. It gives an authority to apply something or to direct people towards something or to gain/achieve something. However, it has a sensitive part: it involves people. A tyrannical or undeveloped leader would lead his people to hell; bad/wrong decision may affect someone else’s future negatively. Good deeds and rightful actions may improve someone’s life. One major causes of painful leadership is the leader’s lack of awareness of the impact of his leadership on his people, positive and negative. This lack of awareness is due largely to the fact that the leader is self-centred; sees only himself, sees his actions from the perspective of “I”, sees the impact of his actions only on himself. Another reason that hijacks awareness is the lack of reflective actions; leaders think of themselves as natural leaders - they are confident in taking decisions, moving people here and there with confidence that they never stop to question their actions and their impact. The first step thus towards influential leadership is an awareness to the major role a leader plays in people’s lives.
The first step towards influential leadership is an awareness to the major role a leaders play in people’s lives.
Great. Now that you’ve gained awareness that your role as a leader affects other people’s lives - who are also connected to other people who will be impacted by their actions - what can you do to be an influential leader whether leading a team or an entire business?
1- Orchestrate like a Maestro
Have you ever attended a music concerto or any musical event at a theatre or Opera house? It’s the Maestro with that stick waving his hands, head, and shoulders in front of the archester. While he does so, if you notice, orchestra team members don’t look at him all the time. You would observe that two things: 1) They look to him from time to time to ensure that they are on the right path. 2) Not everyone from the orchester looks to the Maestro at the same frequency. The Maestro maintains order, a single point of reference - unified across the entire orchestra. Orchestra team members look at them for direction and for assurance that they are performing correctly in the context of the overall performance. And each one references him at the frequency he needs for his work. That’s the basic version of what the Maestro does.
You would never see a Maestro who would go down his stage in the middle of performance and play an instrument for a performer who’s not competent. The orcherstra is composed of professional musical instrument players, able to play their instruments - no other options; there is no music show with a violinist, for example, who’s struggling with it. In other fields, as a leader, you become a reference and a model to your team, but who’s in front of you are competent players; you are not a Maestro (or a leader) if you will have to play someone’s instrument (micromanagement?). But because you become a Maestro, you should treat your team members are professionals before you expect from them to act as such. You set the tone. For off-tune players, you give directions and light a candle for them to get on track, but they professionally and competently tune-in back again.
To be a Maestro, you have to have players and treat them as such. To be a Maestro, you have to be a reference and a model. And to be all of this, you have to spend a great deal of your time developing your character and technicality; for you are inseparable from your leadership role.
2- Create a Reward System other than Money:
To put it upfront, if your employer rewards with money, understand that he’s not interested in your growth; rather in just locking you inside. This could be because of your services, which you be sure are timely and cannot be offered as is forever. Employment is a relationship and for it to be rewarding and healthy, both parties should be interested in one another’s growth. For the employee to contribute to the business growth, there must be a rewarding system other than money. For the employer to contribute to employees’ growth, there must be investment in people themselves.
Create a rewarding system with ‘Intrinsic Motivation’. Intrinsic motivation is about getting your people to connect to their work through something authentic deep inside them. When people performs based on motivation deep inside, this improves their wellbeing as well as the business. Money can’t do this and they breed the wrong motivation later on.
3- Invest in a Non-traditional Marketing Team:
Question it! Whatever which department you belong to, always look for the company’s marketing team and its continued efforts. The team and how it operates would give you valuable insights on how those who steer the company see the future of the company (and your future as well) and their vision. A clamsy marketing team means that your CEO or top leadership just doesn’t care much; or worst, a clamsy himself too. It also means that your company would be always under pressure and continued business risk. The pressure and continued risk would consequently mean that there won’t be a breathe investing in any innovation or employee’s growth. In such case, you won’t have better opportunities inside this company - because work is not going to evolve nor there would be variety of projects on which you can rotate based on your interest and competencies. As a leader, you should question this for your people.
Non-traditional marketing operations geared by non-traditional, highly educated and innovative marketing team is a measure of how fit and fresh your company is or would be. If you want to gain insights about what’s influencing your department indirectly, look at the marketing.
4- Foster Horizontal Governance based on principles, rather than vertical one:
We can more about how we fit within a group rather than how we follow rules. WE may take pride in ourselves when we can cheat the system; and we always find/argue justifications or excuses on not following it. However, we never take pride in being outstandingly different than all around us. We feel protected when we fit in a group, its norms, and structure. This intrinsic inclination is deep rooted within us since the stone age, when being out of the group is a matter of life or death.
Your job as a leader is to create a culture not a rulebook. Horizontal governance is how everyone works not how you mandated everyone to work, which is the vertical one. Horizontal governance is more humane; because it makes people feel good about themselves, creates harmony, makes people learn from each other, and creates a healthy platform for competition. The other great thing about Horizontal governance is that it can be built on shared principles that all team members believe in rather than someone else’s beliefs being pressed down on people. Share principles are then protected by the group, not a person.
5- Put Your Staff First
Those adopting the traditional way of doing business would disagree saying: no customer first! The source of such business belief stems from the fact that customer is the one who pays the bill. Well, sure, someone has to pay the bill for all of us to survive. But, why don’t we say customer first from the perspective of valuing our customer rather than that proletariat view? If we changed mindset to do so, it would transcend to Your People First. Putting your staff first doesn’t mean ignoring your clients in their favour; however, when you think of your staff growth, wellbeing, creativity, work-life balance, and talents, you are benefitting your clients, but from top tier level. Below are some means for putting your people first:
5.1. Listen
Your people’s voice is valuable; and as a lead, you should perceive this as part of your own growth not a job. In my opinion, leaders should listen more than command. And listening is not just the act of sitting and nodding head, but rather attentively listening without pre-judgement. You listen by putting yourself in the shoes of the person’s in front of you with utmost care of absorbing him or her. The mistake, which makes this way of empathetic listening impossible, is when you listen in order to talk; not listen to listen. This particularly happens when the leader is hearing complaints and concentrating only on how to reply and mislead the listener or defuse their complaints, instead of listening to help. As a leader, you should empathetically listen and care about the person. This way you truly listen what was said - and what wasn’t said as well.
5.2 Everyone must have his life
A path to mature leadership is to understand that if work is not improving one’s personal wellbeing; then, it’s negatively impacting the creative economy of your business. The ugly side is the selfish aspect of treating people as commodities (units to satisfy needs). I am not talking here about special circumstances like deadlines or struggling delivery or an emergency situation; these are in fact what shows commitment and solidarity in front of challenges. Nevertheless, I am talking about the pattern of wanting to suck up people’s blood in work and nothing else. As a leader, your duty spans ensuring that your people are having normal lives and never intervene in that.
5.3 Spend time on the hiring process
Why are you hiring? Capacity is just a functional number. But if you are hiring a human being with a decision that could influence both lives; then, the matter differs. Hiring is a complete journey that just starts with that question. If you are hiring just to get a functional capacity; that is, some who’s able to work selected by criteria that satisfy thousands, you are mostly looking for someone who performs functionally - fit as a gear in the machinery. However, hiring talents, the type of people you get so that you put first and grow your business, then, it takes a mind-shift about hiring.
Spend time putting both qualitative and quantitative measures. Subsequently, distribute them over different steps and phases, each concerned with depicting the candidate from different angle. In putting your measurements, keep in mind your current situation and the business status. As such, spending time on the hiring process not only enables you to discover the market and your needs, but it helps you reflect on your work and company business. What type of technical work your company is engaged in and its level? Are you using latest enabling tools? Such reflective questions you will have to contemplate about and answer before you aim your arc at hunting your talented people. Well, if your company is too far behind the-state-of-the-art technologies, you will see the reality that you shouldn’t hire talents. Your people are your mirror.
5.4 Keep them engaged
As a leader, you should be careful about two things when it comes to the work in which you engage your people: 1) people’s interest and 2) Saturated/meaningless/rotten tasks. You would say “it’s all work that people have to perform regardless their interest.” Well, that’s a mistake. Be it work that has to be done doesn’t change that we are humans and have inclinations; besides, when we work per interest, we perform better. First, you should always make sure that work itself is not getting meaningless or rubbish because that would be a sign that the type of work is getting mentally and professionally harmful. Given work is healthy and mentally rewarding, gauge your people’s interest before you assign them. In this regard, you will always find a match between your people and individual tasks.
For the second factor, as a leader, you should always be on the look up for better way of doing things and push for their implementation. You should also be watchful for when a routine task becomes rotten and empty. Such types of tasks would such up your team’s energy and motivation.
5.5 See the right reasons
Authority sometimes fire back on us; you become an authority on your self. You start to interpret and draw conclusions based on your authority and expert opinion instead of the actual reality in front of you eyes. The situation gets worse over time as you start to enter an area of denial, in which you start to deny and exclude evidence that doesn’t conform with your expert view. Nothing can cause rapid downfall to a leader more than inability to see the right reasons and reality. Understand: there is no expertise nor authority in Observations. Your experience, knowledge, and competence comes after you have done the observation like a child, unbiased and uncorrupted. Avoid the temptation to judge things based on your authority. See it through.
5.6 Don’t lie about it
I’ve seen throughout my career and engagement on the executive level, top management tend to lie about it when it comes to some matters important to them that they fear risking them by telling the truth. As a leaders, you should be courageous and fair enough to share with your people the truth. People will be much calmer being told about an issue or a mistake rather than being told all is good while manifestations are the contrary. In business, leis are quickly uncovered and beside hiding things being unethical, it’s humiliating for people to uncover lies the hard way themselves, which happens through painful experiences. When it comes to business issues and risks, share with your people by treating them as partners in the same boat. You will be surprised how they will be eager to risk many things to stand by you; and you would win by those who turn away and leave you in hard time - because the impurity has been removed. When you do a mistake, admit it. You owe your people a frank talk and a resolution. It’s not a shame to do mistakes, technically or mangerial. You build your credibility as a leader by acknowledging issues and resolving them subsequently.