LEADING: More Than Just "Doing"
RESPONSES TO LEADERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
“Climbing the organizational ladder” is a time-honored tradition in American workplaces. People expect to begin on the “lower rungs”, but many of them aspire to “higher” places, to positions of leadership. I’ll go on record as saying that’s a good thing, since I believe that organizational success is directly linked to the quality of organizational leadership.
I like the idea of people wanting to lead, and when their performance, perseverance and patience are finally rewarded and they find themselves in leadership positions, it is truly time to celebrate. It is also time to carefully monitor their early leadership behavior in order to detect—and correct—any mistaken notions they’ve brought with them about how leaders are supposed to behave.
I want to offer some thoughts about what leaders can do, and a widely-held illusion many people in leadership positions have about what they’re supposed to do. I’ll begin by looking at three typical ways that people respond to leadership opportunities.
When they find themselves in leadership positions, for the first time or at higher levels than they’ve previously occupied, people tend to take on one of the following three personas:
1. Doers
2. Controllers
3. Influencers
DOERS
One of the criteria often used when promoting people to leadership positions is their performance, how well they’ve performed in their other positions. For example, top sales producers are often made sales managers. The rationale—not altogether unreasonable—seems to be that people who perform well in non-leadership positions will perform well as leaders. While there are behaviors and characteristics that apply almost equally to non-leadership as well as leadership positions, it should be noted that success in the former does not ensure success in the latter. Top sales producers do not always become effective sales managers.
One reason that past success doesn’t always translate into effective leadership is because the skills required are simply not the same. Staying with the sales example, there are certainly many ways that sales and leadership are similar. They’re both “people positions”, and success in both positions is determined by occupants’ ability to influence the choices others make. But there are also some significant differences, including—but not limited to—prolonged versus occasional interactions. Salespeople interact with their prospects and customers far less frequently—and far less intimately—than sales managers interact with members of their sales teams. So in spite of past successes, the skills required for success as leaders may be significantly different from the ones required for success in other positions.
People who are promoted to leadership positions based on their success in other positions have proven themselves to be effective “doers”. Those same people often undermine their success in leadership positions by continuing to be doers.
Instead of facilitating collaborative processes and influencing others in order to achieve organizational objectives, they continue to rely primarily on themselves to perform tasks that could—and should—be performed by others. Instead of training, evaluating, coaching and delegating to others, they continue to “just do it themselves”. You’ve got to admire their work ethic, but their suitability as leaders is suspect—at best.
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