In this article, which was first written for the Association of Chief Executives, I am setting out to explore the leadership topics that matter most to me.
By drawing together various threads, I want to take the opportunity to:
- challenge some of the toxic legacy myths that we are still dealing with in leadership
- start reframing leadership as a beautiful craft, to be honed over time; one that is rooted in behaviours and choice, rather than job title
- and argue for a behavioural and emotional leadership context that liberates energy and wholeheartedly engages entire communities of colleagues.
The content breaks down as follows:
- Debunking the Myth of Natural Leaders
- The Fallacy of the Great Man Theory
- The Talent Myth
- Deliberate Leadership
- How Behaviour Shapes Leadership
- Building a Culture of Engagement
- The Vulnerability Paradox
- The Power of Story to Engage
- Moments that Bind Us
Debunking the Myth of Natural Leaders
I think sometimes we collude with the idea that certain individuals are born to greatness; that leadership is somehow destiny. Even in our modern age, we are still seduced by the romance of the epic; the hero; drawn to the individual with “leader-like qualities” qualities. It let’s us off the hook; allows us to abdicate responsibility for the circumstances we find ourselves in.
We can console ourselves that we perhaps don’t have the character, the charisma, the fortitude, the luck, the courage to be a leader, and we can leave it to others. Which makes for great stories of individual heroism, but I would argue, isn’t fit for purpose in our complex and turbulent new world.
So how did we get to this point?
The Fallacy of the Great Man Theory
In no small part, we need to place the blame for the myth of natural leaders at the door of Scottish writer, Thomas Carlyle.
It’s the 1840s and most of Europe is still reeling from the impact of the Napoleonic Wars, whilst at the same time coming to terms with the societal and cultural shifts brought about by the Industrial Revolution. It’s a time of social change, uncertainty and fear for many people.
And Thomas Carlyle felt he had a reassuring answer for the masses – a series of essays, which became incredibly popular, promoting the idea that great leaders (and at this point in history we are talking exclusively men; think Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon etc) are born with the innate characteristics of strength, intellect, confidence and certainty in order to lead. They are chosen by God and it is the implied duty of others simply to follow.
“The History of the world is but the Biography of great men.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795 – 1881)
And so the Great Man Theory is born. Falling nicely into the hero tradition of Homer, King Arthur and Beowulf, consolidating a way of thinking about leadership that we are still dealing with today.
The Talent Myth
And this comfortable/uncomfortable relationship we have with the idea of heroic leadership and destiny is further exacerbated by the seductive myth of talent. That some people are just born to succeed, to play guitar, to kick a ball, to run a business well – they are just talented and it all comes easy – somehow they find it easy to win.
As with the born leader myth, we can be lulled into a sense of apathy by the apparent ease of others to take charge, and to be great at the whole leadership thing.
But the boring reality of excellence is that there is little empirical evidence that talent even exists; and if it does, it’s definitely not the determining factor in excellent performance. In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that the quality of performance correlates much more directly with hours practiced. And not just any old practice, but deliberate practice, which we will come onto in a minute.
Excellence is rare because few people are willing or able to spend enough time practicing.
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
Of course, certain physical or cognitive attributes are going to be useful in some areas of excellence (plenty of fast-twitch muscles are certainly going to help sprint athletes, for example, whilst a good situational recall memory is going to be great for a chess master) but it turns out that what really matters are:
- Starting early – early childhood seems to be the key in many sports
- Sustained support – parental support, peer support and coaching all matter here
- Access to excellence – understanding what good really looks like
- Passion – an obsession with the topic and related areas
- Exposure to experience – access to facilities, learning and competition
- Grit – adaptive resilience – positive responses to set backs
- Deliberate Practice – focussed, structured learning, rehearsal and refinement.
And all these filters mean that individuals fall by the wayside all the time. A passionate musician without access to a piano, an athlete who can’t learn from losing, a child’s passion for physics stifled by a thoughtless comment in class…
In effect, the end result often looks like talent but in reality, is years and years of tough, unrelenting graft, fuelled by passion and effort, in order to be better than anybody else.
When we turn this conversation to leadership excellence, it’s a sobering fact that the average age of somebody attending their first leadership development training is 42 years old. That’s the very opposite of starting early!
Combine this with the lottery of access to excellence and sustained support etc and you can start to see why leadership talent appears to be for the few.
Deliberate Leadership
That said, it’s never too late to develop great business leaders. If we start to treat leadership as a behaviour, not a job title then it becomes a beautiful craft to refine, to diligently hone and practice over time; if we have the courage and humility to learn.
And if we start treating leadership development as a deliberate act then we can start to collectively get better at it, in just the same way as we would improve any other part of our skillset.
Deliberate Practice is an approach to improvement that comes from the world of sport. Developed by Swedish psychologist, Anders Ericsson, it is a systematic approach to performance gain that puts “intentionality” front and centre, with a focus on five key pillars:
- Push beyond your comfort zone
- Work towards specific goals
- Focus intently on practice activities
- Expect quality feedback
- Develop a mental model of expertise.
And although we might be starting relatively late in the leadership development journey, with plenty of bad habits to unlearn, there is a clear opportunity to build deliberate leadership. We can build on these five principles and work regularly on the leadership behaviours we want to show, doing it with intention and clear goals in mind.
How Behaviour Shapes Leadership
Building on this core argument that contemporary leadership is a behavioural choice, it also signals a shift in the way that we can understand leadership in our organisations. Leadership is now a social relationship, and whilst there are always going to be some aspects of hierarchy, the prevailing mindset shift is one towards distributed leadership behaviours right across an organisation, with multiple engaged players creating the conditions for others to be and do their best.
So why does this matter?
Put simply, it’s the complexity gap. The increasing pace, uncertainty, complexity and inter-connectedness of our modern institutions is outstripping the ability of even our best brains to lead with the traditional “command and control” mindset. Individual leaders, working alone, are no longer capable of meeting the task demands of the most complex situations they are likely to face.
It’s time to put ego to one side and embrace a fresh leadership approach.
And interestingly enough, the most appropriate model to use is not actually new at all.
Let’s rewind back two millennia and consider the work of Aristotle, who was busy in the Athenian school for generals, the lyceum, teaching a leadership model of “logos, ethos, pathos”.
Alexander the Great, and his peers, were learning how to lead volunteer armies with a clear articulation of strategy, behaviour and emotion. They understood that to lead well in any circumstances, and to distribute and empower decision-making, the fundamentals must be to describe a clear strategy, role model the behaviours you expect and create the emotional context for it all to matter. In their case, to the extent that the strategy is actually worth dying for – no small feat indeed.
Fast forward back to this decade and consider Simon Sinek’s TED Talk argument to start with “why” (pathos) before thinking about “how” (ethos) and delivering on “what” (logos). There isn’t a lot of difference between the two…
So two thousand years later, we are gradually, and sometimes painfully, shedding the feudal legacy of centralised, hierarchical control and moving back towards a leadership imperative to inspire, motivate and guide those around us with a compelling vision, an emotional underpinning and consistent actions that build trust and confidence.
We know already that we follow behaviour more than strategy. Anyone who has ever carefully and diligently written a comprehensive business strategy paper, only to have it ignored in favour of canteen chatter knows this to be true. We make sense of the world through conversation and mediate it through the behaviours we see role modelled in others – the accumulated behaviours of an organisation are its culture; for better or worse.
If you are serious about leading a dynamic, vibrant organisation, then it’s time to work on behaviours first, or at least in tandem with strategy – this is how those around you will understand your intent.
And if you are wondering where on earth to start with this idea of behaviours as value drivers? You could do worse than adopt this list of Value Building Behaviours that my friend and colleague, Chris Parker at Mobilizing Teams International has been researching over the last two decades:
- Active Listening – listen in order to understand
- Open Questions – ask genuinely useful questions, framed to elicit opinion and insight
- Summarising – play back what you understand so far in order to check for biases and misunderstandings
- Support – identify and be clear about what you can get behind
- Challenge – test ideas and explore options with constructive challenge
- Clarify or Contract – draw together the conversation threads and invest time in checking understanding and actions
- Time Out – when it gets heated, pause the action to reframe and prevent a “limbic hijack” that is going to shut everything down
- Review and Feedback – create a performance culture of feedback; expect to give and receive actionable feedback on a frequent and regular basis.
Building a Culture of Engagement
In this new world of “leader as context creator” the overarching task of any leadership community is to work on engagement – creating environments where everyone feels valued, heard and involved. And this makes sense, not just from an ethical values perspective but from a financial one too.
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, the shocking reality is that 17% of employees in the commercial sector are actively disengaged at work. Not just staying quiet, but actively disengaged; which means they are consciously withdrawing their discretionary effort, switching off and potentially drawing others away too. The cost of this disengagement is estimated to be around 34% of salary, so for every six employees you have that are salaried at, for example, £50,000, you are losing £17,000.
Whilst the percentages might vary depending upon sector, if they are anywhere close, what might this mean across your organisation, both financially and culturally?
You do the math…
The Vulnerability Paradox
So what do people really want? Well, according to Self Determination Theory, by researchers Edward Deci & Richard Ryan, what really motivates people at work are three things: autonomy, competence and relatedness. And whilst the first is relatively easy to sort out (if we can master our tendency to micro-manage) the stumbling block is usually the combination of the other two, because of something called the Vulnerability Paradox.
Relatedness, particularly in the early stages of getting to know colleagues, relies on a bit of vulnerability. We actively welcome it in others, it seems, but the kicker is that we want everybody else to go first.
Instead, we opt for strength and competence because, on the face of it, this makes sense. Vulnerability benefits others whilst competence benefits us. And so there we are, stuck in a vicious cycle of demonstrating how strong we are when all we really want is a bit of heartwarming, authentic vulnerability.
The Power of Story to Engage
Linking this idea of vulnerability and Aristotle’s logos, ethos, pathos gets us to an interesting leadership place. One that allows us to combine emotion and compassion with strategy and sense-making.
I am talking about storytelling.
Stories are an integral part of every culture, anywhere in the world. They act as a vehicle for cascading messages and binding communities together over time. Stories are a way of transforming data into something to care about – our brains treat stories differently; lighting up in a way that facts alone can’t compete with.
And if you want to think about your leadership role as Storyteller-in-Chief, then where better to start than the creative powerhouse that is Pixar?
Their guidelines for creating a compelling story, whether it’s Finding Nemo, Toy Story or an amazing corporate strategy, are strikingly simple:
- Facts really don’t speak for themselves; give me context
- Find a way to involve me in the story
- Make me care – about the characters, the unfolding plot and the outcome
- Signpost the critical elements – it’s all in the anticipation
- Use relatable examples and metaphors that can all get behind
- Make sure everything leads back to the purpose of the story – waste nothing!
Moments that Bind Us
The final aspect of this powerful engagement trinity is the idea of defining moments and shared experience. Researchers, Chip & Dan Heath make a compelling argument for this concept of building collective memory through shared moments.
Their book, The Power of Moments (2017), identifies four key elements that make them memorable:
- Elevation: moments that rise above the routine, providing a sense of delight and joy.
- Insight: moments that rewire our understanding of ourselves or the world, leading to personal growth.
- Pride: moments that capture our achievements and accomplishments, boosting our confidence and sense of identity.
- Connection: moments that deepen our relationships with others, fostering a sense of belonging and togetherness.
They argue that by understanding and intentionally crafting these moments, leaders significantly enhance experiences, whether it’s about employee engagement, customer experience or building excitement around a product or service.
As leaders, we need to be always on the look out for those moments where we can go above and beyond; where we can create a unique, memorable moment of thoughtfulness or bonding.
Summary
The world of business leadership is shifting, because it has to. It is up to us to create communities of diverse, engaged leaders, right across our organisations. This means we must also jettison outdated leadership models based on gender, entitlement or spurious characteristics, in favour of leadership that is crafted and refined over time.
We are all a work in progress and our leadership should be no different, guided by passion, determination and a deep desire to create the conditions for others to thrive.
This should be our leadership mission.
