(Here’s hoping this gets past your work email filters… )
To Ponder & Action: (Anti)BullS#it Change Leadership
What labels do you give yourself?
Perhaps you’re a son or a daughter?
A father, a mother, or a grandparent?
A doctor? An academic? A practitioner? A change agent?
A leader? An executive?
An expert?
These titles, these labels, all have connotations… Expectations that come with them.
We expect parents to be strong and caring.
We expect doctors to be insightful and calculated while being calm and considerate.
And we expect leaders to embody every single one of those ‘Leadership’ quotes that everyone is so fond of sharing. (And people must be, given LinkedIn estimates that ‘Leadership First’ - a company that exists solely to “share the very best inspirational leadership quotes and articles” - has grown its employee base by 40% in the last year!)
For years we’ve been bombarded with those ‘difference between a leader and a manager’ memes. About ‘toxic vs healthy culture’. About ‘becoming the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily’.
The bar for anyone in a leadership position has been set so high that it has become ‘Instagram unattainable’.
The way we view leadership needs a shakeup. Similar to the Instagram vs Reality trend a little while ago. For those of you who missed it… here’s a few examples:
The same way that poses, filters and lies dominate the popularity contest that is Instagram, these ‘inspirational leadership’ posts are shaping unrealistic expectations in ourselves and our staff alike.
Admittedly, it’s a difficult situation. Leaders are responsible for so much of a worker’s day to day work environment. Workplace bullies do exist. As do abusers. Neither of those are to be given a pass here. Both are despicable.
But what about the woman who is running a large restructure program, who’s also a single parent? Who feels a double-prong guilt everyday. Either she leaves early to run off to grab her little one after school, or she stays with her team and her little one is left to walk home to an empty house.
Or the man leading a large data team… who’s also going through a tough divorce, and struggling with his recent diabetes diagnosis. He’s distracted - and so he misses opportunities to thank or reward his employees.
These people are showing up. Making decisions, and being the best that can be in that day. In that moment.
Does ‘Instagram Leadership’ really serve them?
But what’s the alternative.
What bar should we hold ourselves against?
I’ll make a simple suggestion here. Embrace Realistic Leadership.
Similar to the way that there are almost no pure introverts or extroverts (we all tend to fluctuate on a spectrum) - there is always going to be a deficiency in your leadership. But there are also going to be strengths (otherwise you wouldn’t be in that position in the first place!)
Realistic leaders are ones that take reality seriously - and look to shape and harness it as it is.
There’s a number of ways to do this, but I’ll offer just one for the moment. You must orient your limited time and energy around your strengths. Here’s how to do that in just 4 steps.
1st - Take a stocktake of yourself based on the evidence of your own achievements and failures. (And ask those around you what they consider your leadership strengths to be).
2nd - Accept the deficiencies and actively find ways to delegate or outsource them.
3rd - Reallocate your time, effort and focus into areas that are your strengths.
4th - Spend time and money in growing your strengths further.
Bottom line - if you’re not spending 80% of your time on areas that accentuate your strengths, then you’re setting you and your change up to fail. Focus on what makes you strong. (Personally, those 4 steps are ones that I’ve been consciously working on every week thus far in 2022.)
This isn’t anything new, but it is simple and quantifiable.
And that’s where realistic leaders dwell.
Are you guilty of judging yourself against ‘Instagram Leadership’ standards?
Are you spending at least 80% of your time on areas that leverage your strengths? If not - fix that.
To Reflect: Your Weekly Anti-Platitude
Leadership isn’t always about strategic vision or inspiration.
Sometimes leadership is effective management.
And that’s ok.
Hot off the Press! Don’t ignore the momentum of your teams - it will make or break your change!
Thankfully it's not complex!
I loved this conversation. Tim and I chatted the inner workings of creating team momentum. Here’s a little more info:
According to Maxwell Leadership, momentum solves 80% of your problems. Momentum is what drives organizations through problems.
⚡ When momentum is high, teams move through problems as if they’re not even there.
🚫 When it’s low, they stall and see more problems than really exist.
So how can we create sustainable momentum in our teams?
Brendon Baker, Managing Director @ Valuable Change Co., shares with us an idea called The Momentum Path. It’s a neat method of assessing the current momentum level of each member of your team.
From there, you can use it to develop a clear strategy on what’s needed to build momentum on an individual and team level.
Listen to the full episode to learn how to grow the energy and momentum of your team ⏩ https://loom.ly/IBnbFcM
(and here’s a few of my fave moments from the chat)
A change leader is someone who drives holistically through the change. And that’s without getting caught in the depths of the ‘what are we doing?’ and all of the stakeholders and everything else. It’s the ability to drive holistically. [3:48]
Momentum is not motivation. Motivation is narrow. Motivation is just one part of momentum. Motivation is all about, Well, how do we get someone to do something for us? How do we motivate them to do something for us? And so it’s very narrow. Momentum is broader. It’s really judging how our teams are and where they are. [16:10]
The lesson there is that we as leaders, we need to build hope first. [19:06]
As leaders, driving a change or not, the question we should be asking ourselves is ‘how do we get our teams talking about us, ideally in a positive way?’ [28:37]
Did we just decimate change ‘methodology’??
One of my mantras is embrace simplicity, not simpleness.
But here's the thing. The need for strong Change Leadership and change management isn't stopping anytime soon. Not only that, but it's just getting more complex.
This complexity is something that I am actively fighting against.
In fact, it's even embedded into one of the Valuable Change Co.'s missions:
Fight Unnecessary Complexity.
Just a few hours before this goes out, I was one of the featured experts on the Change Management Review's International Panel for Simplifying Change Management. (I'm the only Aussie!)
Link here: https://lnkd.in/gGkB8ueP
With me on the panel was a master of deciphering complexity Edwina Pike, and Erika Andersen - the bestselling author of 'Change From The Inside Out' and 'Be Bad First'. Collectively we fielded questions from the editor Brian Gorman - who is also an expert in the field.
It was an absolutely awesome discussion - and I’ll be frank. We may have just decimated ‘change methodology’… (I also offered my approach to finding the most influential people that you don’t know about…)
If you missed it - reach out to Brian Gorman for a copy of the recording. I’ll try to get a copy or a link for a future Change Leader Weekly too.
I often hear people talk about taking breaks from Instagram or Facebook. Not often do I hear the same about LinkedIn. Is it because it’s less addictive, less popular, or that the eternal well of ‘inspirational positivity’ is more insidious…? (I wonder to myself, while posting this on LinkedIn too…)
See you next week.
BB