Creative Leadership: What does leadership mean to you (personally)?

Is leadership and following an instinctive behaviour? I my mind there is an element of instinctive behaviour in how leaders emerge and how followers choose to follow them. In my working career I have known, without really being able to explain it, who the managers are that I would want to work with again. Managers that display what I define as leadership skills are the people whom I most respected and enjoyed working with. When I worked with managers that did not display those skills I left to work elsewhere. So what I would like to discuss is what behaviours I consider to be good leadership behaviours and how do these affect my own values.

Firstly, I respected managers who trust their staff to do research and make the best possible choice regarding an issue and who then supported those findings when reporting to others. I had a case where I got left to my own devices to design a solution to the problem. After I had been given a set of requirements, I engaged the resources I needed to do some research in areas I was not familiar with and then I presented the findings and recommendation to my boss when we had come up with the best idea. Unfortunately the boss reacted in anger because they felt that they hadn’t been kept in the communications loop and that the design had changed from what was originally proposed. I got angry and left the organisation. The conclusion I draw from this is that I like to work with managers with high emotional intelligence. The outcome of this is that I place “developing high emotional intelligence” at the top of my personal leadership action list and in the future I will walk the talk when it comes to displaying trust.

Secondly, I respect managers who help their staff work with the values and processes of an organisation even if those values and processes do not fit well with their own personal philosophy. I think that a person needs to ensure that they are working for an organisation whose values agree with their own or who is prepared to internalise the organisations values regardless of their own beliefs and display behaviours that are congruent to those values. For example, I got stung badly by the performance management system at one employer’s site because of some issues between my manager and the organisation that were broadly related to his personal philosophies. The performance management system allowed one to set personal objectives and the benchmarks against which achievement were to be judged, alongside peer review of those achievements. The process expected that the manager review those objectives for alignment to strategic aims and values of the organisation. Because the manager didn’t really agree with the process and had a lot of turmoil in their personal life, those objectives were never reviewed nor were any milestones used to ascertain progress towards those goals. The outcome was an extremely poor performance review. At the post review meeting I discussed this problem and even received a raise but I resigned and moved on to another organisation shortly after. The outcome of this is that I now make a conscious effort to understand the values of an organisation before I start working for them, mostly through research conducted through employees of that organisation. I also make very sure that what I want to do is congruent with what they want me to do. I never want to be the kind of manager that doesn’t look after their staff or who doesn’t know when their personal life is getting in the way of their professional life and seek the appropriate help.

Thirdly, I respect leaders and managers that I trust. From my perspective trust can take a lot forms. One side of this ~would be where a manager sticks around in the face of adversity or when problems start becoming complex and challenging. For example, I had a manager that instigated some activities and took a leadership role in them while it was still fun to do so but who disappeared when those activities were called into question by more senior people. Suddenly it was our problem and by being absent the repercussions of those activities bypassed him entirely. I guess that I have to know that a manager is going to stand in my corner when an issue starts getting complex rather than bailing. The outcome of this is that I place a high value on ownership and responsibility and want to follow these values as a leader.

Fourthly, I respect the managers that communicate with their followers and check to see if there are any issues that need to be addressed. In the case of my best leader this did not take the form of a daily team meeting, but was implicit in their dealings with all of the staff. They were so good at getting people to deliver what was supposed to be delivered that they eventually replaced the real boss of the team! For example, when a IT project was not delivering, the sponsor tried to pin the road block on our team and arranged for the vendor to turn up at the end of the working day, with the intention that we all stay onsite until the sponsor was happy that something was being done. My team leader immediately stepped in and said that this was unreasonable and that I would only have to stay late if I felt like it. I stayed late and the job got done, for which I was rewarded with a round at the pub. The outcome for me from this scenario is that I will place a high value on supporting my staff in the face of process abuse by other teams, and inspire them towards extra effort by setting the example myself and rewarding that effort to show that it’s appreciated.

Lastly, I respect those managers who take the time to teach and answer questions. This is a leadership trait that I try to practice myself and I really enjoy teaching others. Where I could improve upon this is in the answering of questions which I tend to answer with “I don’t know”. In the United Kingdom it was considered a good thing and earned you respect when you said “I don’t know” to questions that you didn’t know the answer too. In New Zealand this is seen as trying to avoid work. The outcome of this is that I need to make sure that my behaviour matches the values of the society I happen to be working in, or move to a society where specialisation is more readily accepted.

In summary to the question “what does leadership mean to me?” I have discussed a range of experiences where I felt leadership qualities were displayed (or not!) and I discussed how those values are important to me. I intend to internalise and then preach those values to my own followers when the time comes for me to step up and lead. Specifically those values are:
Trust
Be true to yourself
Loyalty
Learning
From my perspective these are the leadership values that I believe in and will follow in my future working life.