I recently engaged in an online exchange with leaders across the country on the topic of leadership and the value of reading. Some claim that reading is passe, that today’s world of blogs, documentaries, TED Talks, and other online resources provide just as much pertinent information as any book on the topic. One person asked, “How many books do I need to read to be a good leader?” while others claimed they didn’t need to read because of their ability to get their knowledge from sources other than books.
Missing the Point
The adage “Great leaders are great readers” still applies today as well as into the future for several reasons: (1) NO leader has all the answers in a complex world; (2) The VUCA environment exposes multiple blind spots that require input from other talent within your organization; and (3) Leadership throughout a company must exercise appropriate influence at different levels and with varied audiences, requiring a solid understanding of the depth and breadth of the challenges leadership must effectively address. Many of the respondents to the question missed these points. Because the world is constantly changing, so must leadership, thus one’s knowledge and experiences of past situations cannot and will not be sufficient for dealing with the future. In short, leadership, like character, requires continual development and strengthening, and this can only come through ongoing education and application throughout the course of one’s lifetime.
Understanding Context: The Essential First Step and its Critical Components
At its core, leadership is contextual. Because of this, leadership has almost as many definitions as the thousands of books that exist on the topic. Yet, nothing in a book can define the specific situation one faces because of the multitude of factors that exist at that moment and what was written is in the past. What books can do is identify how leaders in other times dealt with uncertainty and adversity and achieved outcomes by leading others effectively. Understanding context requires knowledge of the following six areas, with topics for investigation and study:
- 1. The Context of Leadership: As an art, a force for change, its differences with management, and five exemplary practices.
- The Character of the Leader: Five core traits and the discipline of building character throughout an organization.
- The Character of the Organization: How individual character traits contribute to and mold a company’s character, and how company culture begins with the people one hires.
- Ethics for Leaders: The argument for values-based leadership, the foundation of ethical codes, and leaders as role models.
- Emotional Intelligence (EQ): What EQ is, how it operates in the workplace, and the four effective EQ Leadership styles that get results.
- Critical Thinking, Knowledge Creation, and Innovation: Building a knowledge-creating, learning company; breaking the chains of traditional business thinking; and embedding appreciative inquiry into every facet of team meetings for optimal results.
The breadth of each of these areas shows it is impossible for any one person to obtain sufficient experience alone to effectively deal with context. Yet, before stepping into a leadership role, a basic understanding of the differences between management and leadership is necessary since each is unique yet complementary to the other. Learning about context through printed sources such as books and articles in professional journals is necessary to improve leader performance.
Appropriate Leadership Competences Throughout Your Company
About 10 articles ago, I introduced the Levels of Leaders and their specific roles within organizations. Leaders at all levels must develop their intellectual capital to better perform in their roles, and this begins with developing competence in the following areas.
- Grassroots Leaders exercise frontline leadership with small teams and are usually customer-facing. They need to be competent in: Developing exemplary practices such as Modeling the Way and Challenging the Process, Motivating Others, and Building and Sustaining Teams.
- Operational Leaders align internal structures with Organizational Purpose, executing actions to achieve strategic goals. They need to be competent in: Collaboration, Decisiveness, Guiding Change, Continuous Improvement, Performance Excellence and Quality within operating units, and Applying Emotionally Intelligent Leadership in all situations.
- Strategic Leaders need to be visionary in aligning everyone on a transcendent purpose that inspires, motivates, engages, and empowers leaders at all levels of the company. Leaders at this level must be competent in: Collaborative Leadership, Crisis Leadership, Building and Transforming Organizations, Building High-Reliability Organizations (HROs), Organizational Executive Leadership, Organizational Design, Performance Excellence at the Enterprise Level, Strategic Planning, Transformational Leadership, and the Evolution of Leadership Thought.
One look at these competences can be overwhelming but remember the way to eat an elephant: One bite at a time. Each article since #9 has listed at least one suggested reading, which should become part of your corporate library to be accessible to leaders at all levels. The one below is a classic that should be on every leader’s bookshelf as a ready reference and tool for building great leadership within a company.
Suggested Reading:
Kouzes, James and Posner, Barry. (2017) The Leadership Challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations. The Leadership Challenge® a Wiley brand publisher.
Questions for the Week: What competences do I already have from the lists above? Which ones do I need to develop? What priorities do I need to place on my own learning about leadership? What two areas will I focus on over the next six months?
| About the Author: Dr. Ray Benedetto is co-founder of GuideStar, Inc.® a practice in organizational leadership for performance excellence (www.guidestarinc.com). He is a retired Air Force colonel with a distinguished active-duty military career. He is board certified in Healthcare Management and a Life Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). Dr. Ray taught leadership for 12 years for the University of Phoenix Chicago campus. He holds degrees from Penn State (BS), the University of Southern California (MSSM), and the University of Phoenix (DM). He is co-author of “It’s My Company TOO! How Entangled Companies Move Beyond Engagement for Remarkable Results” (Greenleaf Book Press Group, 2012) and numerous ezine articles available online. You can reach him at ray@guidestarinc.com to request a reading list that addresses all competences shown above. |