I love working with leaders, both in groups and especially one on one. What I have realised over the last few years is that in Australia, across many different industries, we have some great leaders – people who genuinely care about their people, who are there to serve them, to create and maintain an environment where their people can shine, develop, get outside of their comfort zone and challenge themselves.
Disappointingly though, I have also come across a number of ‘leaders’ who talk a great game, who give every indication that they are leading their team with intention and providing a strong support base for their people, only to find that when the moments of truth hit, they revert to ‘managing’. Unfortunately, often when this happens, the level of trust the team has in the leader is diminished and sometimes destroyed, simply because the leaders words do not match their actions – they are inconsistent and often unpredictable. This played out recently with a leader I am working with.
This particular leader is exceptional at her role and she has a high level of trust and respect with her people. However, her immediate leader is demonstrating the traits of a manager where the focus appears to be entirely on the ‘numbers’ and nothing else. This is extremely frustrating for my client as her manager spends the majority of his time in his office, analysing reports and spreadsheets, and very little time with his team and the wider workforce. Hence his decisions and conversations are very one way, one sided, with very little room for discussion, conversation or collaboration.
This came to a head when my client was ‘asked’ (more like told) to deliver cost savings across her area of the business and only given 24 hours notice to ‘solve the problem’. As you can imagine, my client is working hard, has a great relationship with her team, however is running out of ideas and options to drive further improvements because she has already had significant cost reductions imposed on her over the previous 12 months. As she said to me, ‘I feel like I am being backed into a corner with a gun pointed at me, and I’m running out of options’.
Have you ever felt like this? You are leading a team, achieving some milestones and driving forward, and still your manager wants more and more and more? This is a classic case of leadership becoming management, where the leader loses sight of the big picture vision and instead focuses on the tactical issues. In this case, the pressure mounting on the senior leader has resulted in him morphing from leader into manager, because he was concerned about his own position and standing within the organisation. As such, unfortunately he was making decisions with an element of self interest, resulting in his level of trust from his people being diminished. How do you stop yourself from moving from leadership to management? We must first keep in mind that as a leader, it is important to ‘manage’ the team and ensure objectives are met. However, sometimes a leader can cross the ‘leadership chasm’ and become engulfed in the management minefield.
Here are some areas to be mindful of:
- A Leader Always Knows Why They Are There – irrespective of what is happening within the business, or what challenges they are facing, a leader is always absolutely certain as to why they are there. Why they are leading. They know the objectives that must be met, they understand clearly the vision and ultimate purpose for the business, and as a result, they are not sucked into the ‘leadership chasm’ when things go wrong. They understand more than anyone that it is their response to what happens which is way more important than what actually happens. This way they always maintain a grounded perspective, they exercise more control and hence, place themselves in a stronger position to drive a better outcome. They keep sight of the big picture and know that obstacles and challenges will be placed in their path, but these obstacles are inevitable and they have strategies in place to deal with them. The manager on the other hand, is often ‘reactive’ to the challenges and will immediately swing into ‘tactical’ mode in an attempt to overcome the immediate challenge, sometimes losing sight of the big picture. Where do you sit on this? Do you maintain your focus on the big picture or are you often quite tactical?
- A Leader Will First Seek To Understand – a key attribute about great leaders is that they will always first seek to understand before they focus their attention on being understood. So when things happen and the proverbial ‘sh*t’ starts to flow down hill, before they take any action, they will focus their attention on fully understanding what has happened, why it has happened, and what possible options are available to mitigate the challenge or handle the obstacle. In my clients case, the ‘leader’ has simply directed her to come up with an initiative to guarantee cost savings in her part of the business and not at any stage has sought to understand what is possible to achieve, what limitations may exist that could prevent the initiative from succeeding – he simply wants the result. As such, the ‘sh*t’ is flying downhill at a great rate of knots!. Where is your focus as a leader? Is your first response to seek understanding, or do you find yourself simply ‘towing the company line’, and pushing the stuff down? If so, how effective is that?
- A Leader Will Be Curious & Focus On Collaboration – linked to seeking to understand, a great leader will be insatiably curious, will ask powerful, open ended questions, without any pre-conceptions, and will focus their attention on being collaborative. They understand that there is a huge amount of knowledge and IP that sits within the team and their role is to be able to tap into that effectively, recognising that they themselves do not have all the answers. There is a high level of humility and vulnerability that sits here, because they literally hand over to the team to brainstorm and generate ideas to solve problems and overcome challenges. When they place the emphasis on collaboration, they typically get great ideas generated, and in the process, the level of trust their team has in them goes up. Do you focus on collaboration with your team or do you give the team specific direction?
- A Leader Will Support Their Team Always – a key element that separates great leaders from ‘managers’ is that their focus is always on how they can support their team. These leaders understand and live their life through servitude, that is, they are there to serve their people; their people are not there to serve them. This is a huge mindset shift that when leaders ‘get it’, establishes massive credibility and trust amongst their team, and creates an environment where team members are encouraged to generate ideas, to provide feedback, to challenge current status quo and in the process, lifts the engagement of the whole team. For leaders who do this consistently, they reap the rewards of higher engagement amongst the team, higher productivity and less turnover of staff. They create a positive culture. A manager on the other had, will often become directive towards staff, will not seek input and often you will hear dialogue such as ‘I’m your manager, simply do as I ask please’. They can often revert to positional leadership, which may get some short term results, but long term, does not generate trust, and also conditions their people not to step outside of the boundaries, thereby stifling creativity. When it comes to leading your team, what is your focus? Do you believe you are there to serve them, or are they there to serve you? The answer to that question will determine the level of your long term leadership success.
As I stated earlier, leading people in any organisation demands that you ‘lead’ them, as well as ‘manage’ – at the end of the day the results must be delivered. However, it is how you go about achieving these results that will determine how consistent your results will be, and definitely how sustainable they will be. As my client has experienced, there are 2 ways to get an outcome :
- Be the leader who knows who they are and why they are there, who seeks to understand, is curious and focuses on collaboration and is there to serve the team, or
- Be the manager who simply wants the result and will not be curious, will not seek to understand and will not be collaborative.
Which one best describes you, and which one do you want to be? Hopefully you want to be a leader – just be mindful of how sometimes leadership can become management. Be aware of this and you will be well on your way to being an outstanding leader.
To your continued sales leadership success.
Darren
If you want to know how you can better lead your sales team, send me an email at darren@darrenmitchell.com.au
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Thank you for taking the time to read this post – I greatly appreciate it, and welcome comments and feedback. Please feel free to comment below, to follow me on LinkedIn, or to connect via Twitter, or Facebook.
Darren specialises in working with Sales Leaders to create, implement & embed a sales leadership game plan that will deliver outstanding and sustainable sales & revenue results. He is also the founder of the Australian Sales Leadership Network, a LinkedIn Group for sales leaders to share insights, strategies, resources and best practices, in order to build high quality, engaged and successful sales teams, delivering profitable and sustainable sales results. To apply to join, please click this link.
