Fast Track to Becoming a Great Leader
Are you a natural-born leader? According to Forbes, natural leaders exhibit such qualities as taking the initiative, active listening, being open to evolving, enjoying life, and successful delegation. Do you recognize these qualities in yourself? If so, congratulations, you are a born leader! If not, do not get discouraged. According to science, when we acquire new skills, only 35-50% of our behaviour comes from a genetic predisposition. In comparison, we can learn the other 50-65% of our behaviour (Uri Galimidi, May 12, 2020, PMI Webinar "Strategies for Developing the Most Sought-After Leadership Qualities: Communicating with Impact"). Nowadays, there are many resources available to study for inspiring leaders. I encourage you to identify those leaders you can relate to most and whose style you find the most suitable to your personality. While a leadership style is personal, this article intends to share with you, leadership principles, which will guide you to become a great leader regardless of the field. "Will the same set of principles be applicable across different fields?" you may ask. To answer this question, we studied leadership frameworks from two very different fields, Military and IT and evaluated their differences and similarities.
First, we will learn from Bernie Banks, an associate dean for Leadership Development at Kellogg School of Management and a retired US Army general. His military career influenced his vision of leadership, and he found that it applies well to the commercial word. According to Bernie, while natural charisma can help, following a leadership framework he put together is all it takes to become an effective leader. Now, let's take a look at his framework, which is based on eight principles: focus, preparation, rehearsals, disciplined execution, safety, values, diverse and inclusive teams, and effective communications. I want to comment on some of them:
Focus is about prioritization and focusing employees' time and efforts on what matter.
Rehearsal is what allows a team to learn intent vs only learning a plan. Why is that important? When things go wrong, it becomes easy to overthrow the plans. As Mike Tyson once said "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." A clear understanding of the intent will guide why and what, even when a plan is derailed.
Disciplined execution: disciplined teams are those where individuals are accountable for their part.
Safety is about taking care of your people, ensuring they have the right resources and meeting their needs.
Effective communication, according to Bernie, is a primary way of establishing influence. Regardless of the context, leaders influence others to reach the desired outcome. Therefore, effective communication is an essential aspect of a leadership role.
Let's move now to a very different field, IT. About eight years ago, Google put tremendous efforts into a project called "Aristotle." Their goal was to understand what qualities contribute to high-performance teams. Google's project combined 50 years of academic studies, 180 teams, and hundreds of interviews. However, despite all the efforts, the project team could not find any correlations: individual personalities, skills, and backgrounds did not matter. Nor did it seem to matter whether teams consisted of friends who socialize outside of work or whether they followed more or less hierarchical structure. Uri Galimidi, a former Accenture partner described the findings of this project well in his recent PMI webinar. Uri highlighted that the foundation of high-productive teams was formed by psychological safety, and these teams were united by trust, dependability of one another, meaningful work, and an impact they produced. The research has shown that these five factors contribute to 80% of team success. What does it mean exactly? As a leader, one should invest initial efforts into designing a team structure, roles and responsibilities, and creating a meaningful purpose. Once the team is built and everyone understands their roles, it takes ongoing leadership to keep the momentum. The leader is responsible ensuring that everyone on the team is comfortable and heard.
In addition to that, it is vital to monitor the team's dynamics: "Do team members have each other's trust and rely on each other?" "Do they address misunderstandings quickly?" Attitude matters as much as skills and leaders should be watching out for "toxic people" within a team to protect the rest from a destructive mindset. The two leadership frameworks above were developed in very different contexts, yet have many similarities.
Both structures talk about creating a feeling of safety, trust and accountability within a team, uniting a team with a common goal and values, and making sure team members know what's expected of them and where to focus their efforts. Besides that, Bernie's constant communication and Uri's notion of ongoing leadership seem to be aimed at the same: maintaining a team on track towards a common goal. I hope that the above set of leadership principles combined with your leadership style will guide you towards becoming an authentic leader in any field you choose.
If you have any questions about this article or would like to share your experience, feel free to post a comment below or contact me directly at [email protected]
—Olga Minikh
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