One of my favourite books is The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Posner. Of the five core leadership practices described in that book, my favourite core practice is “Model The Way”.
As a people leader, nothing you do escapes notice. All eyes are on you, all the time.
People watch you for many reasons – both positive and negative. To see you succeed or to see you fail. The positive reasons include:
- Role model: So that they can pattern their own career aspirations after you.
- Inspiration: To provide them vision and support towards a shared goal.
You serve as a “living example” to model the way for others. So, what you say and don’t say matters. A sort of “golden rule” for how leaders behave.
This “Model the Way” core leadership practice is one of the key reasons why it’s critical in any change initiative to initiate the change at the very top. Change starts with leaders. If they don’t change themselves, how can they expect others to change?
As an Agile Coach helping organizations adapt to agile ways of working, this translates to a “Leaders go first” approach. Coaching leaders first on their role to learn, model and lead the expected changes before asking staff to do the same.
But what happens if leaders can’t or won’t go first?
A recent change in leadership at one of my clients led to that situation. The new leader seemed to have a different vision and set of priorities than his predecessor. I say “seemed to” only because a lack of transparency and direct communication from the new leader led to uncertainty, confusion and speculation. The leader appeared to have gone MIA.
We had a few options to explore for this apparent lack of modelling the way.
- Stop and wait. At least until the new leader was able to model the way with a clear vision and priorities. This option was a non-starter. We didn’t have the luxury of pausing all of the inflight change initiatives and commitments.
- Go through it. The most effective and honourable thing to do would’ve been to directly engage the leader face to face and share the challenges that his lack of vision and support was causing. This would’ve been the preferred option if the leader was not MIA. It’s hard to have a dialogue when the other party won’t come to the table.
- Go around it. Focus on positive deviance. On what was working despite the lack of a leader going first. Focus on joy with the little that was working rather than anger at the rest that wasn’t working. Focus on growing what you can change rather than commiserate on what you can’t change.
We chose option 3. It kinda reminds me of the refrain from the song “Love The One You’re With” by Stephen Stills,
“And if you can’t be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you’re with…”
And the best outcome of option 3 is little by little, it encourages acts of leadership everywhere by everyone.
So if the official leader can’t or won’t go first, then invite everyone else to lead by going first in the meantime.
Next Chapter Consulting 