We often think that looking like a leader is the the same as being one.
The person is confident. They have answers ready and can walk into a room where everyone is waiting for them to say something important without looking concerned or bothered.
I’ve promoted people with those qualities and supported conversations about potential, readiness and who needs to develop the mysterious quality of executive presence.
Fair enough. If you can explain a complicated problem in a way that anyone can understand, that’s a real skill. I’ve watched someone listen to what sounded like twenty minutes of gobbledygook and turn it into three very sensible sentences.
But sounding as though you know what you’re doing and knowing what you’re doing aren’t always the same thing, even though the system rewards that.
Spend enough time around senior leadership and you start to absorb expectations such as: the more senior you become, the more answers you should have.
No-one sits you down and tells you this. There’s no note on your promotion letter that says you’re expected to know everything with immediate effect. But suddenly people are asking you to make decisions, and the questions are getting harder. You know more people are watching, so saying “I’m not sure” starts to feel more uncomfortable.
So you learn how to make recommendations, present strategies and reassure everyone that you have a plan. Sometimes you do and sometimes you’re standing there thinking: “God, I hope this works.”
I have become more convinced over many years that the leader worth following is not always the person who sounds the most sure of things.
You see, I think there is a difference between being confident and being certain. You can be confident and make a decision without being sure of how it will turn out. Which is a good thing given that right now, in this crazy world, there’s a lot we don’t know.
AI is the flavor of the year. You hear a lot about how it will take people’s jobs, change jobs, teams and companies, and we’re still trying to work out exactly how that will happen. There’s no manual that has the answers of the AI universe tucked in the back.
Restructures are reported every day. I have worked through enough of those slide decks to know that no matter how tidy the boxes look, we have no idea how the new structure will work until it is actually happening.
It’s not even just the big things. What about that ordinary Thursday problem? Your team is arguing. Someone who was previously a star performer suddenly isn’t. You have a new boss. The new role wasn’t defined properly. You’re facing a decision and neither option is particularly enticing.
Nine times out of ten, you’re not going to have a perfect answer, but you still need to act. That is where I see the value of a different sort of leader.
The leader who says: “Here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t know. I think we should try this, but are you seeing it differently?” That’s the person I will follow into uncertainty.
It’s not that they were vulnerable and admitted they don’t know everything. I don’t think that is helpful when you need someone with experience and judgement to make a call. It’s because they know the difference between what they really know and what they say because they think they are supposed to have an answer.
It takes courage to start when you can’t give everyone a clear idea of where it will finish. The next thing when you have done that, is you need to pay attention.
Your team might be hearing something different than you thought you said. What looks sensible on paper may be useless in practice. The person in your team who talks directly to the customer might see something you never saw. The person you thought would resist could be your biggest supporter. The smart thing is to listen, change if you need to and keep going.
It sounds so obvious but I don’t think we make it easy for leaders to do this. We spent years teaching people to communicate, influence, think strategically and make decisions. That’s all extremely useful but what about that moment when a leader (especially a new leader) thinks that in order to show they are credible and certain, they can’t say they’ve changed their mind or want to go in a different direction. Have they failed some kind of leadership test?
What about people whose confidence shows up differently?
The woman who wants to think before she speaks, or listens carefully and notices the thing everyone else missed. The person who asks that question that changes the conversation, even if she never has the quickest answer.
So often we tell them they need to speak up more, be visible, show “executive presence.” That could be great feedback or it could just encourage them to be a replica of the last person who was promoted.
That’s where I get concerned.
We have this image of a good leader based on a previously successful employee who climbed the ladder. We measure everyone else against that and spend a lot of time trying to close their gaps. What if we just looked at whether this person leads well?
Is she trusted by people? Where does she show good judgement? How does she step in when people are unsure of something.
I don’t believe we can have one list of traits that makes someone a good leader worth following
I’m starting to look at the people I instinctively trust, who may not have the big titles or the loudest presence. The ones I ask for advice and choose to work with again and again. The ones I will follow into battle even if I don’t know what the outcome looks like.
What is it that makes them someone worth following?
Confidence, experience, they way they listen or whether they are willing to make a different decision when facts change. Maybe because of their vulnerability and willingness to point the way even if they don’t have all the answers.
I’m not saying replace one mold with another. That’s insanity. I’m saying we need to try and recognise leadership in people who don’t look like the image we have in our head, or on the Leadership Framework document in someone’s hard drive.
We need to see the people are can lead well as themselves, even when the most useful thing they can say is: “I don’t know, but let’s try starting here.”