If you’ve ever read a leadership job description you’ve probably been hugely impressed by the dynamic and impressive words…

‘Drive strategic direction.’

‘Lead high-performing teams.’

‘Deliver organisational objectives.’

‘Champion change and innovation.’

Does any of this actually tell you what the job is like? Especially if it is a first move into Leadership…perhaps it completely puts you off with all the business psychobabble.

In answer to those job description I’d ask, is there any strategic direction, what stage is the team currently at, have you set the objective, what has your track record of implementing change and innovation been like.

My personal favourite leadership job description I’ve seen is…

‘Balancing operational tasks with people-centric development to drive results in often uncertain environments.’

On paper, leadership looks like clarity and control.

In reality, it’s going to look more like a situation which is more chaotic, especially as there is a vacancy for a leader.

• You’ll inherit a team that isn’t quite aligned
• You’re given goals that sound clear… until you try to deliver them
• You’ll be in an environment where change and new ideas are resisted
• You’ll spend more time navigating people than executing plans

And the shift will be coming to terms with the fact that the job description can’t truly capture the complexity. Your job won’t be to have the actual answers immediately. Your job is to navigate the complexities of the people you are working with, in all their wondrous mixes, and enable the team to deliver the discovered answers.

And as many of you will know I’m a huge fan of the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM), and the way they ask questions. But when you look at them at first, with all their academic command words and sufficiency descriptors, you might be as put off as one reading a job description.

Take a look at the first three questions from a level 5 assignment, 8607-510 Managing for Efficiency and Effectiveness…WHICH ARE BRILLIANT QUESTIONS!!!

AC 1.1

Assess own organisation’s ability to translate vision, mission and strategic goals into operational objectives with realistic and measurable targets

AC 1.2

Assess own organisation’s ability to efficiently and effectively delegate responsibilities for the achievement of targets and objectives

AC 1.3

Assess the efficiency and effectiveness of control methods used to monitor the achievement of targets and objectives in own area of responsibility

But does that make sense to anyone when they read it? What are they really saying here?

Let’s decode it, take a Leadership Shift to a more realistic set of words…

Shifted AC1.1

Take a look at your own company and the things it says it wants to do and tell us about how good it is at turning that into some real things to do.

Shifted AC1.2

How good is your company at selecting the right people to go and do those things?

Shifted AC1.3

How good are your systems at being able to actually measure the things you are responsible for?

I absolutely adore it when we work with leaders to decode this structure and help them to use well tried and tested tools to get to a situation where they can confidently execute a plan. Turn it into real implementation.

And then there’s the people you have to do it with. While we give loads of different ways to understand them, for this blog I want to focus on the coaching element. Recently I’ve been asked to work with a large manufacturer who have s set of more experienced engineers who can’t move away from the desire to just autocratically tell people what to do. A hammer might work in some situations but there are other tools needed upon occasion that require more finesse.

Coaching could come in here. For the right person, at the right time of their career, or in a particular element of their job, coaching them might be absolutely right. I could reference Hersey and Blanchard or Tannenbaum and Schmidt here, we love teaching them as academic models, but I’m sure you already know what they say.

Coaching is a structured mechanism that can make the abstract real in truly practical grounded conversations.

•  ‘What’s getting in the way here?’
• ‘What does success actually look like?’
• ‘Who needs to be involved that currently isn’t?’
• ‘What are we avoiding?’
• ‘What’s a possible consequence if we take that action?’

These questions don’t just unlock performance. They reveal reality and should garner intrinsic motivation. Yes, we will be giving you some classic models so you can evaluate them for your own needs, I personally like OSCAR (Gilbert and Whittleworth, 2009), but you could equally create your own.

Because basically, the same leadership style isn’t needed by everyone in the team. Not every person needs the same leader. But it’s going to be you who is going to have to be that flexible, and I don’t see that shift written down in the job descriptions.

Some people need:

• Direction
• Others need autonomy
• Some need challenge
• Others need reassurance
• Others need barriers removed for them
• Others need to be nurtured and developed

And then you have to blend all that with a different communication style for each person, in reality. It’s not a surprise is it when the mistake many leaders make is treating everyone the same…and then wondering why results are inconsistent.

So What’s the Shift?

If it had to be written plainly, without corporate language, it would look something like this….

Leadership is not about being in charge of delivery. It’s about being responsible for the thoughts and conversations that make delivery possible and bringing the people on board who then wish to follow you.

And that shift changes everything.