Marc's Blog

The best ill-suited leaders
(... talented leaders that are ill-suited for their organization)
 

How can “best leaders” be “ill-suited” to their organizations?  The problem lies in the fact that leaders can be very skilled, or have charisma, but they can still lack the Leadership Focus needed to build and support their organizations,  ...even if they are the ones that have defined the business vision.

The objective of this article is to introduce Organizational Leadership.  Organizational Leadership is defined as having the Leadership Focus needed to develop and support the fulfillment of the organization’s business vision and key business objectives (see the article on The Business Vision: the most unclear and unconscious facet of most organizations).  

Your Leadership Focus is defined as the coming together of your most prevalent Leadership Strengths—the 4 or 5  leadership strengths that you use day-in and day-out to get what you want and make things happen.  Your Leadership Focus also defines what you look at to judge the performance and potential of others, and the type of support system you need, believe in, and will put in place and support.

So, an ill-suited leader is a leader that has a leadership focus that is incongruent with the organization that he or she is leading.

What happens when your Leadership Focus is incongruent with your Business Vision?
The good news is that your Leadership Focus can be realigned, so that as a leader, you will be able to build and support an organization that reflects your business vision. (see the article on How to move beyond the leadership strengths that prevent you from moving forward in your career )

How to define your Organizational Leadership level?
Your Organizational Leadership level comes from the overlapping of your Leadership Focus on your organization’s Business Vision.  The Business Vision is defined as the explicit description of the focus the workforce should have in the fulfillment of the key business objectives.  So this means that, in order to achieve this, your current Business Vision has to be explicit and precise.  Once you’ve overlapped the two, you can start to see how high or low your Organizational Leadership level is.  

Here is an example:

Some of the elements of an organization’s Business Vision are the following:    

Elements of the Organization’s Business Vision

1. Having a consulting approach
   
2. Being responsive

Now imagine that the leader’s Leadership Focus is the following:

The Leader’s Leadership Focus:

1. Driven
   
2. Results-Oriented
   
3. Customer-Oriented
   
4. Quick Acting
   
5. Empower the Team

Let’s overlap the leader’s Leadership Focus on the two Business Vision elements, and look at which ones of the Leadership Focus elements are supportive of each of the two Business Vision elements. Remember that what we are looking to find here are the qualities that the leader has that will result in his employees being able to either have a consulting approach or be responsive.


Elements of the Organization’s Business Vision (The Leader’s Leadership Focus Elements that support the Business Vision element )

1. Having a consulting approach (None)
2. Being Responsive (#5 - Empower the team, and maybe #2 - Results-Oriented)

Review of the Leader’s  Alignment
You can see that this leader is really ill-suited to create and support these two elements of the Business Vision (The business Vision should count between 4 and 6 elements— less than 4 is not complete enough, and more than 6 is too complex).  

In this example, most of the leader’s Leadership Focus characteristics are about him DOING, rather than COACHING or ENABLING.   This means that some of the leader’s leadership focus elements should be replaced by: “Developing other’s competence,” Developing other’s accountability, Coaching, Mentoring, Teaching, Delegating, Facilitating, or any other Leadership Focus elements that lead him away from DOING, to more of a Transferring of Capabilities approach. In his role, and based on his business vision, he has to learn to coach his employees and, if his organization has middle managers, he has to learn to coach the middle managers to become coaches.   

The leader in the example has the right characteristic to “Be Responsive” himself (#1, #2, #3, and #4), but this may end-up causing him more trouble than good as a leader, because he may become impatient when trying to coach his employees.  Moreover, his idea of being empowering to his team may be to tell his employees to “just do it,” without offering the necessary support.

The leader may also have some experience in “Having a Consulting Approach,” but it would be fairly remote.  Some of the characteristics that are needed to “have a consulting approach” may be “Being Customer-Oriented and Be Results-Oriented, but these two things alone don’t give someone a “Consulting Approach.”

The problem with traditional leadership development programs
The main problem with traditional Leadership development programs is that they focus on developing leadership skills and/or Leadership Focus without considering the Business Vision of the organization.  They develop leadership skills and mindsets in a vacuum, as if there were 4 or 5 leadership skills and mindsets that were universal.  It’s true that some leadership skills and mindsets such as coaching and mentoring will be useful, but they won’t lead you very far if you don’t have the competence or expertise to coach your employees on what they require to act on the Business Vision.

When the Leader’s Leadership Focus is misaligned with the Business Vision, it sends conflicting messages to the workforce, and kills the workforce’s performance, motivation and commitment.
 

What to do next
Take a moment to review your Business Vision:

• Is your business vision documented (i.e. written in a document that can be distributed to your workforce)?
• Is your business vision more than one page long?
• Does your business vision include 3 to 5 characteristics your workforce should focus on and portray in everything they do?
• Does it include, for each characteristic, the result(s) that are expected by portraying each characteristic?
• Does it include a list of the actions that when carried-out will create the expected results?
• Does it include the mindsets that are needed in order to naturally carry out these actions?

If you answered “NO” to any of the points above, your vision is unclear, and you should take the time to rework it.

Once you have a clear and explicit Business Vision, review your Leadership Focus.  The process begins by observing yourself in action:

• What are the means that you use to make things happen? (Think of times when you are under pressure, or under tight deadlines. What are the ways of working you revert to?)
• What are the traits of character that you believe are essential in your role?
• What do you believe you have in common with your role models or people you admire?
• What are you looking for in people that are working for you, to know that they will be as successful as you are?

Once you have some answers, rate them in order of importance, and keep only the 5 leadership characteristics that you use day-in and day-out to make things happen.

Once you have both your Business Vision and your Leadership Focus, overlap your Leadership Focus on your Business Vision, and see if and how your Leadership Focus supports your Business Vision.

If you are interested to dig deeper, there are some tools available on the market, such as the BusinessVision-Matrix and the LeadershipFocus-Matrix that can help you define your Business Vision and your Leadership Focus with precision (see www.strategy-driven.com)


Conclusion
The main points to remember here are that:

1. It’s not because you have great leadership skills that you are well suited to develop and support the Business Vision of your organization
2. It’s not because you have defined the Business Vision of your organization, that you have the Leadership Focus required to develop and support your organization’s Business Vision
3. What makes suitable Organizational Leaders is NOT their “perfection” in terms of skills or past achievements, but the alignment of their Leadership Focus with the Business Vision of their organizations
4. GOOD NEWS, your Leadership Focus can be realigned with your organization’s Business Vision, it’s just a matter of understanding what needs to be readjusted, and using the resources needed to make the changes happen

Please send me your questions or comments at efactor@strategy-driven.com  or see my profile => Marc Chouinard