Ever felt like you could add some art or nuance to your leadership creds?
Well, that is next.
Hello. I hope you're doing great.
Hey, welcome to the Barry Ferrer Show.
We're talking about leadership.
In case we haven't met yet, I normally speak to a freedom issue on my podcast,
and I usually do that to some current event.
But since all organizational impact for change starts with leaders,
I thought I'd provide some quick thoughts in this four-part series.
These quick takes on leadership are certainly not everything on the topic,
not anywhere close.
However, I think you could fit just about everything on good leadership
into one of these four words, authentic, artful, effective, and excellent.
I've had the honor of being in some kind of a leadership role
for a number of companies and nonprofit organizations
over the past three and a half decades.
Whether you're a line manager or a senior executive,
I hope these thoughts benefit you and your organization
and to those whom you lead.
In the first module, we looked at authentic leadership,
and this is sort of a foundational idea, at least in my opinion.
To gather talented people who have leadership capability of their own,
we have to embrace the concept that we can grow and improve ourselves.
If we don't have a sound estimate of ourselves,
we lose the respect of our most inventive people,
and at the end of the day, embracing self-assessment
and personal improvement is really healthy.
Today, we're going to look at the honed skill of an artful leader.
We're not talking about the clever or potentially devious ability
to triangulate your enemies with leverage.
No, I'm referring to a more wholesome definition of artful.
Artful leadership is practicing the nuance that's required
at the right time to affect positive change
and do that with intentional influence.
One of the companies I led had some truly brilliant engineers.
I mean, they were possibly some of the best radar engineers in the world at the time,
but I didn't understand hardly a thing they were up to.
If I inserted myself into their algorithm development process,
I would have messed things up big time.
Yet, I still needed to inject some leadership
to make sure we were going in the right direction.
In other companies, I had some expertise in the field,
but if I wanted to grow, I had to let go,
grant more authority and responsibility to my team,
and trust that they would get the job done,
even if it wasn't exactly the same way that I would do it.
Again, like authentic leadership, artful leadership's not some aspiration to be perfect.
It simply applies the right timing and the right type of leadership
to accomplish the goal.
It knows when to absorb a small loss for the benefit of the big win later.
Now, a lot of leaders have taken the Myers-Briggs test
and they have a high J on that Myers-Briggs test.
That's this high sense of justice.
You see things clearly and you desire to set the record straight.
And a lot of times, that's really good.
But you're also tempted to write a long email to prove your point.
The artful leader will throttle back.
He'll write a more concise email that would stand the test
of wide public circulation, if it ever came to that,
or no email at all.
Artful leadership enables you to subordinate yourself
to get the big picture goal accomplished.
Artful leadership knows when to drill down,
when to allow more freedom,
when to inspire,
when to command,
and when to coach,
and when to develop,
and when to just build relationship,
even at the expense of the task.
Now, you may have an energetic change agent who's just all over the map.
How do you manage her?
I mean, if she's constantly in everyone's business,
her brilliance actually becomes a hindrance.
Or maybe you've got a disciplined but low EQ guy
who's essential to your operations,
yet he's constantly rubbing everyone the wrong way.
In spite of his personal productivity,
he's hindering your company culture.
What do you do here?
You know, you can have solid values.
You can be clear about your goals.
You can be totally confident in your authority and your responsibility
and still mess things up.
It isn't that you want to mess things up,
but it can happen,
due to a lack of finesse,
a lack of nuance.
Artful leadership sometimes has this demeanor of that big burly dad
that you've never met.
you see with his tiny one-year-old.
He lets her romp all over him,
even grab his face with her tiny hands and squish him.
He just absorbs her.
Now, of course, every analogy breaks down,
but you kind of get the idea.
Sometimes it's best to allow for some mistakes
to provide an environment of deep learning.
Artful leadership is a trained trait.
I mean, some people have more of it naturally than others,
but most of us need to intentionally develop it,
if not all of us.
The first ingredient is internal.
Artful leadership has the internal power
to be free of self-absorption.
When leaders make everything about themselves,
they lose the capacity for tact.
Sometimes a gentle answer is the perfect solution
for an intense situation.
So how do you become more artful?
I mean, that's kind of like asking,
hey, in one sentence, had he become a neurosurgeon?
But I'll do my best to share two tools that have helped me.
The first one's kind of simple.
Artful leadership thinks in prioritized terms.
So the top priority has to be your fiduciary duty.
What's best for the organization?
Then you have to think about what's best for the team,
and then finally, what's best for the moment at hand?
Now, there's no science to this, but in general,
I apply a weighting for the benefit of the organization
at roughly 50%, 50 to 55.
Then in round numbers, I weight the team at approximately 30%,
and then the need of the moment at roughly 15% to 20%.
And that exercise helps put things in perspective,
and it increases clarity, and it helps us become more artful.
The second tool is a little more complex,
and it is evaluating yourself through the lens of the seven
leadership styles.
There are legitimate purposes for all seven of these styles.
They all have pros and cons, and most of you
probably have a combination of one or two,
but predominantly fit into one leadership style.
The goal of this exercise is to understand each style,
be aware of yours, and balance out
some of the negatives of your own style
based on the prioritized weighting of that first tool
of what's best for the organization,
then the team, and then the situation at hand.
Now, this doesn't work without a little humility.
I have to accept an honest self-assessment
if I want to be more artful.
Now, the first leadership style is autocratic.
Do as I say.
This is useful in a triage situation
where there's no time for input.
It's quick.
In an emergency, the cool under pressure autocrat surgeon
can save a life.
If you're a master chief on a SEAL team,
the autocratic style enables the team to move as a unit.
The leader can make a split second decision.
It could be the difference between mission success
or total disaster.
As a general rule, the autocratic style
is really only useful in small teams.
The surgeon and his team, no time for negotiations here.
Hand me the scalpel.
The SEAL team leader says execute,
and you must do so immediately.
Everything's sequenced.
When the bullets are flying, there
isn't time for discussion.
Those are settings where the do as I say,
no questions asked style of leadership can be helpful.
It's a dictatorial style, but in these situations,
the team signs up for the work knowing that that's
the way it's got to be.
Yet, if this is your style and you're
trying to build a business, you're
going to need to change or accept that your business will
always stay small.
You can intervene in everyone else's business
and control all the outcomes and view yourself
as the one with the final decision authority on everything
if you want to remain small and not retain top talent.
In most organizations, most companies, most nonprofits,
when the leader holds all that decision-making authority
and power, and when the leader doesn't
trust the talent of his team, and when the leader doesn't
consult others, it just leads to low engagement,
and it can create a lack of trust,
and it doesn't give others a sense of ownership.
And honestly, in decades of leadership,
I've only experienced a couple of instances
where this style of leadership was useful in business.
And in those instances, it was just for a temporary emergency.
So if this is your style and it's dominant in you,
you might be more effective to just keep your team small.
If this is your style and you do want to grow the organization,
you're going to have to embrace some personal growth.
That's the first style.
The second style is authoritative.
Follow me.
Now, at least this leader makes it sort of an invitation.
Follow me is.
Technically a command, but it implies expertise
and it can be inspirational.
This style is useful in the early days
of the business or the organization.
It can work later, but only if that leader has real high EQ,
a lot of empathy, a lot of adaptability.
These leaders bring clarity, direction, and vision.
But the problem is, again, growth.
None of us are the best at everything.
And if you are really a whiz at marketing,
you're probably not an absolute whiz at finance or operations,
as someone else might be.
And most people, especially top talent,
don't like to be told what to do.
Authoritative leaders can be overbearing.
The commands to follow me works in your area of expertise,
but you're assuming no one else has supplemental expertise that
could make the outcome even better.
These leaders are sometimes fun to follow
because they might really be the smartest guy in the room
on a certain issue.
But if they don't own their own mistakes,
if they don't have adaptability, they
can become ineffective as the organization grows.
All things being equal, they can grow a department or an organization
quite a bit larger than the autocrat, but growth will still
be limited to his expertise.
And that is unless he's willing to make an honest self-assessment
and adapt and grow.
The third leadership style is pace setting.
Do as I do.
Now, this is actually useful in getting quick results,
but it relies on a team to be very well equipped.
The team needs to be really comfortable
with minimal direction.
This leadership style has been shown
to work well with highly skilled and highly motivated people.
I've seen do as I do leadership style work really
well in a technology situation and in construction,
on a digital transformation team, and on a framing crew.
In the digital transformation team,
they were all very accomplished software engineers and developers.
They had mutual respect for each other's abilities,
and they could all pretty much do as the leader did
and get the job done well and on time.
They didn't need that much feedback or direction.
The leader worked hard.
They did too, and things got done.
Now, on this framing crew, this was on one of my little developments.
These guys are amazing.
They all know what to do.
They all speak German.
They all have the same faith.
And they are so fast.
I mean, you'll literally miss seeing an entire floor go up
if you're not on the site for a day, and maybe just
if you skip between lunch.
They're that fast.
They move in unison.
It's amazing.
It's like a symphony.
They don't waste any steps.
And the leader is one of them, working hard and smart.
Now, this is a pretty effective leadership style
in those project-oriented settings.
If you've got an experienced team, you
can get your goals accomplished really fast here.
But the pace-setting leadership has its limits.
It's really not great at developing apprentices.
Pretty much all the people on the team are already proficient.
I've also seen do-as-I-do cause some employees
to feel really stressed out, especially
in the financial services world, where I've seen this team work
under a boss who works over 80 hours a week.
The team is expected to keep up, and they don't normally
get any feedback, not good or bad.
And in some settings, the team can
feel like they are part of an assembly line,
and that's just not a scalable leadership style.
So pros and cons again.
The fourth leadership style is relational.
People come first.
This style emphasizes inclusion, process,
and interconnectedness.
They do a great job of hearing people out.
They consider everyone's experiences
and their emotional well-being when they're making decisions.
These leaders are very good listeners,
but they're often indecisive.
They sometimes struggle with plans and systems.
They tend to keep poor performers around way too long.
They tend to elevate how people feel,
and they devalue results.
If a relational leader's in a department lead or officer
position, they are often criticized
for slowing things down, and they
drive the decisive leaders that are below them crazy.
They're not confronters, and they don't usually
drive the highest achievement.
That's because the relational components of this leader
wants everyone to feel good, and it usually
discourages healthy competition.
They have strengths, like for example,
in settings where innovation is not needed.
And there are some where it's more of a cash cow maintenance
environment.
The relational leader can do a great job
of making those employees feel really valued,
keep them for a longer period of time.
Relational leaders can also be very effective
in low-level management jobs that
require a mix of talent and personality,
and just a lot of cooperation to achieve the outcomes.
And they're really good at making people feel cared for.
The fifth leadership style is democratic.
What do you think? This differs from relational sense. The question is for the
benefit of the task
at hand. It solicits ideas on the best way to solve a problem. It encourages
creative
no idea is a bad idea environment and when it's combined with healthy
competition there's a strong connectivity between the team members.
It can also set the stage for regret. That's because not everyone's ideas are
good
and not every idea can be implemented. In practice without balance it
leads toward procrastination.
Since you're always waiting for a reply from somebody before you can act
it spreads the risk and it spreads the reward.
But left to itself it becomes bureaucratic and it's unable to handle
an emergency. This leader can become the perennial CYA leader.
However in the right setting
and managed well it creates strong bonds
lots of connections among the team. The sixth
leadership style is coaching. Consider this.
This is a very effective style when you're leading as a mentor.
Helping your team to more accurately assess themselves so they can make
better use of their own abilities.
This leader is willing to shoot straight. He can do this in a very kind
manner but he will tell you what you don't want to hear
so you can become better at what you do. Think in terms of sports.
Do these exercises to strengthen your core so you can jump higher, lose weight,
gain muscle, build more cardio, watch the ball all the way into your hands.
In the typical business organization this is a pretty sophisticated leadership
style.
It requires a lot of observation and the willingness to give very regular
feedback.
This is a time-consuming leadership style. It requires a high skill level
and strong EQ skills.
And it requires a lot of experience in the area that you're coaching.
But it yields great results for the organization.
Team members feel they are being developed to be the best they can be
and if they stay with the organization these better leaders than they were
before
do great things and the organization gains a competitive
advantage. The seventh and final leadership style
is transformational. I develop
winners. These leaders can identify gaps
and they can formulate a vision fast. They help employees embrace change
and they work toward a common goal with a lot of enthusiasm. These leaders tend
to be pretty lousy
at the details. They usually need a bit of girth to succeed.
They're kind of clumsy at the startup phase because they're kind of built for something
bigger.
But they can be dynamic at taking a company
or a non-profit to the next level. They aren't
as good at short-term goals as they are at long-term goals.
They kind of see that long-term better. They typically will burn out
mid to low energy employees. In fact, if you're not an A performer in that
environment
you will probably quit. That's because you'll be under
this transformational leaders intensity.
Transformational leaders challenge assumptions, they take risks,
they solicit team members input, but they aren't normally
super warm and fuzzy. They do all these things for the benefit of the
organization
to win. To win in the marketplace, to win in their
area. Yet at their best, they do provide very equal treatment on clear terms.
And that motivates winners to stay. It's clear. And those who don't like that kind
of clarity,
those that don't fit in, they leave. They motivate their team to work toward a
common goal
with passion. They believe in professional development
but for a purpose. The purpose is that they can grow,
that individual can grow, and that individual when he grows
will do more good things for the company or the organization,
will help be for the benefit of the company or the organization's
goals. So this leader is normally not effective in the maintenance cash cow
business
or in the ones that require really long lead times.
Nor is she effective in the organization that already has crystal clear vision
and just needs a maintainer.
So there you have it. Regardless of where you fall out,
all these leadership styles have pros and cons.
And I'm sure you can think of times when one style would have been more helpful
than another. Knowing the most effective way to get things done
and being willing to deploy the proper style of leadership for the benefit of
the organization,
team, and need of the moment is in fact
the art of leadership. Let's close out with
a graph. And for those of you who are just listening on the podcast, the graph
shows
use of authority on the far left and the area of freedom
for the team on the far right. On the far left,
we have the leader making a decision and she just announces it.
This is an autocratic style of leadership. Then as you make your way to
the right, there's the leader who sells the decision.
There's still no choice in the matter, but at least he tries to win you. And
that's that authoritative leader.
As you make your way to the right, you have increased amounts of freedom for
subordinates
until you reach the far right of the graph. And here the leader permits
subordinates
to help define the limits themselves. They'll even be able to weigh in on the
budget that they're gonna be measured by.
They've got maximum freedom. And then they are held responsible
for the authority they have been given. I kinda lean toward freedom
with a clear understanding of authority and responsibility, but you think this
through for what's best in your
own situation. What is your primary
leadership style? What's the weakness of it?
Which leadership style can you borrow from to be
more effective? You'll always dominate in your natural leadership style,
but you can make enhancements to artfully deploy
the right leadership style for the benefit of the organization,
the team, and the situation at hand.
Well, we just discovered last week that authentic leaders make an honest
self-appraisal.
They endeavor to balance the role of support and
direction for the benefit of the mission. Artful leaders
understand the strengths and weaknesses of various leadership styles,
have thought through theirs, and they endeavor to give away the right amount
of freedom
based on the situation for the benefit of the organization
and the team. Artful leaders
tend to enjoy a higher employee morale. They usually see longer tenure, and as a
general rule, they're more fun to work for.
Next time, we'll look at effective leadership. For now,
to your authentic and artful leadership and
to your freedom.
Hi, I'm David Farah. Thank you for listening to my dad's podcast,
The Barry Farah Show, Culture Shift. Click subscribe now
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See you next time.