What works for one team, manager or situation may not work for another. Effective leadership is the ability to notice changing dynamics and adapting your approach, rather than defaulting to a leadership style or personal tendencies.
Key takeaways
- Effective leadership requires adapting your approach as people, teams and situations change.
- Relying on one leadership style can mean responding according to your own tendencies rather than asking ‘what does this situation require’?
- Overusing control can limit agency and lead to a dependency loop, while too hands off can lead to a lack of clarity and managers feeling unsupported.
- Taking time to reflect, seeking feedback and different perspectives helps you understand what a situation is asking of you and respond more effectively.
Remember being in science class looking at cells through a microscope watching tiny blobs bouncing around? Each one moving in its own way, having its own experience. Sometimes cells cluster together, and sometimes they need space and move freely as they change and react to whatever liquid was dropped on them by a curious student.
Teams in layered organisations are not dissimilar. Each is part of the same organism, yet each is encased in their own membrane of experience and perception. At times, teams will move together and collaborate. Depending on the situation and ability, at other times will move apart and work in isolation, needing space to iterate, build confidence and grow.
How a leader shapes what it’s like to come to work
For a leader of multi-functional teams, the experience of their teams is dynamic. Constantly moving and adapting. How a leader observes, interprets and responds to these changing dynamics shapes what it’s like to come to work.
To use one engrained approach, or default to our personal tendencies, will be effective in some situations but not others. What works for one manager may not create the same relationship with another. What worked last time may not work this time, because one or more elements have changed.
In our last newsletter, we explored the layers that shape culture. This month, I want to focus on one of those layers: leadership, and the ability to observe and adapt to changing dynamics.
Leaders are closely scrutinised. Even the smallest shift in how they respond to suit different situations can change someone’s perception. Small changes can create positive ripple effects.
The challenge with leadership identity is … behaviour is centred on how leaders see themselves, rather than what best serves the situation.
Leaders used to be asked to describe their “leadership style”. The challenge with this identity is their leadership behaviour becomes centred on how leaders see themselves, rather than what best serves the environment or situation.
Being a details person can be useful when someone is on a steep learning curve or there is critical and tight delivery. But if a leader’s default approach is to create certainty and stability through control and oversight, then there is limited room for a manager to feel they have agency or room to grow.
Like the cells on the slide, they may be clustered too tightly in place.
Overusing oversight and control can lead to a dependency loop, where leaders make all the decisions and managers defer responsibility.
Leaders who drive high performance through stretch goals, and expect managers to rise to these standards, can have an amplifying effect when shared objectives and values are aligned.
In environments where there are underlying politics, lack of clarity or limited resources, being too hands-off or detached can leave room for unhealthy behaviours to develop and managers feeling unsupported and overwhelmed. In this environment, they no longer feel safe to stretch. Instead, they retreat to the skills and approaches they can rely on.
Different situations need an appropriate approach that sit at different points along this spectrum. To do this, leaders need to be able to reflect and expand their thinking.
Some potential starting points may be:
Schedule time to percolate and reflect
Some observations are not clear in the moment and benefit from our minds having time to draw connections. In the push to be productive, the thinking time required often gets squeezed out. Block out time, be in a different environment and maybe even take a walk. Sometimes our best work is silent.
Encourage curiousity without attachment
Start by assuming the first answer to the situation is probably wrong, or at least incomplete. From this place, ask managers and others in the environment what they experience. Every situation has many perspectives. Asking questions helps see where patterns are emerging and what the situation may be asking.
Expand leadership tools
We all have an approach that is our default ‘style’. And it may not even be what we think it is, it might be how others are experiencing us. Feedback can help us understand what that default may be and what other tools and approaches work for different people and different situations.
Find a sounding board
Whether it’s a mentor, manager or coach, we can benefit from talking through the situation. Held in our own mind, our own bias and fear can convince ourselves of an answer, but talking it out can bring sharper clarity and objectivity.
Use a framework to guide your thinking
If a situation still feels unclear, applying a sense-making approach like the Cynefin framework may be helpful.
If you are supporting leaders, or you find yourself trying to navigate more complex team dynamics, we can help create space to reflect, sense-check and build more effective ways of working within them.