The Reflective Leader. Alan Smith

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      1. Know what you are trying to do

      Stephanie’s predecessor, Bill, was known as someone who led from the front. While some considered Bill to be dynamic, others experienced him as dominating and felt that he did not listen to their opinions. There was not much discussion about future direction. Bill expected his staff to implement his decisions with little debate.

      Stephanie had been surprised and delighted by her meteoric rise to lead the organization. Her colleagues agreed that she was immensely able and most of them were genuinely excited by her appointment. Her first step was to call together her team and explain that she wanted to work with them to build a vision for the whole organization and to grow it.

      She asked each of them to provide a brief report on the trends of the previous five years. They spent time together analysing the factors that were impinging on their work. From this mass of data they then worked on building a consensus on the way forward. They distilled this into six statements that described what they were trying to achieve. From this they devised the strategy that undergirded the rapid growth of the organization. Once agreed, Stephanie found she did not have to persuade her colleagues to implement the new strategy. Having been involved in developing it, they were already fully committed to it.

      It sounds an obvious thing to ask, but do you know what you are setting out to do? If asked, can you summarize what you want to do and how you hope to achieve it? Are you clear about the underlying trends affecting your organization which you either need to build on or counter? Can you identify the main threats to its thriving that you have to overcome?

      This can be more challenging than it sounds as the leader needs to hold the overall vision (‘We want to support as many homeless people as possible’) as well as the strategy of how to get there (‘We are going to open another homeless centre before the end of the year’). The strategy then needs to be broken down into a series of aims which are crucial if the strategy is going to be delivered (‘We have to increase the number of donors to fund the new centre’, ‘We need to recruit someone to lead the project’ and ‘We have to identify and train thirty volunteers by September’). Although the overall vision may stay the same, the strategy and the aims will change over time.

      Some leaders have little grasp of what they are trying to do or how they are planning to achieve it. If the leader is not clear then no one else in the organization is likely to have much clarity either. Worse still, colleagues may hold subtly conflicting views that have never been articulated but which work against the organization succeeding. One of the features of most growing organizations is that not only is the leader articulate about what they are doing but that they have built a team and a workforce which also knows where they are going and how they expect to get there.

      Some think that the role of the leader is to devise the vision, the strategy and the aims and then tell everyone else in the organization what they are. It is true that one role of the leader is to ensure that there is a common vision, strategy and aims.However they should not feel that they have to produce these alone. There are few leaders who are so omnicompetent that they understand all the external factors and internal processes which impinge upon the organization. How much better to engage everyone’s creative energies and ideas at the earliest stage to really understand what is happening both in the organization and in the wider context. This can then become the basis of future plans which are much more likely to succeed if everyone has already worked on them together.

      There is another problem when a leader decides the vision, strategy and aims and then tells their colleagues what they are. Telling people something does not mean that others will necessarily implement it enthusiastically. Indeed, persuading others to adopt a vision and a strategy may involve a great deal of time explaining what they are and why they should adopt them. Generally it is more effective and much quicker to involve our colleagues at the earliest stage. Having been consulted and engaged in the process, they will understand the reasons for it and why it is better than the alternatives.

      Once the broad strategy has been agreed, the leader has to be careful not to get bogged down in micromanagement. This is a fine judgement to be made here. Some details of an organization’s work need watching very carefully as they could threaten the overall success. But there will be other areas where we need to trust our colleagues to work out the best way of implementing the strategy. If the overall leader decides every last detail they are likely to disempower colleagues and create a dependent culture which stifles creativity and the taking of responsibility.

      One thoughtful leader makes a distinction between principles and preferences. He argues that we need to be very clear about the fundamental issues and the guiding principles of our work. These are non negotiable. However, there are other areas which he calls preferences, where people can be given freedom to get on with the job in the way that they see fit.

      For reflection