Monologue on leadership

 Pardon the unedited monologue

Q: What is transformational leadership?

A: Before we talk about transformational leader, "who is a leader?", your 5 year old asks. 

First answer : A leader is who inspires to take initiative, to be brave and forget pains/obstacles for time being to help focus on achieving a goal.

Often, in tough or uncertain situations,  a leader has to encourage to just take a positive action and trust the people to keep finding short and long term goals to pursue.

Many a times people just need that nudge to come out of comfort zones, and mental plateaus to be able to see the need to increase or redirect their energies and tactics to get to a goal.

Sometimes leaders are just good listeners who help employees recharge and rejuvenate on a long and arduous journey.

In military environment, leaders at the lowest ranks, NCOs etc are exceptional role models for the larger group of fighting men/women around them. They are expected to not hesitate and show case examples of initiative, bravery, perseverance and ferocity. Top commanders, on the other hand are expected to be visionary, flexible with decisions, and inspiring confidence and trust of sub-ordinates.

In a corporate environment, a leader at the top is mainly expected to display and communicate a clarity of purpose of the organization or an initiative. But all levels are expected to showcase fairness, openness to feedback and always gunning for victory. Sometimes leaders are personally relatable, and that bonds the team closer to them. This is not always feasible due to personality differences across cultures and geographies. In such cases, appealing to a common set of values is enough and the remaining is site-specific bonus.

It is also important to communicate the why part of any decision, process or policy at the top level. This reflects onto middle managers, without which they tend to close themselves to feedback from their sub-ordinates, creating a low trust environment. More often, it is the lower layer managers who have to face the feedback of the technical team which often doesn't align to the top management visions. This can be mitigated by direct access to leader's voice and forums, plus careful communications with expected resistance planned into it. Some of these expected resistance or pushback can be read from carefully crafted and regular centralized surveys. But often it is the lower layer leaders who need to be aware of the team pulse and key developments, and communicate a gist of it regularly up the management channel.

Such a channel should exist for managers to communicate to their managers about informal matters. It builds trust and encourages low level managers to be creative with their team's specific situation instead of losing out on need for homogenization.

Also, with all this rambling, I realize that leadership is not something that can be 100% perfect all the time. And I think I can see some factors that influence it, and that explains why there are so many different materials, forums, thoughts on this through centuries of civilization, and we still see a need to keep working on this.  Leadership is a fully human concept. It is not exactly defined, and the leadership qualities expected change based on the leader, the organization, the business, the times. 

Sometimes, everything is going fine. Then either the leader is changed or has a change of mind, employees change or have a change of mind, business changes or the entire world changes. It is in this vortex that we find a need for a shining beacon of leadership at all levels of an organization. While there are timeless principles and qualities of leadership that can be trained, coached and practiced by organization, the highly valued leadership skills are based on self-reflection and talking to people at a given moment. Leadership served for one instance shouldn't be forced to be used in all situations.

Negotiation and communicating fairly is a key skill to be learnt as a leader. Placing all facts for perusal allows opening up the trust, and you have avenues for negotiating to overcome mental blocks, and resistance to change. But this flexibility is also required of the manager when the blocks are factual or technical, requiring to rethink the whole approach and redirect the many pieces to fall in place.

Oh yes, another point in that is that leadership and administration are two different things. A leader can be a pioneer or a manager. Both require different skill sets and shouldn't be swapped freely unless the person involved is mentally ready for this. Pioneers hack through harsh jungles, seek new paths, lead the team, but their work isn't often neat or orderly or sustainable. But without them, we are lost. Managers on the other hand are good at organizing and administering multiple complicated pieces and sustaining an efficient operation. It might consist of challenges as well as repetitive actions and consultations, which might disillusion the pioneering leader. We also should accept the fact is that at times, a leader has to showcase both abilities, and so aspiring leaders would do well to observe both styles, identify the stronger side, enforce it and also work on strengthening the weaker one.

Another thought is about trying to classify your intended target for a change communication. There might be supporters, indifferent ones, cynics and open rebellious ones. Here is a strategy for each of those:

a) Supporters -> Talk to them privately and learn their reasons for supporting. If they align, use them as ambassadors if it helps within the team. Sometimes, their involvement polarizes the others for certain topics. You might also discover amazing reasons for support which you wouldn't have anticipated.

b) Indifferent -> Talk to them to identify their concerns. Often it is reluctance to change, stemming from past injustices. If possible address or correct those. If not feasible, offer them the benefits of moving on and encourage regularly to come over to your side.

c) Cynic -> This can be quite tough as usually cynics are well prepared. One can engage in an intellectual debate, inflate/deflate their egos and get them on your side, or go through the process for indifferents with an open mind to show that you care, and you should genuinely do so, if they have a weird and different opinion on how things should be. You might find some rare gems there.

d) Rebellious/Scared -> These are the folks who often expect the change to be damaging to their career, reputation or more. Care must be taken to calm their mind with active listening and genuine interest in resolving their problems. If issue is imagined, careful explanation is important without pushing on behalf of management or promising punishment. It might work in short term, but will fire back in the long term.

Leaders in tech

In tech, we value good approachability, ability to convince, negotiate and motivate. Ability to accept mistakes, reduce conflicts and maintain a positive outlook is also key skills for a leader. And not to forget, ability to motivate people to take calculated risks without fear of being judged harshly, and enabling a culture that inspires technical studies and using that input for leading the product and organization.

Managers shouldn't or needn't be always in a position to guide or coach technical experts. They need to collaborate more. This allows both of them to operate in a win-win model. This raises a question of whether technical folks can also lead, with the full spectrum of a manager, by providing leadership to other non-technical departments like HR, finance, quality and meeting legal criterion. That’s quite interesting to find where that boundary or overlap of skills, wide knowledge and attitude of allowing multiple opposing ideas to co-exist and shape the final decision exists.

Most importantly, in such environments, the key thing to note is when/how the individual experts/departments are able to come out of their limited role and perspective, and discard their feeling of self-importance to make some truly remarkable decisions for the organization. Can this be done without a central hinge point of a leader? That is, can a decentralized team of leaders pull this off, and sustainably so as an extended question?

Wow, this entire exercise is a challenge to the mind, science and philosophy.

Inspirations for this monologue written in a single sitting

a) Man's search for meaning Victor Frankl

b) Prince by Machiavelli

c) Built to last

        d) 7 effective habits Stephen Covey