WHEN LEADERSHIP FAILS
A recent article in The Onion cleverly told the story of a six-year-old who was being groomed by his teacher to take over the role of “line leader”.
I chuckled — our future in the making – and I wondered if this young man knew and understood his teacher’s intent. Did he want to be a leader and did he have “the right stuff”?
While books on leadership flourish, they all have their own viewpoint about who makes a good leader and what skills and qualities are required. And still I wonder if it is possible to distill leadership down to a few paragraphs that someone can implement without issue.
Will it always work?
According to an article in Workforce Magazine the three leadership qualities that tend to be identified as key traits – strategic vision, supreme confidence and top-notch communication skills – don’t necessarily ensure success because they can be “damaging to securing employee commitment.”
As the article explains it, employee commitment to large-scale initiatives is separated into issues of content and context.
Content relies on demonstrating the plan is valid (the right plan) and communicating the plan in easy to understand language (clarity). If either one or both of these is absent, employees may go along for the ride but never be fully committed to implementing the plan.
Context deals with the perception the implementation team has of the leader and includes his or her credibility and sincerity, ability to address difficult problems, competence in creating and executing the plan, and concern for those the plan affects.
So even if the plan appears valid and clear – meaning there are no content issues — if there are context issues, employees will still not be fully committed.
This is why a charismatic visionary who is able to wax poetically about the direction the organization should take, may find him or herself alone at the top. And that is when leadership fails.
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