Part of a series on leadership. (Link incoming 2022/09/29)
What is your leadership style?
(Or your leadership philosophy)
This question is frequently asked. In interviews, in day-to-day interactions. There are surface level responses, perhaps read in a book or a blog. And there are genuine, practical responses. Below is a model of leadership I put into practice 4-5 years ago. While I had philosophies before, it was working with a colleague (Fab Avila) at Wave Apps that the following model crystallized for me. While there is a lot more to my leadership philosophy, this is a great starting point.
How do you think about influence?
Let’s imagine you have a situation, a team, a problem, you’re trying to influence. In this model of leadership, we visualize our stance as being relative to the problem.
Generally speaking, the stances don’t have a positive or a negative connotation - they are simply a way of thinking about how leaders influence or work with teams.
Remember:
“All models are wrong, but some models are useful” - George Box
What are the stances?
Visualizing the leadership stances
Using the diagram above as a reference, let’s summarize the stances:
Leading from the front - The Authoritarian - the typical first leader thing to do. You’re telling people what to do, you’re directing them, and frequently accountable for all decisions, and making sure everyone’s moving
Leading from the read - The Motivator - the motivational stance. You create forward momentum, sometimes through positive reinforcement (e.g. “If we get this done, we’re going to be rich!“) or negative reinforcement (“If we don’t get this done, we’re all out of a job”) In all cases, you’re trying to provide a why for the team.
Leading from within - The Example - the leader is a recognized expert in the field or fields the team is working within, or else the leader recognizes the need to demonstrate solidarity with, and cohesion within, the team. This is the stance most engineers take by default as they grow in skill, scope and experience.
Leading from the side - The Observer - a.k.a. management by exception. In this case, the leader has setup their data feeds, both direct (e.g. watching the team’s performance and output) or indirect (e.g. inferring the state of the team through secondary metrics, like reputation, customer feedback, etc.), and through passive (e.g. monitoring reports or measures like DataDog, GitHub, Code Climate, etc.) and active (e.g. measures you have to source yourself, such as surveys, 360 feedback, 1-1s, etc.) Frequently, experienced leaders will use this as their default stance, using it as a launchpad to guide them to the appropriate other stance based on what they are seeing.
How do you use them?
The keys to making these work for you are:
Being deliberate and intentional in which stance you choose - each one has its uses, and the choices ultimately come down to the context of the situation or team you’re leading, and personal style.
Some of the stances are unstable or unsustainable - for example, leading from the front generally works when there are very few people or the situation is important, high-profile etc. It has a lot of uses, but persisting in this state is difficult and can be exhausting. Similar caveats apply to each of the others, which brings us to…
Always use more than one stance - it’s an unusual situation that requires you to always lead from one stance. Teams are usually dynamic, growing things, as the team members are. They acquire new skills, old ones become rusty, they have personal problems, and so on. Flexibility and the ability to match your style to the team is vital, which brings us to…
In order to master leadership, you really need to master the transitions - This is where you will ultimate end up as you grow in sophistication and scope. Great leaders know how to engage and disengage with teams and situations. Being able to seamlessly step from bootstrapping a new team, to the side to watch how well your foundation is playing out, to lighting a fire under them once they’ve got their legs under them is not just a craft but an art.
In conclusion
We discussed at a high level:
Leadership stances as a model for thinking about influencing a team
What the stances are, and when to use them
What is needed to succeed using the stances
As next steps, we’ll discuss some of the tools and techniques associated with this way of looking at leadership. We’ll also discuss alternatives, the dangers of model myopia, and how you might apply these yourself.
I hope you found this useful!