The seven levels of leadership

The best and most effective leaders have taken a transformational approach to themselves and their style of leadership over the years. While memorizing tricks is initially easy, it’s very hard to recall and use when the circumstances call for it.

Transforming yourself is harder, but afterward it carries no additional effort. Think of the state you were in when before you learnt to ride a bicycle or drive a car. There was some trepidation and uncertainty during training but once you did master it, you were able to execute that skill effortlessly.

Level 1: Leader of Self

Leadership begins with mastery over self. Nothing detracts followers more than a disorganized, aimless, indecisive leader and no one in their right mind will delegate authority to someone who isn’t on top of their game. A leader of self is happy, confident and outspoken even with chaos all around them. All of this is possible because they are authentic and fearless. If you catch yourself whining, bored or terrified, it’s a clear indication you need work on yourself.

Level 2: Leader of Team

Being great at what you do is a lot easier than making an entire group of people good at what they do. When you are the new leader of a team, especially when you have been bumped to managing people who until recently were your peers, you have no credibility yet. If your anxieties to get the project done on time forces you to micro-manage or make unreasonable demands on the employee’s time, your subordinates grow weary of you rapidly.

The natural instinct of people is to resist illegitimate authority and submit to legitimate authority. You have to earn their loyalty by proving to be a capable and credible leader who adds value and knows when to step out of the way and let them do work. Demonstrate a sustained ability to transform risk and uncertainty to a vision and a plan, create opportunities for professional growth and defend them from absurd corporate mandates.

Level 3: Leader of Leaders

Many leaders get a shock when they move from managing individual contributors to managing leaders of other teams. Leader-subordinates know their value and will dissent more readily and will speak up to protect their teams from meaningless tasks and unnecessary distractions. They are naturally aware of their own value and understand it’s harder to replace them. Losing a leader in what may be perceived as an unjust manner may also mean losing team members loyal to the leader. Master effective delegation, vet your ideas with them and do not interfere in the running of individual teams.

Level 4: Leader of Organization

As you rise up in power and position, the good and bad perceptions of you are amplified. Two outbursts a year and you are an angry man or bitch. A couple of successful products and you are a visionary. If you have high credibility and great presentation skills, you can deliver a powerful speech and energize and motivate the team for months. Your stature and aura are so amplified that most employees are in awe and intimidated by you. They will often not speak the truth and hide the ugliness in the team and product from you — the very things you need to see and hear. Most executives have the fear of driving blind and fall into the trap of over-reliance on metrics, Genchi Genbutsu and other visibility substitutes. Pick your team very carefully, since you are so removed from ground reality that your success depends almost entirely on your generals. Monitor the product and listen to the customers regularly, since they will be the best link to ground reality.

Level 5: Celebrity

It is common for a C-level executive to be well known in their industry but sometimes, their accomplishments make them famous enough that they become celebrities. Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are obvious examples. As a celebrity, you have enormous reach and influence to impact any social or political cause that you care about. Opportunities come looking for you all the time. It becomes easy to make deals and your endorsement itself has high value.

While this may all seem to be desirable, you lose all claims to privacy. You also become a target for lawsuits, blackmail and possibly an example to be made of by the government or other powerful forces. Many of the opportunities that seek you are probably scams and you need to scrutinize every interaction very thoroughly. A failed endorsement tarnishes your brand. You realize that the press loves to take you high but enjoys bringing you down even more. Without carefully structuring your life for this stage, you may not really be in a position to enjoy your success. Many rich and powerful people never want to cross beyond Level 4 for this reason.

Level 6: Sovereign

A political leader at the head of government (or state) is a sovereign. A leader with the status of celebrity has a much easier time to transition to sovereign. Donald Trump is the most recent example of a leader who transitioned from Leader of Organization to Celebrity and further to Sovereign. Your enormous reach and influence as a celebrity can be leveraged to build a war chest and win a war or election to rise to power. As a sovereign, your ability to do great good and terrible ruin is extremely high. No matter what you do, people tire of you eventually and want someone else to rule them.

Office politics is child’s play compared to what a sovereign has to deal with. As a sovereign you will find yourself hounded by all manner of plots of intrigue to unseat you from the moment you take the throne. Everything you say and do will be analyzed and cast in a negative light. Your credibility will be under constant attack and wear. In many countries, assassination attempts are an ever-present threat and you will be forced to be in a security and information bubble as you cannot mingle with civilians in ordinary settings.

Level 7: Diety

A celebrity or sovereign after many years of successful accomplishments is likely to be deified. This is especially true if the leader underwent a great personal sacrifice for the welfare of his followers. The tradition of god-kings everywhere in ancient history gives us interesting insights. Disobedience of a god-king is unthinkable and followers feel privileged just to serve their leader. But more importantly, deification coincides with the forging of a national identity and legends that represent the early mythology of a people.

Conclusion

Leadership is complex and ultimately very individualistic. We divide it into four aspects (COPE) and seven levels for didactic purposes. In this series, we will mostly be focusing on Levels 1 through 4 but will refer to higher levels for illustrative purposes.

This provides an outline and structure that enables you to facilitate quick absorption and assimilation of future posts.

This is part of the series “A theory of leadership.”