Leadership: One surprisingly simple leadership tool I wish I had known & applied sooner

Simple ways to apply systems thinking in developing & leading teams

The conditions for successful leadership are subject to continuous change — yet managers have little influence. At the same time, the demands on their leading performance are increasing. Millennials and Gen Z employees make new demands, and what seemed sensible yesterday is today ranked as outdated. How do you navigate this ambivalence and successfully lead an increasingly diverse team?

“A born leader” — you have certainly heard this phrase at least once. There is a long history in that. Are some people better suited as leaders than others? Do they have certain characteristics or are they even born with the charisma of being influential? Can you actually gain and train the skills you need to become a better leader?

This article aspires to shed light on the evolution and future of leadership and offer a simple tool to help you successfully lead your team.

A brief history of leadership

Our understanding of leadership developed over the past centuries. The first modern leadership theorists focused on personality traits that they classified as innate. This view of the one hero changed with the advent of the human resources movement. Now behavior became the focus of attention. The assumption that leadership can be learned became acceptable — and desirable.

Leadership as a transactional model emerged around the 1980s and included concepts such as “management by objectives”. At its core it is an exchange. Transformational leadership subsequently developed in the 1990s and aimed at intrinsic motivation. The focus remained on the promotion of the individual, and the communication of visionary ideas by the leader. It is not too far from transformational leadership to agile leadership.

The agile leadership model, born in spring 2000, brought three essential novelties: The understanding that

1. leadership is distributed by roles, meaning that leadership is no longer in the hand of just one person
2. leadership is guided by the right mindset, implying that leadership is seen as a service to the customers and people in general
3. teams are systems that function and perform through self-organization.

Leadership of the future: Where is the journey heading?

In the last years we have observed the emergence of new leadership styles like the much-discussed servant, inclusive or courageous leadership styles. Although these try to embody the call for democratic or participative leadership, they are still holding onto the notion that

“{t}o an extent, leadership is like beauty; it’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it” (Warren Bennis).

In public discourse leadership is still deeply connected with character traits, but — it is fair to say — our person-centered approach is indeed shifting: leadership is starting to be seen not as an act of enabling motivation, power or coaching, and not always as just service: it’s all of them, depending on the context. This context is not derived from a specific situation, but from your general environment, your stakeholders. The idea of the leadership of the future is to equip leaders to lead organizations in a global economy of diverse organizations largely depending on suitability.

The prerequisite on applying a new tool or model

There are quite a few tools, advice, tips and tricks to be found in countless management guidebooks. They all claim to be true, to deliver the only correct theory. But, keep in mind Alfred Korzybski’s words: “the map is not the territory”. The map is just a section of the territory, it simplifies it and helps as navigate in a quite complex world. Every claim to the “one truth” confuses the map with the territory.

Why is this differentiation important? Because, what we become aware of is always essentially dependent on our perception. We process our perceptions and that’s how we develop our view of the world. Understanding how our reality is constructed is a prerequisite for applying new models or tools in one’s own management practice.

A leadership tool you won´t find in management guidebooks

Do you sometimes have the feeling that you are exposed to situations, where you do not exactly know what is expected of you? Or, situations where you are quite certain you know what is expected of you and are disappointed that the result or reaction of your doing was not what you hoped for? Have you experienced situations where the expectations towards you are clear, but you do not approve of them? We have all been there. In consequence, we often feel unable to act — we simply react and hope for the best.

The simple leadership tool you won’t find in management guidebooks offers an alternative take on the traditional linear concept of expectation management. In order for you to be able to act, take a look at your role within an organization. In systemic theory the role in the organizational context equals the sum of all expectations — formal and informal — in a given situation.

It is therefore not only advisable but also highly practical to regularly clarify expectations — your expectations towards your stakeholders (colleagues, employees, managers, clients, customers, suppliers etc.) but also the anticipated expectations of your stakeholders towards you. The regularity is important as the mapping of the expectations is situative — just a snapshot in time.

Here we go…

For this tool you will just need a piece of paper and a pen. In the middle of the paper, draw a small circle in which you write “I” referring to you in your role in the organization. For the next step consider your stakeholders: who are the people or groups of people with whom you regularly have to deal with in your daily work?

Distribute the identified stakeholders on the sheet in such a way that the size of the circle is a sign of significance (the nearer to you the more important) and the proximity (or distance) to you a sign of emergency or prioritization.

In the next step draw connecting lines (arrows in both directions) between yourself and your stakeholders and follow the outlined steps for all of the connected pairs:

1. What do they expect from me? Write this down next to each corresponding line.
2. Is the expectation clear and reviewed? Or is it an expectation that I expect they have from me (expectations of expectations)?
3. Now rate each expectation with a plus (+) if you approve it, with a minus (-) if you do not, with question mark (?) if the role or a specific expectation is not quite clear to you
4. Reflect on the findings. Are there any expectations that still need clarifying?

Set new quality standards in leadership

People are linked to the organization through their role. Given that we have defined the role as the sum of all expectations — expectations regarding not only the tasks to be fulfilled but also the expectations regarding the person´s expectable (exemplary) behavior or handling of situations — clarity becomes an essential quality standard of leadership.

So, be aware of your own role as a leader and develop a clear picture of the formal and informal role expectations towards and from your employees. Try to communicate through these expectations and to constantly observe your own role behavior and the role behavior of your employees. This will give you the opportunity to give reasonable feedback and reflect upon renegotiating the roles according to the circumstances and context.

P.S. A big thank you goes out to my coachee who let me borrow their feedback as a title, & Ruth Seliger whose “Leadership Map” has largely influenced the development of this tool.