A Model of Leadership

Leadership
Written By Simone Smerilli

Fundamentally, anyone can be a leader. Leadership is the ability of an individual to guide others on a journey that most of the time has an objective. In the organizational context, the objective may be financial, quantitative, and outcome-driven. Or it could be process-oriented (Bolhuis, 2003). An objective is outcome-oriented when there is a quantifiable state to achieve (e.g., earn $100,000 in recurring revenue in 2022). It is process-oriented when there is no clear destination (e.g., developing yourself and your “followers” as more integrated, capable human beings).

Anyone can be a leader because leadership is contextual, malleable, and personality-driven. While the trait theory of leadership posits that there are identifiable, fixed personality traits that can be markedly noticed among leaders, the reality is more nuanced (Colbert et al., 2012). Merely believing in the trait theory of leadership may be considered a “fixed mindset” (Dweck, 2014). Personality traits are for the most part invariable, which may make trait-leadership proponents get stuck in their own current way of being.

In fact, employing a “growth mindset” (Dweck, 2016) in leadership may be beneficial to anyone who strives to lead: you can improve your situation by working on your behaviors, thought patterns, and mindsets if you truly wish to become an effective leader. Employing a growth mindset is not the default state of being, for most individuals. Believing in your ability to improve your situation can be cognitively and socially uncomfortable because you will need to truly take responsibility for your actions, gain self-awareness, and expose yourself to undesirable conversations and situations.

Such self-work appears fundamental in leadership. The role of a leader is to be a guide for other people. You can only be an effective guide if your personality is integrated enough to understand the context you are in, the implications of it, and the best course of action to proceed forward toward your lighthouse. You will find out your lighthouse (purpose) if you inquire within for long enough and become comfortable with it (Colonna, 2019). You can only gain the self-awareness of an effective guide if you expose yourself to many diverse life situations to attain a superior level of self-efficacy (Pajares, 2003) and resilience.

A model of effective leadership

  1. There is no leader without followers. Leadership is about being a guide for your followers. Your followers are the people you have some degree of control over. In an organizational setting, your true followers are the individuals who respect you to such a degree that they (1) do not negatively gossip about you; and (2) can recognize themselves in your beliefs, behaviors, statements, and actions. An effective leader recognizes the value of followers and goes to great lengths to not enforce top-down ideologies, but foster contrarianism and radically honest reflection from followers.

  2. An effective leader puts everyone “one-up”, not “one-down” (Haley, 1958). When you are a leader, you are in a position of “one-upmanship” and you have a choice as to what to do about it. Being “one-up” means having the “upper hand” in a relationship. Because of your leadership position, you have the power of influence over your “followers” (whether true followers or the people who are in your span of control merely because of the organizational structure they found themselves in).

    With such a position, the effective leader reflects on this essential question: so what? The effective leader comes to the conclusion that being “one-up” is a responsibility born out of their position, and that he/she will never take advantage of such a state to manipulate other individuals. The effective leader strives to put everyone around them “one-up” (or at least teach them how to be so), like a psychoanalyst in their relationship with a patient. Ricardo Semler is an example of such a leadership style. His “do how you believe to be best for you” leadership style empowers individuals to grow.

  3. An effective leader does enough self-work to find purpose (Colonna, 2019). Sometimes self-work is forced upon the effective leader at some point in their life through a crucible moment (Bennis, Thomas, 2002). By inquiring within like a meditator in their first month in the monastery, the effective leader understands that true leadership cannot be pretended.

    Rather, true leadership can be developed over time, with patience, humility, competence, and self-awareness. The effective leader finds their purpose by trying many things—it is only in this way that one can become an integrated human being (one who has integrated their past, present, and future in their personality). This is what Jean Claude Biver describes in his speech to a group of students when he explains that being a great leader requires “swimming against the flow of the river” to find your own way.

  4. An effective leader has high levels of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 2004). Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand the context where one is, the people one is surrounded with, and the most appropriate decisions to make. Emotional intelligence is composed of 5 pillars: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill (Goleman & Boyatzis, 2017). The effective leader understands that developing each of those pillars is a process that takes time, real-life practice, and long-term commitment.

  5. An effective leader knows how and when to be a follower. Like anyone can be a leader, anyone can be a follower. Leadership is context-specific, and so is followership. A self-aware leader understands when it is time for them to sit in the back of the car and follow, instead of lead. A leader can take the place of the follower in an emergency situation that needs expertise outside of the leader’s sphere (e.g., Thailand flooding, Covid-19 pandemic), or whenever they do not have the competence to make the best decisions for a specific situation.

  6. An effective leader does not fear letting go of control (e.g., Valve & Semco Partners). Control is often the by-product of insecurity. When you are a leader, you have a span of control over groups of people. And any human being knows—even if implicitly—how pivotal and fragile trust is in a relationship.

    Every human being (including you) has the ability to lie, take shortcuts to complete a task, avoid taking responsibility for their actions, be cynical, and many other things. The default coping mechanism to avoid such behaviors in organizations is to set up control systems. But tight control systems can sometimes backfire, resulting in even less productive behavior. Controlled individuals will feel a lack of trust in them, learn to hack the regimes in some way that is not discoverable by the supervisors and does not have a significant impact on the organization, and keep maintaining the status quo.

    An effective leader understands why control systems are the default, and then decides what to do about it. An effective leader always considers the option of letting go of control in order to gain control. This may sound counterintuitive at first. Letting go of control means building an organization that is based on trust instead of suspicion. Trust is at the foundation of positive human relationships. Organizations are composed of humans. An effective leader may choose to build their organization on trust, hence sharing leadership and holding everyone accountable for their results, rather than the process they follow to achieve results.

    As I already stated previously, an effective leader empowers other people because the job of a leader is to put everyone around them “one-up”, not “one-down”. Setting up a system of objective outcome reports would ensure that the effective leader has a way to maintain stability in the organization and address any individual who attempts to hack the system by (1) speaking with them openly about the issue and (2) giving them a second chance, or deciding together to part ways.

  7. An effective leader sets the culture and is the embodiment of it. The culture of an organization (the set of beliefs, values, behaviors, and customs) is set by people who are “one-up” (Schein, 2010). The effective leader has internalized such a concept and represents the culture in every behavior, word, and choice he/she makes on a daily basis. By living the culture, the effective leader demonstrates high integrity (a desirable value within every person) and shows that culture is not just bold statements on a piece of (digital) paper.

These seven principles of effective leadership taught me that determining your own leadership style from first principles instead of looking at the status quo is the best approach the wide majority of the time. The main lesson I learned is this: leadership is a sort of artform, and what makes you a good leader is your unique personality and behaviors. Instead of trying to adapt yourself to standard leadership styles, you can craft your own leadership style. And you can only cultivate the leader within you by coming to terms with yourself (past, present, future), and understanding psychology and sociology. Then you may apply your field-specific knowledge on top of that to conduct business-as-usual activities. If you truly commit to it, you can ultimately become the leader you wish you had (Sinek, Brown, 2021).

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References

Simone Smerilli
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