Nearly all organisations are facing big challenges that present themselves one after the other increasingly quickly. In helping employees to move with the times, the role of managers is more crucial than ever. Many managers are looking for tools so they can do their work as leaders even better, to continue to book results and stay connected to their people.
As one of the founders of the HPO Center, I have spent over twenty years helping leaders to do their work better, with the help of insights and tools. At HPO Center, we study the characteristics of high-performing teams and organisations, and based on these findings and decades of experience, I can help managers to optimise their approach. The ‘good leadership model’ that I work with has over time become increasingly simpler and more practical, and is based on the following principles:
- Good leadership is essentially about balancing power and connection.
- A leader’s behaviour is ‘contagious’; the behaviour modelled by leaders is unconsciously reproduced by their employees.
- There is no such thing as a bad team with a good leader: a team’s performance is largely determined by the focus and actions of their leader.
- The difference between more and less effective leaders lies not so much in big things, but in what the leader does in the micro-moments of the day. It is not big words, but small actions that make the real difference.
Image: When leaders change their behaviour, employees follow suit
It is only in teams where the work is always the same, and there are no organisational or external challenges, that self-managing teams may occasionally be successful. In the vast majority of teams, it is the qualities of the manager that determine the team’s performance. What are these qualities?
Much has been said and written about what effective leadership is. When you peel off all these layers and look at the essence of all leading studies, it becomes apparent that the leaders of successful teams stand firmly on two legs: daring & caring. Both are essential for a good team result and there needs to be balance and interplay between the two.
Image: The two legs of good leadership: using power and creating connection
The first leg stands for what I call the daring side of leadership: organising the work and working together towards a common goal. This asks of a leader that they bring focus and monitor the team’s objectives. Here, the power that comes with the position is optimally deployed to create clarity and generate momentum. The manager has control over the focus of the team and the tempo in which things are picked up and implemented. The manager can also resolve the dilemmas that arise in the course of the work by taking decisions, stimulating and supporting collaboration, and providing clarity. Clearly, leaders can talk to and consult with their teams on many matters, but ultimately, it is the leader who is responsible for taking decisions, and transparently setting the direction and tempo.
The other leg represents the caring side of leadership: the human side of responsibility. From this place, the leader wants to help their team, their people, to grow and develop, to make them better, and to inspire and coach them. Creating an environment in which people can grow, and acting as a binding factor in the team. Teaching people to work together, learn together, and inspire each other – to create a good team feeling, respect and appreciation for each other, and an inclusive environment. From the power in this leg, people are taught to listen to each other’s perspective, so that the team’s decisions get better and better.
The two legs in practice
The daring leg is the side of leadership that has traditionally been considered most important. In the past, many leaders were therefore also chosen and appointed on the basis of these qualities. My impression is that until a few years ago, there was this idea that the caring part could also be delegated to an active department secretary who devoted attention to birthdays and team outings. That is a fallacy. Caring leadership goes much further and deeper: it is about really making time for your people, really listening to them, and actively helping them in their development by coaching them, inspiring them, and thinking and acting along with them. A growing number of studies shows that people who feel inspired, appreciated, and coached within their teams are substantially more flexible and resilient, engage with challenges with more energy, and generally get more energy from their work.
The daring side of leadership is an active task in which the work is continuously framed, focus is established and maintained, and decisions and actions are quickly taken It is not something a leader does from time to time, but something they are continuously aware of: who needs my help to lift a collaboration to a higher level, who is facing a choice that I can help with, who has a tendency to take on too many tasks that are not in line with our focus and core tasks, and how can I guide them better? An experienced leader learns to recognise such moments with speed and accuracy, and does so actively.
My guess is that a good daring leader devotes approximately 30% of their time to organising the work. The majority of managers’ time is devoted to the caring aspect of leadership. It is about giving the team attention by bringing inspiration, stimulating collaboration, and improving and growing as a team. And this also requires individual attention for all team members. It helps tremendously if a manager can create rhythm with fixed individual appointments, such as ‘30 minutes every Friday.’ It is essential that these appointments should not focus on the work’s content, but on the well-being and development of the person. And this takes time. Good managers devote approximately 70% of their working hours to the caring tasks.
Ask yourself whether, in your position as leader, you stand firmly on both of these legs and are successful at both tasks. Are you as caring as you are daring? What is by nature your strongest leg? How would your employees assess you in this respect? Which leg do you need to train more, and what would that look like for you? Are you actually prepared to train your leadership legs to help your team and organisations move forward?
What do you need?
To learn to effectively use both leadership legs requires training – practice and reflection. We often see that at times when leadership challenges intensify, people tend to fall back on their naturally stronger leg. And that is not always the best choice. What I see a lot in practice is stress in teams, caused by uncertainty and lack of clarity. This stress expresses itself in practice in various ways. Some people become hyperactive or angry, others tend to crawl back into their shell. The tendency of a caring leader is to listen, to sympathise, and to try and help, while the task of a leader at such times is on the contrary to be daring and to reduce stress by taking decisions and creating clarity. For example by telling an insecure team: “I know that a potential reorganisation would lead to changes in our team. I don’t yet know everything about it, but I can assure you that until 1 March of next year, nothing will change. If something does change, I will tell you about it at the latest at the start of next year.”
Leaders in organisations benefit from working with these simple principles, speaking the same language, and learning and balancing together. When leaders discuss with each other the daring and caring challenges in their teams and reflect on their approach, they can help each other make great progress. This allows managers to solve challenges that have remained unsolved for far too long and have as a result become a source of frustration for manager and team.
Taking the time to be a good leader
For some managers, this approach to good leadership may come as a shock. They see their roles as manager as one of their roles, one that they sometimes can pay less attention to, especially when heavy content-related tasks also demand much from them. Occasionally, you meet people who are good at both, but far more often, what you see is that teams with such leaders function less well, that their best employees tend to leave, and especially that these teams are unable to respond quickly to changes. The question to ask such leaders is whether they can either adjust their behaviour, or make their leadership position available to someone else. Often, both the team and the leader regain a lot of energy once the leader decides to focus on the content, and relinquish their leadership position. This is no loss, but a gain for all involved, as well as for the organisation.