Yes, Leadership Does Make All the Difference
Article by Dr. John E. Kello
Where to start? It would be hard to find a topic that is more critical to effectiveness, whether at the personal, team, or organizational level, than leadership. As trite as it may sound, leadership does make all the difference. Once in an interview, the legendary coach of the old Houston Oilers (one “Bum Phillips”) was asked to define a leader. His answer went something like this. “A leader is someone who can take his’n and beat yourn, then take yourn and beat his’n.” Got it.
Self-leadership doesn’t get a great deal of attention in the voluminous literature on leadership, but successful individuals apply proven principles of leadership to managing their own affairs. They think strategically about their lives. They set goals and measure their progress against them. They show drive and initiative. They are self-starters. They work to be flexible and adaptable, to roll with the punches. They use constructive self-talk to reframe threats or failures as challenges and opportunities. Overall, they show high levels of self-awareness, an important component of emotional intelligence (EQ). They coach themselves. They use behavioral strategies to manage their own actions. In this sense we are all leaders, regardless of what position we occupy in the organizational hierarchy.
Team leadership does get a lot of attention in the research and practice literature on leadership. Those responsible for the development of a team and the work-outcomes/ results of a team must have a vision. They must recognize that teams develop through predictable stages from initial Forming to, ideally, ultimate High-Performing, if they are led well (and indeed, only if they are led well). Leaders must provide direction and resources for their team. Ideally they help create opportunities for early success, and they celebrate such early wins with the team, generously giving credit to others. They gradually relax their hands-on control, and increasingly operate from the boundaries, allowing the team to provide much of its own daily leadership. The impact of the first-line leader, the supervisor, has become increasingly visible in the research on leadership in recent decades. Indeed, it is fair to say that the individual who has the most influence over the daily life of workers is their immediate supervisor, the leader of their team. That first-line leader is the linchpin, connecting workers with the goals and objectives set by upper management. The impact of daily leadership exerted in a variety of ways by the immediate supervisor is huge.
Note that the supervisor is a leader-by-position. He or she is a formal leader. But some individual contributors, who do not have a formal position of leadership, also exert influence over others. They are informal, or “emergent” leaders. They inspire others to come to them and follow their direction, even when they don’t have position power. They are respected for their knowledge and skill, their experience, and for their charisma. The ideal combination, of course, is for the formal(positional) leader to also be an informal leader in the sense identified here. But, paradoxical as it may sound, some supervisors and not leaders, and some leaders are not supervisors.
Organization-level leadership gets even more attention than team-level leadership in the research and practice literature, especially so-called “transformational leadership”. Much of the voluminous literature on leadership focuses on top-level leadership, and the critical role of executives in the C-suite in setting vision, mission, values, and strategic direction for their organization and resetting that direction when needed.
The following essays on this site address some critical issues at the first-line supervisor (team leader) level and at the level of executive leadership for the organization as a whole. It’s about behavior of course – it always is -- but more specifically it’s about the behavior of the person in charge, the leader. It’s about what the leader does and says that inspires (or requires) others to behave in ways that promote positive outcomes.
