Few businesses are static. Nearly all of us deal daily with the challenges of changing priorities, competitive pressures, people, problems, margin pressures, and rules. Because of that, it is important to integrate flexibility into your leadership style.
Managing and leading are different things. Managers tell and inspect. Leaders inspire results through others. Be clear on the difference. Way too many managers consider themselves leaders when their behaviors define them otherwise.
When you instruct your people on what to do and how to do it — and evaluate them based on results attained by doing it your way, not theirs — you are managing. Leadership is different. Leaders challenge people to contribute in positive, innovative, and better ways.
I like the Hersey-Blanchard model to situational leadership, which calls for a recognition of the two extremes all leaders operate within. One on extreme a boss can use positional authority. On the other he or she can let loose the reins and provide subordinates freedom through delegation.
The Hersey-Blanchard model suggests that the most effective leaders operate in-between those two signposts based upon two situational variables:
- The willingness of subordinates to do the work.
- The ability of subordinates to do the work.
If the subordinates are quite willing and able, they have a high “maturity level” for delegated performance. A boss would be smart to delegate.
The plot thickens when the reverse is true.
The reality of the business landscape is that sales organizations are comprised of people who have varying degrees of commitment, engagement, self-motivation, drive, ego, and fear of failure.
Some salespeople, I like to say, “Want to be somebody someday.” They are fully engaged and quite willing to grow and tackle new challenges.
Others have no such drive. They are content to do their work and cruise. They are somewhat engaged (or somewhat disengaged) but not the type you build around.
Ability wildly varies among salespeople. Too many sales management staffs mistake experience for competence. Even more salespeople think they are better than they are. There are blind spots here and blind spots are expensive.
My experience — having worked with sales organizations of all types all around the world — is that the reverse is true. Because experience and competence are two totally different things, someone’s demonstrated ability depends on two things: their professional development and their commitment to the profession of pro selling. Without both, you will never have more than a middle of the bell curve performer.
The range for a leader, therefore, requires the ability to read a situation and decide on the collective motivation and talent prior to delegation. Because the decision ranges from delegation to telling, sometimes it takes leadership confidence to challenge people without micromanaging how they go about their work.
The more the leader delegates, the less he or she has to do. Since he or she is holding their people accountable for delivering the desired results, the leader is free to drive other initiatives.
This is a big challenge because Boomers are usually the boss. But the workers, in increasing numbers, are Gen X and Gen Y (significantly younger). Gen X and Gen Y workers tend to have organic competence with the mastery and use of workplace tools.
Boomers do not. Boomers have acquired expertise and often “don’t know what they don’t know” when it comes to information seeking and processing, much less directional trends of younger people’s thought patterns, motivations, and behaviors.
When a leader can fully delegate, he or she relies on relationships and trust to fuel the workplace output. If the leader is not comfortable with delegation, he or she must decide on the right balance between actively participating or aggressively selling ideas to the masses.
Many, of course, don’t have the fuse for that. They are old school and use a mountaintop leadership approach. Rather than delegate, be involved, or sell the concept, they scrap all that and simply order people to do things the way they want them done. They have all the answers (or think they do) and all the best practices. At least in their mind.
But here again, especially now, they do not know what they do not know. There is often a better way. That better way is quite often housed in the offices and cubicles of those closer to the action.
An inflexible, domineering leadership style is a sharp sword to wield. Aside from Gen X and Gen Y worker alienation, people who want to contribute cannot. Once they’ve been shot down a few times they quit caring. They slide from being engaged toward being disengaged.
Since the number one reason good talent leaves is her or she is not growing, and number two is the boss, it is better to delegate whenever possible. Raise the bar, raise the results. The more people grow, the more engaged they become. They more engaged they become, the more you can delegate. It’s a nice, self-feeding circle.
Different situations call for flexibility. Whether it’s hands off, hands on, or situational engagement, the willingness of the leader to adapt his or her style to the needs of the situation and propulsion of the people is paramount.
Old habits are hard to break — especially when a career has been built around one particular style — but how that career or company was built is not necessarily the smartest way to manage it forward.
Great leaders know this and have the courage to adapt. Leadership flexibility is a strength, not a weakness.