M 18 | management.co.nz | JUNE 2018
SUCCESS
Are leadership roles harder these days?
A BOARD COLLEAGUEof
mine recently commented that
‘Leadership roles are so much
harder these days’ to general
agreement around the table. It’s
one of those things that everyone
knows isn’t it?
Afterwards I found myself
querying this view and
wondering why she thought that
was the case. Everything she
mentioned to support her view
was in existence when I was
in‘corporate’lifeandhasbeen
the subject of many coaching
conversations since I left that
world and went out on my own.
Andthat’sbeenalongtime.So
nothing was new.
Certainly, when I work with
leaders around the country I see
that many work long hours and
haveafairamountofstressin
their life.
In my first job, an 80-hour
weekwasnormalsolonghoursaren’t
new. And everyone was under stress
to deliver.
What I see a lot is poor leadership,
and I'm not saying that’s new either.
I just wonder if we are buying into a
view that ‘leadership roles are hard’,
when it’s the lack of good leadership
that makes it hard.
I still see unwillingness to delegate.
I still see unwillingness to empower.
I now hear the need to be ‘across
everything’ as a euphemism for either
‘high need for control’ or ‘doing it all
myself ’.
I still see leaders who critique
without providing effective feedback
and correct without coaching. I still
see people with limited ability to
relate to others being put into team
leadership roles and making it tough
on themselves and others for the sake
of a title or position.
Istillseeunreasonableness
from above i.e. demanding (often
impossible) targets, deadlines, KPIs all
inthenameofbeingboldorhavinga
BHAG (do they teach this in businessschool? Because its endemic).
I still see a lot of ‘tell’ and little
‘ask’.Istillsee‘Iamtheboss,sodo
as I say and don’t question me’. There
are still hierarchies and there are still
intelligent people just doing what they
aretoldinsteadofthinking.
What has certainly changed is the
speed of information flow, the urgency
of email and the mobile phone, the
availability of broadband and therefore
24/7 access to all our cloud-based tools.
Of course none of these were around
when I was in the corporate world (the
first mobile phone I had was to be on
emergency call for incident response).
Iactuallyrememberthinkingthat
the laptop I was being given would
give me the freedom to have work/life
balance. Oh, what a fool I must have
been.
This world of immediacy with its
24/7, fast paced, big data, ‘give me
it now’ culture is very different. We
get upset when downloads are slow,
when websites ‘think’ and we have to
queue for anything. This kind of world
createstimepressurewithlittleroom
toescape.(Inthepastwehadpressurebut no mobile phones and less
email, so we could escape to some
degree).
It now takes those with a lot
of courage to ignore the time
pressures and choose to take the
time to practise the essentials
of what leadership is. These
leaders build engagement with
their people to support them in
delivering. They ask questions,
give feedback, coach, provide
clarity, test ideas, ask for ideas,
create dialogue and discourse,
engage and motivate, delegate and
empower. It takes bravery to take
time out just to think, to reflect,
review, consider and test your
own thinking the way a good
leader does.
So, on reflection, I don’t really
think that leadership itself is any
harder than it has always been.
I don’t even think the choices
of leadership are any different. I
think the choice is still ‘do I lead or do
I do it all myself?’
Where my board colleague and I
do agree is that the pressure of time
and demands from above have made
leadership a braver, more courageous
choice to make.
Despite this, the better leaders have
recognised the need to swim against
the ever-rising tide of demands,
time-pressure and ‘noise’ and choose
to make time to stop and plan; to
establish direction and priorities and
to lead their team-members towards
those. This definitely takes courage
but ultimately has to be the way to
go. There will always be more on the
To Do list than you can get through
and there will always be emails to
respond to. Recognising that you have
choices in what you attend to is a
first step towards truly leading rather
than being ‘led’ or complaining that
leadership’s just ‘harder’ than it used
to be. MDouglas Lang is the director of
#NVTKU.VF
YYYCNVTKUEQP\ Douglas Lang wonders if we are buying into a view that 'leadership roles are hard', when
it's actually the lack of good leadership that makes it hard.