Speaking in "leadership"
by Miki SaxonI had a great time with “Jean,” who took me up on my coaching offer (Oct. 15) and also received permission to write about her situation, since I’ve heard similar stories over the years.
She told me about a specific situation within her department and what she was doing to handle it. I asked her if it was working and she said it seemed to be, but that she’d rather solve it using leadership skills instead of just management skills. Jean went on to say that she wanted to be chosen to attend her company’s leadership classes and to do so she had to demonstrate strong leadership potential.
Jean and I had a great discussion (we ran over the hour) about her interest in leadership, her goals, how she communicates with her people, her group’s culture within the overall company culture and what she’s accomplished—solid management, on-time/in-budget projects, low attrition, high morale and strong productivity in her organization.
Apparently the accomplishments aren’t enough for Jean’s boss, who’s been know to skip over DOers in favor of people who “speak leadership,” when describing what they’ve done.
In fairness, and before you get the wrong idea, Jean said that she loves working with him, he’s been a great mentor and promoted her twice. He just has this thing about leadership.
Since, in my opinion, Jean’s already demonstrated her ability to lead, what she needed to learn was how to talk about it. I knew she had read both books and blogs on the subject, so I asked her to choose something and then describe it to me as she would to her boss.
As I listened, the problem was evident. Jean’s description was low on “I,” high on “us.” It was about the challenge and how the team succeeded in overcoming it—exactly the way a good leader talks.
When I mentioned that, Jean laughed and said that speaking “leadership” sounded pretentious to her and that none of the leaders that she’d been around spoke that way, including her boss. She said that although she’d found a lot of the tools she used described in leadership books, she just assumed that they were different when used by a “leader.”
Now, I’m the last person to stomp on common sense (it’s too uncommon), so I suggested to Jean that she walk her boss through the prequel to the event, in other words, how she planned to achieve whatever, since when describing her planning she did use leadership terms.
As for all you bosses who recognize yourselves in the above—stop it! Stop focusing on the talk and check out the walk of your people who DO. Maybe they haven’t learned the language of leadership or maybe, like Jean, they find it pretentious to describe what they do that way, but if you’re desire is to identify those with leadership potential I hope that you’ll start looking for it in what your people DO.
October 16th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I think many people, managers and otherwise, just believe in stereotyped images of what “leaders” should be. They confuse “leadership” with “style”. Leaders are people, and people have different styles. Bosses should open their minds to different styles.
October 16th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Ivan, You’re right-on about style and style includes language. Everything has its own lingo, but a person may choose to eschew it; I hate trendy terms and always try and avoid them. Unfortunately, that lingo may be the only way to make yourself heard.