Imagine you’re on a leaking ship. Do you command everyone to follow your orders precisely, or assemble a team to innovate and construct a makeshift raft?
What contextual information would you need to know to determine how to lead?
You may want to know whether enough lifeboats are already available. You may need evidence of the seriousness and speed of the leak. Or perhaps you require information about whether the leak can be patched relatively quickly and easily.
Your answer reveals much about your views of leadership. If you are similar to many modern leaders, you will fall back on your favored leadership style, regardless of the contextual details.
But is your go-to style the one that will keep your ship afloat in today’s turbulent business seas? Consider this: Your approach may not work well in every situation. A style that works for you in a crisis will likely fail when innovation is the goal.
Steering through the complex waters of modern leadership requires more than a single, go-to approach. It demands the skill to adapt swiftly, changing your leadership style on the fly to tackle constantly shifting conditions and challenges. In this unpredictable environment, agile leaders don’t merely get by—they excel.
Command and Control Leadership
Command and control leadership is ineffective in our modern, complex, fast-paced world of business and social enterprise, right? Many claim it is dead, because command-and-control is, by design, inflexible.
However, some circumstances call for a directive form of leadership.
When in Crisis
When navigating through treacherous waters with reefs and storms, you may need a crew that follows your orders as an experienced leader. Command and control leadership is often a practical approach in a crisis.
High Predictability and Repetition
Likewise, directive leadership can be effective with high predictability and well-defined and repetitive tasks. For example, the manager’s role in a fast-food restaurant is to ensure compliance with rules and procedures and set clear expectations.
Regulated Environments
The command and control style can be helpful in tight regulatory environments like finance or healthcare, leaders may rightfully expect others to follow orders and carry out strict procedures. Variations may cause mistakes that could have dire consequences for all.
Thus, command control leadership isn’t necessarily the problem many make it out to be. The danger is that leaders may use this style too often or exclusively, not because it is the best for the circumstances but because it is familiar and comfortable.
When faced with complex, fast-paced, and ever-changing environments where novel challenges require fresh thinking, command, and control, leadership is destined to underperform, if not fail. This style stifles creativity and prevents the unconventional thinking often required for effective solutions.
Leadership through Teaming
With complex issues and tasks, more heads are certainly better than one. Thus, you might assume that forming a team to tackle a thorny problem is an effective way to lead.
Indeed, gathering a group of interested and knowledgeable parties to work on challenging issues is better than the command-and-control leadership style with complex questions.
Nevertheless, the effectiveness of this approach in tackling novel problems depends on how the leader structures the team.
Command and Control Team Leadership
Team leaders often carry a version of command-and-control styles into the team setting. Claiming a need for efficiency, they create project plans with tightly structured roles, timelines, and expectations. While they may solicit input from the team members, they hold control over decisions.
This approach does not maximize the expertise and creativity of the team members.
Restrictive Norms and Tight Timelines
Even when team leaders are more democratic in style, the ground rules and timelines they create may inhibit the search for innovative and fresh ideas. For example, they could impose group norms that prevent team conflict. By conflating diversity and debate over ideas with interpersonal conflict, they may neglect the conditions that allow for new solutions to emerge.
Leadership Through Alignment
Finding ways to attack wicked problems requires acknowledging the need for wide-ranging and diverse perspectives, and a forum that enables debate and the emergence of new ideas to address these questions.
In this scenario, leadership through alignment will work better than any command and control version. The leaders set the direction and work to align the team around it. They do not dictate how the team should proceed, nor do they micromanage the problem-solving. Their primary role is supporting and nurturing a creative team process.
Alignment leaders shed the need to reinforce only those whose thinking resembles theirs. Instead of craving individual accomplishments, they honor the diversity of thinking and concentrate on tackling problems together. They invite team members to challenge the status quo.
It’s crucial to understand that being aligned doesn’t mean being inflexible. A well-coordinated, cross-functional team should be ready to pivot in response to changing conditions, all while keeping sight of broader goals.
Rather than being a static condition, alignment is typically a fluid, continual exercise in fine-tuning and readjusting, particularly in environments that are either complex or subject to frequent changes. It demands ongoing vigilance and feedback loops to maintain its efficacy.
Systems Convening and Facilitating
Systems convening, or connecting people across boundaries or silos who all have a stake in the problem, is well-suited for the most complex challenges, according to research conducted by the Centre for Public Impact.
Stakeholders who participate in the problem-solving or idea-creation process will represent the most critical parts of a system. Thus, the leader will unite people across many borders, sometimes even crossing those that separate organizations, industries, or sectors.
The leader plays a facilitative rather than a controlling role. In place of the strict, hierarchical chain of command or traditional teaming, systems convening involves shared power based on earned legitimacy.
Like alignment leading, the leader will suggest the direction and facilitate the group as they form a shared vision.
Far from being hands-off, however, the leaders must be deeply engaged in nurturing the conditions for creative problem-solving and systemic change.
The treacherous waters of modern-day leadership are no place for a one-size-fits-all approach. Relying solely on a favored style—command and control, team-based, or facilitative systems convening—invites stagnation and potential catastrophe.
Leadership in this century is not about clinging to a single, comfortable style but about developing the situational awareness and flexibility to switch between approaches as the context demands.
Agile leaders will keep their ships afloat and successfully navigate the storms and calm waters. And in doing so, they will be better equipped to tackle the wicked problems and incredible opportunities that define our complex, ever-evolving world.
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