Effective leadership is very much about clearly seeing, seeking, and continually executing change for the better. Life is about change. Whether leading your own life, leading a small group, or leading an organization, there will be problems or opportunities, then solutions, then change, then more problems and opportunities, more solutions, more change, and so on and so on. That doesn’t seem to make sense. Aren’t there times when things are just fine the way they are? Well, if you want to slowly experience entropy (basic universal truth is energy is fixed, and then all things move towards disintegration and death – the “entropy” force at work). So, doing nothing, well, is a leadership decision.
What does an effective leader do? Well, in giving this some thought, I came up with the following Effective Leadership Quadrants chart.
You see the direction of the left (going from down to up) is from a low amount of vision to a high clarity of vision and then the direction from left to right is the ability to drive and/or allow change. Vision, to me, is the ability a leader has to anticipate changes in the external environment, see changes currently taking place in the environment quickly, or the ability to clearly see current internal problems that need addressing. Execution is about a leader’s ability to drive change, collaborate well with the organization on change initiatives, and persistence in ensuring change happens.
The four types of leaders that I see in these quadrants do exist in many organizations. This is certainly not meant to be a complete (as in academically researched) picture of leadership, but I am confident that you will recognize these types of leaders.
Underachieving Leadership
These leaders mostly just react to situations as they arise and really would prefer that everything keep running smoothly. They have to be pushed and are likely not the first “champions” of any change initiative. The fact is that some of these individuals are really “managers” within the popular U.S. usage of that word and can be valuable to the organization within that role, but likely will not be highly successful leaders unless they are mentored and can cultivate skills. Many employees don’t really mind working for them since they can “lay-low” and be comfortable in the day to day predictability of their jobs.
Unguided Leadership
The good news is that the unguided leader will occasionally hit a home run with ideas because of their keen sense of vision in terms of market needs, but overall, this leader will leave a trail of good ideas that do not get fully executed and either die or do not reach full potential. Without the right team around this leader, you might hear a lot of “new strategic plans”, but not see a great deal of true change in culture, activity, or results. There is sometimes a high turnover in groups led in this way because of the frustration of unfinished execution.
Unfocused Leadership
The unfocused leader is extremely capable of delivering results. In fact, this leader will get everyone focused on producing results. The down side is that without focus (less vision), this leader may chase all results equally and have trouble knowing which projects are really worth doing. The key activity is just to execute the changes, make it happen, deliver changes and incremental activities. These leaders usually have faithful, loyal, engaged, busy, and fairly happy workers where everyone fully believes that they are productive and valuable. That makes sense. They are getting stuff done.
Effective Leadership
The effective leader has the right balance of vision and execution. This leader keeps a clear eye on what is happening in the external environment, anticipating future changes, clearly seeing shifts and opportunities or potential threats, while at the same time seeing opportunities arising inside the organization to make positive changes for improvement. This leader is also successful in getting everyone to change. Wait a minute – Who fits that bill? Well, there are rare individuals that embody these traits, but truthfully, and thankfully, effective leadership is normally a team effort that starts with a leader smart enough to surround herself/himself with leaders with diverse and complementary skills. In fact, when a new company is born, the first huge leadership challenge of any entrepreneur is determining how to build the right leadership team to compliment the entrepreneurial vision and energy that started with her/him.
There are enough books and other materials on leadership to keep you reading or listening for a long time, but hopefully this chart offers a clear and practical look at how leadership relates to vision and execution of change. Given that there is never change in your business unless that business is dead, examining where you fit in this chart or perhaps where all of your organization leaders fit in this chart may assist in building a stronger leadership team together.
In my next post, I apply a similar “quadrant chart” to organization effectiveness.
