Leadership is Personality Work

Leadership is about understanding what drives people and using that to achieve an outcome.

This is my definition of leadership and is how I go about it with those in my charge. The principle at the heart of this definition is simple to say though harder to execute; understanding comes before influence.

Of course, leadership can be done without understanding. When that happens, energy is being burned somewhere, either in you, in them, or in people around you. When you lead through understanding, you’re not pulling energy from them to keep things moving. You’re creating a mandate to lead that generates energy for both of you.

You have to know the person, group or team you are trying to lead before you can lead them. This principle scales, it doesn’t matter if you are working one to one with someone or influencing a whole company in an all-hands. The second half of the definition “using that to achieve an outcome” makes no judgement on if the outcome is right or wrong, and unfortunately this is where the line between leadership and manipulation can get blurry.

Many of the same skills required to lead effectively are also used to effectively manipulate. Empathy, persuasion, timing, knowing which buttons to press etc. The difference is who benefits in the outcome. I once worked with a senior leader who sized me up quickly and tried to recruit me into undermining my peer. In contrast, the same peer took the time to understand me, answer my questions and build trust so that we could help our teams through an intense period. Same toolkit, very different outcomes. The understanding came first though the intent behind it changed everything.

Getting back to the essence of the definition, understanding. This is where leadership really becomes personality work. To really effectively and sustainably lead someone (or a team and so on) you have to know them better than themselves sometimes. You have to be able to read between the lines of their email, messages and conversations, see the droop in the shoulders, the furrowed brow, the smile, the spring in the step, the elevated tone of voice and on the list goes. Watching and understanding those cues, and the myriad of others, tells you when to push, when to protect, do they need an arm around the shoulder, a devil in the ear or a saint on the shoulder?

One of my direct reports had a brutal internal monologue and was unbelievably harsh on himself. He and I worked best when I put a metaphorical arm around his shoulder. He was so harsh on himself that I thought being a soft supportive voice and coach might help him ease the pressure and give him some space to think and act a little slower.

Another direct report in the same group was a very direct individual and certainly didn’t respond to arm around the shoulder. He was a true engineer and just wanted to solve a problem and he took that approach to his leadership.

With him our coaching sessions were always principle based, me sharing and helping him understand a principle of leadership he could apply to the situation he was facing. I’d share the principle once and he’d apply it and we’d move on. Two different people, two different approaches to leadership and execution, same principle of understanding.

What I like about this approach to leadership and as I showed above is that it opens up the option for a variety of leadership styles, You don’t have to be leading from the front, you don’t have to be in the metaphorical trenches. You can if it works for you but you don’t have to and this is the wonderful and fascinating thing about people, we respond differently to different people in different circumstances, just because I responded well to a person in a particular way, doesn’t mean that will work with someone else doing it.

A word of caution here is that people, groups and teams all evolve over time. Therefore the practice of understanding has to evolve as well. I worked with one boss for a long time, and when we started working together I was relatively new to leadership, I had been a formal people manager though I wasn’t very good at it. So much of our 1:1’s early in our working relationship were about the development of my leadership practice, though as time went by we did less of that and more work on my ability to think outside my direct area of influence. He recognised I was changing and he adapted his leadership of me to suit.

If you take nothing else from this, take this: leadership is about understanding what drives people and using that to achieve an outcome. That understanding must come before influence, be applied with intent, be grounded in the person in front of you, and adapt as they evolve.