26 Sep Mobilising Leadership Across the Organisation
“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” – Ronald Reagan
The measure of a true leader is in their ability to develop and create other leaders. The law of legacy states that a leader’s lasting value is measured by succession. A legacy is created only when a person puts his organisation in the position to do great things without him.
We have found that because there is a dearth of effective, high performing leaders, the responsibility of leadership development tends to be outsourced to consultants, usually with mundane results. To truly build up to the point of organisational breakthrough, leaders must do the work of mobilising the leadership potential at all levels of the organisation. Simply put, a leader must teach others to lead.
Leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness. It is always the lid on personal and organisational effectiveness. Whatever you want to accomplish is restricted by your leadership ability. Findings show that there are positive and negative correlations between leadership style dimensions and organisational performance, not just in the private sector but also in the public sector.
In a study carried out on Nigerian Banks, it was found that leadership style dimensions predict organisational performance, which accounted for 23% variance of performance.
Cambridge Leadership Associates defines Adaptive Leadership as a practical leadership framework that helps individuals and organisations adapt and thrive in challenging environments.
Our studies also revealed that all mature leaders demonstrate four (4) adaptive Leadership Styles:
- Direct
- Spirited
- Systematic and
- Considerate
For a leader to teach others to lead, they must demonstrate these four (4) dimensions of adaptive leadership styles.
Adaptive Leadership Maturity is the ability of a leader to select the style and approach required to deliver the best results in a particular situation. When it comes to teaching styles however, the study of High Performance Leadership Development requires all four (4) styles delivered in an integrated format to build future leadership competencies (Knowledge, Character, Skill-Set and Attributes).
- The Direct Leadership Style tends to teach by giving Instruction to others and is directional in nature (telling the student-leader what to do). Instruction builds the Knowledge of the Future Leaders.
- The Spirited Leadership Style tends to teach by Mentoring the student-leader into the role of leadership. This involves using lots of examples -including personal example-, inspiration, motivation, modeling and storytelling. Mentoring builds the Character of the Future Leaders.
- The Systematic Leadership Style tends to teach by Coaching. This teaching style involves planning a system to help the student-leader acquire the skills through practice, while providing support, wisdom and feedback. Coaching builds the Skill-Set of the Future Leaders.
- The Considerate Leadership Style tends to teach through Counseling. This is leveraging the conversational approach to direct the student-leader to learn from their own experiences and pointing them to principles and practices which that student’s experience relates to. Counseling builds the Attributes of the Future Leaders.
Adaptive Leadership vs. Mechanical Leadership
| Mechanical Leadership | Adaptive Leadership |
| Focus on activities | Focus on productivity and value |
| Bureaucratic organisational structure | Flexible and changing organisational structure |
| Loyalty and obedience is expected of employees | Cooperation and mutual respect is encouraged and practiced |
| Efficient employees | Effective and creative employees |
| Influence is based on authority and position | Influence is based on value added to the organisation |
Therefore, when it comes to developing and unlocking leadership potential across an organisation, successful leaders convert the workplace into the learning place. They create the culture, systems, structure and practices required for the development of the next generation of Organisational Leaders within their organisations.
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