The Multiple Facets of Leadership

How to balance multiple leadership roles to use them effectively and make us be more successful as leaders

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Leadership is a complex endeavor.

To be effective leaders, we’re expected to have multiple skills and be able to combine them in a manner that makes us efficient and productive leaders.

In this post, I’d like to summarize some of those “roles”, that I’ve distilled from this great LinkedIn course by Sara Canaday: “Balancing Multiple Roles as a Leader”.

Roles of Leadership

Before we’re diving into leadership roles, I’d like us to think about it for a moment. What are our roles as leaders?

Roughly speaking, I’d divide them across 3 fundamental activities:

1. Provide guidance
2. Build high-performing teams
3. Achieve results

Each one of them could be attributed to either people or the results dimension.

The key success factor is being able to balance our activities in a way, we’re are able to invest the right amount of time in both dimensions.
We want our teams to feel empowered, innovative, motivated, focused, self-organizing, and ultimately achieve business objectives and results.

Sounds like an ambitious goal to achieve, right? That’s where multiple leader “hats” come into play, let’s review them.

Multiple Roles of Leadership

Leader as Manager

One of the common issues we can encounter in organizations is lack of clear direction.

We can be encouraging and inspirational but still fall short in articulating even the short-term vision for the future. This may pose a problem since our teams will be having a hard time reaching their goals without a well-defined plan on how to get there.

That’s why the “leader as manager” role is important.

The main purpose of a manager is to provide a systematic way to organize, execute business plans and deliver value.

This may include activities, such as, setting the agenda, developing roadmaps, removing roadblocks, providing context, setting KPIs, monitoring the process and most importantly, holding the team accountable for reaching their goals.

Leader as Subject Matter Expert

As it often happens in organizations, people that accumulated extensive expertise in technical domains, are getting promoted to leadership positions. It’s a quite obvious choice since those people might be already acting as leaders in this or that agenda.

People seek their advice about complex issues and their problem-solving skills together allow them to help in problems resolution. We also reach them to train other team members to transfer knowledge on processes and procedures related to their specialty.

Leader as subject matter expert (SME) is an important role if done wisely.

We need not to fall into the trap of keeping ourselves in our comfort zone and limit the amount of time we spend playing this role.

As our responsibilities expand, it will become clear that we can’t be everywhere and know every aspect of the work being done. That’s where we should learn to trust our teams to do what they’re good at while putting our focus on the bigger picture.

We should give up on our expert persona and improve our ability to work effectively with and through others.

Leader as coach

In my opinion, this is one of the most important roles, we as leaders are called to play, is that of the coach. As an engineering manager for the last 15 years, I find this part as the most significant and fulfilling.

So, what does it take to be a coach?

As opposed to managers, that are more focused on delivering results, a coach is focused on helping to produce better results. This mindset requires a genuine desire to encourage and help people to succeed. It’s a deliberate decision to adopt a supportive mindset and look for opportunities to get out the best in others.

It’s a focus on the growth and well-being of our employees.

Leader as a change agent

Since we’re living in an extremely dynamic world, change is inevitable. As leaders, we must be able to lead and support change.

What kind of change you may ask?

Well, virtually any change requires leadership support. Starting with minor ones, such as changing people desks or in-office vs. remote days allocation, to the major changes, such as team restructuring, change in operations model, adopting new methodology, introducing a new technology, or adjustments in the vision statement.

In those situations, we need to be aware of the change, have the courage to speak up, and influence the team to support it.

In that sense, change agent leaders are positioned on the front lines to “sell” the new idea or approach to the people who will be implementing it, to engage them and get them on board with the transition.

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

As leaders, we can use the following practices to be better in our role as change agents:

1. Explain why the change is happening. Investing our energy in providing the motivation for the change is crucial, as people are more likely to accept it if they understand its purpose.
2. Think from the people's perspective. What would they wanna know, or what would frustrate them? How can you make the transition less stressful?
3. Engage people in the change process. Work to build agreement about change. We can foster real commitment by encouraging people's participation in the process. Hopefully, we will be able to get their buy-in to the transition.
4. Lastly, create enthusiasm about the process. We should be able to underscore the positive aspects of the change and communicate it in a way that creates real enthusiasm for the transition.

I invite you to read about Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model here.

Leader as motivator

Another role that I’d like us to discuss is our role as motivators.

Often, we’re so overwhelmed with the pressing deliverables and tight deadlines, that it makes us too focused on them and what affects most their execution.

This granular focus prevents us from shifting into one of the most impactful, yet neglected roles, the motivator, often seen as the catalyzer, the inspirer.

Being a motivator is about relating to our team members and being able to encourage them in a way, that promotes a positive attitude and a can-do approach.

If we want to inspire our teams, here are a few techniques we can apply:

1. First, establish a positive environment. One way to do it, is to show employees how much we care. Ask them questions about their goals, and concerns, then listen and take corrective actions.
2. Second, set clear goals and bring them to life. In our conversations, instead of informing and instructing them, engage and inspire. How can we help them connect with their bigger purpose, and add a new perspective?
3. Third, tailor our communication to be more effective at motivating each individual.
4. Finally, maintain progress despite challenges. We need to be prepared to continue motivating our team members even in difficult situations.

Leader as ambassador

Sometimes we’re required to communicate and contribute outside of our organization as its representatives. However, often we’re doing it intuitively, without a clear understanding of how to promote and elevate the company’s brand. This is how we can play the role of leader as ambassador:

1. First, build our networks outside of the organization. We would want to join some professional events, attend industry conferences and meetings, and maybe even volunteer to speak or participate in a panel discussion.
2. Second, we need to be able to articulate our company’s brand. One of the simplest questions we might be asked: “What do you do?” or “What does your company do”? sometimes is really difficult to answer. In the ambassador’s role, we want to be able to describe the purpose of our organization and the customers we serve, the benefits we provide, and the problems we solve.
3. Finally, as company leaders, we are acting as an endorsement for choosing our organization as an organization to work in. Therefore, we must recognize and appreciate the responsibility involved with being the face of the organization.

Leader as visionary

Some of the world’s greatest leaders are considered visionary. Although it’s expected quality for a leader, but in many ways, it’s also the most difficult.

Stephen Covey, in his famous book The 8th Habit, describes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports these shocking findings:

Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why

Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team’s and their organization’s goals

Only one in five said they had a clear “line of sight” between their tasks and their team’s and organization’s goals

Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals

Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for

Here are some strategies to help us expand our capacity to play the role of leader as visionary:

1. First, we need to make knowledge acquisition to be our top priority. Read about a wide range of subjects, and explore other perspectives. As we broaden our knowledge, we’ll begin to see connections in seemingly unrelated subjects and domains. Then we can use that to develop a distinct point of view that adds value and creativity. Ultimately, we want to establish ourselves as thought leaders that people respect and seek to advise.
2. Second, make time to think big picture and long term. It’s hard to step out of the daily work to ponder the future, but we must have the discipline to make that happen.
3. Third, translate that vision into strategic goals for the future. Ideally, the goals should be SMART and include measurable outcomes for each area, timeline, milestone, or required resources.
4. Lastly, we need to communicate this vision effectively. We need to be able to describe it clearly and concisely with a passion and enthusiasm that gets everyone else excited about the journey ahead.

Summary

As we saw, to succeed as leaders, we have to balance a range of different roles. It’s a challenge, but with a solid strategy and practice, we can achieve this goal.

One thing that this great course teaches us, is that balancing leadership roles doesn’t involve a strict formula. It’s not about making them equal.
Some roles will have more priority because of a challenge or a new opportunity. We just need to make sure we’re fitting it to the situation at hand, and let our team benefit from every facet of our diverse leadership skills.