BEHAVIOUR 06 OF 10 . LEADING

Why does my team stop having ideas when I’m in the room?

Often because you are leading from the front, and to people who have ideas of their own that reads as not being open to theirs. The fix is not to lead less. It is to be able to lead from three positions instead of one.

This is leading with a small L

Think, do, be. This is not management. It is leading for creativity in other people, which you can do with no authority at all, on a project you are not even on.

Good ideas need leading, because they die easily. The boss is in the room, so nobody says the risky one. Somebody is shouting down every idea but their own. Or the room is simply too far into busy brain, and every new thought is getting killed at birth.

In the absence of anyone leading for ideas, the possibility of new ideas is quietly lost, and nobody in the room will ever know it happened.

Where this came from

My friend Bernie is an executive coach. He watched me run sessions for a while before he said anything.

Then he told me I led every single one of them the same way.

He was right, and I had never noticed. I had one setting. Up at the front with the pen, seeing where it could go, pulling the room along behind me. It worked often enough that I had mistaken it for competence rather than for a preference.

What he said I needed was a thing he called range.

And the model I built it on came from somewhere unexpected. At BBC Radio 1 we used a brand model about where a brand sits in relation to its audience. Out in front of them. Alongside them, arms around. Or behind them, as a backstop.

That is exactly the choice you make every time you walk into a room where ideas are meant to happen. Leading creativity is an audience relationship. You are picking a position relative to the people whose ideas you actually want.

The three positions

Out in front. Being the idea leader. Follow me, I know where we are going, I have got the ball, I can see and feel the potential here, so come with me. And people do.

Alongside. Being the idea mate. Arms around other people’s creativity. Creative equals. We are in this together, keep going, I am right beside you, supporting and encouraging and wanting to know more, every step of the way.

Behind. Being the idea backstop. Letting others step up. Letting ideas go where they will. Letting other people take their creativity somewhere new, with you behind all of them. Still engaged, still watching, holding the backstop position in case you are needed.

Here is how to find yours. If you were leading an ideas session tomorrow, at your most comfortable, would you be up at the flip chart boldly leading where the ideas go, sitting with others discussing and exploring, or hanging over the back listening and watching where the conversation is heading?

First one, you are a natural out in front. Second, alongside. Third, behind.

None of them is the good one. The whole thing is range.

And I will say the obvious part out loud. There is a page on this site about a session I derailed by standing up and presenting a finished concept at point two of eight. That was not a one-off. That was my home base, running with no awareness that it was even a choice.

What the evidence says

Leading from the front actively costs you output in a room full of people with ideas. Grant, Gino and Hofmann (Academy of Management Journal, 2011) ran this twice.

First in the field, across pizza delivery franchises: 57 store leaders and 374 employees. Where the employees were passive, more extraverted leadership predicted higher store profits. Where the employees were proactive, more extraverted leadership predicted lower profits. Same leadership, opposite result, depending entirely on who was in front of them.

Then in a lab, 163 people in 56 groups folding t-shirts against the clock. With passive followers, the groups with highly extraverted leaders did best. With proactive followers it reversed hard: the less extraverted leaders’ groups folded around 175 shirts, the highly extraverted leaders’ groups managed 142.

And the mechanism is the part that should stop you. It was receptivity. Proactive people experienced the less extraverted leaders as more open to their ideas, and that raised their motivation and their performance.

So out in front is not a worse style. It is the right style for a room that has nothing to give yet. In a room full of people who already have something, it is the wrong one, and the cost is not manners. It is output.

And range itself is what correlates with results. Goleman’s Hay/McBer work drew on a random sample of 3,871 executives from a database of more than 20,000, and named six leadership styles. The finding: leaders who had mastered four or more had the best climate and the best business performance. The more styles available to a leader, the better, and the most effective ones switched between them as the situation required.

Worth saying plainly that this is large-scale practitioner research rather than a controlled experiment, and the article does not publish the numbers behind the four-or-more claim. It is still the biggest data set anyone has put behind the simple idea that range beats being excellent at one thing.

What to do on Monday

Name your home base. Use the flip chart question above. Be honest, not aspirational. Most people know within two seconds and then talk themselves out of it.

Then make one deliberate move out of it in your next session. One. Comfortable, stretch, panic: time spent in the stretch zone grows the comfort zone, and panic teaches you nothing except that you want out. If you are a natural out in front, sit down and be alongside for one exercise. If you are a natural behind, take the pen for ten minutes.

And design your escape route before you start, so that a stretch cannot turn into a panic. Knowing you can go back to home base is what lets you leave it.

One specific thing, because it works and almost nobody does it. If one person is dominating the airtime, go and sit beside them. It will shut them right up, without a word being said about it.

Leading is behaviour six of ten, and it sits with Facilitating and Designing in Module 3, Accelerating Creative Project Work.

Sources

  1. Grant, A. M., Gino, F., & Hofmann, D. A. (2011). Reversing the extraverted leadership advantage: the role of employee proactivity. Academy of Management Journal. Field study: 57 store leaders, 374 employees. Lab study: 163 participants in 56 groups. doi:10.5465/amj.2011.61968043
  2. Goleman, D. (2000). Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business Review, March 2000. Hay/McBer random sample of 3,871 executives from a database of more than 20,000. Practitioner research, not a controlled experiment. hbr.org/2000/03/leadership-that-gets-results
  3. BIF source: BIF People Behaviours 6. Leading, which carries the Range model (out in front, alongside, behind), the know-your-style test, the comfort/stretch/panic zones and the leading tips.
  4. Origin: Matt Hart on Bernie, his friend and executive coach, and the BBC Radio 1 brand model about where a brand sits in relation to its audience.