Measuring Leadership - What Happens When You're Not There

Last week a close friend lost her spouse very unexpectedly. All of us who participate under her leadership in our music program (band) at church were shocked and grieved for such a devastating loss for a close friend. It was truly heartbreaking. The experience is one I would of course not want to have go through if given the choice, but it did reawakened for me something I've believed about leadership for some time. So I share these thoughts about leadership, keeping in mind they pale in comparison to the gravity of last week's events.

There are many ways to assess, evaluate and measure leadership. Bottom line results, leadership style, strengths surveys, 360 degree performance reviews, action under fire... I could go on and on. But one measurement that is often overlooked is, what happens when the leader's not there?

I enjoy, respect and thrive under many leadership styles, but value much less charismatic and personality driven teams. They rarely hold up in the long term, and usually hit some ceiling frequently not surpassable without a significant change of leadership. Those approaches are usually too dependent upon the capabilities and characteristics of one person. Leadership solely vested in that one person also means you live with their limitations too. At least that's been my view.

I believe leadership is about enabling the team and organization to achieve its best results, growing and thriving in the process. Flourishing is a great way to describe a high performance team. It's about enabling people to succeed. It's also about creating a shared vision, with clarity of purpose, goals and a high degree of mutual accountability within and outside the team. I also subscribe to the view that if you believe in people, truly believe in their power to succeed, they'll do just that, and more.

Want to see how effective leadership is? Remove the leader and see what happens. You'll quickly spot where there's deficiencies in communications, continuity, goals, empowerment, decision making and many other areas. You'll see bottlenecks or pent up issues pretty quickly. If the team can't continue to excel, at least for a reasonably short time, you don't have a team, you have a group of followers. Now, see what happens when a curve ball shows up. That also gives great insight into how effective the team's leadership is.

So, bringing this all back home to last week's experiences. Sunday's services went off without a hitch, even without the week's normal 2 1/2 hour rehearsal. Some band members had never even heard the music prior to Sunday's early rehearsal. Everyone involved (probably 25-30 people) all to a person stepped up and volunteered to help out in whatever way was needed. Team members changed previous commitments to be available. And we'll continue this and more until our leader returns, whether that's one week or six weeks from now. We have a shared vision and purpose for our music, we know how to execute and fill in when someone suddenly needs to step out, we know how to adjust (flexibility is one of our key attributes), and there are many capable leaders within the team who can step up and fill the gap until she returns. 

Most importantly, none of us wants to let down the leaders in our organization. Our mission is to continue delivering on our goals without a drop in the quality or capabilities of our music. Matter of fact, our goal still continues to be raising the bar of our music program. We value our leaders too much to do anything less.

Comments

[Carol Ross]

Thanks, Mitchell for this post about what leadership is really about for me--developing a team of leaders who have the awareness, capability, and willingness to do what's needed in the moment for the higher good. It's great feedback for me as a leader when I step out of the picture for a few days or a week and observe what happens with the rest of the organization.