The 360 Leader of Influence
I’m certain that anyone who has moved into a new job in a senior role will share an insight into the phenomenon I like to call ‘the spiky interface’. When you arrive new in post, as keen and sharp as a poacher in a moonlit forest, you invariably experience a disparate response from your inherited leadership cohort. I’ve never failed to experience this irregular interface and I think understanding it and strategising around it, holds one of the keys for successful leadership transition.
As a first time Head of School, I can still recall the adrenaline of those heady days as I tried to conceal the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing beneath a veneer of composed authority. Being the sphinx without a secret is a strain but, sure enough, in time the secrets did begin to creep under my office door. What began as a cautious trickle slowly turned into a steady flow of callers who came to me seeking to introduce themselves, mark my card, push their particular agendas or just size me up. At times, in my head, I was on a Mississippi Riverboat, being given the once over by the seasoned poker players.
But taking stock, a few months into that first year, I realised that not everyone in leadership positions had made their way to my door. For some, it seemed that my door was a dangerous vicinity in which to linger, suggesting a fear that even the smallest tap might set off alarums and excursions that could not be controlled. I conducted my expected one-to-one meetings in those early months, of course: two stars and a wish gets you a long way towards your first development plan but those pleasant encounters with middle leaders did not mark the beginning of a beautiful liaison with all of them, only with some. All were polite, all were friendly, all were respectful – but only some chose to come back on other occasions when they hadn’t been invited.
Several schools later, I can now say with certainty that this phenomenon never changes. It has been the same in every new setting. I have learned that people choreograph their approaches to new leadership according to a song that only they hear. When we train middle and senior leaders, we don’t spend enough time talking to them about how important it is to be a leader of influence, as opposed to a leader with positional authority.
Actually, this isn’t even about middle leaders; pretty much anyone in an organisation can exert influence if they have a mind to – but our love of creating hierarchies (particularly strong in British school culture) has produced an unintended consequence for many members of our staff. They learn to think that positional authority is necessary to be a leader.
It isn’t.
To illustrate what I’m saying, let’s look at three characters. Names have been changed to protect the innocent but they are based upon real people I have known in schools. Which one has the greatest opportunity to exert influence on school culture?
Miriam is a charming and highly qualified teacher who has risen through the ranks to manage a large High School department. She is warm, if a little guarded in conversations, and willingly takes on any task given to her. She finishes every assigned task to a high standard, manages her team in an accomplished manner and rarely, if ever, gives cause for concern. Her team is seen as high functioning and well led. She speaks to the Principal when she is invited to meetings as part of the yearly calendar and greets him (it’s me, hence ‘him’) pleasantly when he passes in the corridor or drops into the department office. She enjoys similar relationships with all of her peers and is well-liked without being particularly well known by anyone.
Delilah is a gregarious and passionate teacher, also highly qualified and also someone who has risen through the ranks to lead a large High School department. She is warm and approachable but likes to engage and argue as part of her thinking process. To Delilah, everyone is a person with whom an argument is possible. There is nothing unpleasant about arguing with her, it is seen in the spirit of friendly joust by the Site Manager, the Catering Manager, the Business Manager, the PTA Chair – and the Principal. When she has something on her mind, she articulates it and when the joust is finished she is happy if she is sitting in the winner’s saddle and equally happy if she has been knocked off her horse. For her, to argue is to learn. When she has something about the school on her mind, she knocks on the Principal’s door. He enjoys the visits because in the dialogue that ensues, he learns things. He is invited to evening excursions with her department and gets to know her team well. He enjoys being included where many assume they can’t or don’t want to engage with him on a personal basis. Sometimes Delilah just drops in to ask the Principal how he is.
Andy has been at the school a long time. He is highly experienced and enjoys a strong local reputation. He knows what Principals do – they change things for the sake of it – and he’s had enough of living through the pointless disruption of the latest initiative. When the new Principal arrives, he makes a point of getting in the door early and often to complain about what is going wrong in the school and to lobby on behalf of his team who have long been underfunded and overlooked for what they do. Exchanges with the Principal start in a semi-cordial way but cool over time as the usual excuses are trumpeted and management shows it’s true colours as expected. At social events, Andy takes the opportunity to fire targeted barbs of criticism, wrapped in a semi-humorous delivery, and shares these small victories with his team who tend to mirror his behaviours.
It’s fairly obvious which of these three characters exerts the most influence over the Principal’s thinking. But it’s what lies beneath the behaviours which is most interesting. Each middle leader has interpreted their role in a different way – the first thinks she is supposed to get on with things and not bother senior colleagues unless absolutely necessary; the second advocates from a position of engaged concern for everyone around her, regardless of their status; and the third believes that the role is to aggressively defend his people from the follies of leadership.
Personality plays a part here, for sure, as does prior experiences of engagement with both teams and senior leaders – but fundamentally these three characters are not interpreting what they are supposed to do in the same way.
Why is this?
Quite possibly it’s because no-one ever explained to them what a 360 leader of influence can achieve and how to go about being one.
There are many taxonomies of leadership, none right or wrong and all useful to stimulate reflection. At Takumi X, we work around a structure that we call the 7 Elements of Leadership and these are:
- The Strategic Leader
- The Intercultural Leader
- The Courageous Leader
- The 360 Leader of Influence
- The Effective Leader
- The Coaching Leader
- The Learning Leader
Much of the ground that we cover in our own way will be familiar but the concept of being a leader of influence is one that I come across less often in leadership taxonomies.
So how do you develop yourself to influence the community around you, with or without positional authority?
Firstly, you need to believe that you can and that you should be doing this as a part of your job.
Secondly, you need to let go of any preconceptions about or projections of hierarchy that you are carrying with you. This can be difficult: we all learn about hierarchy experientially and we exercise authority heuristically, learning from our mistakes and copying our elders. But when you do let go, you can begin to see the authority figures (and everyone else around you) as people, not as functions. People feel the same things as you do.
Once you see your leaders in this light, you are far more likely to ask them how they’re doing, feel comfortable buying them a coffee and feel it is perfectly reasonable to engage with them about anything that’s on your mind. If you give this out, you will get it back; if you play up to the facade of authority you will evoke a correspondingly formal response that reflects the imbalance that you create. In other words, you will increase the inaccessibility of your leaders by treating them as leaders and you will make them more accessible if you treat them as fellow human beings.
You need to learn how to manage upwards as well as you manage downwards – and not to assume that you should adopt a split personality to do that. Being ‘you’ with everyone is what Delilah mastered much better than Miriam and Andy did.
Thirdly, you need to engage with the idea that the community is your strongest advocate. What the canteen staff say about you, what your peers say about you, what students say about you, what their parents say about you, what board members say about you – these things create your story in the whispering trees of your community. If you are being ‘you’ in every possible place – just being an ordinary, kind, caring human being in every space in which you move, the trees know it. If you keep yourself to yourself, the trees know it. If you disrespect and diminish people, the trees know that as well.
Why does it all matter? Well, it matters when you want to make something better. If you have trust and rapport, if doors open to you, if people seek you out for advice or just sit and chat to you in the staff room, then at the important moments, you will be listened to.
If you hide from your leaders they may forget to seek your advice at critical moments; if you simply set out to be oppositional, it won’t be to you that leaders turn to when the big questions come (which will confirm everything you think about your leaders).
This isn’t something you can fake. I’ve seen many people try to simulate solicitous care and concern but the trees know the truth. They see you when you thank the catering staff for lunch or chat to the security staff in the morning; they see you helping the person who looks lost or sad; and they see who you pick and choose to be kind to when no one is looking. The leader of influence chooses to be kind to everyone.
