Product Leadership Essentials: Developing Your Authentic Leadership Foundation
What is an authentic leadership foundation, and how do you build one for yourself?
To me, an authentic leadership foundation is an internal structure built from your principles, ideas, experiences and values that guide your actions and reactions as a leader.
That’s an important first sentence, that I’m going to ask you to re-read before continuing, and pay particular attention to one thing: the emphasis on you.
Authentic leadership is all about you. That may seem like a no-brainer, but based on many of my conversations with clients on leadership, it’s something that I think we sometimes forget.
Don’t get me wrong; you already have ideas about leadership that you follow, but they may be unconscious products of the lessons you've learned throughout your career. Part of growing further as a leader is taking those ideas and make them conscious, deciding which ones you want to keep, which ones do you want to invest in and grow 10x, and which are unhelpful and need to be left behind.
Simple ... right? Well, not exactly! From working with leaders across Product organisations and beyond, I’ve found that we often don’t take the time or put in the effort to understand and develop our own authentic leadership foundation. Instead, we look toward common stereotypes of leadership to guide us and adopt styles that may make sense for some, but not all, and most importantly - maybe not for you.
For example …
Many times we get caught up in the idea that we have to be a specific kind of person to be a leader.
A pattern I've noticed recently is that when I have the conversation around "what is a leader" with my coaching clients, the answer often starts with a physical description, and from there goes into attitudes or an outward projection of personality.
Physical traits like being in shape, tall, well dressed and well-spoken are common responses. Basically - this persona of a leader always looks like they have it “together” and always says the “right” thing; be it to motivate, influence encourage or empathise. Everyone loves this leader, and why not!? They are the smartest person in the room and always get it right.
Wow … how exhausting (and impossible!) to try to be this perfected version of a leader.
We only focus on pre-defined leadership styles.
In one of the first coaching courses that I took, about 6 years ago, we received a massive, juicy, 10-page long book list. As I was working through the section on Leadership, I discovered "Leadership That Gets Results," a Harvard Business Review article by Daniel Goleman.
For those of you unaware of his work, like I was at the time, Goleman is an author and psychologist who wrote the book, "Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ." In his HBR article, "Leadership That Gets Results," he shares the results of a study he and colleagues did to get a better idea of the prominent leadership styles that are exhibited in the working world and how they relate to emotional intelligence.
They found six leadership styles, and defined a "style" as "the way that managers motivate direct reports, gather and use information, make decisions, manage change initiatives, and handle crises."
I've been using Goleman's thinking in various leadership courses, talks, coaching sessions and even my own book since that initial discovery. The idea of leadership styles has been helpful for clients and students to connect with a particular style as a sort of framework for effective leadership, and to understand where their actions and behaviours fit into that framework.
But I also think that something is missing from the idea of a leadership style. I am curious: is there another, more personal way to think and talk about how we lead?
Another favourite of mine, "True North" by Bill George, focuses on discovering our own leadership principles, ideas that guide our behaviours and how we act.
So instead of thinking about leadership as styles that we can try to adopt in different situations, it's about taking a more introspective approach: looking within, identifying what's important to us, deciding on what matters based on our values, and designing principles that put those values into action. Basically, our version of authentic leadership becomes living and acting out our principles.
Examining, understanding, and developing your leadership principles is about looking inside, discovering the truth about how you are now, and building an internal leadership framework for yourself. A little like putting up a trellis so that a plant can support itself as it grows.
Whether or not that inner framework results in a specific "style" of leadership, it will be a solid foundation from which you can grow, learn, and change. You can examine each principle and ask "Is this serving my needs? The needs of my team or organisation?"
The greater understanding of your own internal world that results will help you lead from a place of authenticity.
So, how can you explore, understand, and develop your leadership principles?
It starts with self-reflection.
One tool I've developed to help with this kind of reflection is the Human Skills Wheel. The wheel focuses on human skills like empathy, self-awareness, conflict resolution, etc. It helps you analyse where you are with each skill, and where you need to focus in order to grow.
As George says in his book:
“The hardest person you will ever have to lead is yourself. Once you are fully comfortable with who you are - and feel good in your own skin—leading others authentically becomes much easier.”
Here's a simple (although perhaps not easy) way to get started reflecting on your own, authentic leadership principles and how they affect how you lead now.
Ask yourself these questions, and then answer by writing down a short description of your approach. (Don't overthink it! These should be the first things that come to mind. And by the way, I’m purposely not adding in examples on how you could complete these prompts. It’s up to you!)
1. As a leader, it's incredibly important to me that people see me as __________.
2. I believe the 5 most important character traits you can have as a leader are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
3. The thing about my work I find it the hardest to care about is _________________________.
4. The thing about my work that I can't stop thinking about is __________________________ and that matters because __________________________.
5. When someone questions a decision I've made, my first instinct is to __________________________, but what I actually do is __________________________ and what I believe I should do is __________________________.
The answers to these questions will help get you started on thinking about what's important to you as a leader, and how you already act on what you believe is important. From there, you can start to see patterns emerge, which will reveal both strengths and opportunities for growth.
Then, you can start to intentionally develop your authentic foundation, based on how you work already. To start digging even deeper on your own, you can develop your own questions about situations you encounter as a leader. Here's a quick framework for that:
When __________________________ happens,
What I do now is __________________ because ____________________.
What I believe I should do is _________________________ because _____________________.
A middle-ground step I could take, that would start on the path toward what I want to do, is __________________________.
Discovering and developing your leadership principles is one of the keys to leading from an authentic foundation. It's also a powerful way to find opportunities to grow, and to create learning goals to keep you growing long-term.
These foundational questions are a great place to start. Reflect back on them regularly and track your actions and reactions. Share them with your peer coaches, or start your journey with a leadership coach to help you look at where you are, where you want to go and help you draw a line between those two places
After all, just like successful, Olympic-level athletes still need a coach, strong, successful leaders also need a coach. Get in touch to find out how we can start the work together now.
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