Reinventing Positional Leadership
Part Two of a Three Part Series on Redefining Positional Leaders
How can traditional positional leaders shift from leveraging their position and authority to lead and move more in the direction of leading with others?
Traditional positional leadership or positional leadership involves being assigned a leadership role/title in a hierarchical organization where certain authority is inherited over others as part of the position. Being a positional leader is like working between a rock and a hard place. Not only do they have the external pressure of meeting organization goals and being accountable for their team’s performance, but they also face an endless stream of surprises and fires that inevitably arise. Additionally, there are all sorts of internal struggles that surface, especially if they are a positional leader who believes that the old way of working and doing things is no longer sustainable for them, their team, or the organization at large. Being a positional leader is just plain tough. Below is a discussion of several common leadership traps and effective solutions.
Realizing Leadership as a Role
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
Leading amid positional leadership pressures without any means to keep ourselves centered and grounded can result in adopting the energy of the group, organization, culture, etc. As people defer and entrust their power to another person to make decisions, etc. it can be destabilizing, causing the leader to start believing they are above or more than others. The higher the position and influence, the easier it is to believe in our own self-importance and lose ourselves in the position. Therefore, having a practice to ground us and remind us that we are no different than anyone else and that our leadership position is just a role we’ve been entrusted with can be very helpful. If you are a positional leader who is committed to creating change or transformation, I believe having such a practice is essential. Become a heart-centered leader and experience grounding.
Leading from an “Us” Perspective
In my experience, I have found that it works best to have an “us” disposition if you are leading a group, community, or organization as being us focused more naturally creates group closeness and a culture of togetherness. My post The Journey from Me to We to Us discusses how to overcome the tension of along this path to reach an “us” model. I find that learning circles or working in small, trusted groups offer safe places where people can receive offer gentle indirect feedback, experiential learning, and practical confidence-building techniques that can be shared in larger organizational spaces. To find out more about participating in a learning circle, please get in touch.
Letting Go of Old Habits and Limiting Beliefs
A common challenge I hear from leaders who are trying to create positive change within their organizations is that they feel like they are doing all the work. Yet when talking to the staff their perspective is quite different—instead they share how information, decision-making, and other resources they need to move forward are often held back. As leaders, we may believe there are legitimate reasons why we are controlling these things, but it often just comes down to old habits and an unconscious unwillingness, or just not knowing how, to let things go. This pattern frequently stems from our traditional leadership roles where we are used to carrying the load, believing that we are the best person in the best position to interpret, understand, make decisions, and even execute on the information at hand. Decision making and the burdens of leadership can create this overdeveloped sense of responsibility, making positional leaders feel that they are responsible for getting everything done vs. letting go so the work can flow to those who are meant to help carry the load and in fact may be better equipped to do so.
There is inherent tension in the positional leadership role. By its very nature, the role of a positional leader is to anchor, stabilize, and maintain the standard while refining and enhancing the current structure. I have seen long-serving leaders in traditional organizations who recognize the need for change struggle with their organization’s limited appetite for innovation and transformation. These positional leaders also grapple with maintaining the status quo while attempting to “improve” it. This dilemma or entanglement can lead to a deep divide among leaders. As a result, there are three “directions of adaptation” positional leaders tend to go in—work within the status quo and let go of inspiring the changes that are needed, try to create change, or leave the organization. Read more about these adaptations in the third part of this series—Key Questions for Positional Leaders.
Image by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pixabay
Additional challenges include personal pressure and unawareness. For those positional leaders who remain within traditional organizations, there is a cost as they are often under a great deal of pressure to maintain the status quo. “A little change is acceptable but nothing too disruptive” is a common organizational attitude. In effect, these leaders become a walking paradox because they still embody the organization’s habits yet are being called to “unlearn”, let go, and trust. At a personal level, even when they are trying to change, positional leaders are often unaware that their habits, non-verbal communications, and incongruent actions are inhibiting transformation and sending mixed messages to their staff. As a result, these leaders may hide their desire to create change and internalize their frustration with the system. This ongoing internal pressure can manifest physically, emotional, and/or mentally in various areas of their personal lives.
Unlearning Institutional Leadership Habits
How can positional leaders begin to unlearn the institutionalized habits of leading from afar or leading through a movie lens by shifting their focus from leading things (organizations, projects, programs, etc.) to leading people? Here are eight ideas for positional leaders to begin the unlearning process:
Create space within ourselves to be present. Meditation, slow movement practices, walks in nature can all help us slow down, relax, and become more present.
Listen deeply to what is being said and unsaid in the spaces you are in. Actively listening is the most underrated skill in corporate America. To hear beyond the words and realize the other 80% that is being communicated is a skill and it involves the ability to traverse different cultures and ways of understanding.
Build relationships with social leaders and change agents. Realize they have skill sets you may not have. No one person has all the answers and by tapping into the talents of other leadership styles you can begin to see a bigger picture.
Get a coach. Many top athletes have coaches because they understand that in order to become better, they need help. A coach can help you surface unknown habits, become more aware, discover the unseen solutions sitting in plain sight, and encourage you to tap into previously underutilized habits, talents, behaviors, etc. that you may possess that can support you and the team.
Resist the urge to reframe the unknown into something you already know/understand. When we reframe the unknown or uncomfortable into something we are familiar with we stop our journey of learning, growing and expanding and return to our known path. This inevitably leads us back to familiar territory and effectively keeps us within our current/limited level of understanding. We are simply creating a big loop which will land us back on the same path.
Realize there is more than one way of learning/understanding such as head, hand, heart, etc. Know which one you lean towards and find where you can learn the other perspectives.
Celebrate and encourage diverse thinking. Embrace divergent thinking.
Learn to let go of the idea/habit that you have to understand everything before it moves forward. Just provide “safe enough to try” spaces for the team to innovate.
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