First Principles Based Leadership: Six Perspectives That can Help us Transform from Good leaders to Great Leaders

Premise

The most important act we do as a leader is our interactions with those we lead. The quality of these interactions lead to the results we achieve through them.

To transform from average or good leaders to great leaders, we need to develop the ability to assess any given interaction and respond based on the need of the situation and the person we are interacting with.

I believe that we can do this well, if we can learn to think and behave from six different perspectives for every interaction we have with our team and then choose which perspective best suits the situation and serves the needs of the person we are interaction with.

This gives us a framework that we can use to generate different options to pick from in response to any given situation. This ability and the option to pick a role most suited to the person we are leading is what separates good leaders from great one’s.

Here are the six roles we can play in our interactions with the people that we lead:

Coach

The first option is to play the role of a coach. The role of a coach is to help others solve their own problems through the process of self reflection and self inquiry. They do that by asking guiding and reflective questions.

Good coaches believe that almost all of us (almost always) have the ability to solve any problem that we come across by ourselves, if only we were able to think through and ask ourselves the right questions.

What separates good coaches from bad one’s is the quality of their questions and the ability to assess if the person being coached need has the skills needed (in which case, they ask question that reveal the answers) or not (in which case, they ask questions that reveal the need to learn new skills).

Typically, this is a great role to play when dealing with experienced people who need guidance that can help them decide what it takes to address this situation. It can also be about placing our trust and confidence in their abilities.

Mentor

Mentors are people who have already done what we are trying to do and already achieved what we are trying to achieve.

They give clear directions in terms of step by step playbook of how they responded to a similar situation that we the person being mentored is facing.

They might also talk about different options that are available and their process and thinking about how they would decide on how to respond to the situation.

Taking on the role of a mentor is a great idea when the person we are leading is inexperienced (in this specific context) and the stakes are high enough to not being able to allow experimentation and the possibility of failure.

Friend

There are a lot of times when all that is required from us, as a leader is to believe in our teams and their abilities to deliver the results we want.

We need to become their biggest cheerleaders. As I have written on this blog multiple times, people tend to rise or fall to the level of expectations that their leaders have of them and their belief of the level of support they can expect from their leaders when needed.

One of the important things we need to understand when playing this role is the importance of absorbing pressure as a leader and not just simply passing it on to our teams.

Think about this as having full confidence in our team and shining a spotlight on them, so that they can rise and shine. This is a good option if we already know that they already have what it takes to deliver spectacular results and then celebrate them, publicly.

Mechanic

There are times when people on our teams don’t know how to solve a specific problem or handle a given situation.

And in addition, it is a high stakes situation, meaning, if not done right, can cause an irreversible harm for either the person or the team’s goals and needs to be handled urgently.

There is no time to coach, mentor or train them so they can handle the situation.

In such situations, we play the role of a mechanic who solves the problem or addresses the situation all by ourselves. This is the time when we step in and take control of the situation and deal with it.

We generally play this role rarely and only in novel situations that we know how to address but the team has never responded to in the past.

Teacher

There are situations which we can use as teachable moments. These interactions are based on a situation which we can use as an example to teach something (simple, profound or anything else in between).

We can play the role of a teacher by creating low stakes situations where our team can learn and develop new skills and practice them without creating any significant risks to them or the team’s results.

This is like digging a well, much ahead of the time when we need one, knowing fully well that we will need it sooner or later.

This is something we need to be constantly thinking about. Any situation or interaction has the seed within itself of becoming a teaching moment. All we need to do is be intentional about looking for it.

Mid-wife

There are times when we need all hands on deck. These are highly intense situations which require the teams to go above and beyond their regular performance.

This is when we forget that we are a leader and get into the trenches with the team and be one among them and do what we expect them to do.

One of the biggest mistakes we could do as a leader is to expect things from our team that we ourselves are not willing to do.

If you ask anyone about their best heroic leadership moment, the chances are that they will recount a story about how their leader got down in the trenches with them and they delivered something spectacular, together as a team.

This role requires us to bring all our ability to not only perform as an individual leader but also our ability to bring the entire team together as one unit.

Conclusion

To become a really good leader, we need to ask these questions of ourselves before and during any interactions we have:

1. If we showed up as _____ (coach, mentor, friend, mechanic, teacher or a mid-wife), what would I say or do?
2. What does this person need to me to show up as?
3. What does this situation need me to show up as?

And once we have assessed and answered these questions (assuming we are aware of what we want to achieve in this situation), we can then choose to show up as the role that best suits the situation and the person’s needs.

It would also be interesting to know if there is a role that we default to in any given situation. This could tell us where our comfort zone is and enlighten us on where we need to work to develop ourselves.

Like anything else, this is a skill that we can develop with time and deliberate practice.