This week’s provocation: Autonomy, Ownership, Competence, Confidence
(Heath warning: there are THREE 2 x 2 matrices in this post)
A while back I write a post on my definition of what great leadership should really be all about, and I described this as high-reaching informality. High-reaching because great leaders are ambitious, exceptional at getting the best out of their people, and encouraging their teams to think bigger and aim higher. Informal because this supports open communication, trust, psychological safety, and a culture of healthy disagreement which means better and faster problem solving.
When I think of all the truly great leaders that I’ve worked for and with over the years, these are the two interrelated aspects which have inspired and enabled me to do my best work, and which can combine in a compounding loop. These bosses, as with all effective leaders, were exceptional at adapting their leadership style according to context. They were situationally aware but also self-aware, which enabled them to connect with people in a meaningful but powerful way.
The post became one of my most shared and viewed posts of recent times. People seemed to relate to the bringing together of these very different attributes. But recently I’ve been reflecting on a particularly important element of this concept and something that plays into both of the dimensions: autonomy and ownership.
I wrote quite a bit in my books about the power of autonomy in enabling agility in a fast-moving, complex and uncertain world. Great leaders empower their teams. Micromanaging is terrible for slowing a team’s progress or adaptability. But there’s a real subtlety in how leaders can understand the role of autonomy and once again it’s about context. And here I can offer up two further dimensions which I keep coming back to and which adeptly set the context for empowerment, ownership, and autonomy: confidence and competence.
Competence: this is not just about being skilled enough to do the task, it’s also about being well-informed enough to reliably make good decisions. Because autonomy doesn’t work without situational awareness. Leaders often think about functional skills, but may downplay soft skills.
Confidence: team members may be skilled and informed enough but the team may still make sub-optimal decisions if some members of the team are under-confident. This may well result in poor equality of contribution, dominance by a few team members, people not speaking up when they feel that the course of action is wrong, or simply a lack of confidence in their own skills and how to apply them.
This is why both dimensions are important. The role of the leader is not only to get the best people, but then to set them up for success. It is only through the combination of competence AND confidence that the team can get the most from each person, and that unique knowledge and skills can combine to create an impact greater than the sum of its parts.
The inspiration for these dimensions came from Alice Chapman, who has talked about how they frame an understanding for leaders of when to direct, when to retrain, when to coach, and when to let go. To build on that, these dimensions can also set out a context for leadership styles - when leaders need to lead from the front, when coaching is more appropriate, or working alongside, or when letting go will actually be the thing that gets the best results.
This reminded me of situational leadership, and also Google’s Fowards, Alongside, Behind (FAB) leadership styles. Forwards leadership is about leading from the front and directing (telling rather than selling). Alongside leadership styles are more about guiding, steering, and coaching or even working together to solve problems. Behind leadership is about high autonomy, entrusting teams to make the right decisions because they are both competent and confident in the domain or task at hand.
The subtlety of adapting your leadership style and approach requires a sensitivity to situational context and also enough self-awareness to know what your default or typical leadership response may be.
It’s like the idea of traffic lights and roundabouts. Context is everything. And yet it is so often ignored. In a time of high uncertainty, rapid change and growing complexity, aligned autonomy enables you to move fast, stay adaptable and get the most out of everyone. Its like a superpower.
If you do one thing this week…
The latest version of the annual Dentsu Media Trends report is out (via friend of ODF Dan Calladine). This is always one of the best captures of upcoming media trends IMHO. And amongst other trends this one talks about GenAI beyond the chat box, AI working it’s way across the entire media value chain leading to an explosion of ‘micro-moments’, deep fandoms, widening technology gaps and ‘algorithm planning’. You can download it here.
Links of the week
The latest episode of Google Firestarters is now OUT, featuring the brilliant Tanya Evans, Group Culture and Leadership Director at Lloyds Banking Group (full disclosure: I did a big project with Tanya through the first half of this year). She gives a masterclass in how to lead culture change in a large organisation and catalyse shifts in behaviour, how to measure culture and understand change readiness, and how to become more agile in decision-making in a risk-averse culture. And I loved her point about bringing more joy into transformation. Amen to that. (Youtube, Spotify, Apple)
‘If everyone walked on the grass, a cow path would form & then the groundskeeper would put in a permanent surface. This is known in landscape architecture as a "desire path"'. I quite liked the term ‘desire path’ as a way to describe how lots of people doing the same thing can have permanent consequences (taken from Tom Worthington’s comment on Johnnie Moore’s thoughtful post about everyone using AI for content generation.
And I liked the idea of ‘compound creativity’ which describes the results of an IPA/System 1 study demonstrating how consistency in creative platforms pays off by building and compounding on the effects of previous advertising work
I also like the idea of using a GPT as a sparring partner to improve your pitch before going into a tricky meeting
Quote of the week
‘Whenever I go for a new job, the one thing I conveniently leave off my CV is the time I got sacked from Kwik Save. I worked in the stock room & made a huge fort out of toilet rolls & then fell asleep in it.’ Fesshole
And finally…
‘Start as close to the end as possible’. From Kurt Wonnegut’s 101 for creative writing (HT The Freelance Writing Network)
Weeknotes
This week I was mostly on the road. I ran a two day leadership and transformation workshop with the Diageo European leadership team in Dublin working in partnership with Trinity Business School which meant that I got to see the amazing Trinity Old Library and the stunning Book of Kells (a not-so-fun fact about the Book of Kells - it was made by young monks in the early 9th Century who subsequently all tragically died, poisoned by the very paint they used to create it). I then came to Shrewsbury to run a session with the leadership team of an education trust (something of a mental mid-week handbrake turn). Next week I’ll be out in Abu Dhabi working with some finance types out there on agile transformation.
Thanks for subscribing to and reading Only Dead Fish. It means a lot. If you’d like more from me my blog is over here and my personal site is here. If you liked this episode do share and pass it on, and do get in touch if you’d like me to give a talk to your team or talk about working together.
My favourite quote captures what I try to do every day, and it’s from renowned Creative Director Paul Arden: ‘Do not covet your ideas. Give away all you know, and more will come back to you’.