The Best Leaders Are Predictable
Being predictable is a great trait in leadership. That's right, as boring as it sounds, consistency inspires trust. Life is unpredictable at uncertain at times, but your leadership shouldn't be.
Do you know how you lead? Do you know how you lead in a specific situation? Do you know how, through your leadership lens, you would respond during an unexpected situation? How do you really know how you would react, how you would lead?
Here are a few more questions that may hit a nerve; candidly, these questions may be more important than the first few I asked.
Does your team know how you lead? Do they know how you will respond during uncertain times or difficult situations? Do they know how do you respond to conflict? What is your preferred communication style?
Does your boss know?
Does the person who is interviewing you know what they are getting when they hire you to lead some of their people and business?
In other words, are you predictable?
One of the most important things you can do to become a predictable leader is to think about, define and then articulate your own personal leadership philosophy (an “LP”).
Having a personal leadership philosophy gives you consistency. This is a chance for you to be predictable. This is a way for you to manage expectations above your pay grade, below your supervision, and horizontally throughout the organization. This is a way for you to showcase who you really are when you are interviewing – what you are really about, what makes you tick, what decision-making and discernment grid you go through as the rubber meets the road in leadership and business. Your Leadership Philosophy is a lens that will illuminate, even before an event happens, your actions and responses. Without a leadership philosophy, your responses will reflect the tensions of the moment.
So, what exactly is a leadership philosophy? Let me first say what it's not:
It's not a one-pager that makes you look professional and sharp.
It's not just words.
It's not so you can punctuate "I'm this kind of leader" when asked at a professional development seminar, and you have to pull it off your hard drive to remember what it was.
It's not copied from your favorite business leader/author, pastor, football coach, military hero, or somebody else.
It's not incongruent with who you are.
So, back to "What is a leadership philosophy?"
It's you. When you say it out loud to people who know you well, they respond verbally and nonverbally, "Yep, that's Doug. It's in his DNA. That totally makes sense.”
It's informed by others. I know I said, "Don't copy your favorite ______," but that doesn't mean your leadership philosophy isn't inspired and informed by great leaders who came before you. My leadership philosophy is a tapestry of dozens of amazing leaders – but I made it my own and made it special by weaving their great leadership traits and my personal skills, values, gifts, and passions.
It's a one-pager (yes, you should write it). That way, it's portable, sticky, and straightforward. My leadership philosophy only has a handful of parts. I have a sticky title, and then I unpack each catchy title with some explanation—but it all fits on one page.
It's known. It's a system that lets your direct reports, boss, and cross-functional team know what you believe.
It's your compass. It guides how you are going to act. It clarifies what you expect from yourself and everybody else who is underneath your leadership.
It's memorized. If you don't have this thing memorized, it's not genuine.
It's well thought out. It takes significant time to get this nailed down. From what I've observed, this is not carving out one hour and coming up with one. If you do, it probably won't be memorized nor authentic. In fact, when we guide clients to develop their leadership philosophy, we have them go through other prerequisites first. That way, when they get to crafting their LP, they know that it's them, it's true, it's authentic, and it can be lived out with great predictability and success.
In short, a leadership philosophy guides all of your leadership decisions. Actually, that's not totally honest. It SHOULD guide all of your leadership decisions. But because none of us are perfect, and all of us have some wounds or baggage we carry around, we will drop the ball and not lead-out and live-out our leadership philosophy 100% of the time. But what's great, if you have a LP, and it meets all of the criteria I just described, you will get called out on it.
Someone who knows you well will know when you are not living out your leadership philosophy (even if they have never seen your one-pager). It sounds something like this, "Doug, you are all about taking care of yourself. You make your direct reports do good self-care for themselves, and you normally do this for you. You do this really well. But, honestly, you are dropping the ball on this right now. I can look at you and tell. You are tired and run down. What's going on?" Ouch to get that feedback. And, awesome to get that feedback. The reason someone gave me that feedback is because I'm predictable. My leadership philosophy matches my business lens and behaviors. But something I'm doing right now is unlike me. Something in this season, or in this week, or in this business meeting is unorthodox, unexpected, and outside the norm of what my sphere-of-influence expects from me. It's a wake-up call to get me back on board with living how I behave (and philosophize) as a leader.
If you don't have one, I encourage you to develop a leadership philosophy. This will benefit you, your team, your organization, and your business.