We once worked with a manufacturing company that was trying to move from a top-down leadership approach to a more participation-focused system.
Brian, a manager of one of the larger plants, readily accepted the challenge building a new concept of leadership and was doing an excellent job of making unfamiliar and sometimes difficult choices.
One day we commend him on the strides he had made in involving those reporting to him. We then asked how his subordinate supervisors were coming in the process of involving their people. Brian blanched and said faintly, “That’s part of my job, too?”
All those who oversee subordinate managers, from vice-presidents and division heads to floor directors and line managers, are responsible for developing not only their own leadership capacities, but also those of the people below them.
The task facing these leaders of leaders can, in a way, be thought of as managing the process of leadership itself.
This is absolutely crucial in building effective human systems. Unfortunately it is regularly overlooked in the workplace. Countless employees, for example, say that the quality of management in their organization depends almost entirely on who you work for or what department you are in. Some managers are great. Others are terrible.
Such extreme variations in management are a sure sign that the process of leadership is going unmanaged. Leadership is being determined, either partially or entirely, by the whims of individual personality and temperament. Management is little more than a crap-shoot, and poor, counterproductive and even destructive dynamics can, in such circumstances, continue for years on end.
Avoiding such pitfalls beings with leaders like Brian expanding the circle of reflective leadership to include those below them. They do this by setting clear standards through training, coaching, and mentoring, and then reinforcing them though regular systems of feedback, encouragement, and recognition.
Leaders own personal improvement is of course indispensable to organizational development. But movement towards true collective excellence obliges leaders at all levels to consider not only their own effectiveness, but also that of each subordinate leader within the scope of their authority.