Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:33: Leadership is about, "Be yourself more with skill"

00:02:25: Idea for action 1: involve and not solve

00:04:17: Idea for action 2: know your shadow that you cast

00:06:13: Go-to guru

00:06:22: Relevant podcast episode

00:06:28: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast.  And this episode is part of our Squiggly Skills Sprint series, where we've recorded 20 episodes, each of them are less than seven minutes long, to help you build some career development momentum.  In each episode, Sarah and I are going to talk about a Squiggly Skill, what it is and why it matters, we're going to share an idea for action from each of us, give you a go-to guru and a podcast episode so that you can listen and learn a bit more. 

And we really, really want you to turn this Squiggly Skills Sprint into your own learning streak.  And for anyone who lets us know how they're getting on and who completes the 20-day streak, we can't prove that, so we trust you, but if you tag us that you've done the sprint, you've completed the streak, then what we will do is we'll get in touch with you and we will invite you to a free Five Skills to Succeed virtual workshop that Sarah and I are going to be running in September, so we can help you dive even deeper into the world of Squiggly Careers.  All you've got to do is tag @amazingif in any of your social posts, and then we'll be in touch.

Sarah Ellis: In this skills sprint, we're talking about leadership.  And I think often in ladderlike careers, leadership was all about your position on that ladder, how high up the hierarchy you were.  Whereas now I think in Squiggly Careers, we all find ourselves leading in some way at some point, whether it's projects, cross-functional groups. 

And actually we did a podcast about when to lead and when to follow, and I think our roles in organisations are much more fluid now than they've ever been before.  And my favourite definition of leadership, and someone laughed at me the other day when I said this, they were like, "Who has a favourite definition of leadership?"  I was like, "I do!"  But it comes from Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones in their book, Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?  And they describe leadership as, "Be yourself more with skill".

I really like this idea of being a leader or becoming a leader or developing your leadership skills is not about changing yourself, it's about almost the active choice to want to be a leader and then really thinking about how you develop the skills based on who you already are and what you've already got, and letting go of this pressure that being a leader does not mean you need to be perfect, it doesn't mean knowing all of the answers.  It's much more about thinking about what have you got to offer, and how can you just continually always be a work-in-progress leader.

Helen Tupper: I really like the idea of sort of level-less leadership, you know, that we're all leading.  I think it definitely helps me to think about, "Well, how in a working week can I be myself more with skill on the things that I'm working on?"  It feels much more approachable and actually links a lot into my idea for action, which is about when you are in those moments when you want to be leading, take the approach of involve and not solve.

So, I think ladderlike leadership looks very much like solving it for other people, telling them what to do, coming up with the answers, you're the idea generator.  But all that really does is, it stops people feeling empowered and it actually reduces the likelihood they'll take action, because they're not very connected to those ideas or those suggestions. 

What we really want to do is be much more involving in our approach, because then people are more committed, they're probably building better ideas because you're bringing in other people's brains, and that's going to be better for them as an individual and better for their organisation too. So, some specific ways that you can take an involve versus solve approach.  When you are discussing with people on projects or in teams, whatever this moment is that you're looking to lead in, questions like, "How would you approach this situation?"  "What is your perspective on…?" or, "I'm a bit stuck with this, what's your take on it?"  All of those ways of inviting in other people's perspectives, ideas, and opinions are really important ways that you can take more of an involve-don't-solve approach.

Sarah Ellis: And previously, I worked for a brilliant leader, where he would often say and signal to me, "I've not done this before.  Let's figure this out together".

Helen Tupper: Nice.

Sarah Ellis: That never felt worrying, that just felt empowering.  And if anything, I wanted to do an even better job for that person because of it.  So again, letting go of that pressure of, "Well, I should know all the answers".  And my idea for action here is to do with the shadow that you cast as a leader.  So someone once said to me, "Never underestimate the shadow that you cast when you're leading a team or a big project".  And I think what really struck me here is the importance of, the shadow that you cast comes not from what you say, but from what you do.  And sometimes this is described as the say-do gap.

So maybe we say, "Oh, I really care about learning and development as a leader".  And you might really mean it, but if your teams or the people that you work with never see you do that, they never see the actions that back that up, then they start to doubt that you really mean it.  So, it's the kind of classic "actions speak louder than words".  And I was reflecting on the shadow that I cast, particularly when I was leading teams in bigger organisations. 

And the important thing to realise here is, your shadow doesn't need to be all things to all people, and it doesn't need to change all of the time, but it is worth thinking about what are the two or three things that you really want to show up in your shadow. So for me, I was thinking it's that I care about people's careers and their learning and development, and I think pretty consistently people would say that about me.  I'm good at scanning and reading rooms, and what would be Zooms now, and figuring out how to make stuff happen.  So, I was often quite good at helping people to figure out, "Okay, you've got to get this project underway, we need to involve this person, how do we do that?"  And I think I'm pragmatic. 

I think I'm a pragmatic leader who someone once said to me, it takes quite a lot for me to get flustered, because naturally I'm quite a zoomed-out person.  I think that helps me to have perspective, and that's quite useful as a leader.  So, this doesn't need to be a really long list, but I think maybe know what you want to have on your leadership list and connect it back to "be yourself more with skill".  All of those things are some of my natural talents.  It's then how do you build on those natural talents and apply those in your leadership roles. So our go-to gurus here are Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, and you can listen to my interview with Rob on the podcast if you want to learn more about Why Should Anyone be Led by You.

Helen Tupper: And another episode is episode 236 where we talk about How to Know When to Lead and When to Follow.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you for listening to this Skills Sprint, we hope you found it useful.  We'd love you to share and subscribe so you don't miss a sprint.  And that's everything for this episode, so bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.