Are you a Courageous Leader?

Where do you lead your people from?
I worked for a large corporate for almost 20 years, and when I became a Manager in my mid twenties, I had a very blinkered view in regards to how to manage people. My basic philosophy was that I simply had to tell people what to do and they would do it. If they did not do what I asked, then all I had to do was get really angry with them and this would basically fix the problems I was experiencing. I really had a problem understanding why this approach would not work, as my instructions were clear and I was being very upfront in relation to what I wanted.
The fact that I could not get my people to perform in a way that I deemed to be satisfactory really perplexed me, especially because my managers had always treated me the same way and I had followed their directions because I was scared of the consequences if I didn’t. Come to think of it, this fear meant I would basically do anything that they said. If they could manage like this, why didn’t it work for me? After all I weighed about 140kg and made a pretty good stand over man. I suppose looking back, people did follow my orders, but because I was always a perfectionist, their efforts would never be good enough.

The other thing that I could not understand was that my people were never really happy. I never saw them joking around and having fun, at least not in my presence. I tried to inspire them to have fun, but they did not seem to react to my efforts. The other management trait that I displayed was to take my people’s lack of performance personally, which made me even angrier and only provided me with the ability to yell even louder.

A few years later as I approached the age of 30, I was told by a colleague that had previously worked with me that they were fascinated by the way that I was able to instill fear in people, even a whole team. This came as a total shock to me, because I was only doing what I had previously experienced. The problem was that I was following the example set by the managers that I never enjoyed working for. About the same time I had a couple of fantastic managers come into my life, who also turned out to be great mentors. They were concerned about my personal development and helping me to plan and achieve my career aspirations. I enjoyed working for these people more than ever was because they were “Leaders” not just managers. I can now clearly identify them as leaders because they paid attention to the development of their people. It’s interesting that they all worked in the same division, which was well known for its outstanding performance.

It was then that I clearly identified that I was a manager concerned with the day to day grind, rather than a Leader who was interested in developing my people. It was also at this time that one of my mentors told me that I should always lead from the middle, which at the time was very confronting for me. At that time, my perception of leadership was that I should walk in front of my team and make them come on the journey with me, skull dragging them if necessary. I also thought that it was necessary to move behind them at times to give them a hurry up, so you can see why the notion of Leading from the middle seemed quite daunting.

Once I worked out that I could lead from the middle and take the journey with my people, I became very successful and well respected for the authentic connections that I developed with my teams.

This small piece of advice was one of the most powerful pieces of information that I have ever received in relation to achieving outperformance, and I get a lot of pleasure out of sharing this with other people today.

So I pose a couple of questions to you:
· Do you see yourself as a Manager managing, or a Leader developing your people?
· What position are you Leading your people from?
As a final point, I must acknowledge that to move from the identity of a Manager to the identity of a Leader takes real courage.

To talk more about Leading from the middle and Courageous Leadership, please call me on P: (03)9555 7955 or E: scott@neuralnetworks.com.au or visit our website at http://www.neuralnetworks.com.au/