The higher order of leadership

DEAR Captains,

Much of what we learn about leadership and management focuses on practical skills: setting goals, delegating, developing teams, giving feedback and handling difficult conversations.

These are important. Every leader-manager needs them.

However, the higher we rise, the less sufficient these individual skills become. A chief executive, unit head or leader-manager of a public institution must work above any single task or technique. At this level, we are responsible for the direction, performance and health of the whole organisation.

It is the higher-order work of a leader-manager, understood through five responsibilities.

1. Being honest with reality.

The first responsibility is to be honest with reality. This requires us to define reality clearly, establishing what is and what is not, without allowing our likes, dislikes or emotional attachments to distort what we see.

The higher we rise, the more likely reality reaches us through reports, meetings and people who may filter what they communicate. We may receive plenty of data but still misunderstand what is happening.

Defining reality requires us to distinguish activity from results, symptoms from causes, and temporary disturbances from deeper patterns. We must notice what people are saying, not saying or afraid to say.

We must also look outside. Changes in customers, technology, demographics, regulation and public mood may reshape our future before appearing in our financial statements.

We need to ask: What is really happening? What has changed? Which assumptions are we still carrying? What are we failing to see? Where are the risks and opportunities? What should we keep, abandon or modify?

A leader-manager cannot respond wisely without first being honest with reality.

2. Act while reading the situation.

Leader-managers do not operate from a distance. We must participate in events while observing what they reveal.

Example, while chairing a meeting, we must notice who is engaged, who has withdrawn, where resistance is developing and whether agreement is genuine or merely polite.

We must also read the emotions, relationships and interests influencing the conversation.

We need to be inside the action while mentally stepping outside it to see what is happening.

Every action produces new information. Success may reveal an opportunity. Failure may expose a mistaken assumption.

People and circumstances may change. Plans must guide us without becoming straitjackets.

We need check-in points to compare results with expectations, examine assumptions and adjust when necessary.

Leader-managers should listen first and speak last. If the most senior person speaks too early, others may arrange their views around the leader-manager’s position. Important information may never reach the table.

To act while continuing to read and adjust is leadership and management in motion.

3. Manage today, build tomorrow.

Every organisation lives in two time horizons.

We must perform today.

Customers must be served, commitments fulfilled, standards maintained, employees supported and problems resolved.

Without current performance, there may be no organisation left to inherit the future.

We must also prepare for tomorrow by developing people, renewing capabilities, exploring opportunities and responding to changes that may make today’s successful practices obsolete.

The challenge is not choosing one over the other. It is managing both simultaneously.

Some leader-managers exhaust their people, postpone investment and neglect succession to produce present results. They make today look successful by borrowing from tomorrow.

Others speak about transformation while allowing present performance to deteriorate.

But we cannot build tomorrow if we repeatedly fail today.

We must make work productive while developing our people.

We must use present strengths while building new ones, and protect what remains valuable while changing what no longer serves us.

Managing today preserves performance. Building tomorrow preserves relevance.

4. Move the whole system.

Knowledge and good intentions are useful only when translated into coordinated action.

At senior level, personal effort is no longer enough. We must align people, priorities, structures, information and resources so the whole organisation moves in the intended direction.

An announcement is not execution. Neither is a strategic plan or decision recorded in the minutes.

A decision becomes actionable when people know what must be done, who is responsible, the deadline, and who must be consulted or informed. Without clarity, sensible decisions dissolve into delay and confusion.

Communication is not something we add after a decision. It is part of making the decision work.

Meetings must become working mechanisms rather than rituals. Each should have a clear purpose, the right people and a defined outcome, ending with responsibilities, deadlines and follow-up.

Moving the system also means putting capable people where they can create the greatest value, including major opportunities.

The test is not how hard the leader-manager works. The test is whether people across the organisation understand the direction, accept responsibility and act without continually waiting for the leader-manager.

A strong leader-manager does not merely move people. A strong leader-manager builds an organisation capable of moving.

5. Exercise judgement.

Finally, we come to judgement. Decision-making is part of judgement, but they are not the same.

A decision is the visible choice.

Judgement is the deeper capacity to determine what should be chosen, why, when to act and what consequences we are prepared to accept.

Senior leader-managers rarely choose between something clearly right and wrong.

More often, we choose between competing priorities, risks and imperfect possibilities.

We must judge what matters most, what can wait, what must change and what should be preserved.

We must balance present performance with future capability, speed with consultation and organisational interests with stakeholder needs.

We must judge when to direct, persuade, negotiate, support or step aside, and what to entrust to others.

Most importantly, we must ask not only whether an action is legal or profitable, but whether it is right for the organisation.

Good judgement requires the humility to review our decisions.

When something fails, we must ask whether the problem lies in implementation or our original judgement.

The most useful questions are: What needs to be done? What is right for the organisation?

What are the likely consequences? What will this decision solve, and what new problems might it create?

Judgement comes last because it draws upon all the other responsibilities. We must judge the reality we have faced honestly, the situation while acting within it, the balance between today and tomorrow, and how the whole system should be moved.

Work beneath work

Dear Captains, the higher-order work of leadership and management can be summarised as: Being Honest With Reality. Act While Reading. Manage Today and Build Tomorrow. Move the Whole System. Exercise Judgement.

These are not separate steps. We move continuously among them. Being honest with reality informs judgement. Action reveals new reality.

Today’s performance creates the capacity to build tomorrow. Judgement guides the system, while its response provides new information.

Goal-setting, delegation, coaching, feedback and difficult conversations remain essential.

But they are the instruments. The higher-order work determines how, when and why those instruments should be used.

The higher we rise, the more honest we must be with reality, the longer the future we must consider, the larger the system we must move and the more consequential our judgement becomes.