What Is Your Leadership Shadow?
Part of a leaders role is to shed light on the direction to be followed. But where ever there is light there is shadow and how every leader shows up, their attitude and behaviour has an impact which influences the quality of a businesses atmosphere and culture, which then affects results. In my virtual learning tutorial, we explore ego traps and how the way a leader shows has such an impact on atmosphere and performance. Here i share a case study that really brings this to light.
How a leaders shadow can impact
Take the story of George. He was a senior director leading a division of over 700 personnel. He had many positive leadership qualities: he was a deep thinker who shared profound alternative perspectives that stretched and challenged people’s thinking and inspired them to be relentless in how they approached problems.
The organisation of which George’s division was a part prided itself on having a culture of meritocracy, but from my first dealings with George and his team, I felt here was a sense of fear and trepidation around him. People referred to George as if his word was law; what he said was what happened. His team spent precious energy working out how to present things to him and finding the best time and way to approach him.
George actively avoided opportunities for more personal contact where relationships could be built. Priding himself on having a stern ‘no nonsense’ approach. People knew when he wasn’t happy, but he never fully explained what he needed from them. George’s dilemma, and the reason he engaged with me, was that he was unhappy with how his executive board was performing as a team. There was conflict, in-fighting and a resistance to pull together. This resulted in a loss of performance, low trust and an atmosphere of anxiety. People were constantly looking over their shoulders and covering up mistakes.
As part of an ongoing conversation about his team, I asked George how the way he was being as a leader might be impacting them. He pushed back, claiming he felt like he was being put on the spot and it was his team he wanted sorting out, not himself. Pointing the finger clearly at ‘them’, George was excluding himself from the issue, making it hard to address the team’s performance.
The team members were stuck in some tricky dynamics and they knew it. Some endeavoured to address this, but without George being willing to open up and reflect on the impact he was having, these became entrenched and stopped any real dialogue. One member in particular seemed subversive and would not be held accountable. A couple of others, highly committed to sorting out how the team behaved, supported the opening up tricky conversations, but when these were raised the rest of the team remained silent.
George, in the meantime, withdrew further and further, seemingly oblivious to or just not willing to look at the impact his behaviour was having.
Responsibility starts with the leader
This story demonstrates how a leader’s behaviour casts a shadow over those they lead and infiltrates and influences beyond any level of consciousness. The more senior a leader becomes the more visible they are to everyone else and the greater the impact of their behavior. Responsibility sits firmly on their shoulders
A leader may think they are only influencing the people they come into direct contact with, but how they leave those people, whether it’s in a resourced or un-resourced state, will then influence the impact their people have on others. And so the shadow is cascaded throughout the organisation.
Being driven to lead also means being committed to developing yourself
I meet many people in organisations who are ambitious and want to get ahead. But before they rush in I invite them to consider what their motivation is. I ask them the three questions below.
If you want to get ahead as a leader who really enables highly functioning teams and results, you might also want to consider them:
How prepared are you to be responsible for how your team is performing, not just results wise, but behaviour and relationship dynamics too?
To what degree are you willing to look inside yourself and do the necessary work that minimises the impact of the shadow you cast?
How open are you to sharing your developmental journey with your team?
No one on George’s team was prepared to share their personal objectives. The teams culture was too psychologically unsafe. When it comes to taking responsibility a leaders first job is to own up and be vulnerable. Even though that can be really hard, it is the access to creating a foundation of trust from which all effective teams eventually can grow.