How To Lead When You're Not The "Big Kahuna"

Tuesday 1 February, 2011

by Kevin Berchelmann

Anybody can lead from the front. It takes skill to lead from the back! This article is about most of us - the most of us who aren't the CEO of our organisations, the functional focal-point or the principle revenue-driver. Most of us, however, can and should still provide real value to our organisations.

Leading is tough business. Not necessarily complex (versus simple), but it's not easy, either. Add to that being a "support" function, or "back office" role, however, and it gets even harder.
Leading the business when Not Obviously in Charge (NOiC) simply takes more effort. We've got to work harder at it, and make fewer mistakes. Our margin for error is very slim...

• Build Your Credibility
  
  First, you've got to pass the Credibility test. Credibility comes from trust, and trust is made up of integrity, compassion, and competence. Credibility, therefore, uses trust (the currency of leadership) to make leaders. Further, this credibility must be evidenced in three areas:
  
  
  1. In your function
     
     First and foremost, you've got to know your stuff. I'm talking about the grunt work. Transactional, tactical, decidedly non-strategic. It forms the foundation for your leadership credibility.
     
  2. In the business
     
     Without sounding too flippant, you can only be valuable if you show real value. And you can't show real value to the organisation unless such value ties in directly to the success of the business - which, of course, means you must have knowledge of the business enough to determine same.
     
     Frankly, you must know more about the business, as a NOiC, than our more direct-impact brethren. We can't provide leadership if we are not precisely clear on where we're trying to go.
     
  3. In leadership
     
     Regardless of function, you need to be or become a go-to person for leadership success. Not just a functional expert, but someone who attracts followers because of leadership acumen, not simply functional expertise.
     
     Further, we need to get really good at making decisions - rapidly - when they can be made. Some will be wrong - there's risk in leadership - and we've just got to pick ourselves up, dust off, and jump back in the game.
     
     And we've got to get good at making hard, definitive stands on future unknowns. We don't have a crystal ball, but we are the best and most likely suspect to define what our functional future will look like, and since actions today impact results tomorrow, we'd better get good at guessing.
     
     Of course, we'll call it "watching trends", "monitoring the industry" and "surveying others in our space", but in reality it's still just a good guess. We've got to get good at it, and be prepared to make a firm stand on those assumptions and our related decisions.
     
  One last thing: credibility-building must sometimes start at the very bottom. For example:
  
  My first corporate job was as the "Corporate Training and Quality Improvement Coordinator" for a large manufacturer. After facilitating my first "quality improvement team" meeting, lasting nearly four hours, I was disappointed when I had to tell my boss that the biggest contribution from that session was the apparent need to have stripes painted on our dilapidated parking lot.
  
  While lamenting this news to my boss, he didn't seem the slightest bit concerned. He looked me right in the eye and said, "Sometimes to get others to go where you want them to go, you've first got to 'paint some stripes.'"
  
  He was right. Sometimes, we have to prove real credibility at the basic level before reaching for those things bigger, better, stronger and faster.
  
• There's No Complaining
  
  Or whining, moaning, or commiserating. There's simply no room for it, and no one wants to hear it anyway. No one even listens to it, except that they hope they'll then get the chance to reciprocate, moaning to you about their problems. Of which you won't want to hear either...
  
  You're either part of leadership or part of the whining and complaining crowd. The two groups do not overlap one iota. If you haven't been, then great. If you have, stop. Now.
  
• Keep It Together 
  
  There's no crying in leadership. By that I mean you can never show yourself out of control. Your employees don't need to see you as an example of how to run in circles, waving your arms over your head screaming, "The sky is falling!". They've already got 'panic' down to an art form.
  
• Don't Assign Blame To Others 
  
  Don't dilute your credibility by assessing blame to others for hard decisions. When you say things like "Hey, it wasn't my decision", or "I don't agree with it any more than you do", your personal credibility as a leader takes a hit.
  
  You believe the lessons being learned are that you're "a good guy/gal", and are "on their side" with these seemingly "bad" decisions. In reality? Those employees just learned that you're not it. You clearly aren't a decision-maker, so when I really need one, I'll remember that.
  
  As an NOiC leader, never assign blame to others for hard decisions. It's a "we" thing for all in leadership.
  
• Make Others Look Good 
  
  You've heard of "Making Kings"? How about "Building Empires"? Well, they aren't the same thing, and they probably don't mean what you think they mean.
  
  Zig Ziglar once wrote that "You can have anything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people get what they want". In NOiC leadership, this is doubly true. Our goal should be to create the most successful environment we can, through our actions, decisions, and results, for the entire organisation.
  
  In doing so, we're certainly going to make some "others" successful or "look good". This is as it's supposed to be.
  
  Don't view this as a zero-sum game, where someone else succeeds on the back of your efforts; look at it as another key leadership figure in your organisation has succeeded largely because of you. You've created an ally and the organisation is better-served. Win-win all around.
  
  Further, empire-building is passé. At least in its traditional sense. As NOiC leaders, it's critical that we stop this oft-incessant attempt at making our departments, regions, functions, or offices "bigger", and focus on making these things more valuable. It's not the size of these things, it's how valuable we are perceived by the rest of the organisation. That's a big difference.
  
• Go After The Big Fish
  
  Big results. Things that matter. Risky, yet valuable efforts create our critical personas of decision-making and problem-solving. More importantly, we become go-to leaders.
  
  Become a critical center of influence based on value. Create an environment around you of success, of a willingness to do whatever it takes, and most importantly, to be part of the leadership team, versus just one more behind-the-scenes subject expert. We need fewer geeks, more leaders (no offense to geeks).

This article isn't an absolute playbook. Leading from the rear requires a lot of effort - of real heavy lifting - to be successful. The rewards, however, become more obvious as you head down the path:

More Efforts = More Value
More Value = More Significance
More Significance = True Leadership

And that's true whether from the front or the rear.

Source:ceoonline.com