What type of leader are you?

We are all leaders – we use leadership skills at different times in our lives – it’s just that some of us are also leaders in our jobs. Tim Roberts says he is continually amazed by how frequently we fail to harness the diversity of thinking styles in our relationships at work. It’s all too easy to criticise a leader for their opinion on what to do next and to judge our own opinion to be superior but it’s often a waste of potential

Working within leadership team disputes and conflicts, I continually hear these kinds of allegations and I witness the
disconnections and painful fallout they cause. I think this is
just as true in other kinds of leadership conversations that we
may not readily identify as having a leadership role, such as
husband-and-wife discussions, committees, and community associations or sports teams.

One of the most important things that leaders can do is to
understand how to build on the ideas of others in ways that get things done – and not become distracted by the urge to dominate and prove the other wrong.

We can use many perspectives to help us reflect on our
leadership styles. Four powerful and immediately practical frames are listed below.

These are adapted from the work of Bolman and Deal and I
read about them in the excellent and highly recommended Handbook of Mediation: Bridging Theory, Research, and Practice, edited by Margaret Hermann (see below for full reference).

None of these frames are right or wrong per se. An awareness
of these frames can allow a leader to make more effective
choices and to adapt their style to meet the needs of those
around them.

Structural Frame
Structural leaders handle ambiguity and disorder by employing
ordered ways of thinking and acting and using structures and
systems. This may include setting performance indicators, targets and goals, roles, and speaking about formal expectations and accountabilities.

Leaders who think in this frame set maintain procedures
and policies and focus people on tasks and deliverables. They
value deductive thinking, logic and hard facts.

Such leaders become preoccupied with finding structures to
control the issues they face. However, it is vital that this structure is appropriate and does not become a defensive routine.

It is important that this structural approach is articulated to
others clearly. Meetings are viewed as information-transfer portals, times for analysis and hard-headed decision-making.

Structural leaders may not pay close attention to people,
personalities, motivations and emotions and may be tempted to
impose technical fixes on adaptive and emergent situations.

Human Resource Frame
The HR leader is not an HR professional (but could be) but
focuses on people to motivate and care for people as they
achieve. They may be extroverted or introverted.

The HR leader pays attention to needs, aspirations and relationships in order to help people overcome confusion, uncertainty and fear. Loyalty is fostered towards this leader because he or she is responsive and caring and communicates concerns.

The HR leader rates listening to and respecting of others highly
and is keen to empower, give autonomy to others and help to
create opportunities for success. The HR leader makes decisions transparently, often through consensus and aims to maximise the understanding and commitment of others.

Political Frame
The political leader aims to build power and influence. The political leader is a natural navigator of partnerships and aims to build alliances by developing forums that allow concerns to be raised and negotiated.

Political leaders rate their ability to advocate and negotiate
as important. They are at ease in the powerplay that unfolds
and are, therefore, comfortable in disagreement and conflict.

One of the main aims of the political leader is to develop a
powerbase that gives them protection and influence so they can persuade those they regard as being important to their strategic cause. At an extreme, they can create empires within silos that become inward-looking.

An astute political leader is aware that people cannot always
be pleased and that fundamental differences in values, beliefs and interests will continue.

The weapon of choice of the political leader is the creating of
arenas where players can compete for resources, talk about
differences and commonality and where compromise may be reached some of the time.

Symbolic Frame
The symbolic leader’s approaches of choice are to provide vision, meaning, and inspiration. The symbolic leader helps people create new meanings and new identities and ways of behaving that support these new identities.

The symbolic leader helps people address loss of direction,
frustration and clinging to the status quo by offering them a
new vision and by building hope and commitment. The watchword of the symbolic leader is belief. Symbolic leaders reason that if they can give people something powerful they can believe in and hold onto, people will harness their potential and achieve.

Symbolic leaders understand that each event has numerous
potential meanings and they understand clearly that what is
most important is not what actually took place but the meaning
that is assigned to it. The power of the symbolic leader lies in his or her ability to reshape the meanings that people give to
what took place.

Symbolic leaders aim to help people create the most dynamic
meanings and to build strong emotional attachments to these. Symbolic leaders use story, metaphor, myth, ritual, ceremony,
etc. The symbolic leader derives much of their energy from passion, and emotions that spring from passion.

They make efforts to communicate passion, they value passion
as a currency and they benchmark against passion. The symbolic leader wants to be inspirational because this evokes
passion and motivates people to perform well, and they want to be seen to be doing so.

Symbolic leaders use meetings to communicate values and
to explore meanings. They want people to embrace accountability to take risks and be collaborative.

It seems to me, certainly in organisations I’ve worked with
recently, that symbolic leaders are needed to create the transformation that these organisations desire.

What is particularly interesting is that those who favour a
structural approach with strong measurement systems are often sidelined and regarded as almost old-fashioned and pedantic.

HR leaders are criticised for being soft and political leaders
are mistrusted. Yet, without a combination of frames, things
collapse.

It’s certainly true that big aspirations call for powerful new
meanings, gripping stories and engaged people but every leadership frame is required to make the dream a reality and to keep it working.

It’s no different in a police team or in a family. The vital aspect
of leadership is, as it always has been, having conversations that help people understand their differences as well as the space needed to help them blend these strengths.

Reference
Adapted from Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and
Leadership by LG Bolman & TE Deal (2003) 3rd edition, Jossey-
Bass.

Cited in MS Herrmann, (Ed) (2006) Handbook of Mediation:
Bridging Theory, Research, and Practice, Blackwell, chapter 18
by NH Katz: Enhancing Mediator Artistry: Multiple Frames, Spirit, and Reflection in Action.

Leadership Frames
● Identify your natural preference(s) and which frames you are least comfortable with (10 minutes)
● Ask two other people for their assessment of your preferred
frame and for their opinion of which one you are least attracted to. Why do they say this? (20 minutes)
● Find others who prefer the same frame as you. Working
together, what can you offer the culture of this organisation
and those you serve in the next two years? What are the risks that your frame brings with it? (20 minutes)
● Present this (5 minutes)
● Find others who are all different to your frame. What needs to happen, specifically, for you to build on each other’s strengths and to counter each other’s weaknesses? (20 minutes)
● What can you offer the culture of this organisation and those you serve in the next two years? (30 minutes)
● Present this (5 minutes).