LEADERSHIP IN THEORY
Here’s How to Lead From the Back
You Should Give Away Power and Walk From Behind
Leading from the back sounds like an oxymoron. The word ‘lead’, in the context of management, has a connotation of someone being at the front. While in command or wielding authority, it can be difficult to imagine how leadership can occur while you’re behind everyone else. Since ancient times, Man had a vision: a leader is someone who stands at the top. The leader is someone who has his or her followers at beck and call. The leader rallies the people under him or her.
In an interview with The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent, Ryan Lizza, one of Barack Obama’s adviser described the former President’s actions in Libya as “leading from behind”. It was a comment on the Obama foreign policy to seek balance, to which the adviser said: “it was necessary for shepherding us through this phase”.
However, the aberrant-looking phrase originated from another influential political figure.
In his 1994 autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom”, Nelson Mandela described a leader leading from behind as a shepherd. The shepherd stays behind the flock, letting the weakest go ahead. As the others follow, all of them are unaware that they have been directed from behind. While it may seem like the shepherd is abrogating his leadership responsibilities, the observant one can notice that occasionally, he uses his staff to nudge the flock. At times, he notifies them of danger, then promptly veering them away.
In the context of management, such a leadership style breaks away from the traditional lead-from-the-front model. It is a style that suits the workplace of today due to shifting attitudes. However, the benefit is not one-sided: leaders get to have visibility and create more opportunities for innovation. Yet, most leaders are not equipped to lead from behind.
In reality, that is unsurprising.
Why are we here? Employees are now looking for purpose and 90% of them are willing to trade portions of their salary for more meaningful work. In response, companies are shifting their resources to focus on employee engagement. Instead of remuneration and perks, companies are choosing to build a greater employee experience — which makes HR professionals designers by default.
Anything can be designed: at Australian tech giant Atlassian, performance reviews are re-designed to discover “brilliant jerks”. At IBM, a holistic assessment was done, leading them to develop a “three-sphere” employee experience model for them to follow. At a large pharmaceutical company, employees are even allowed to control the amount of light coming in from their glass window through a phone application.
The employee experience has taken the main stage in today’s era of work. Glassdoor reviews are underscored. Prospects are doing their utmost to research about the company that they are interviewing for. Today, employees are increasingly chasing self-actualization and meaning, and some demographics are willing to do so at the expense of their salary and job security.
The change lies in the psychological association.
An engaged employee is one that believes in the organization’s mission. He or she is proud to be associated with the organization and would go far and beyond to deliver results. It’s about being larger than themselves: how can they contribute to the organization’s purpose?
As such, the traditional leadership model does not work.
Typically, the traditional leadership model revolves around ‘I’. It is about the leader’s ideas and direction. The leader commands and controls, exerting a large amount of influence over the teams. It revolves around a singular set of instructions, subject to change by a singular entity.
Leaders who fail to adapt to the needs of employees today will be left in unfortunate yesteryear. Instead, leaders need to ditch the idea of walking at the front.
From the Back, You See Everything
Many leaders are always looking forward — with the only occasional report from the back, leaders can often get blindsided. In such a critical role, it is through the actions that resulted in them being crippled. Without the right perspectives, employees can get dissatisfied, disengaged and unproductive.
Rather than stay at the front, leaders can create space for others to go forward.
Falling to the back of the line is not about abrogating leadership responsibilities. Recall the role of the shepherd: he still leads, ensures that everyone is banded in together and that they are not veering off-course. From the back, the leader can see those who are straggling, disengaged, discouraged, and then deal with the problems they engender. At the front, it is about injecting energy, providing guidance and rallying the entire team.
An effective is one who can pull from both ends, rather than excel from the front.
Give Away More Power
The more power you give away, the more powerful you become. While a strangely phrased quote, it is a leadership style that works overtime — this does not discount the times when holding on to the reins of power is necessary. During tough, bitter times, leaders can be forced to make difficult decisions, which require them to exercise their authority. In the larger picture, such is less effective in managing complex organizational systems.
- Create guides and lay out parameters. Space is given but uncontrolled is a disaster waiting to happen. Instead, align the team with the company’s mission and values. What is it that the team can do to contribute to the company’s core mission? How can they operate in a free space that would allow them to deliver results?
- Empower employees to build and experiment. Complicated challenges often rise at work and it can be difficult to tackle them head-on. However, when employees are allowed to venture on their own with the problem in mind, there are opportunities for growth. Instead of simply entrusting them the task and leaving it as it is, struggle with them. Work with them, refine their thoughts and guide them towards attaining their goals.
- Nurture employees to weather storms. When employees respond to problems in the face and forge new paths, they become sturdier. When a team becomes powerful collectively, the leader becomes more empowered in his or her role, which leads to a stronger collective overall.
Show the Danger, and Struggle with Them
World War 1 was fought in trenches and at the workplace, many employees are facing challenges like that. For instance, teams are left to face challenges without sufficient information. When the manager is sorely needed, he or she is nowhere to be found. When the team realizes that they are fighting on their own, trust and credibility are eroded — it takes eons for it to be regained, especially if the problem is severe.
However, great leaders are those who understand what constitutes as a danger. Depending on the type of work, it can be something like missing a deadline, being criticized by shareholders or losing a big corporate contract. For individual employees, each of them has their version of what it means to be ‘in danger’ for themselves and the team.
Employees feel like they are left in the trenches when they feel like they are in danger — even though they are not. Leaders need to pass on the right information so that the team does not feel like they are being left at the side.
Show Appreciation and Recognition
Suppose a team is working tirelessly to release version two of the company’s product. People can jumpy about deadlines and the project gets wearier and wearier nearing to the end. When the team wraps up the project, they are dismayed to find that the management team — who were not around with them throughout every extra hour of work — clinking glasses and patting their backs.
While appreciation and recognition are inherently different from each other, such situations are easy to avoid. Leaders need to:
- Identify the victories. What constitutes a win for the team?
- Celebrate success with varying intensities. Leaders don’t have to pop champagne bottles at every victory, but showing appreciation is still mandatory. A simple ‘thank you’ can go a long way.
- Find the small victories before the big. There is no need to wait for a big project to be completed before celebrating the victory. Small victories can also be highlighted. Creating collective ownership begets increased productivity — the team feels like they are truly part of the project and thus treasure every contribution they make.
Leadership is paradoxical. For instance, leaders give power away to be more powerful. Leaders also surface conflicts to solve conflicts. Such are the essential challenges for leaders, with seemingly opposite goals that require leaders to accomplish both — you can’t have one without the other:
- Laying out clear parameters and articulating strategies while also encouraging creative thought and experimentation
- Encourage innovation while maintaining expenditure
- Confront problematic job performance whilst promising employees opportunities to grow
By embracing the complexity of the challenge, leaders can then reach their solution smoother and faster.
Leading at the back is such a challenge and most leaders have a misconception about it: it is not instantaneous. We cannot simply wake up tomorrow and think about leading from the back, then making that happen at the workplace hours later.
Without the team’s trust, it will be difficult to lead from behind. However, when a leader makes it their goal to lead from the back, the team will take notice and appreciate the leadership. After all, it is always easier to ‘manage’, but harder to ‘lead’.
