From theory to reality: Implementing innovative leadership concepts that last

Hal was a new leader over a team of six followers. He made a commitment to his manager to be a “learning leader” and read leadership books to improve his skills. Almost every month at team meetings, Hal included a report on his latest book and the leadership techniques he wanted to put into practice. At first the team was receptive, but after the first few books a pattern emerged. Hal would talk about what he learned and implement the new methods…until he read the newest book on his list, leaving the focus of the previous book aside as yesterday’s news. The team became exasperated with Hal’s technique. of the day only to have it replaced with a newer model. Worse still, the theory stayed at that, theory. Hal evaluated himself based on his knowledge; the team evaluated him based on his behavior. Hal eventually lost his role as team leader; all that theory never coming to reality.

As of this writing, there are over 60,000 leadership books on Amazon. Each author (including me) tries to put a unique spin on some aspect of leadership in the hopes of appealing to leaders of all stripes. Some books have been very influential (think The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), while others not so much. With so many options on the market and new ones being released all the time, a leader can feel overwhelmed with the amount of authors yelling at them how to be a better leader. Even if a leader narrows his reading list down to a few books, he is faced with what to do with the concepts the author is selling. Perhaps it’s a topic for discussion at a staff meeting or the basis of a team-building exercise at an outside meeting. Most of the time, today’s hot concepts stop at just that: concepts. Translating leadership concepts into reality that can truly grow a leader’s skills requires deliberate action.

Do you want to be more intentional when weaving leadership concepts into your leadership structure? Consider these five takeaways:

1. Set expectations with yourself and with the team. – A team deserves to know what to expect from its leader, including the desire to increase leadership skills throughout the team. Make sure your team knows that you are an active learner and, in the spirit of building skills across the team, you want to experiment with the concept of leadership. It is particularly important that you treat leadership experiments as you would any project; have a goal, a schedule, activities, and any skills you expect from the team and yourself.
2. Actively learn, selectively experiment – I say this as a leadership author: authors look for provocative ideas that put new twists on leadership in the hopes that it will catch fire and sell millions of copies. As a learning leader, it’s your job to filter out concepts that won’t work well on your team and only use those that have a higher chance of success. for example in No rules Rules, Netflix’s Reed Hastings has instilled a culture of minimalist policies that allow employees to do things that many other companies wouldn’t. A mid-level leader cannot realistically implement this concept if his or her organization is more policy-driven.
3. Don’t let experiments get in the way of getting the job done – At the end of the day, the team still has commitments to meet. Experimenting with the concept of leadership is certainly fine as a means of developing the skills of a team. However, if you have team members burn the midnight oil to do their daily work, then the experiment will have less chance of success. And team members are likely to resent the experiment because it creates more work. Be open to feedback from the team on the frequency of experiments and how much time team members are expected to spend.
4. Postmortem of the experiments – After the experiment is complete, give an honest evaluation of the experiment; what concepts worked well, what didn’t work well, and what concepts (if any) the leader and team agree to keep practicing. It is perfectly acceptable to come to the end of an experiment and decide that none of the techniques will pass.
5. demonstrate adaptation – As a leader, I got really excited about a new leadership concept only to revert to old behaviors over time. Focus on a small number of leadership improvements (between one and three) and demonstrate through action how you have incorporated the improvements. A team will follow the example of its leader. If you change, your team will change; if you go back to your old ways, the team will follow suit.

There is no shortage of leadership tips and tricks that any leader willing to learn can take advantage of. Just be intentional about what you decide to take on and focus on bringing leadership concepts to life.

See The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People here.