Is There An Essential Attribute Of Leadership Excellence?

Let’s dig below the surface

Leadership has amazing diversity. It seems as if two leaders can be almost polar opposites in their leadership approach and both be equally successful. We could conclude that there are no common factors to leadership success at all if we simply observe the public personas. However, we all know that leadership runs much deeper than surface observation.

My own research on leadership is very much concerned with the essential elements of leadership. In my book Evolve, I hypothesize that successful leadership has an evolutionary basis. Leadership approaches that caused better group cooperation prevailed over time. It makes sense that groups that cooperated well under a leader would outcompete less-cooperative groups. As Homo sapiens developed greater cognitive ability and linguistic skills, more sophisticated and farther-reaching mechanisms of leadership developed. Interestingly, the increase in leadership reach did not occur continuously, but rather in a few discrete steps. Today, we sit at the top of these steps, with leadership mechanism that can have us cooperate in hundreds of millions.
 

This most sophisticated form of leadership is called the Futurizing Voice. It is the ability of a leader to intentionally create a movement; a large community of people with a shared identity acting in a co-ordinated way to cause large scale disruption or change in a complex social system. It is this capability that has us positioned as masters of the planet (for good and for bad).

This is far from a surprising finding. Ask most people about leadership and you will soon find yourself in a discussion around a leader’s futurizing capability, an example of which is the capability to create and deliver a vision of the future. Examining case studies of leaders who have delivered on their visions is very important. To get the complete picture, however, I think that we also need to look at unsuccessful visions and ask ourselves why they failed. When you contrast the leadership of unsuccessful visions with that of successful ones, you start to zone in on the essential attributes.

In my research of both successful and unsuccessful visions, I find evidence that the futurizing voice is a powerful instrument of change when it is supported by the other modes of leadership given to us by our evolutionary past. It seems that each time our ancestors stepped up to a new level of leadership, they did not leave the old level behind. The new capability was built on the foundation of the previous modes of leadership. Today, we respond best to futurizing if we also witness the other differential voices of leadership.

The next step down from the futurizing voice is the Prosocial Voice. This is the leadership capability of building a strong social identity around the objective. Leaders with a strong prosocial voice are effective at communicating in a way that has people identify themselves with other members of the team. While the futurizing voice has us connect to a great cause, the prosocial voice has us connect to each other.

The futurizing voice and the prosocial voice combined as powerful motivators, but great motivation must be turned into action. It is here that the Command Voice comes into play. The Command Voice is about execution and delivery; it is the leadership capability to plan and to put plans into action. Without the command voice, a leader’s grand vision is all talk with no action.

The prosocial voice and the command voice can, therefore, be thought of as Essentials when it comes to leadership. However, if we want to keep burrowing down to the non-negotiable essence of leadership, there is one more leadership capability that is even more foundational – the heartfelt voice.

People work best when they work in an environment of psychological safety. This is (relatively) new terminology for a concept that is older than humanity itself. As humans, we yearn to amongst an inner circle of trusted colleagues, where we connect deeply with others, where we share a common purpose, and where feel safe to truly be ourselves. It is in this environment of psychological safety that we do our best work.

As a leader, therefore, it is more than a moral obligation to create this environment, it is essential for high performance. In the absence of the heartfelt voice, all the other voices fail. The command voice becomes that of a barking drill sergeant, the prosocial voice starts to look more like the work of a shallow social director and the futurizing voice becomes political ‘spin’.

Two leaders may indeed show up as polar opposites in their leadership approach and both be great leaders. Look closely though, and you will find a common attribute; an essential element. The Heartfelt Voice is the essential element of Leadership Excellence.  
 

Graeme Findlay is the author of Evolve: How Exceptional Leader Leverage The Inner Voice of Human Evolution and an Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School. He consults to the industry as an executive coach and change management advisor. Prior to specializing in leadership development, Findlay held executive management roles and was accountable for delivering operational transformations and performance turnarounds on world-scale mega-projects. His passion for high-performance teams led to academic research at Oxford University and HEC Paris.  Visit www.graemefindlay.com Connect Graeme Findlay