Why leadership is a soft skill
OFTEN, leadership is equated with people skills or described as “soft skills.” Sometimes, leadership is distinguished from management, where experts like John Kotter link leadership with change and management with predictability and order.
For this write-up, leadership is the ability to influence the ways people think and feel to the point that they take decisive and responsible action.
Leadership is selling ideas, motivating teams, gaining commitment, modeling behaviour, engaging in dialogue, aligning organisations, and getting results. It’s a skill set that runs the gamut from easy to train to downright challenging to develop. Some people acquire these naturally, but most acquire them through practice and application. Some learn leadership through role models and mentors if they’re lucky, others through training programmes, and almost by osmosis. The point is that we can define leadership as a set of behaviours, and as behaviours, new and existing leaders can see it, learn it, and get better at it.
Expertise is the starting point for leadership development. It is based on job content and technical proficiency, and a track record of successful performance. Expertise is a potent mix of drive, intellect, and experience. In the expertise stage, you spend your time building a base of knowledge, learning the ropes, getting a lay of the land in terms of processes and procedures, developing and refining your ability to think analytically, diving below the surface of a problem, or looking beyond the obvious, driving for and getting results, perhaps leading a project or two, getting as smart as you can about everything related to the work itself, and continuously striving for mastery of the critical knowledge and experience in your job.
Most people become leaders, supervisors, senior managers, directors, or chief executives because we have developed expertise in what we do. Hence, the expert lawyer becomes a senior advocate; the excellent teacher becomes the headteacher, the great doctor becomes the medical director, the innovative engineer becomes the chief engineer. However, the problem is that the expert power that got us recognition and respect in our technical expertise area doesn’t always guarantee that we will become an effective leader in the organization.
The legal expert often doesn’t know a lot about quality assurance, marketing, engineering, sales, or financial analysis. Often the technical expert is quite adept with a detailed knowledge of their area of expertise. Regrettably, this is sometimes accompanied by a mindset that is only concerned with their area of the profession, to the detriment of the broader business picture.
Andy Kelly categorised the scenario described here as a T model type of leadership. This is seen as the vertical of the T where the individual, i.e., engineer, doctor, or lawyer, is an expert within their comfort zone.
Therefore, the leader living in the vertical only concerns themselves with their area of influence and can be oblivious to his executive team members’ concerns and challenges while sitting through top team meetings until the discussion infringes on their area of expertise. This is where they will immediately defend their patch against all encroachment on their turf. Sometimes, they may imply that other people at senior management level can advise or comment on their department’s issues as they do not have the expert knowledge. Kelly says topics such as strategy, the external market, and finance may be ignored as not relevant to them. These vertical leaders are only focused on the short term and obsessed with the operational issues, allowing the urgent to drive the important.
The major challenge is that the organisation
At the highest level of executive management, leaders need a mindset that sees the bigger picture and understands how the various parts of the business fit together and co-operate
needs leaders who have a bird’s eye view of issues and the business environment. At the highest level of executive management, leaders need a mindset that sees the bigger picture and understands how the various parts of the business fit together and co-operate. The leader has an external focus, understanding the market forces the business faces and how it interacts with its customers. Experts say that in the T model of leadership, the individual must be comfortable sitting on the horizontal part of the T, with a broad view of the organisation. The leader at the top of the T recognises that the focus has to be on the longer term and on the changes the business has to make to deliver the strategy. These leaders see the top team as their main team, not the team back in the department. They have responsibility for the management of a function, but their number one priority is delivering the agreed organisational strategy.
When working with organisations, the major challenge we leadership consultants face is helping leaders’ transition from the vertical to the horizontal. That pervasive force, managerial gravity, pulls the leader back into day-to-day problem solving, distracting them from the strategic challenges and eating up their time to manage the details. It is perhaps unsurprising given how comfortable the vertical of the T feels with its familiar skills, decisions, and problems. At the top of the T, there lies challenges and uncertainty, new problems, new opportunities that push us out of the comfort zone. That is where leadership development steps in. Very few are natural leaders; most of us must learn the tools, approaches, and models that help us lead people and organisations. Without support, learning, and coaching, the top of the T will always seem daunting, the vertical comfort zone familiar and safe.