I’m often asked, “what does your tagline, #everybodyleads, mean”? What it really comes down to is about creating and developing a pipeline of prepared individuals.
Historically, organizations only develop team members after they transition into a formal “leadership” role. This approach goes against everything we know about how adults learn.
We’ve not done a good job distinguishing between managing and leading. We’ve associated “leadership” with a title or role, which equates to increased pay. The concern within organizations is that development will ultimately cost them more in salary expectations.
One of the biggest critiques of the pipeline approach is that the organization will be filled with leaders. I can’t think of anything better!
Lets explore some reasons why…
Organizational citizenship-
One of the greatest gains having a developed pipeline is the idea that you increase your organizational citizenship. By doing so, you have a large part of your team members who are more supportive of the organization’s mission, core values, strategies, and so much more.
Reality check–
There are many in the organization who aspire to leadership positions. In my years of experience, many who have been through leadership development better understand the demands of the work and therefore many rethink the decision – opting to remain individual contributors. The benefits of this ensures that we have developed team members who are far more supportive of leadership (decisions, actions, etc.) then before.
Project teams and workgroups-
Don’t forget that if you are leading a project, leadership development is important for you as well. Project/team leaders typically are working on short term projects. Research has shown that employees working on short term projects have less commitment overall. Project leaders often lack positional power. This means that you must rely on influence power alone. Leadership development is a definite must!
Reduces the leadership burden-
As more employees and team members are aligned with organizational strategies, the burden on the formal managers decreases drastically. Its not surprising that there as many employees who don’t want anything to do with leadership roles because they see the extreme pressures of the role.
Developed team members can provide support because they better understand the work of leadership. Therefore they tend to speak more favorably about the organization, aide in change management, and understand the overall whole of the organization, or are better organizational citizens. In shifting some of these functions, formal leaders are now able to engage in the actual work of leadership! For example, developing team members and engaging them.
Leadership is simply an attitude of self-knowledge, awareness, and behaviors. This is why #everybodyleads is the Archetype Learning Solutions tagline, as well as #reenvisionleading. Both are important and necessary as we shift the organizational paradigm from managing to leading! Having a well-prepared pipeline of ready leaders provides huge advantages for a team or an organization.
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