The Synchronized Leadership Model
Twenty-first-century business requires agility. Agility from teams, institutions, and leaders. That agility comes from synchronised leadership. Despite the radical change in the environment, many institutions still cling to Twentieth-century management models. Those Industrial Age management models are ill-suited to guide leaders in the Information Age.
Perhaps the “king” of management models from the last century is the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid. The Blake-Mouton model, which uses a 0-9 scale to quantify the “production vs people” tension, is still in use in some circles and is good for creating leader archetypes for discussion.
However, the Blake-Mouton model has several shortcomings. First of all, the leadership environment is much more complex than a simple linear graph can describe. A two-axis grid implies there are only two things leaders must hold in balance, and those are dependent on each other. Secondly, a graph with a 0 to 9 scale implies a limit. By looking at a chart, some of us will set limits for ourselves and hold in tension those things that should be harmonised.
The leadership dilemma is not whether to balance people and mission; instead, it’s how to synchronise the various needs and priorities of a task, institution, and team members’ individual needs. At a basic level, leadership means working with people and managing things effectively. That means the most effective leaders find the best fit for people to a task within an institution to get something done. So, how do we visualise that?
The Synchronised Leadership Model
Leaders have many considerations and priorities to balance, but we can group most of them into three major categories: Institution, Project, and People.
The Synchronised Leader Model is neither linear nor binary. This model reflects the complex nature of integrating people, tasks, and institutions into a single mutually supporting system. Leaders who maximise the intersection of all three categories of needs will get very high performance from their team.
There’s tension between competing priorities; to say otherwise is to be Pollyanna, but “competing” doesn’t need to be “opposing.” In the Synchronised Leader model, leaders can move the circles around based on resources, staffing, and the situation. It’s a dynamic model that reflects the complexity of the environment with the realities of constrained resources. Ultimately, leadership is about people. But people operate in a real environment rather than a binary world. That makes the three sets of needs– Institution, Project, and People–independent variables rather than dependent. Being independent variables is a key point. It means a leader can commit energy or resources to something without necessarily reducing the ability to do the same elsewhere.
Institutional Needs
Organisations have institutional needs. Boards of directors and shareholders demand profits and efficiency, donors want to know their money is being used for the mission, manufacturers are concerned about quality, and everyone wants to maintain a good reputation in the community. Leaders must work within a structured or institutional framework and collaborate with other leaders who set agendas and allocate resources. They have to be respectful of the culture and process within that institution. Leaders who ignore their parent organisations and their institutional needs do so at their peril. The institution’s needs are legitimate and must be part of a leader’s calculus. Leaders must embody their institution’s values and transmit them to their teams.
As I’ve written before, if you can’t respect your institution, get yourself another institution. It’s the leaders’ responsibility to help their teams understand and accept their institutions’ needs and internalise their institutions’ values. Leaders who do that successfully will inspire confidence in their teams and provide them with a mission to connect with.
Project Needs
Each project has its own set of “needs” leaders must consider. Leaders can succeed by understanding and accounting for the various demands on their resources. Project needs are time and resource-driven, and so managing those things is usually a math problem. This is an area where many leaders prefer to “live”-math is straightforward to understand. We can produce charts and graphs to use in decision-making, and we can even allow the “data” to make our decisions for us. Accounting for project resources is certainly important, as I wrote above, but it can’t be the only way for us to lead. Said another way, because we manage things and lead people, the data isn’t the only answer.
People Needs
The third set of needs is the personal needs of the individuals on the team. Each person has their reason for what they do, as well as their skills. Leaders must know their people well enough to understand each individual’s motivation and abilities. By way of illustration, consider the case of professional football teams. Team managers will actively recruit players based on their athletic ability and, in some cases, for specific positions, such as goalkeeper or striker. However, those same managers also recognise that not every player aligns with the team’s culture or the other players. That same team manager might pass on a very talented player because they “don’t fit” with the team dynamic. The goal is to determine, by getting to know the player well, where a particular person is best suited and will be happiest. Happy players are usually the most productive.
The same principle of hiring compatible people and placing them where their skills are best utilised and their motivations are most effectively “fed” applies to any team, not just athletics. In my own military experience, we trained our personnel for specific jobs, but we were also keen to place people where they were happy and productive. It does no good for a leader to recruit a star performer only to have them drag the institution down because they are unhappy. So, how does a leader make the right choices? There are no shortcuts; leaders must engage with individuals on their teams and understand them. The most successful teams aren’t always the ones with the most talent, but rather those where the entire team is comprised of people who contribute, collaborate, and are happy.
Bringing It All Together
The real aim of the synchronised leadership model, then, is not to parrot their institution’s values, minimise cost, or create a happy workplace; rather, it’s to synchronise all three to make the “sweet spot” in the middle as large as possible. It’s a constant balance of sometimes competing priorities, but if done skillfully, it can create an impressively productive and happy team. Understanding and effectively transmitting institutional needs to the team leads to their internalisation of institutional values. Effective project management reduces stress on the team and provides them with creative space to innovate. Hiring and coaching “players” into the right spots in the institution so they can be their best harmonises the workplace and inspires people to be their best. The larger that “sweet spot” becomes, the higher the team’s performance.