Self Leadership and
The New Leadership Playbook
Blog by Andrew Bryant

This story is so familiar that I am sure you have heard it, experienced it, or are living it. Following success in a previous, project, department, or company, a manager or executive is promoted into a new leadership position and fails.

The premise for the promotion is that if someone is successful at leading one team, they will be successful leading any team, but this assumption is based on a common misconception of what leadership is, and how it works.

You Can't be a Leader without doing Leadership

I had a coaching client who was a brilliant marketer. She was creative and led her team to deliver excellent work for her company. She felt she deserved a promotion and the title of CMO. When this finally came, everything changed. The expanded team resented her, complained that she was absent, and the quality of work from her department suffered.

This CMO had confused being a leader with doing leadership, and she is not alone. Leadership books, posts, and memes focus heavily on the att...

The Executive Leadership Team (ELT) typically consists of the most senior leaders of a company, often with a CXOs title such as CEO, COO, CFO, CPO, CTO, and CRO. When the ELT works as One Team, the positive impact on culture and performance can be phenomenal, unfortunately, the majority of ELTs aren't even a team, they are a workgroup at best.

The Myth of the Executive Leadership Team

Just because your call it a team doesn't make it a team. A team operates with mutual accountability. Team members work together towards a common goal, tasks are shared, and success depends on collective performance. In a team, leadership is often distributed, and communication is more collaborative.

A workgroup operates with individual accountability. Each member has their specific tasks, and the group's success is the sum of the individual efforts. There is less interdependence compared to a team, and the focus is more on departmental or vertical achievement than collective goals. 

Most ELTs operat...

I'm not sure whether night sentries really call out, "Who goes there - friend or foe?" but I'm certain that foes don't announce their intentions before making an attack. The same is true in our personal or professional network.

Here's a hard truth, most of the people you know are neither friends nor foes, they are neutral. They will smile in the corridor, will nod in a meeting, and may even like your occasional post, but when push comes to shove and you actually need support, they are nowhere to be seen.

A true friend or ally will come to your aid in times of duress, even at personal or reputational risk. Such friendship should be nurtured and treasured. In my opinion, they are like owning priceless art, you must look after them, appreciate them, and you can't have too many or your attention will be diluted.

A foe in your network is easier to spot, as they will actively sabotage you whenever there is an opportunity. Your loss is their win. Such people see the world in terms of compe...

A manned trip to Mars within our lifetimes is a high probability. Billionaire, Elon Musk has his heart set on it, and there’s a modern-day space race between nations to get there first.

Just as the race to the moon gave us more down-to-earth technological advancements, like sneakers, digital photography, and wireless headsets, preparation for the moon is revealing how teams will function remotely.

Before I share some recent findings from Long Mars Simulations, let’s review what a Mars shot has in common with leading a team.

Leading Teams

1. Vision: Going to Mars is a bold and ambitious goal that requires a clear and compelling vision. The same is valid for leading a team. A great leader has a clear and inspiring vision for their team and knows how to communicate this as a ‘Why’ that motivates and excites others.
2. Strategy: To go to Mars, a lot of planning, resources, and expertise are required. The same is true for leading a team. An effective leader has a well-thought-out strategy
...

Collaboration is the behavior of working with others, in-person or virtually, to produce something. It is the nature of business and a key factor for success, yet it is often lacking.

Some years ago, I was asked to run a conflict management training for a software company in Singapore, I explained to the client that giving people conflict management strategies is a great idea, but the conflict would remain unless the underlying causes of the conflict were addressed. I asked:

"Who is in conflict with whom, and about what?’"

With more gentle probing, I discovered that the engineering team was motivated and rewarded to keep the servers online and secure. The innovation team was motivated and rewarded for developing new solutions and selling them to market.

‘I’m curious,’ I probed further. ‘Does the innovation team need to test their beta software on the engineering team’s servers?’

The answer was ‘yes’, and this was the source of the conflict because if the innovation team’s product ...

You might think that after the pandemic-induced remote and hybrid work leaders would have embraced social collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Yammer, or Facebook Workplace.

A recent report by Knowman showed that the effect of the pandemic has been that 64% of organizations indicate an increase in leadership activity on their chosen social platform but only 18% of leaders use the platform to create dialogue around important topics, and only 8% have a structured approach for doing so. 

When I was researching for 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸: 𝗕𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗹𝘀𝘁 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘀 (Ocean Reeve Publishing 2022), I spoke to many leaders who were looking forward to putting the pandemic behind them, getting everyone back to work, and returning to traditional management techniques. This traditional mindset ignores, at great cost, the gains made through collaboration, team performance, and employee engagement that mature use of social collaboration can deli...

Imagine you are traveling on a plane, there's a loud bang, and the oxygen masks fall from the ceiling. 

The pilot comes out of the cockpit and says either:

a) “Obviously there's a bit of a problem, can you get into small groups and discuss options, as I would like full buy-in before I make a decision.” 

Or

b) “Ladies and gentlemen, put on your oxygen masks and remain calm; we are experiencing some difficulties but I will get us out of this”? 

You chose b) right?

Clearly, in this situation, a crisis, a directive, or autocratic leadership style is appropriate and even appreciated.

At the start of the pandemic, I was coaching senior leaders to be more directive to give clear leadership and a sense that someone was in control - even if they were making adjustments on a daily basis.

Now, that we are used to living with Covid, and have adapted to a high level of autonomy with work-from-home, is a directive leadership style desirable or effective?

Leadership Styles

Effective leaders...

In nearly twenty-five years of writing about, speaking about, coaching and facilitating leadership, clients often ask me, ‘What is the best leadership book?’ or ‘If I was to read one leadership book, what would it be?’

Best is subjective and depends on where a leader is on their journey. For me, leadership always starts with self-leadership or personal mastery. After all, how can you lead others if you can’t lead yourself?

Prior to writing, ‘Self Leadership – How to be a more successful, efficient, and effective leader from the inside out (McGraw Hill 2012’, I would have said the best self-leadership book would have been ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. 7 Habits is still a must-read for self and time management.

But what about the best leadership book? There are so many, and each covers different definitions of leadership; some are more strategic focus, whereas others are strictly about management. I would include anything by Peter Drucker in this last category...

In my 2012 book with Dr. Ana Kazan, ‘Self Leadership – How to Become a More Successful Efficient and Effective Leader from the Inside Out’, we asked are you the Driver or the Passenger of your Life?

Self-leadership, and whether you are the ‘driver’ of your life and career depends on accessing the self-confidence to exercise your autonomy (ownership) over your thinking, feeling, and actions.  Passengers, by contrast, wait to be told what to do for fear of failure or because they lack the self-belief that they can.

I recently heard from one of my executive coaching clients that he would be promoted before he expected.

“How do you feel?” I asked.
“I don’t feel ready”, was the reply.

This is interesting because, in my experience, how ready we are for a new challenge depends on our willingness to get comfortable with the unfamiliar and our belief in our ability to learn.

Learning to Drive - Again

I have recently moved from Singapore to Portugal and bought a new car to get around. Now ...

You probably have first-hand experience with conflict and issues with communication, and you have likely struggled with whether you should speak up, or not.

As a coach and motivational speaker in Singapore, I regularly hear of the problems people face in getting heard, the ‘right way’ and I even teach a class on conflict and communication at Singapore Management University, but if you think this means I don’t mess up, you would be mistaken. In this post I will share a framework and my own experience because I have come to realize:

“We teach best what we most need to learn.”

Culture, gender, age, and personality are just some of the factors that complicate communication and lead to conflict. I am a nearly 60-year-old, university-educated, white male, whose personality is high on directness and only moderate on diplomacy. I work with both Asian and North American clients and yet the challenge to speak up without causing conflict is a common problem.

The Cost of Speaking Up

A f...