‘Success is Best Shared’ means replacing the ‘power of the few’ with ‘the influence of the many’, replacing ego and recognising that Leadership is best delivered through a network, not a cascade. By leadership, I do not mean a function of hierarchy or role or seniority. I mean the mindset and behaviours of every individual in an organisation, no matter their role, function or how many people they manage. Everyone is capable of thinking and behaving differently towards themselves, their business or social environment, and towards other people. Everyone can put themselves at cause, take accountability, and make a difference. This is Leadership in practice.
Problems, challenges, and opportunities don’t just exist at the top of the organisation for the senior few to own, they exist everywhere across the whole enterprise. They just vary in terms of scale, impact or urgency.
Having said that, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Leaders in the traditional sense tend to have direct influence or control over financial and human resources, and so have a greater capacity to impact the firm. I urge these leaders to use that capacity to cultivate organisations that share and distribute success by creating connected leadership throughout the organisation.
We talk about ‘Distributed Networks’ and ‘Distributed Ledger Technologies’. Imagine if these behaved like people in an organisation and everything had to flow from the single most powerful computer, or if the information was only sent one way, or if some computers hid data from others, only shared it with the few, or neglected to ask inputs from the many? Then we would all agree that the performance would be suboptimal, yet hierarchical leaders often behave that way in our businesses.
Why is this becoming more important?
Pre-Covid, when everyone was in the office, the leadership that I saw was focused on the ‘Science’ of being a leader – defining a strategy, setting goals, making investments, implementing governance models and ensuring the efficient functioning of the system by keeping everything on track and on budget.
Post-Covid, the ‘system’ has been severely, and in my view permanently, disrupted by hybrid working models. People changed their expectations, motivations and choices, and now prioritise their mental, physical, and emotional well-being. This has forced the smarter folks with influence to think more about the ‘Art’ of leadership as a gateway to the sustainable achievement of outcomes and the fulfilment of individual and corporate purpose.
The ‘Art’ means working on people’s mindset and capability so they have the skills and confidence to put themselves at cause, take accountability for results, decisions and actions, and make a difference to themselves, others and the organisation.
How do we achieve distributed leadership and shared success?
High-performance behaviours
Start by investing in the development of high-performance behaviours that encourage everyone to lead and outperform themselves, others and results, no matter where they are in their career. Don’t wait until mid or late career to invest in your people. Invest in school leavers and graduates,- make behavioural development an imperative for the many, not a luxury item for the minority. Smart organisations are developing such high-performance leadership behaviours around 4 themes:
- Thinking (researching, developing insights, decision making, conceptual agility),
- Developing (earning trust, compassion, collaboration not cooperation, building capabilities),
- Inspiring (generating confidence, communicating with impact, enrolling others), and
- Delivering (being proactive, committing to outcomes, designing from the future, leading change, driving commerciality and value).
Traditional models teach us to adjust our leadership style according to the motivation and capability of the people we are responsible for: the more motivated and capable they are, the more we focus on outcomes. The less motivated they are, the more we focus them on tasks. What if you invested in everyone’s motivation and capability continually, helping people build their confidence and skill, and to find and cultivate purpose in their role? Then you can move more people to focus on outcomes instead of tasks, encouraging more widespread success, which becomes infectious.
Create true, authentic diversity in the organisation
Move beyond tokenism and quotas around the legally protected characteristics and look to build cultures that really value equality and inclusivity as a way of amplifying the high-performance leadership behaviours I spoke of earlier. Smarter businesses are widening their reach to access greater pools of talent, linking up with charities that are dedicated to driving social mobility. Together, they are placing young talented people into meaningful roles they would otherwise be excluded from for a range of socio-economic reasons. Firms are redesigning their recruitment and onboarding processes to open access to people who are neuro-diverse, using, for example, multimedia-based applications and induction techniques.
Psychological safety
High-performance leadership behaviours, in people who are obsessed with equality and inclusivity create psychological safety, encouraging people to engage so they feel they belong in the organisation. Don’t be the lazy one and say “My door is always open for you to come to me” – be curious about people, go explore, listen, and accept that you don’t know everything and you don’t have all the answers. It is also not just about what you don’t know, but what others might know. Show some vulnerability and allow others to be curious with you.
Freedom to lead
Create the conditions that give people the freedom to lead. Encourage the formation of wide networks by giving people the permission, opportunity and confidence to explore the broader organisation. Invest in building these into active communities of practice that are self-sustaining around a common interest and not merely fixed ‘distribution groups’. Sponsor and recognise innovation labs and gamification techniques to encourage engagement, contribution, research, exploration, and failure.
Organisations that sustain ‘the power of the few’ have extensive governance and approval processes, with incentive and reward systems that punish failure and reward heroes. I know of one organisation with a ‘one PnL’ mindset where bonuses are cross-team/cross-divisional and don’t allow for one team or unit to succeed and another to fail. They also have a system of peer-to-peer ratings based on the types of behaviours I mentioned earlier, which drives further rewards such as equity allocations. Performance follows on from the mindset and behaviours of people, and it is those that are valued, developed, and encouraged.
Foster collaboration
Understand how that is different to cooperation, where people work with each other out of duty and serve their own objectives first. Collaboration is a choice, in which different people or groups step forward to achieve a greater outcome that neither could achieve alone, and they are bound together by a common purpose or vision. It is the coming together as a discretionary effort that solves the problem or realises the opportunity, not being told to cooperate.
You can create an environment for this by being open and repeatedly communicating, with honesty and clarity, the broader context for people. This includes your strategy, the challenges you are facing and are even afraid of, the outcomes you are striving for and the unknowns that leave you puzzled. Let people explore them with you, and with each other. Connect people and let them work cross-boundary/geography/team/process without fear of failure or punishment.
In summary, ‘Success is Best Shared’ means those who are in senior roles and have the ability to influence financial and human resources, use that influence to create organisations in which leadership is distributed rather than hierarchical. It is networked and connected, and every individual has the opportunity to exhibit leadership in their actions and behaviours to make a difference to themselves, to others, and to the broader organisation. You can shift from the ‘power of the few’ to the ‘influence of the many’.
