Over the course of my life I have been fortunate enough to have lived in six different countries – working for many years in four of these; and to have managed consulting businesses in three of them. This global exposure has allowed me to observe leaders across multiple cultures and industries, and in organisations that span small family-owned businesses; large global MNCs; NFPs; and government agencies.

Through these interactions, and more recently while supporting clients in a coaching capacity, I have observed common patterns of behaviours in leaders and some common underlying ‘solutions’ to their challenges.

Based on these experiences I have distilled my thinking into 3 Maxims, that I frequently use to guide interactions with my clients as well as with team members.

None of this is rocket science, however, the 3 Maxims always resonate well with clients. While the 3 Maxims may easily be framed in the context of the present COVID-19 pandemic, I have refrained from doing so because I believe they are applicable regardless of the context.

When I was growing up, “Don’t do what I do, do what I tell you” was one of my father’s favourite sayings.

While he had good intentions in wanting me to become a better person, his underlying belief that I would do what he told me, rather than mimic his behaviours was seriously flawed. As any parent will attest, this approach does not work. Children tend to copy what their older – and presumably wiser – parents do; often to their parents’ chagrin.

The reality is that mimicking the actions of our elders has a biological benefit. The basic logic being, if they did it and lived to tell the tale, I should be safe too. This approach to learning is not new. It’s called Social Learning Theory, and the concept has been around for more than 50 years (Bandura, 1969).

In the same way that children copy their parents, staff copy what their managers and leaders do.

Managers who take short cuts, who don’t follow processes, and who are argumentative, will in turn have staff who are more likely to skip steps, not follow procedures, and believe that being argumentative is what will get you promoted to the next level. Taken to its extreme, those in leadership and managers who drive a ‘meet the bottom line at all costs’ mentality and who are open to bending the rules, are likely to find their teams also bend (or break) the rules in pursuit of the end goal. There have been numerous examples of this, as the recent Royal Commission into Banking demonstrated.

What Maxim 1 ultimately boils down to from a coaching and development perspective, is the criticality of role modelling by senior staff members. If we want our children to do the right things, we need to be their role model. If we want our staff to do the right thing, we need to model the behaviours we want them to demonstrate. The clichés, ‘lead by example’ and ‘Be the change you want to see’ spring to mind.

Of course, it’s easier said than done (as my own children will attest), and our derailing tendencies may get in the way. Classic leadership ‘derailers’ here include a tendency to micro-manage; jumping in and taking over; or feeling the need to be (or at least to appear to be) the smartest person in the room.

A few years ago, I attended a workshop which discussed the difference between effective and ineffective leaders. I must have a short attention span, because after a day of listening to a number of engaging presentations I came away remembering only one word – intentionality. The key difference between effective and ineffective leaders, was the intentional way effective leaders spend their time.

Early in the morning – generally during exercise, while walking the dog, or when getting a pre-work coffee – these effective leaders would think about the day ahead: the meetings they had coming up, and how they were going to behave in each of them. They determined whether they would actively lead the meeting; use it as an opportunity to coach junior staff members to speak up; focus on listening to alternate viewpoints; delegate the leadership to another etc. Going into the meeting they were clear on how they intended to behave. Some leaders colour coded their calendars to reflect their intentions, to create a visual reminder of the role they planned to take.

An example I strongly recall related to this concept was a senior leader based in China, let’s call him Dan, who was very intentional about how he entered a room for meetings. Dan always made sure he was the last person in the meeting. Dan would stride, purposefully, into the meeting, shoulders back to make himself as tall as possible (and he was already a tall guy). Sitting down with his bum at the back of his seat (to ensure he didn’t slouch), Dan would then lean forward, place his elbows on the table. Without saying a word, Dan had signalled to everyone, “I am here, the meeting can start”. This was not his natural style. It was a practiced behaviour, intentionally deployed to create a desired effect.

While one might argue that such an approach is disingenuous, the reality is that as leaders progress up the corporate ladder, their visibility increases and their staff spend increasing amounts of time observing them and their behaviours. We all have performance management systems in place at work. Being intentional about their behaviours helps a leader to further manage their performance.

Effective leaders also take the time to reflect on their performance each day, perhaps by keeping a journal to help track their success. This reflective process helps reinforce their intentionality in subsequent days and further enhances their performance and effectiveness.

The last maxim can either drive the other two maxims, or can be seen as the result of appropriately using the other maxims.

When I first became a manager in the late ‘90s, I attended a 2-day in-house training program aptly called, “Congratulations, You’re a New Manager!”. While I have vague recollections the workshop talked about internal processes, personality differences, and the standard stuff around the role of manager vs a leader etc., only one moment TRULY stood out.

When the Deputy Managing Partner came in on Sunday morning, he strode purposefully to the front of the room (he wasn’t not Dan, by the way), and stated dramatically: “Congratulations, you’re a new manager. Your role is to make yourself redundant”.

Coming as it did at the time of the Thai Financial crisis and the fact that we were in the process of setting up an outplacement consulting offer for our clients, probably made me pay a bit more attention to this than I otherwise would have. However, the message resonated strongly and has been an anchor that I fallen back on every day since.

Fundamentally, a manager’s role is to help grow and develop those beneath them, so that work will get done even in the manager’s absence. This frees up your time as the manager to undertake more strategic work, thereby enabling you to progress to the next level in your career – since your manager should in turn be working to make themselves redundant.

While this may sound altruistic it makes good business sense. Managers who do not (or cannot) develop their staff appropriately will end up with disengaged staff who either leave or become a negative impact within the organisation.

Taken together these maxims helps drive a frame of mind built around questions such as How am I behaving? Am I developing those beneath me?, and Am I developing my skills appropriately so I can continue to progress in my career?

That’s it!

As I said at the start, it isn’t rocket science.

Hopefully, the 3 Maxims are as useful to you as they are to me.