No, this isn’t a blog post on football, although it would be fun. This post is about leadership. Leadership is hard. I could stop here and provide you a link to connect with one of our coaches to help you navigate the difficulties and opportunities in your leadership, but what fun would that be? I guest lecture at the University of Washington and have the opportunity to speak to graduate students in the public policy program in the fall. My talk is on agile leadership, which involves a framework and some lessons about awareness and change. To learn more, you should register for that course. A nugget I will share is the essential requirement that we as leaders be able to adapt our leadership to the situation and the needs of our team, as well as the need to able to adopt a posture in their leadership that puts them in position to be most effective in various situations. As a shorthand, I’ll refer to this as the middle-back-front method of holistically agile leadership.
The middle-back-front method is centered on an attitude of intention. It requires the leader to understand the situation and adjust their leadership to respond to the leadership needs of the team most effectively using distance to make sense of what’s necessary for the moment. Most day-to-day aspects of leadership require us to lead from the middle. The middle gives us perspective on daily operations, helps us lead thoughtfully through project management, and ensures we communicate with the team in ways that keep everyone aware of what’s essential for team success right now. Effective leadership from the middle doesn’t mean being a technical expert; it requires leaders to ask the right questions, consult with staff to make shifts, and ensure everyone has what they need to meet their goals. The middle is an essential place of leadership.
We coach from the back. In this posture, we leverage our roles to create a space for team members to reflect, plan, and think about how they will leverage their current situation to reach those aspirations. We coach from the back because we believe our staff members are wise, resilient, and capable of achieving their goals WITHOUT us; thus, the back becomes a space we earn through trust, consistency, and the general ability to not tell people how to succeed but partner with them to chart a path towards their success. We usually go to the back during one-on-ones - the most skilled leads go to the back when offering feedback and in moments when members of the team are struggling with personal matters.
The front might feel heavy on the woo, but I don’t know any other way to put it - we love from the front. Love is about “you over me,” it’s about clarity and kindness, it’s about ensuring I’ve done all I can as human regardless of role or title to see you first as human without role or title. We love from the front whenever we encounter another human being. This means we often move from the front to the middle throughout our day and from the front to the back when the circumstance presents itself. Love is subjective, so I’ll try to suggest when it’s time to go to the front. When you must deliver uncompromising news like a layoff or project scale-back, go to the front, go to the front when a team member tells you that their life just imploded. Go to the front when your life implodes. The front isn’t about sorrow, though it is about finding space for human emotion. The front doesn’t mean we’re not accountable for outcomes, but it provides grace when needed so humans can rebound.
At BetterHumans, we leverage mental models like middle-back-front to help our clients become the leaders they want to be. We’d love to discuss how executive or group coaching with your senior team might create more balance, care, and effectiveness for your organization.
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