Leadership Priciples

This text provides a high-level definition of leadership. It also differentiates between management and leadership. Interestingly, the author posits that the evolution of a managerial role may not develop into a leadership role. You will examine the theories of servant leadership, transformational leadership, collaboration/meta leadership theory, and shared leadership.

The Five Elements of Collaborative/Meta Leadership

According to a recent Harvard study there are five main elements of Meta Leadership:

1. The person behind the leadership. This means that the leader of the group needs to have a good understanding of their impact and a high emotional intelligence so they can effectively collaborate with others at different levels within the organization.

2. Understanding the issue at hand. This element is reflective in the sense of identifying the issue at hand, the amount of evidence available to understand the issue and how to navigate the different needs/wants of different levels of the organization.

3. Leading your core followers. This element discusses the necessity of having a core competency of certain skills within the organization. Through a trusted group of followers (typically in this case the main department the leader oversees), the meta leader can have consensus built and leverage that when rolling out larger solutions with other groups not under the direct leadership of the meta leader.

4. Leading up. This element discusses the impact of "managing up" and not letting hierarchical rank be a deterrent. This element is tricky as those that have a direct manager/leader need to be aware that through meta leadership they might obtain more informal power than their direct manager. Additionally, meta leaders will be able to effectively call out and challenge the status quo that is instructed from above. Typically, this delivery of critical advice/guidance manifests through leveraging their direct team, their subject matter expertise and their overall proximity to the work.

5. Leading across the system. In this element the impact of meta leadership "spills over to other areas of the system. This impact leads to more cohesive and impactful change. By leading across the system change becomes a concerted effort with results that are beyond what a singular leader can obtain.

I personally think I am a meta leader since I have found myself leading across the system and bridging the gap/dismantling the silos of areas that partner with my area. One example of this is how my current employer treats business specific knowledge. In my role, I noticed that we were defining things in different ways, causing unnecessary confusion. I quickly noticed the gap in common knowledge and worked with six teams to build a common vocabulary. As simple as this sounds, it required knowing the impact of the change, addressing any issues from high levels of leadership, finding core followers that would be "agents of change" and managing different priorities/needs of the six teams.