Stronger Through Adversity by Joseph Michelli

Author:Joseph Michelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

GETTING AHEAD BY MOVING BACK

Let’s make one last twist on the scenario presented previously. This time let’s assume the group is on the right path, moving at a brisk pace, and working effectively as a team. At this point in the journey, where is the best place for you to be?

As teams advanced successfully during the pandemic, leaders often told me they intentionally stepped back. By moving to the back, these leaders encouraged the groups’ autonomy, supported their momentum, and celebrated their victories. Robert Greenleaf, founder of the servant leadership philosophy, put it this way, “The best test as a leader is: Do those served grow as persons; do they become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become leaders?”

Ann Ayers JD, Dean of Colorado Women’s College at the University of Denver, learned the value of leading from the back when she was a child. Ann noted, “I grew up in the mountains hiking with my father. When we’d set off for a hike, he encouraged me to go ahead of him. I didn’t like being in front, and it didn’t make sense to me. He was taller, more experienced, and could follow the trail better. One morning we started hiking before daylight, and he wore a headlamp. As he walked behind me, he shined the light on our path.”

Ann explained how that experience shaped her leadership, “My job is to hire people who have talent and put them in positions where they can grow. To be effective, I need to stand behind them, shine a light so they can see their path, and help them work around obstacles. During the pandemic, I had to adjust the beam of my metaphoric headlamp based on my team’s stress level. Some days it needed to shine just a few steps ahead of them, and on other days I needed to point it toward a bright horizon.”

As evidenced by Ann’s headlamp metaphor, leading from the back is not a passive activity. It shouldn’t be confused with abdicating responsibility or delegating projects and failing to assure accountability. If anything, leading from the back requires a leader to continue to shine the light on the optimal destination, help team members sustain momentum, and foster growth opportunities as the team ventures forward.

Leading from the back means your team will arrive at the destination before you. As such, the accomplishment is not “yours.” It is “ours.” By stepping back to a supportive and encouraging position, you can best see leadership talent emerge and give space for others to wrestle with problems and craft their solutions. All those benefits occur as you continue to nudge, prod, and keep your light shining on the destination. The ultimate success for leading from the back is how it ignites collective wisdom and shared decision-making. Put simply by leadership guru Ken Blanchard, “None of us are as smart as all of us.”

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