Build Your Leadership Foundation Before You Need It

 Solid leadership requires a good foundation.

In 1995, while stationed in Italy, I visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What makes the tower famous, of course, is it is lean. What caused that lean was much less glamorous: an unstable foundation.

There is a leadership lesson in that.

The primary purpose of any foundation is to support the structure above it and keep it upright. The tallerand more visible the structure, the more important the foundation becomes.

Leadership works the same way.

As your responsibilities increase, more people depend upon your decisions. Your team, your organization,your customers, your family, and other stakeholders may all be affected by how well—or how poorly—youlead.

And when conditions become difficult, that foundation gets tested.

I spent much of my career in U.S. Navy Special Operations. In those environments, you learn quickly thatyou cannot wait until the crisis arrives to determine how you are going to operate. You train, rehearse,develop competence, and build trust before you need them.

Leadership should be approached with the same deliberate mindset.

 

Your Foundation Should Be Deep and Wide

A skyscraper’s foundation is largely unseen.

So is a leader’s.

People see our decisions, our communication, our confidence, and our actions. They don’t necessarily seethe years of experiences, successes, failures, education, training, reflection, and personal developmentunderneath them.

But those things matter.

Your foundation gives you secure footing when the ground underneath you begins to shift.

 

In Elevate Your Leadership, I break the leadership foundation into three primary components:

1. Your personal definition of leadership

2. Your deliberate leadership styles

3. Your deliberate power types

These are not academic exercises. They are tools you should consciously develop and then put to work.

 

Start by Defining Leadership for Yourself

Ask yourself a simple question:

What does leadership mean to me?

If you cannot define leadership, how do you know when you are actually leading?

My definition has evolved throughout my career:

Leadership is enabling others to achieve their objectives and requires comprehensive awarenessdeveloped through experience, education, and training.

I can simplify that definition into two words:

Enabling others.

Those two words provide me with a reference point.

Am I creating an environment in which someone else can succeed? Am I developing people? Am I giving them the information, resources, authority, training, confidence, and support they need?

Or am I simply exercising authority?

Those are very different things.

Your definition doesn’t have to be mine. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be.

Leadership is personal. Your definition should reflect your experiences, values, profession, personality, andthe people you lead.

But you should have one.

It becomes the cornerstone of your foundation.

 

Develop More Than One Leadership Style

One of the mistakes leaders make is trying to lead everyone, in every situation, exactly the same way.

That rarely works.

Leadership requires the ability to read and react.

My preferred styles include visionary, coaching, and participative leadership. There are also situations whena directive approach is necessary.

A visionary leader establishes the cardinal direction. Where are we going? Why are we going there? Whatdoes success look like?

A coaching leader develops the individual. Coaching is not simply telling someone what they did wrong.Often, it means asking:

If you faced that situation again tomorrow, what would you do differently?

Then rehearse it.

A participative leader draws upon the experience and intelligence of the team. Some of the best answers inan organization are sitting several levels below the person with the highest title.

And sometimes circumstances require directive leadership.

That does not make you an autocratic leader. It means you understand the situation.

Highly effective leadership isn’t about selecting one leadership style and putting it on your LinkedIn profile.

It is about having several tools available and consciously selecting the right one at the right time.

 

Understand How You Use Power

Power can be an uncomfortable word in leadership discussions, but leaders have power whether theyacknowledge it or not.

The question is:

How are you using it?

Legitimate power comes with the position. You are the CEO, commanding officer, department head,manager, or team leader.

The title gives you authority.

But a title doesn’t necessarily make people want to follow you.

That is why I place such importance on referent power.

Referent power develops through trust, respect, credibility, and meaningful relationships. It takes time tobuild and can disappear very quickly when trust is compromised.

There is also expert power—the influence created through knowledge and competence—and connectionpower, developed through the relationships and networks we build throughout our careers.

The strongest leaders aren’t walking around reminding everyone who is in charge.

People already know.

Instead, those leaders consciously develop the credibility, relationships, knowledge, and trust that allowthem to influence others without constantly relying on their position.

 

Experience, Education, and Training

Underneath this foundation are three pillars that have been essential throughout my own leadership journey:

Experience. Education. Training.

Experience gives us perspective.

Education expands our thinking.

Training gives us tools and allows us to rehearse their application.

The military understands this exceptionally well.

We learn something in the classroom. We practice it under controlled conditions then we take it into the field and apply it under increasingly realistic conditions.

Sometimes we succeed.

Sometimes we fail.

Either way, we learn.

Leadership development should operate the same way.

Read.

Study.

Attend training.

Seek difficult assignments.

Coach others.

Allow others to coach you.

Make decisions.

Get some wrong.

Conduct your own after-action review then apply what you learned the next time. That is how leadership moves from theory into muscle memory.

 

Inspect Your Foundation

A foundation isn’t something you construct once and forget.

It needs inspection.

I have seen leaders experience periods of erosion, and I have detected cracks in my own foundation attimes.

The important thing is recognizing them and making repairs.

Ask yourself:

Has my definition of leadership evolved?

Am I consciously selecting my leadership style, or simply reacting?

Am I relying too much on the authority of my position?

Am I continuing to build trust and credibility?

What experiences, education, and training have I pursued during the past year?

Great leaders remain students.

They continue examining and expanding their foundation throughout their careers.

Because leadership is a perishable skill.

Use it or lose it.

The objective isn’t to build a perfect foundation.

The objective is to build one that is deep enough, wide enough, and strong enough to support you—and those who depend upon you—when the ground inevitably begins to move.

Build it deliberately.

Inspect it regularly.

Repair the cracks.

Continue expanding it.

Then use that foundation to do what leadership is ultimately about:

Enable others.