Much is made of effective leadership.  For organizations that excel (corporate, public, entrepreneurial, etc) the strength of leadership is considered a key attribute.   A well thought of and proven leader can enhance, even drive stock prices up and when they leave the organization, cause the price to fall.

Do Leadership Skills always lead upwards

I had an interesting discussion today about a strong leader with drive motivation and proven emotional intelligence skills.

Unfortunately this leader’s team results were poor.  The leaders practices (usually effective) did not cause the team to excel, rather the opposite.  An inordinate amount of time was spent by team members on protecting and defending their roles

The leader had created an environment where it was safer to find reasons not to do things rather than reasons to do them.

Why is this?

Leaders need to be very aware of the makeup of their teams.  Behaviors that can lead to exceptional performance in one case will result in exactly the opposite in others.

A key factor for human resources within a closed environment is the value equation, that is reward versus effort.  With the wrong model in place to incentivize and motivate as a group more time can end up being spent by individuals contributors protecting ones position than to driving forwards toward the units goals.

In these cases often success criteria for the team becomes based on how little work they can do and still be compensated.

While some would classify this as poor leadership I believe in some cases it is more misdirected.  That is, good leadership practices are often in effect they are just not effective because they are not targeted to focus on the collective needs of the team.

In these cases the leaders need to build an enabling structure such that colleagues can organically collaborate.  Using  duct tape and staples to bind the teams together in pursuit of a common goals just does not work.

How can this be improved?

The solution, lead from the bottom.  Make everyone on the team a leader (help them find the leader within).

To do this, observe and adapt your methods as needed.  Recognize (both success and failure) ultimately being clear on the measures used to confirm (or deny) effectiveness.   Empower everyone to practice leadership.