Some skills I like to associate with implicit leadership are:

 

Observation

 

Quite complex to develop under pressure, particularly when stakeholders are demanding results or you have no history of developing observational skills. The ability to observe and absorb what's happening around you is hugely important and yet the real skill is being able to discount your own prejudices or emotions and then analyse objectively-am I seeing? and how is this of value add to me as a leader? Some of the best examples of observational leaders I have seen are hotel General Managers some of whom still use the management by walking around method whilst too many managers have spent so many years locked in an office, or putting up other barriers that they lose touch with their employees.

 

Effective observation (without judgement) enables you to get a real understanding of your team, environment and what is happening in context. It is also a great enabler when trying to understand the potential or limitations of a person, system or environment.

 

How often though do you give yourself time to observe the outcomes of a decision or implemented system beyond the immediate bottom line impact? If none, then ask yourself, what am I missing?

 

Questioning and Listening

 

Ultimately as the man or woman in charge, you will have to shoulder all or some of the responsibility for the final decision – which is sometimes used (particularly by inexperienced leaders) as justification for “doing it my way”.

 

However asking and listening is a huge show of respect, people consciously and subconsciously become aware that you are interested in them and as a result they ultimately become more engaged in you and your cause.

 

Top end marketing and sales professionals are probably the best examples of how to use these skill sets, particularly those selling experiences (hotels) or subjective stimulus products (cars, perfumes). The best among them will spend a great deal of time asking questions and listening to responses to enable a sense of benefit within the potential customer, ultimately leading them to a point of sale. The key difference here for a leader is not necessarily trying to lock in an immediate result; you are however showing interest and mining information that can be of benefit when managing your team.

 

As a leadership skill, the ability to ask and listen enables the growth of an environment and culture that people want to thrive in, it can transmit a sense of caring without the use of complex or admin-heavy HR systems – sometimes important in high pressure environments where people may question their own sense of purpose.

 

Conversely, if you manage this well, your team is willing to share more information, dig a little deeper to give you what you really need to make the right decision and consequently reduce risks caused by unnecessary assumptions.

 

Empowerment (Delegation)

 

I have over the years regularly experienced and observed the situation whereby team members view a leader as some kind of oracle – all seeing and all knowing (which admittedly could be the fault of that person). My first few leadership experiences were hampered when I could not justify (in my own mind) that I did not necessarily know more than people lower down the hierarchy. Reality check – not all leaders know everything.

 

The best leaders engage technical experts (engineers, designers, marketeers) to complement or supplement missing skill sets and knowledge, often at some cost. As such, it's important to ask their opinion and listen to what they have to say.  Your team of experts empower your final decisions; the critical factor though is trust.

 

A weakness of some explicit leaders is impatience or lack of trust which only compounds the issue.  Most industries require harmonization of different skill sets towards a common goal, be that a product or service.  In which case, why would a business leader ever recruit a specialist whose job they could do better themselves?  Further, why would you distrust the specialist opinion for which you hired them?  Arrogance is the only answer to both these questions.

 

Trust is the glue that binds professional teams together.  Even when things go wrong you have to trust people to learn from their mistakes, however costly.

 

Experience counts for a lot here and trust can be frightening for the subjective leader.  That said, managers demanding that every “$10 decision” gets signed off with the correct paperwork attached is not healthy.

 

• In my early teens my parents gave me more money to travel several miles and make more cost decisions (on groceries!), than some managers enable their adult staff to make today

 

• My mid-20s role in the Royal Navy had me (amongst other things), handling hazardous materials, dangerous machinery and firearms after short periods of training with support from trusted systems. In my early 30s going into business, I found that many people of a similar age could make no decisions without prior approval of 1 or more people above them

 

• My marketing guy Dan, proudly describes the team he ran in London as far more technically capable then himself.  He would motivate and enable his staff to make the strategic judgements that underpinned his ability to make business-level decisions, close contracts and drive growth.

 

Empowerment and effective delegation are essential skills to develop but are often overlooked because the outcomes can be difficult to correlate to bottom line impact.

 

The flip side however is a group of “mono-thinkers” which can be a critical failure if your business (like most), needs decision makers throughout its management structure.

 

Quick Test:

 

How many times did you read the word ‘team’ in this article?  To save you the <Ctrl+F> time, the answer is 7.  Remember – while the team leader is critical to team performance, they like other members of the team, can rarely function well in isolation.

 

Implicit vs. Explicit

 

Implicit behaviours are of great use to those in charge if used effectively.  It is important, however, to realise that used independently of explicit traits, they merely become skill sets and not part of an holistic leadership package.

 

Some points to consider:

 

• Develop a whole package of leadership skills and behaviours

 

• Implicit skill sets take longer to develop and are less obvious

 

• Use implicit behaviours to enhance explicit ones and vice versa

 

• Implicit leadership in some circles may be seen as weak or passive.  It requires courage

 

• There is no “one size fits nobody” solution and you have to work on leadership skills as much as any other set of skills you need to fulfil your role

 

• Implicit leadership can help fend off the loneliness that often comes with being a true leader and does not necessarily blur professional boundaries

 

Angus Peacock, December 2013