Stealth Leadership

I was having a conversation with one of my clients this week. He was telling me that he had let someone go and that they were now working out their notice. This person had been the topic of a few of our sessions, as he was heavily woven into the company and a friend. (We will look at friend and family businesses in another blog!) Sadly, his behaviour had become quite extreme and my client had no other option but to let him go.

What was really interesting is that once my client (the CEO) had made it public that he had an issue with the behaviour of this person, suddenly all the other staff told him what they also thought of this person. He was reflecting that they clearly hadn’t felt able to be honest because this person was my client’s friend, but also, and more importantly, because my client was clearly not standing up against this poor behaviour.

We discussed ‘stealth leadership’ in depth.

It’s so easy to think that your leadership is based on what you say and do, but you must also remember that it’s heavily based on what you don’t say and don’t do. This is why I constantly go on about why leadership is about who you are, not all the courses and books you’ve read. This client was struggling with how to manage his friend’s behaviour as a friend, but also as a boss. Through his own personal journey, he realised that he had to be a boss first and that these issues were so serious that if the friendship had to end, then that was sad, but okay. The work that got him to be able to make this decision was internal personal work, not a leadership skill.

I truly believe that our leadership style comes from who we are as a human, what our personality is, and what baggage our life experience has left us with. If any of these are out of whack, we will lead with those issues front and centre.

This lovely client has been working on how to set better boundaries, because that is an issue he struggles with in his personal life. Another client is working on not snapping and getting cross at work, a behaviour he learned from his dad. One of my female clients is working on how to delegate because she’s grown up looking after everyone else.

All these behaviours in their leadership come from their childhood learned behaviours.

Stealth leadership will happen whether you like it or not. It’s what you unconsciously pass down by just being you. To hack this leadership style, you just need to sort out your internal self (which will be great for you in every area of your life), so that those unconscious leadership styles that you pass down are healthy and useful to your team.

So, if you pause right now and are completely honest with yourself, what are you passing down to your team without having realised it?

If you don’t know, maybe ask for anonymous 360 feedback and see what themes come up.

Have a great week and be healthily stealthy!