The hierarchy of leadership
I’ve been having a lot of conversations with my clients recently about hierarchy. Whether it exists in the company, whether it should exist. Does it exist in name only, or not exist in name only! There seems to have been a move towards less hierarchical structures in companies and personally I don’t think it works.
Leadership comes from within, for anyone, whether you are a junior right at the bottom or the leader at the top, you need to understand where you fit so that you can thrive. While I understand the theory behind non-hierarchical structures, they don’t work – certainly I haven’t seen one that did (do let me know if you have one!) As one client said to me, we now have executives spending an hour photocopying when they are paid $300 an hour.
We have to be honest that we all have different skill sets and we should lean in, rather than out of them. I am not good at drilling down into the 1000 ideas I have and knowing which to do (weirdly I excel at doing this for clients!) and so I use others to help me. I’m also under the level of most teenagers in my use of tech. Thank god I have a tech guy who is passionate about it. I’m incredibly good at my job, that’s what I’m good at.
I once worked with a team that were trialling a scheme where they all did everything for the role they had, on a rotation basis. They had their central role and then were responsible for finding a venue, the stock in that venue – literally down to buying the toilet roll and tea, organising the rota, etc. Some of the people involved had none of those skills, but were just incredibly good at their actual job. One ended up leaving and the others were unhappy as they also didn’t like the switch from someone who was good at organising a rota to someone who wasn’t – for example.
Hierarchy doesn’t tell us what to do, it just helps us know where we fit and what our responsibilities are so we can know who to contact about what, and whose skill set is what we need in that moment. I don’t want to worry about the things I’m terrible at and I certainly shouldn’t be asked my opinion on them! No one in my family asks me about cooking – ever – it’s well known that I brought all the kids up to believe that sausages should be black because that’s when they are cooked. Cooking was not a skill my mother had either…
I hear words like collaborative approach, non-hierarchical structures, there’s no I in team, well there should be! We should all be an I, lots of I’s make a fantastic team. The reverse ends up with poor decision making, no-one really knowing what their role or jurisdiction is and a wishy washy command where the wrong people get a say in decisions that don’t really apply to them and they don’t have skill set in.
A strong company has a strong hierarchy and strong communication. It doesn’t mean that they junior doesn’t share ideas with the CEO it means that the CEO makes the final call.
Last year I worked with a team in the US and one exercise I gave the CEO and leadership team was to write up their job descriptions and have a 1-2-1 meeting with the CEO/founder where they clarified that what they thought their role was, was what it was meant to be. They then discussed this in a team meeting to make sure all agreed. This type of exercise can really clarify if the system you think you have, is actually the system you have. It solidifies teams, creates purpose, identifies gaps and more importantly, puts the right people in the right roles.
If you need help reviewing your team, just let me know. You could always start using the exercise above.