Leadership in Five Dimensions
David Sole OBE, School for CEOs
Well, as I was kindly introduced, my early career was agriculture and rugby-related, and I’m now an executive coach, managing partner at the School for CEOs, involved with Worldwide Cancer Research. I also co-authored a book on networking. But I’d like to talk about our Dimensions framework this evening, which we developed at the School for CEOs; developed from some research we did in 2013, a review of leadership literature, and from listening to our chairs and faculty on the programs. And we use it to help give leaders a different perspective on how they lead and where they should focus their attention. Very simple. It’s about how you manage up, down, in, out, and across.
The first dimension is Managing Up, and it talks to the relationship you have with your boss, or as a CEO or MD, the relationship you have with the chair or board. It’s a dimension that is very often neglected. It’s absolutely critical to establish how you want to work together, what expectations both of you have, and particularly for CEOs, it’s critical to establish where your boundaries are and where both players want to play. Frequently, people forget to manage up and across the peer group of their boss or chair. Now, these peer groups are critical when you’re influencing informally, because it’s essential to engage with other non-exec directors and seeing life through their lens.
The second dimension is Managing Down, and that’s where most organizations invest their L&D budgets. It’s all about becoming better leaders, creating followership, engagement, and driving organizational performance. And it’s easy to forget that leaders are role models. Their behaviors and modus operandi are scrutinized and copied by others in organizations, because that’s what made them successful. The shadow you cast as a leader gets longer and larger the more senior you are, and it’s easy to forget that you can’t move on unless you have a successor in place. So you need to remember, when things are going well, you lead from behind. When things are going badly, you lead from the front.
And so to Managing Across, which, generally, people feel comfortable with. Of course, this dimension disappears for the CEO or MD as they have no peer group, which can be a blessing and a curse. Peer groups can be challenging, and frequently there can be an intense competition between individuals, often for the next promotion. In dysfunctional leadership teams, this manifests itself as silo working and a lack of collaboration. If people are unaware of the political blind spot or the extent to which informal influence gets things done, they’ll struggle to be successful.
Managing Out is another area where we find that people have great opportunities to develop further. As well as gaining external perspectives and market insights and information, we believe it’s essential for leaders to horizon-scan and to orientate themselves outwards rather than focusing exclusively inwards in their organization. It’s all about working on the business rather than working in it. Currently, CEOs and MDs are really worried about how technology is either going to give them competitive advantage or to disrupt their business models. And the world is pretty unstable with crises in the Ukraine and the Middle East, a new president in the US, so keeping abreast of geopolitical developments is absolutely to be encouraged.
And finally, Managing In. Again, this is an area where people can run the risk of ignoring personal well-being and mental health. Yet, in order to look after yourself, you need to know yourself and notice if and when things change or feel different. Your body is a great indicator of your well-being. Noticing your sleep patterns, your desire for alcohol or junk food, or simply recognizing your mood state are all good indicators of your overall preparedness to perform. Things aren’t getting any easier, so resilience is a key leadership attribute. And as Milton said, the mind can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.
Over the last decade, we’ve had huge numbers complete our Dimensions questionnaire, and these are the consolidated results split by gender for each dimension. You’ll notice there isn’t much difference between men and women. But I’d like to finish with one thought. Many of these dimensions rely on strong working relationships. You might call this working. I view it as networking. So be purposeful and deliberate in building great relationships and you won’t go too far wrong. Thank you.
