Leadership
2.3 Organisation LayersTrue leadership lies in guiding others to success – in ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well
What is leadership?
Definition
The senior management team and all individual in leader roles within the organisation
Purpose
To create the ability for employees to execute their responsibility towards the common direction
Leadership is built up by all leaders in the organisation
The individual assigned by the owners to act as accountable for the operations can seldom perform all operations alone. Unless one is self-employed, the operations of an organisation is dependent on a lot of people such as employees, partners, suppliers, etc. To ensure that the organisation operates and progresses in the defined direction, there must be leadership that shows the way, supports and ultimately ensures that the organisation has the ability to operate in line with the direction.
The leadership layer consists of the senior management team and all roles in the organisation with the responsibility to lead others within their area of responsibility. The leaders in the organisation acts as the extended arms of the senior management team, the accountable head of the operation and ultimately the owners.
Leaders create ability for others to execute
The leader does not execute and create any outcome value in this role. The main responsibility of the leaders is to create the ability for others to execute their responsibility. The leader can do this by ensuring that the conditions to be able to execute are available, such as ensuring the right competences, access to the required resources, clarity in assignment and expectation, a safe work environment, fair compensation, etc, within the area of responsibility.
The leadership role is not exclusive to managers. It extends to leaders without direct reporting staff as well as all individuals in the form of self-leadership. This means that everyone is not only responsible to ensure everyone else in the organisation has the ability to execute, but also that oneself has the ability to execute one’s responsibility.
If conditions such as resources, safety or something else doesn’t allow oneself to execute, one must to create the conditions for oneself. This is done by identifying the missing conditions and if within responsibility, establish them for oneself.
If the conditions are dependant on factors outside one’s mandate, a request should be formulated with options and a clarification of the inability to fulfil one’s responsibility and the consequences. Self-leadership is about creating conditions for oneself to fulfil one’s responsibility.
Next Step
Next, read more about the Operations layer…