Today’s leaders typically ascended to their roles after demonstrating their ability to do the work and deliver results. But upon rising to a supervisory position, too many leaders fail to make a shift that’s increasingly critical in the modern workplace: They haven’t evolved from doers to influencers.
Traditional, top-down leadership is no longer viable given the pace and scale of change in consumer demands, employee expectations, market conditions, and emerging technologies. In the traditional “doer” model, leaders see themselves as the experts. They control work by directing rather than coaching. They often put their people on the defensive by evaluating rather than developing. And they sometimes inhibit progress by holding back information rather than trusting teams by being transparent.
All of this creates an environment that too often squelches innovation and growth, which no company can afford.
Modern leaders, by contrast, understand that their primary responsibility is to influence the work of others. In this democratized leadership model, leaders see themselves as mentors and career coaches rather than bosses. They create strong workplace communities that give employees a deep sense of belonging. By recasting their roles, they build environments where their people can thrive, do their best work, and unleash their full creativity.
Lessons from Tech
To understand why modern leadership is now a must, consider the core role of technology in companies’ ability to become future-proof. Across industries, organizations are scrambling to find new ways of using technology to delight customers and cut costs. At the same time, tech can pose a threat to current business models and render entire categories of work obsolete.
Because technology is constantly evolving, it’s no longer the exception for team members to know more about a particular topic than their leader. Today’s leaders can’t possibly keep their fingers on the pulse of every promising trend, learn each new coding language, or understand the nuances of how the latest technological developments are being used to disrupt old ways of doing business. But their teams, by working together, can do all of this.
When leaders are influencers, they position themselves to shape cultures in which innovation and experimentation can flourish. They inspire workers to develop their skills by modeling this behavior themselves and encouraging it in others, even if this means giving their people the latitude to step away from current assignments.
Compared with authoritarian leaders, who seek to keep their people in line, influencers dream up new ways to remove barriers to free thinking and cross-team collaboration. When a teammate comes up with a solution the leader never would have thought of, the leader celebrates it as a success.
Influencers Create Community
The most successful social media influencers create a strong sense of community among their followers. Similarly, the most successful leaders create strong workplace communities.
Today’s employees crave community. According to recent research from the O.C. Tanner Institute, 72% of employees say it’s important for them to feel like part of a community at work. When employees have a strong workplace community, they are eight times more likely to feel like they belong. This sense of belonging, in turn, boosts retention by 43%, lengthens employee tenure by 84%, and reduces burnout by 38%. When leaders practice modern leadership, the odds of a strong community dramatically increase.
Because workers value a strong workplace community, as well as flexibility, autonomy, and a sense of purpose, leaders spend more of their time mentoring, coaching, and otherwise cultivating positive environments that deliver on these expectations. As a consequence, leaders’ success is being evaluated in new ways. While leaders will always be held accountable for delivering results, the focus is moving away from their individual contributions and toward their ability to create environments that inspire great work and long tenures.
Again, here we see that being an influencer is key. You can’t mandate a sense of community from the top down. Leaders who remain focused on being “doers” often miss the forest (the community) through the trees (the discrete tasks in front of them).
The Rise of the Workplace Influencer
Today’s leaders can’t possibly hope to do or control everything themselves. The demands are too crushing, the conditions changing too quickly. By evolving into influencers, however, leaders can forge strong workplace communities that are collectively well equipped to take on any challenge.
Gary Beckstrand is a vice president at O.C. Tanner, a workplace culture company. He is also a coauthor of Appreciate: Celebrating People, Inspiring Greatness.