Different Levels of Leadership

A leadership development program I attended this week highlighted the fact that leadership development is relative. There does not appear to be a “standard” development that can be applied to any leader at any given moment. The leaders themselves and everyone else involved in the development process must know where the leaders are and where they need to go both from a personal and an organisational perspective. Different leaders are at different stages in their personal development and the organisation might have different leadership needs according to the applicable strategies and objectives at any one time.

In researching how to frame those levels of development, I came across John Maxwell’s recently published book entitled “The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential” (2011, Hachette). The target audience is global but a lot of the cultural references are American and it is not immediately evident that these “levels” can be applied in other cultures. Nevertheless, this book is a clear and practical guide amongst many books on leadership development.  

Here’s a summary followed by my culturally biased critique (“et alors”).

The Five Levels of Leadership

Position

·         People follow because they have to. The authority goes with the desk rather than the person.

Permission

·         People follow because they want to. This is the beginning of influence where people start to follow you voluntarily.

Production

·         People follow you because of what you have done for the organisation. It could be argued that this is performance in addition to the “permission” or influence.

People Development

·         People follow you because you have invested in them and developed them.

Pinnacle

·         People follow you because of what you are and what you represent. This mirrors the popular notion of “authenticity” in leadership theories.

Et alors?

Napoleon’s definition of leadership was “first define reality then give hope”. In large, complex corporations for leaders in a “position” level, there is a lot of emphasis on defining reality and not necessarily a lot of hope-giving! For the other levels, a common thread in Maxwell’s book is the “giving of hope”: with the emphasis on a potential future, people see that you are capable of achievement, that you can lead change, that you can develop talents and ultimately that you can have a vision and take people there. However, the common theme of hope does not apply consistently in all cultures.

Imagine a culture where the emphasis is on the past and the present as much if not more than the future; a culture where the emphasis is on sensing the details rather than imagining the concept; and a culture where the hierarchy is very important… In that culture, there is a risk that leadership stops at level one! To progress to level two however, the type of influencing might be different than having future-orientated and conceptual ideas, being willing to take a risk and motivating people to believe in the idea itself. You cannot just sell the idea; instead you would have to spend a lot of time relating the “idea” to the past, firmly rooting it in the present with facts and figures and then having the support of someone with a “position”. It could be argued that this is just a different type of influencing, but the focus on facts and details might not lend itself to leaders or followers interacting on the personal or “human” level with reference to future possibilities.

A further problem arises not only attempting to apply a leadership theory from one culture to another but when actually trying to “apply” a leader from one culture to another. One thing is to lead in the original or similar culture (and some leaders do appear to be “transferable”), but in a truly global environment, to lead across different cultures is extremely difficult especially if the style of leadership in one culture is not recognised by followers in the other culture. When this happens, there is a tendency to rely on the authority of the position than the person, or in other words, regress to level one!

Whether Maxwell’s levels are applicable universally or not, he has emphasised two very important points in terms of relative leadership development. When principally engaged as managers planning and organising complex tasks in complex environments, leaders can often overlook the levels “permission” and “people development”. Position is literally just that and performance (or “production”) can always be achieved with technical or expert skills in such an environment; but in order to genuinely progress as a leader, there has to be some ability to influence on a personal level howsoever that “influence” might manifest. In addition, for more “advanced” leaders, turning to their staff and becoming the leader of leaders-both-current-and-future is a good point of development to ensure that they and their organisation can reach their “pinnacle”.