The problem with leadership advice
One of the things I love about leadership is how incredibly challenging it can be. It's messy work. Full of context, nuance and paradox.
As with anything, we often try to simplify and organize it. One result is an endless supply of leadership thought pieces along the lines of "The 5 most important leadership traits". This type of leadership advice always fails to address the complexity of the human experience. And leadership is all about engaging with that experience.
Even this newsletter, which I always aim to make helpful and actionable, is still limited by its inability to specifically address individual circumstances and dynamics. Today, we'll discuss how a lot of this advice falls short. In the actions items, we'll provide some tips on gaining more meaningful leadership advice.
Overly Generic
Most published leadership advice is overly generic by design.
If leadership advice was made for specific leaders or personalities, it would no longer be relevant to the masses. The problem is that a one-size-fits-all approach does not consider individual workplace experiences or more importantly, the individuals within those experiences.
This limiting factor is what creates many of the subsequent problems…
Inactionable
A lot of the advice we get sounds great in theory but is not nearly actionable enough to be helpful.
We often hear things like "to lead you need to inspire".
Got it? Are you inspiring yet? Never mind that there are different ways to inspire others and that each of those individuals are likely inspired by different things altogether.
People who are looking to develop a certain skill are usually not just looking at the result, but how to achieve it. To truly support them, it helps to understand that individual, their strengths and their experience around the skill in question.
Paradoxes
There is so much nuance and paradox in leadership that generic advice often ignores. We're called to lead with both confidence and humility. Be authentic yet flexible. Responding to the urgent while prioritizing the important.
The truth is you have to be all those things, at different times. And you need to learn when to leverage each.
Servant leadership is a great example here. I'm not against servant leadership, but I do see a lot of leadership advice that promotes the idea without acknowledging the day-to-day realities on the ground.
What will your servant leadership look like when you need to start making tough and unpopular decisions? It's not impossible, but it's almost always more complicated than what is suggested.
One shot
Much of the advice we're talking about doesn’t acknowledge that leadership development is a life-long practice.
There are a number of examples of knowledge-action gaps in leadership. Things that leaders don't do despite knowing they should be doing more of it.
Delegation is the perfect example. Most managers know and will even acknowledge they should be delegating more. Because the general advice out there is vague, inactionable and overly-simplified, it's unlikely to drive any meaningful change. Even if a leader reads that advice and delegates for a couple weeks, it's very easy to accidently slip into old habits.
Great leadership is a life-long commitment to developing these difficult skills. Even actionable advice like the one this newsletter provides is only valuable if regularly practiced. Knowledge without action isn't very valuable.
This Week's Action Items:
Take from generic leadership advice what is valuable to you, but understand that it only scratches the surface.
Identify systems that will help you transform broad advice into you own actionable growth.
Make the commitment to continuously work on developing your own leadership skills.
Seek a mentor or coach who can help you navigate your specific circumstances.
