On the Transition from Management to Leadership
By: Dave Bour
Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Skills, Leadership, Startup

Either consciously or unconsciously, leaders set the example of how to behave in groups. Employees will mimic their behavior, adopt their methods, and generally attempt to rise to the level of their leader. As a new leader, you must take time to reflect and develop your value system and moral compass. This, in turn, will be consistently applied to every interaction.

Given the importance, let’s examine some of these traits in detail and consider how they can be a part of your value system.

Compassion

Shared amongst all leadership types and a basic component of good human beings is compassion.

Acts of Compassion includes sharing with the needy and listening without judgement. At it’s core, compassion is about improving the circumstances of others. It is developed as an ability to prioritize context over expectations. It’s putting the individual ahead of the outcome, expectation, or want and in a way, it’s taking the long view over the short view.

Empathy

Empathy is a multiplier. You can be compassionate in an individual circumstance, but if you can put yourself in someone’s shoes, your accuracy will improve. For example:

If your goal is to retain employees, your ability to remember what it feels like in their position and read between the lines to capture the nuances of their situation will improve the liklihood of this outcome. If someone is caring for a sick family member and falling behind on a project, compassion will call for reducing stress, perhaps by extending the project timeline but empathy will call for adding paid time off to allow them space and time to care for their family. Empathy takes the solution a step further.

Empathy has a second benefit of putting yourself in the shoes of the customer. You may be able to develop more useful products and processes by applying it to your deliverable.

Rationality

This may also be described as ‘keeping a level-head’, ‘keep calm and carry on’, providing clarity, or dispelling fear. Rationality is instilling confidence in others that we will overcome the challenge ahead.

The ability to be rational will depend on your personality. While I wouldn’t call him irrational, Elon Musk has not garnered a reputation for serenity. Or, his bar is set so high that what seems rational to another is seen as underwhelming to Mr. Musk. In any case, he has been the first to say that, above all his roles, he sees himself as an Engineer. And you, as a leader, will need to be rational.

This value will often be used to re-focus employees closer to the ground. They will be pulled in a lot of directions and without the benefit of your decade+ experience, will embody a more reactionary policy.

In your 1:1’s, you can reiterate that everything will take time, that they’re still on track, everything is going well, and you believe in them. They’ll walk away with a renewed confidence in the objective and that emotion will be infectious.

Selflessness

Time, energy, attention, money — all leaders will put the needs of others ahead of themselves. Simon Sinek puts this best in his book, Leaders Eat Last, where you can find many wonderful examples of leadership. He draws heavily upon studying military processes, which, also, espouse selflessness.

Putting the group or the company before one’s own needs is necessary as a leader. While it can be a learned behavior, it is best working to make this automatic by practicing humility and gratitude.

Take some time to reflect on your recent interactions and, where appropriate, ask yourself how you applied compassion, empathy, rationality, and selflessness.

To summarize: