The What and How of Leadership: My Leadership Model
By: Matthew Alan Waller
Tags: Leadership Development, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Skills, Leadership Training, Leadership

On April 3, 2019, I published a LinkedIn article titled, “The What and How of Leadership.” In that article, I presented an earlier version of my leadership model, which combined the work of John Kotter’s 2001 article in Harvard Business Review with the work of Deborah Ancona, Thomas W. Malone, Wanda J. Orlikowski, and Peter M. Senge in a 2007 article in Harvard Business Review. Kotter’s article discusses what leaders do and Ancona et al. discusses how leaders lead.

I combined How and What into a 2 X 2 matrix, with the What items — Setting Direction, Gaining Alignment, and Providing Motivation — across the top as columns, and the How items — Sensemaking, Relating, Visioning, and Inventing — down the left side as rows of the matrix. To understand this, please read “The What and How of Leadership.”

After using it for a few years, I added one new “What” — Build Trust — two new “Hows” — Diversifying and Including and Sharing Governance, and three new pillars — Honor People, Learn and Develop Skills, and Operate with Integrity.

Trust is complicated to define and measure. Based on my understanding of the literature, my opinion, and my experience, trust is built through competence and skill in a leader, confidence that the leader wants the best for the followers, and belief that the leader will operate with integrity. In addition to adding trust as a “What” of leadership, I took the components I just listed and made them pillars for the entire model.

I added Diversifying and Including to the “How” in my model because as our organization has been seeking to improve in this area, I noticed that it increases perceptions of procedural justice, which improves overall alignment. Procedural justice essentially means that employees feel that decisions are made in a way that is fair. As a leader, when we include more diverse groups in our decision processes through committees, meetings, boards, etc. we increase procedural justice. When followers are treated fairly in decision-making, it helps them get on board with the decisions, thus increasing alignment.

I also added Sharing Governance to the “How” dimension of the model. Shared Governance is a concept that is used heavily in universities. It is often complained about by university administrators, but if it is designed properly, it can lead to better decisions and increased alignment and motivation. Here are some important questions to ask yourself as a leader: Which decisions do I make that should include input from others? Who should have input to these decisions? Which decisions do I make that could be made by others?

Here is how I use it: for our leadership team’s important and strategic initiatives, I make entries in the matrix of things we are doing or communicating that fit in that cell based on the corresponding column and row titles. If I cannot make an entry, then I ask myself and/or my team if we should be doing something in that regard. I rarely pull out the table and ask them to complete it. Instead, I use it more as a checklist to make sure we are not missing anything important in our approach to leadership.

I encourage you to seek out the crucial Whats and Hows of your organization’s leadership and let me know how they correspond with the leadership model we use for strategic decisions at the Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Table 1.0: Integrating the “What” and “How” of Leadership

Ancona, Deborah, et al. “In praise of the incomplete leader.” Harvard business review 85.2 (2007): 92.

Konovsky, Mary A. “Understanding procedural justice and its impact on business organizations.” Journal of management 26.3 (2000): 489–511.

Kotter, John P. “What leaders really do.” Harvard business review 79.11 (2001).

McEvily, Bill, and Marco Tortoriello. “Measuring trust in organisational research: Review and recommendations.” Journal of Trust Research 1.1 (2011): 23–63.

Ozmen, Y. Serkan. “How employees define organisational trust: analysing employee trust in organisation.” Journal of Global Responsibility (2018).

Taylor, Mark. “Shared governance in the modern university.” Higher Education Quarterly 67.1 (2013): 80–94.

(Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-how-leadership-my-model-matt-waller/ )