Accidental Leadership: The Challenge Of Leading And Managing In The Technical Professions

Susan H. Surplus
The Hay Group
Weston, Fla.

If everything written on leadership in the last 5 years were scanned for an essential two or three grains of advice, there would be a short list. There would be something on pointing people in a sensible direction, something on getting people to see the end point of that direction, and, of course, something on making people want to go there.

If that short list is what leadership will require for the future, then it's significant to note how many otherwise savvy executives in the technical professions-such as those that characterize the oil and gas industry-feel clueless about how to focus and energize their people.

These are accidental leaders, who, by virtue of their rise through some technical or other expert ranks, earned a leadership title without having an operationalized understanding of what that entails. They have used a "follow me" approach that many employees are unable or unwilling to accept.

The reasons

No one who inherits a leadership title intends not to lead. At the very least, accidental leaders recognize that the people reporting to them have to be kept busy and content enough not to rock the boat.

At best, many accidental leaders recognize that their own behavior, more than any other factor, affects the ability of those people to be focused and energized. What to do about that remains for them a mystery.

The causes of that puzzlement are obvious. The disciplines that brought these leaders to their present posts were rational and taught them rational thinking. The technical projects they delivered had clear processes and specs. There was solid feedback on their performance from the predictable technological outcomes of their work.

When they moved up the ladder out of their technical expertise and into people management, these accidental leaders found that employees are not always rational, are not led by a clear formula approach, and are seldom totally predictable. Leading and motivating became a matter of painful trial and error until, over time, experience of what not to do became the rule. There was little thought given to leading and motivating in a deliberate way.

What continues to keep accidental leaders in the technical professions from becoming deliberate leaders? The reasons are both business-based and personal:

• Accidental leaders tend to be experts at something, self-starters suddenly in the unsatisfying role of making others start themselves. The work of leading doesn't provide the same adrenaline rush as "doing what has to be done myself" faster and better than any employee could be led to do it.
• Leading others doesn't give any immediate feedback. Executives with a healthy sense of urgency can't tell if the time they invest in giving direction or coaching has any positive effect on performance. (Often there seems to be evidence that there has been no effect at all.)
• Leaders have trouble providing focus when they don't have focus themselves. If executives haven't operationalized the organization's strategy in terms of their own roles, it's difficult for them to operationalize it for those who are supposed to follow them.
• Insight is not enough. Accidental leaders may read voraciously from the writings of leadership gurus, but translating others' ideas into their own actions is a challenging task for busy executives. Knowing what to do and being able to do it require different competencies.
• Organizations reward "the wrong stuff." The public posture of companies is to emphasize the importance of coaching and developing employees. The private posture is often to reward executives for making the numbers, with or without effective leadership behaviors.

The costs

There are prices to be paid for accidental leadership-a price for organizations and a price for leaders. An example involving research and development is typical of what companies experience.

Faced with the challenges of rapid changes in technology, increases in customer demand, and decreases in budget, the organization decided to rethink itself. It set new strategies and new objectives. It reorganized its structures. And then it recognized the need to test its benchstrength-to measure the capabilities of its current technical professionals against the needs identified for the future.

The organization found that it had no benchstrength, that most of its top professional human assets were in senior supervisory or management spots, and that most were a decade or less from retirement. Even the plan to escalate hiring to fill in the ranks would not quickly close the gap in critical professional roles. The organization was nearly bankrupt in human assets for the future.

How the organization came to find itself bankrupt can be traced to many factors, among them its tolerance, and sometimes its reward, of accidental leadership. The only clear path for increasing one's salary, prestige, and tenure in that organization was to get promoted. The only upward movement was into supervisory spots, to which people rose not by exhibiting leadership, or customer service, or cost-cutting innovations, but by being excellent scientists.

Once in those spots, scientists led, by accident, in the only way they knew how: by doing key tasks themselves and by being hands-on as their direct reports tried to do their own assignments. It was the "Let Me Do It! Let Me Show You!" style of leadership that was rewarded and that caused talented, ambitious young professionals to move on. The organization was deprived of well-developed and motivated benchstrength for the future.

An example of how accidental leadership is costly to accidental leaders themselves comes from Arnie, who has a global leadership role in an engineering firm.

Arnie rose through the ranks over 15 years and is considered a high flyer, destined for one of the most senior spots in the business if company politics or his grueling travel routine don't get him first.

With regions to manage in Asia and in Mexico, Arnie spends most of his time on a plane. He keeps a personal eye on what's happening at each site, getting data directly from site managers instead of through country representatives who report directly to him.

Arnie's main frustration is that he can't trust people to do what he wants them to do. He can't understand why his direct reports complain when he fixes local problems for them, why they don't have his sense of urgency, why they question his decisions when the intent of those decisions is so obvious.

Managing people is the most punishing part of Arnie's job. Turnover is a blessing, a chance to start fresh with someone who thinks and acts like Arnie, without direction.

Arnie's lack of satisfaction in the job he's trying to do, and his diminished performance in trying to do that job alone, will likely take a toll on his personal and professional life. That's a big price for being thrust into the role of leader without accurate company guidance in what that job is really about and without help in changing his self-image and his behavior from that of doer to that of motivator.

Toward deliberate leadership

Research has shown that there is no single profile of a good leader, but there are ways in which organizations can make their leadership choices more deliberate and predictable.

They can and should:

• Clearly define the business results that need to be delivered by incumbents in a given leadership job or role now and in the foreseeable future. Leaders need clear targets.
• Define the criteria that can be used to measure the level of attainment of those results. Leaders need to keep score on their own performance.
• Define the key activities that incumbents will need to engage in to get the desired results, and from that define the basic skills and knowledge needed for survival and the competencies (personal performance characteristics) needed for excellence.
• For new hires, spend time on effective job (or role)-person matching to determine with some accuracy the degree to which a candidate can demonstrate the competencies needed for excellence.
• For incumbents and internal recruits, communicate the performance model: the results needed, the scorecard measures, the competencies. Leaders, especially those who rose through technical ranks, need to see and understand a new template for success.
• Provide leadership development support. The notion that leaders are too busy or too senior to learn more about managing the organization's most critical assets is a dangerous one for business. Whether the support is given one-on-one or in teams, whether it is delivered by management or other professionals, leaders must be developed throughout their careers to lead.
• Hold leaders accountable for how they lead people, and reward the best. Leaders need continuing feedback on the parts of their jobs that get lost in the press of other work, e.g., on how well they:

-coach their people so that they can contribute more and better performance to the organization; -retain talent by providing a motivating climate for performance; -provide clarity of direction and individual feedback on where people are headed.

There is much technical and human energy to be harnessed when accidental leaders become focused and deliberate. Organizations can't afford to let any of that energy drain away.

When they moved up the ladder out of their technical expertise and into people management, these accidental leaders found that employees are not always rational, are not led by a clear formula approach, and are seldom totally predictable.

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