The importance of consistent role modelling of behaviours
Role modelling and the question of visibility – it’s an area we find ourselves often needing to give Executives and SLTs feedback on as part of our bespoke leadership development programmes.
Why? Probably because Execs and their leadership teams, when caught up in their own schedule of demands and challenges, can forget just how influential their presence is. We sometimes ask them to scan back to when they were at more middle level roles and to recall how aware they were of their ‘top leaders’ – it’s always interesting hearing their recollections of what they observed and commented on in terms of these leaders’ behaviours.
The impact of leadership behaviours
It is all too easy to underestimate the positive (and negative) impact that top teams’ behaviours can have on employees’ levels of trust, connection and commitment to the organisation’s vision and goals. A heightened awareness of just how much you are under the ‘organisational microscope’ at Exec level is key if desired leadership behaviours are to be successfully role modelled and anchored into the company culture.
The challenge of consistent role modelling
As business leaders, we all know that diaries often get filled up with the practical and the tactical, but of course it is equally, if not more, important to spend time, effort and energy on strategic thinking and developing the all important key leadership behaviours including;
- The characteristics/behaviours required to help us drive the business to achieve its goals.
- Ensuring that we do what we say we will do in terms of how we lead and behave
How we engage with the business is what inspires and gives confidence and keeps people focused. Particularly when the going gets tough. But, consistent role modelling can also be one of the hardest things to do, especially as a team. You no doubt know from psychometrics and different personality exercises that what we tend to do under stress is to forget our recently learned and acquired behaviours and go straight back to our old ways of operating.
You come up with great ways of leading, you know they make sense, you really put combined thought and energy into how they fit with your culture – you start putting it all into practice and then pressures come in and you go back to the comfort zone of familiar but inappropriate or less effective behaviours.
Combatting old behaviours
So, what can we do when we find ourselves moving into old behaviours that we want to combat either as a team or individually?
First stage has to be regularly checking out the whole team’s commitment to all agreed and prioritised leadership behaviours. It helps if these are enshrined in a Leadership Charter or set of Golden Rules – whatever you want to call it, by co creating a contract between team members you have far more chance of anchoring any new behaviours in your ways of working.
The importance of ‘live’ feedback
This brings into play another key area: how we give and receive feedback, one of the most effective ways, whether through mentoring, coaching or adopting HOT as a shared team mantra (honesty- openness- trust) to effect change. If you can give feedback to each other when you see people slipping into old habits, and you do it in the moment (with subtlety and care) or shortly afterwards, it is such a powerful and constructive way of helping each other keep on track. Word of caution though – we have to be willing to hear it!
When working with leadership teams part of our role is to offer ‘live’ feedback, role modelling to the team how effective this can be if handled well. A recent example was when in a team discussion a couple of Exec members, having worked to free up their SLT to become more independent and decisive, felt they needed to do a bit of a U turn and step in on a key decision that was being made by them. We challenged the Exec as to whether these behaviours were appropriate and the right course of action or had they slipped back into old ways of operating and controlling without realising. It needed sensitivity as when we are in full flow and feeling worried or passionate about something it can be difficult to stop and reassess. By allowing some discussion and reflection not only did the Exec hold their nerve with their SLT, they also built in better ways of supporting and guiding them. As a result, their visibility in role modelling different and agreed ways of leading stayed intact
Providing the necessary tools
One tool that we find particularly useful to use with clients when working on feedback is the SBI model – situation, behaviour and impact.
This framework helps teams and individuals to add clarity to their feedback conversations and offer clear, specific, and actionable feedback. By framing the conversation around the context/intention, the observed behaviour, and the resulting impact, the model helps to build trust, avoid defensivness, and ensure the feedback is actionable, effective and honest.
To be able to engage in this kind of honest discourse is a big boost to increasing confidence in a leadership team’s positive visibility to the rest of the business because they really will be holding each other to account, ensuring they are doing what they say they will.
It’s key too when developing the feedback muscle to know when you can achieve this way of working independently as a team and when you may need facilitation to help you cultivate the practice.
The ‘why bother’ question
Finally, it’s always useful to pose the ‘why bother’ question – we’d say that if you have worked out what leadership behaviours your organisation needs from you to deliver the goals and achieve the vision but you then fail to deliver on those behaviours you are also failing to do justice to your vision.
It’s easy to be inspired by a leader – but if you then witness them not doing what they said they would it’s equally easy to be turned off by them. How we interact and engage as leaders, with consistency, without a doubt impacts on a culture of belonging and productivity and probably affecting attrition and retention too. Remember, you are more visible than you realise.
How effective is your role modelling as leader?
Talk to us to discover how a bespoke Maier leadership development programme could help you make change to be proud of.
