LEADERS ARISE FROM – AND INDEED, ARE NECESSARY IN – EVERY LEVEL OF ORGANIZATIONS. AWARENESS OF BOTH THE PITFALLS AND THE PROMISE IS THE FIRST STEP TO BECOMING SUCH A LEADER.
Most people think of leaders as the people who are in charge – supervisors, division heads, vice-presidents, CEOs. That’s simply not true. Ultimately, leaders are only in charge of themselves. What’s different about them – the reason they have been ostensibly put “in charge” – is that they understand how to influence others. Anyone can do this.
It’s best to start the learning process early in your career, but it can be done at any time. What most people don’t understand – and this is why most people don’t attempt to acquire the
necessary skills – is that you don’t need power to bring change to an organization; you need influence – which is actually a more important skill.
Consider the question posed by Harvard Business School associate professor Amy J.C. Cuddy in this July 2013 article in Harvard Business Review: “So which is better, being lovable or being strong?” Cuddy and her co-authors, wrote, “Leaders who project strength before establishing trust run the risk of eliciting fear, and along with it a host of dysfunctional behaviors. Fear can undermine cognitive potential, creativity, and problem solving, and cause employees to get stuck and even disengage. It’s a “hot” emotion, with long-lasting effects.”
Cuddy cites 2013 research of consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, who determined that “in a study of 51,836 leaders, only 27 of them were rated in the bottom quartile in terms of likability and in the top quartile in terms of overall leadership effectiveness.” Cuddy concludes that “[a] growing body of research suggests that the way to influence—and to lead—is to begin with warmth. Warmth is the conduit of influence: It facilitates trust and the communication and absorption of ideas.”
The problem with that hypothesis, however, is that not everyone is inherently warm. Indeed, the more important value highlighted by those experts is not warmth, but trust. In today’s highly collaborative (or even yesterday’s highly siloed) organizations, how frequently must you argue the validity of a position, or the logic of a decision, to others? More often than not, you don’t have the power to force them to follow your lead. Others must trust you. Only by
understanding how to develop trust – and by extension, influence – will you become successful and transform yourself into a 360° leader1.
WHAT IS A 360° LEADER?
The definition of a 360° leader is simple: it’s a manager who wants to influence what happens in his or her organization through three specific groups: their peers and their peers’ subordinates; their bosses and their bosses’ peers; and their subordinates and their peers’ subordinates. Their ultimate goal: leading up, leading down and leading across (we will discuss each of these goals in subsequent white papers).
The definition also encompasses managers who want to move from potential to purpose to
performance. Potential is what you bring to the organization; purpose is what moves you
forward; and performance is the result of your efforts. At various times, all three get you
noticed.
That’s why being a 360° leader can be so valuable. You don’t want to be someone who only gets things done by dint of an antiquated command-and-control system. You want to be someone whose opinion is sought out by others; whose insights are valued for their depth; and whose
imprimatur can both ignite a project and inspire those working on it. Influence is more
important than power when it comes to getting things done and getting noticed. You can spread influence further than you can spread power.
THE 7 CHALLENGES TO BECOMING A 360° LEADER
It’s not easy to become a 360° leader. If it were, everyone would be a master of influence and anyone who works in a modern organization knows that that’s not true. More often, people rely on power, politics, and even manipulation to get their requests fulfilled. Those tactics may work in the short term, but not in the long term when colleagues tire of them. Furthermore, they may only work in a culture that allows such negativity to flourish. Influence is a much more transferable skill than intimidation.
Thus, though the transformation is something that you can use anywhere you work, you will still have to overcome seven difficult challenges.
The Tension Challenge. Tension arises depending on the level of empowerment and initiative you’re allowed within the boundaries of both your job description and the company culture.
The best way to relieve this tension: develop a level of comfort commensurate with your role in the organization. Understand that if you don’t have the answer, you should know where to find it. Understand what you can control and what you can’t, and let go of the latter. Understand that you won’t always get credit for something you do. And finally, never undercut your
superior, as that will lead to more tension, not less.
The Frustration Challenge. Frustration inevitably arises when you find yourself reporting to someone with distasteful management characteristics – that is, someone insecure, selfish,
lacking vision, and even downright incompetent. This can actually be a great opportunity: we learn more from people we dislike than those we don’t. It is also an opportunity in terms of
developing influence, because you’re saddled with someone who needs your help but may not be inclined to accept it.
Whether you like supervisors like this or not, you must develop a relationship with them. You must identify their strengths and their weaknesses, appreciating the former and augmenting the latter. Within the organization itself, you must also praise those strengths. At the same time, you must strive to mentor your supervisor, through not only your own supportive behavior but also through subtle suggestions for improvement.
The Multi-Hat Challenge. The multi-hat challenge doesn’t necessarily relate to responsibilities as much as it relates to demands. After all, managers face pressures from all directions – from superiors and subordinates, and from customers and suppliers.
When wearing different hats, it’s important to remember context. Your interactions will differ depending on how you’re interacting with but – and here’s the big challenge – your
behavior must remain consistent and predictable. (Think back to your most frustrating boss – wasn’t inconsistency one of their most aggravating characteristics?) You can only develop
influence by first convincing people that the face you present to them is a consistent one.
The Ego Challenge. We all have egos, and we all like to be praised. At times, as much as they’d like the adulation of colleagues, managers have to be satisfied with their own self-knowledge that they’ve done a job well, or inspired their subordinates to perform well. You may only be recognized by peers and colleagues, and not your boss, and sometimes that has to be enough.
Finally, know the difference between self-promotion and selfless promotion. The first is rooted in competition and the second is rooted in collaboration.
The Fulfillment Challenge. The challenge of fulfillment is closely aligned with the ego
challenge. It’s hard to feel fulfilled in the middle of the pack. You’re not always setting the pace or the direction or even feeling like you’re where the decisions are being made. Another aspect of being in the middle: you’re not always recognized for your contributions. That means being
mature enough to see success not in terms of individual achievement but rather in terms of team achievement. As Harry Truman once said, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
But as with most challenges, there’s an opportunity: work harder to collaborate with those who are making decisions, as well as their subordinates. You’ll gain a better understanding of the
organization’s direction and goals, even if you’re not deciding them. At the same time, you’ll also be recognized as someone who understands what’s going on.
The Vision Challenge. The vision challenge also relates to being removed from the strategic decision-making process, as most managers are. There are two ways to respond to this – as a petulant individual, which gets you nowhere, or as a team player, which has the opposite effect. The first response is understandable: if you didn’t help create a vision, or you don’t understand it, or you don’t feel like you can contribute to it (or if you don’t even know what it is), it’s easy to feel lost.
But if you take the opposite tack, by adapting to it, as you would to a supervisor with whom you don’t agree, you’ll have more success. This is a key element of creating influence, because those who address the vision challenge successfully are seen as someone who has placed the
organization’s needs first, promoted the vision, and understood their roles within the vision. (That behavior is much more memorable than that of the person who petulantly either tried to derail the vision or simply left the company in disgust.)
The Influence Challenge. All the foregoing challenges lead up to the challenge of influence. A leader’s influence is more than power, because when you have influence, people follow you because they want to, not because they have to. People follow leaders who’ve demonstrated a willingness to put the benefit of their colleagues and their organization ahead of themselves; because they demonstrated consistent and reliable behavior no matter who they were talking to; and because they’ve demonstrated commitment and competence even in the face of directives with which they didn’t agree.
HOW DO YOU BECOME A 360° LEADER?
Facing the aforementioned challenges, it may seem daunting, but it most assuredly can be done.
As Cuddy et al noted in the Harvard Business Review article, all of these issues come together; “In management settings, trust increases information sharing, openness, fluidity, and
cooperation. … Most important, trust provides the opportunity to change people’s attitudes and beliefs, not just their outward behavior. That’s the sweet spot when it comes to influence and the ability to get people to fully accept your message.”
Thus, you must be willing to learn, and willing to change (few of us are taught to be leaders, and may even have been subject to behavior that crimped our ability to learn it). (See below for more information on John Maxwell’s Lead In – Lead Out Coaching Program.)
To abrogate negative teachings, you must submit to positive teachings, preferably through coaching. You must also obey three laws.
The first is the Law of Intentionality. You must be intent on change. That means understanding your purpose and your goals to become a 360° leader, and then creating a plan and implementing it.
The second is the Law of Awareness. This requires a keen understanding of who you are and what you stand for. Do you stand for the betterment of yourself first and your team second, or is it the other way around? Can you build on what you know and commit to learning more in order to become a better leader, a better peer, and a better boss?
The third is the Law of Consistency. Are you willing to be reliable and disciplined, treating
everyone the same way (notwithstanding context)? Are you willing to hold yourself and others responsible for what they do, rather than diverting blame for fear of being tarnished?
You may not always be successful in your attempts to become a 360° leader, but that too is part of the challenge: acknowledging failure, learning from it, and moving forward. We always learn more from our failures than from our successes. In fact, the ability to acknowledge and accept adversity – and especially learn from it – is the mark of a true leader.

Nice Write up....kudos