UNTITLED LEADERSHIP: How To Influence And Thrive In A VUCA world

"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”

This quote from Rudyard Kipling (1895) challenges our logical brains to think differently as we look to influence and thrive in this current volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. This quote reminds us that the formula for success is less about individual contributors, but rather how each impact and reflects on the group, and individuals gain just as much from the group as the group gains from the individuals.

And it is for this reason culture is becoming increasingly important to our projects and organisations, as culture is the result of how individuals’ function and behave within group environments. The role of a leader is to set the tone for a positive culture through their behaviours, remembering leadership as compared to management is a choice, not a title.

Today’s construction industry is complex and interconnected, and often there is no single or simple solution to the problems encountered. No one individual can know every solution, yet heroic leadership continues to dominate the leadership landscape. Often heroic leaders over-control and under-utilise their subordinates. Heroic leaders discourage people from feeling responsible for anything beyond their assigned area, which inhibits optimal teamwork and implicitly encourages subordinates to use the heroic approach below them. As an alternative, “Untitled Leadership” should be considered as a means to enable better outcomes for our projects and organisations in this VUCA world.

Untitled Leaders promote the virtues of strong team environments, influencing by collective contribution rather than having individuals expend time and energy protecting their ideas. Individuals who work alongside Untitled Leaders have greater support for things they played a part in creating. And finally, Untitled Leaders produce high performing teams that know collaboration with others is the only way to get complex, intractable problems solved, and allow patterns to emerge rather than just looking for facts with a confirmation bias.

So how do you practice Untitled Leadership? Here are 3 key focus areas to help become an Untitled Leader:

Consistency of purpose

People are more likely to buy in and follow you along for the duration when they are aware and can align to a common purpose. And consistency of that purpose must be shown through leader’s actions (and inactions) time after time and not just at a single event. A leader’s behaviours are the seeds for the culture you want. Remaining consistent ensures you build a high level of authenticity which then allows trust to grow within your teams.

Build a psychologically safe environment

The goal is not to be comfortable but rather create a climate where people can speak without fear.

Firstly, it is about destigmatising failure. Failure with the construction industry traditionally has negative connotations and often brings up visions of structures collapsing. However, from failure comes learning, and if you fail safe and fail fast you can then learn and take advantage of opportunities much faster.

Secondly, psychological safety begins with admitting our own mistakes and welcoming criticism from others. Leaders who act with confident humility understand that there are things you don’t know and have a willingness and capacity to learn. Untitled Leaders make themselves vulnerable to new ideas and alternative perspectives. To paraphrase Marcel Proust… The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes.

Encourage diversity and lead with inclusion

Each individual is different because of their unique background, experiences etc. that brings their own perspectives to the task at hand. And diversity is not only about bringing different perspectives to the table, because research has found that people change their behaviours also. Individuals anticipate differences of opinion and perspective and as a consequence raise their game when we think we are going to be challenged. It puts us out of our comfort zone so we come more prepared to focus on the problem and more willing to articulate our point of view. And diversity alone is not enough, so to benefit from diversity an environment of inclusion and psychologically safety is required to maximise these perspectives. n

Mikael Heinonen

Cofounder at Collabaloop + The Build Better Network mikael@collabaloop.com