Leading by Supporting Leaders

I remember when I was in the traffic department which is the bottom rung of the agency world. It is so far at the bottom, that I don’t think it exists anymore. I was essentially trying to manage both the throughput and delivery of projects in my portfolio. This would have been a lot easier if I had any influence over the people who were responsible for creating the work I was responsible for delivering. Alas, I just assigned work and crossed my fingers that it got done. Eventually, I developed mutual respect with enough colleagues that I could count on. But still, I had no authority over the people or the process that determined my success. Holding great responsibility without the resource of great power is beyond frustrating, it is ridiculous.

On one day, I remember an important creative director left before reviewing and approving the thing I needed him to review and approve to make my deadline. I was so angry and I remember one of the owners of the company was there to witness my small tantrum and asked me if I wanted to be angry or if I wanted to solve the problem. I told him that I wanted both. That wasn’t exactly true, what I wanted was for people who sat above me in the org chart to respect my role, and even more importantly, I wanted them to understand and support the work that needed to be done.

The two most common responses I have seen to this type of situation are 1. Stop caring and get used to crappy outcomes or 2. Take responsibility for supporting leaders and making them stronger so that things go better. Obviously, there is a lot of nuance between these two options but most solutions land between these two poles.

In my case, I got good at studying leaders and noticing how their direct reports were using them as a resource or not using them at all. I invested time and energy into building the kind of relationships that supported collaboration and feedback from every direction. This is an art unto itself, but building this skill is always a good investment of time and energy.

Early in my career, I decided that it was important to see to it that everything around me went as well as possible. I prioritized this because I cared about my job but also I cared about the people I work with and the work that we did. One important aspect of making things go well is to take responsibility for the success of my appointed leaders. This decision alone made me a key leader of every organization I was a part of.

Here is a little-known fact about leadership. The only thing you have to do to become a leader is lead. It is not necessary to wait for someone to call you a leader. In fact, being named a leader does not make someone a leader. Having a vision of where you are leading people and a plan that roughs out how you will lead are the tools you need to become a leader. All of the other leadership skills just determine how effective of a leader you will be. Here are some examples of my leadership that nobody was asking for and everyone benefitted from.

I once worked at an agency that was experiencing some rapid growth. There were legacy systems, and legacy roles that were being smooshed together with some new roles and new processes. We had a campaign for a huge client and it was very important that the work was good. Again, nobody was asking, but I felt it was even more important that we showed up to the client feeling aligned and confident.

I am sure you can see the problem already, if there is no alignment, how can the work be good? If there was no agreement in the upper ranks, how can the people charged with making the work good succeed? I coordinated a meeting with our Executive Creative Director, our Director of Strategy, and our Account Director. Each one of these people made at least triple my salary at the time. Each one of these people asked me if it was necessary to attend the meeting and with all of the authority that nobody gave me, I told each of them, it was absolutely required that they attend.

When the time came for the meeting, it was an icy atmosphere and everyone wanted to know why they were there. I identified the problem that the three of them had an equal influence on the direction of the work but their current inability to find common ground on the strategy was impacting the team’s ability to succeed. I spent some time paying respect to the power of tension that creative difference creates but added that if it is not contextualized and channeled, it can be an agent of chaos.

The work that happened in that meeting not only resulted in giving the creative team stronger direction, but it fortified those working relationships. Additionally, it created a model for resolving these issues in the future. I did not wait for these leaders to be better and more aligned, I took responsibility for doing what they could not do on their own and offered them some support.

I have another example. I was kind of new at another agency and I was trying to stay in my lane and not get involved in the creative. I think I just wanted to take some time and observe how things got done before asserting myself. Oh well, that didn’t last long. I was watching the president of the agency review the work with great disappointment. It just wasn’t landing. The work was ok, but not great. Nobody was expecting me to solve this problem. It was absolutely out of scope for me, but it was really hard to watch.

I finally sat down with the president after the team left and asked him what he thought was going wrong. I listened to his feedback on the work. We looked at the brief and figured out that much of the work was technically on brief, but it still wasn’t hitting right. We broke it down worked the problem and collaborated on articulating what was missing. This worked because I was an outsider. I wasn’t partial to the brief and I wasn’t attached to the work. I saw an opportunity to support and lead the leader to create a better outcome for everyone.

As a named leader, this is a little different. As a CEO, I was cognizant of my responsibility to support all of the leaders downstream of me. I also decided to be transparent about the places where I needed support and create permission, opportunities, and expectations around support. My team more than met the challenge. As a result, I was able to distribute work, responsibility, and accolades across the team.

Whenever I experience a leader that is not as effective as I would like, I now feel inclined to apply more wonder than blame. Leadership is not titles and it is not buzzwords and three-letter acronyms. Leadership occurs when skill, heart, vision, and courage meet each other. It is far more accessible than most people realize. Great leaders are in every organization and they have a huge range of titles.