Finding Your Balance
Becoming a balanced leader is central to succeeding in life and business.
By Jay Scherer | Fall 2017
How do you lead? How do you know if you’re an effective leader? Do you have a leadership
philosophy? In my 20 years of experience as an executive coach, I’ve found these to be difficult
questions to answer for most charged with leading a team, a department, or an entire organization.
The challenge for all leaders is that being able to articulate the kind of leader you want to be—
and being able to consistently deliver on that promise—is exactly what’s needed to drive your success
and the success of your team.
Learning Leadership
When you’re responsible for managing or supervising people, you’re getting paid to lead. And as
a paid leadership professional, you’re also responsible for being a student of leadership, seeking
out the secrets of what great leaders do. But getting there isn’t easy when there’s a new leadership
theory of the month, month after month—I can’t even keep up and it’s my field of study.
Just try Googling “leadership theories”; you’ll get something like 5.4 million results. It’s no surprise
that much of this information is reduced to background noise; it’s no surprise that you might not
know where to start or which theory is appropriate in your own situation. So, it’s also no surprise
that you also may not be leading as well as you could or should.
Thankfully, you can lead better, day in and day out.
The framework below represents next generation thinking—the
thinking of a balanced leader—resulting in contemporary, simple,
practical, and very usable leadership practices.
Timeless Traits
Sometimes, before you look to the future, it’s best to look to the
past. Even though changes in people, markets, and technology are
driving changes in how leaders “need” to lead today, I believe
every leader can better their chance of achieving superior results
if he or she balances four timeless leadership traits and practices:
Envision. Great leaders spend time building strategies and plans in
anticipation of the short-, mid-, and long-term implications of the
overall mission, vision, and initiatives of the business. This
requires leaders to fully understand their businesses, envision the
future, build strategy, and innovate.
Inspire. Great leaders focus on getting others to buy in and commit
to a course of action. When inspired and engaged, people willingly
give discretionary effort. This requires leaders to foster commitment,
engage people, build relationships, and promote teamwork.
Implement. Great leaders are great leaders because they get things
done. They align their teams with their organizations’ goals and
make sure they’re all heading in the right direction, executing on
plans and strategies. This requires leaders to have the ability to
organize, establish priorities, instill accountability, and drive results.
Coach. Great leaders ensure sustainability of their enterprises by
focusing on developing the talent around them. This requires leaders
to know how to assess people, build teams, and maximize the
potential of each individual through coaching and more.
Building Balance
Too often leaders get caught up in business tasks when a balance
between tasks and the human side of business is what actually
maximizes effectiveness. The point of the four timeless traits
and practices above is that they seamlessly achieve balance by
focusing on both short- and long-term impacts, and both people
and performance.
Inspire and Implement, for instance, are practices that support an
organization in achieving near term results. On the other hand,
Envision and Coach are practices that support an organization in
creating and delivering on a long-term vision and strategy, and in
developing people and the organization for a sustainable future.
Envision and Implement are task-focused while Inspire and Coach
are people-focused.
In other words, reasonably implementing these practices ensures
you’ll be on the path to effective, balanced leadership.
Of course, one key to implementation is figuring out just how
much time you’re currently spending on each area—if any. I often
encourage the leaders I work with to track their time for a week or
two, using their calendars and color-coded entries to illustrate how
much time is spent on each leadership trait and practice.
With a better understanding of where your time is being spent, you
can make the necessary adjustments to get the right balance. But
what is the “right” balance?
In 2011, I helped conduct a survey of a select group of 75 senior
leaders that asked how much time they actually spend on each of
the four areas. We found that Implement (35 percent of time) led
the way, followed closely by Inspire (29 percent of time), and
Envision (21 percent of time) and Coach (15 percent of time)
rounded out the balance.
What’s interesting about the results is that when we asked if this
was the appropriate amount of time to spend in each area, the
responses centered on the belief that leaders should spend considerably
more time on the long-term items (Envision and Coach). As
a rule of thumb, I believe the more senior your role, the more time
you should spend on Envision and Coach. I’d also encourage you
to ask your superior how much time he or she thinks you should
be spending on each leadership practice.
In short, you have to find the balance that’s right for you and your
team. But, armed with this insight you can then build a plan for
each day and week about the percent of time you should spend
on each of the four practice quadrants. Some days you may spend
no time in one quadrant depending on that day’s focus, but I
believe you’ll need to spend some time in all four quadrants each
week if you’re truly focused on becoming a balanced leader.
Following this strategy, one leader I worked with, the U.S. president
of a global enterprise, quickly realized that his executive
team meetings were only focused on the long term—the team had
an execution gap. This leader is now working on closing that
gap, using a novel “Balanced Leader Scorecard” to guide his
team’s areas of focus.
Balanced, Better
In addition to figuring out where you need to spend your time,
it’s important to conduct an honest self-assessment of your
effectiveness in each leadership area. In which of the four areas
are you most comfortable? Least comfortable? It’s probably true
that where you’re most comfortable is where you’re most effective.
On the flip side, where you’re least comfortable is where you’re
most likely less effective.
I encourage you to work to understand what you can do to
enhance the skills you’re least comfortable in, but also consider
how to leverage your stronger skills.
Becoming a great leader is an ongoing process—one deserving of
many trials and errors—but this basic approach provides a way to
put together and implement a plan that focuses you on becoming
a better, balanced leader, today.
Jay Scherer is the president of Chicago-based Scherer Executive
Advisors, a specialized coaching firm with deep experience helping
executives achieve business objectives and career goals.