by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Enlightened leadership introduces far more meaningful roles that reflect the 21st century.”

  President Trump, whether you like him or not, holds the primary USA leadership role of Visionist – traditionally he’s regarded as country manager, CEO or President.  Visionist, however, more clearly represents his required role. He has a number of key cabinet members around him: in leader terms, they are the country’s Strategists for their specific domain – or in manager terms, they are Executives. All their Department Directors or Vice Presidents, in management parlance, would be regarded as Group Leaders in the leadership camp.

Then at the first level of influence over people, instead of having supervisors we have Team Leaders. Within enlightened leadership, as far as is humanly possible, you only have these four levels of leaders, or less, without the likelihood of invoking a common organization disease called ‘bureaucracy.’ Later in this article, we can look at how we can scale up for more sizeable government or commercial organizations, when they utilize such a recommended role constellation.

Toward the other end of our enterprise-size spectrum, since we’re now well into the football season: we can consider a typical leadership-management organization for orchestrating a successful sports team. The franchise owner could also be regarded as its Visionist, because she/he will declare how they would like to see the franchise evolve – profitably we hope. Typically, they will have a CFO, General Manager and support services executives (the behind the scenes people). In leader terms, these would then be regarded as Strategists for Resources, Game Operations, or Support Service domains.

And then we get to their typical Team Manager or Coach, combined with Assistant Coaches and Specialist Coaches. The Team Manager could easily be regarded as their Group Leader/Primary Coach and his/her Assistant Coaches can remain as such, or as Associate Coaches, because coaching is much more synonymous with leading than supervising. These two sets of individuals are responsible for either the defensive or offensive teams. The Specialist Coaches are just that: either for team quarterbacks, linebackers, kickers or whatever. More about these latter individuals later.

Interestingly enough, when we come to sports players, we regard them as team members; although in the remainder of our management world we regard workplace people as employees – people that are “owned” by employers – both employee-employers are traditional management words. How about, instead, using enlightened leadership terms, where we regard employees as either team members or contributors; since their role is to contribute more than be employed? Then they can be regarded as either strong-contributors, contributors or non-contributors. After all, isn’t contribution that organizations really reward their people for?

In the case of non-contributors: once someone gains that designation, they should be encouraged to move on to a place where they can fully contribute. Without that change, both you and they are doing your organization a disservice – you by retaining an under-performer and they by living with their probable frustration of not meeting agreed contribution levels.

As contributors or team members, they should be given the opportunity to hold one of three categories – as proficient contributors, experts or masters. As Proficient Contributors or players, they should regularly display the capacity and motivation to meet all key performance requirements of their designated position. (Note: They don’t need to be especially ambitious, as long as they consistently meet required performance levels.) As Experts: They should have the extra experience – 2-3 years – know-how and attitude to largely operate and contribute with minimal coaching or mentoring.

When it comes to Masters: They should have the expertise – including some years as Expert – competence and motivation to coach and lead others within their particular discipline. This is where those Specialist Coaches – alluded to earlier – come into play. Consider letting them wear appropriate insignia to indicate their role to newcomers, and be rewarded accordingly.  (Note: Some people are talented enough to lead others, while others are available and better suited for specialist roles within their own domain.) The use of Contributor, Expert and Master roles enables organizations to recognize capability and contribution in an era where fewer leader spots are available.

Coming back to the leader roles again, whether they be as Visionists, Strategists, Group Leaders or Team Leaders, we can revisit our football team once more to clarify their particular roles. Starting out with the Associate or Assistant Coach roles: their focus as Team Leaders is to energize their defensive or offensive players, so as to optimize their special team game performance. To accomplish this, those team members have to buy-into their coach’s game-play strategy, have the confidence they’re playing with optimum team-mates, and ultimately believe in their given coach. Easily said; but tough to sustain by any Team Leader or Associate Coach on an ongoing basis. It’s a challenge every day; especially as players are maturing all the time and what worked yesterday may not necessarily work tomorrow.

Now revisiting that Group Leader-Primary Coach – or Team Manager – role, we can envisage him educating and motivating his Team Leaders -Associate Coaches. He will particularly focus on their leader and game strategies, challenge them to get the best from their players, and encourage them to grow as people-leaders. Additionally, he will be looking at near-term strategy and player needs. He will also take a lead from his own Strategist.

Any Strategist will have more than one Group Leader on his own team; to cover such requirements as scouting for talent, monitoring competitor team developments, preparing for hopeful post-season needs, and liaising with other Strategists at his level. He will also aim to draw the best people-leader performance from his Group Leaders. Ultimately this Team Strategist will take his lead from the Visionist – CEO or President in traditional speak – where there will also be a Resource Strategist, PR Strategist and Infrastructure Strategist on this key team. Visionists will regularly challenge their domain Strategists in a constructive manner; to encourage them to look at tomorrow as well as today.

Taking this all into account, we can now briefly return to the opening paragraph promise: which was to minimize the prospect of bureaucratization in much larger scale government, institutional or commercial entities. In such instances, the Team Leader-Associate Coach role would be handled by a much more seasoned and advanced people-leader. In fact, it’s also envisaged that his/her same-level counterparts will become advisory partners, too – in place of traditional Board Directors – and he/she would behave like a Domain Visionist for their own domain. This would therefore kick-off a whole new constellation of Domain Strategists, Group Leaders and Team Leaders once more for that particular domain.

So your take-aways for setting up such an enlightened leadership organization will be:

• Although management will still be relevant, the primary focus will be on leadership roles.
• By focusing on leadership roles, it will encourage them to inspire people rather than be
• Millennials are likely to respond much more to leadership, since it will encourage them to “make a difference” rather than “be slaves to production models or game-play manuals.”
• By giving each role a meaningful, enlightened and relevant name; it will resonate with up-and-coming generations and encourage them to put their best foot forward… providing, of course, that the role holders live up to role expectations.

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