Creating Your Ideal Leadership Shape
Prioritize Your Role-based Values To Find That Perfect Fit
Photo by Parsoa Khorsand on Unsplash
Are you considering a career change to find greater satisfaction, meaning, and fulfillment in your role? If you’re on the fence about whether to stay or move on from your current role, keep reading because this article may help you.
Finding meaning and fulfillment, especially in our employment roles, is easier said than done. But fundamentally, it’s about who you are, what you want, and where you want to be. If you’re just starting your career, it might take some time to get there. However, if you’re mid-career or experienced, you probably already have a clear idea. Likely, you know who you want to work for, who you want to work with, where you want to work, and what you want to do.
Conversely, you probably know who you don’t want to work for or with, where you don’t want to work, and what you don’t want to be doing. These insightful reflections can help define your ideal leadership scenario, which I’ll relate in this article — is your ideal leadership shape. To achieve this and find fulfillment in your role, you’ll need to take the time to get it right, even though it’s not always possible to do so right away.
What’s a leadership shape? Let’s start with a quick lesson in geometry. In geometry, a quadrilateral is a flat, two-dimensional shape with four straight sides. Common types of quadrilaterals include squares, rectangles, trapezoids, rhombuses, parallelograms, and kites. To find fulfillment in our roles as people leaders or individual contributors, we should aim for a proper balance in four key areas, which I’ll refer to as “sides,” like the sides of a square. These are: Boss, Organization, Role, and Team. When I mention “team,” I’m talking about your colleagues, or teammates, who, like you, report to the same person. But what if you’re a people leader with a team of direct reports? Well, I can understand why you might be wondering where they fit into the equation: they’re important. In fact, very important, both for your own career success and your organization’s. But for the purposes of alignment and creating your ideal leadership shape, they should not be a factor.
Just like a square, if all sides are equal in length — meaning you give equal importance to each — the angles connecting them would all be exactly 90 degrees. But making all four aspects (sides) equally important isn’t easy, nor is it always appropriate, because people value different things differently. Further, professionally, loving what you do (role) doesn’t mean your situation (boss, organization, team) supports it perfectly. It’s complex and nuanced, and it always will be. So, to find your ideal leadership shape, you first need to address each side individually, and here’s how:
Rank the four sides in order of importance. If all four matter equally to you, then you know that aligning all of them is necessary to find the perfect role. However, if after prioritizing, you find that one or more are significantly more important than others, the next step will help clarify things. So, to start, ask yourself which of these six statements applies to you:
1. You love your boss, your organization, your role, and your team.
2. You love your organization, your role, and your team, but you don’t love your boss.
3. You love your boss, your role, and your team, but you don’t love your organization.
4. You love your boss, your organization, and your team, but you don’t love your role.
5. You love your boss, your organization, and your role, but you don’t love your team.
6. You have some other combination not listed in statements 1–5.
7. You don’t love your boss, your organization, your role, or your team.
Once you’ve identified which statement applies to you, it’s time to plan your next steps. Before I start, let me clarify what I mean by “love.” The word “love” can be overused, but for this exercise, it means you really like or are happy with your current situation. If your feeling toward any side of the shape is less than that, statements 2–5 apply to you.
Statement 1: You love your boss, your organization, your role, and your team.
Congratulations! It looks like you’ve found an ideal role. Do you know why you love your boss, your organization, your role, and your team? Take note of those answers; save and file them away. Someday, you’ll want to revisit them as you consider your options for advancement or changing employers. But let’s say you have no desire to change your circumstances. That’s great, too. If you’re happy, content, and finding meaning and fulfillment right where you are, stay put. Keep producing outstanding results. Be grateful that your leadership shape is perfectly aligned, and when possible, share that positivity with your boss and your organization so they can see what it looks like to have the right person in the right role from the contributor’s perspective.
But there’s a counter-narrative here, and that’s growth. So, to address the elephant in the room, continue to produce in alignment with your role’s goals and objectives. That’s critically important as you seek to maximize your longevity in the role. While employers value those who want to have longevity in their roles, they also value growth and results because, after all, organizations don’t grow if their people don’t.
Statement 2: You love your organization, your role, and your team, but you don’t love your boss.
If you love everything except for yor boss, you have a few options. Start by understanding why you don’t love your boss. Is it work-related or personal? Do you disagree with their leadership style, or are their values out of sync with yours? Do you know what their leadership philosophy is? That’s a good place to start. Sometimes, simply understanding why your boss behaves the way they do can be very helpful. Also, knowing their quirks and dislikes can reduce confusion and help set boundaries.
On the other hand, if you already know you can’t work well with this person, it’s time to consider switching to a different role away from them or leaving the organization. Statistically, people leave organizations because of their boss, so you won’t be the first or last to make that decision. That said, for clarity’s sake, it’s important to talk to your boss about why you’re thinking of leaving. Remember, as the employee, you hold the power, not them, so if you find the courage to have that conversation, it could be a game-changer. If they genuinely receive and act on the feedback, you might change your mind; if not, you have your confirmation.
Statement 3: You love your boss, your role, and your team, but you don’t love your organization.
If your discontent stems from a lack of love for your organization, it’s time to ask yourself what exactly about the organization causes that feeling. Is it the organizational policy? Is it the senior leadership? Once you identify the reason or reasons, decide whether there’s anything you can do to address them. If you have a practical way to create change and believe the effort is worthwhile, then it’s time to take action. If not, it might be better to start looking for a better fit sooner rather than later, especially if the organization’s mission and values don’t align with yours.
Additionally, it’s crucial to communicate your feelings to your leadership, especially if you value those relationships. Why? Because misalignment within an organization might be related to messaging; there’s an opportunity to improve it by keeping your chain of command informed. Recognizing the root cause of discontent is essential — you don’t want to end up in another organization facing the same issues.
Statement 4: You love your boss, your organization, and your team, but you don’t love your role.
Everyone has worked in roles that didn’t match their demeanor, personality, skills, natural strengths, or career goals. If you’re in a role that doesn’t match your ambitions, motivation, or natural strengths, you face a tough choice: stay and push through, draining mental energy just to get by, or make a move to find something more fitting.
The decision at that point is quite complex. Do you see yourself with the organization long-term? If the answer is “yes,” develop an exit strategy with your current leadership team. Organizations value loyalty and want to retain talented employees. When you find a way to succeed in a role that isn’t the best fit, you demonstrate that you can handle adversity and that you don’t give up. Whether right or wrong, employers — especially informed hiring managers — value role endurance. In other words, all else being equal, someone who stays in a role for two years, for example, may seem more attractive than someone who only lasts six months.
Consider kids who grow up on farms. Do you think it’s their lifelong dream to wake early to work on the family farm before a long day at school, or during the summer when there’s no school and they’d rather be sleeping in? I would guess that, for the most part, the answer is “no,” but they persevere and learn some valuable lessons along the way. Similarly, if you can navigate the role and find a light at the end of the tunnel, you may learn some truly valuable lessons while you’re in the tunnel. However, if the tunnel is so dark that there’s no end in sight and no viable way to find the light at the end, then pursue the role that fits you, your natural strengths, and your career goals sooner rather than later.
Statement 5: You love your boss, your organization, and your role, but you don’t love your team.
Colleagues, not leaders or subordinates, are the most important for career success. Why? Because colleagues can support you in ways that aren’t easily imitated. When you can motivate your colleagues, your sphere of influence and the power of your ideas become much more effective than when you influence your direct reports or even your leaders. However, if you cannot find it within yourself to lead effectively among your colleagues, you’re in a tough spot. Your colleagues are there for a reason, and like you, they have their own goals and initiatives. Working together benefits the organization, but that doesn’t always mean it’s good for you, and whether it’s good for you depends on how you view the health of the relationship.
You should only consider leaving a role when a relationship with a coworker is so strained that it impacts your well-being, and only after giving your leadership team a chance to address the issue. If it’s possible to fix the situation, it’s better to work through it for long-term growth and stability. Usually, there’s a good way forward, often through improved communication. But if fixing it isn’t possible and you’ve exhausted all options to find a meaningful solution, then and only then should you think about leaving the role for another opportunity, either within or outside the organization.
Statement 6: You have some other combination not listed in statements 1–5.
If you find yourself in a situation where, for example, you love the role and the organization but dislike your boss or team, or any other combination, you can use the guidelines above to address those issues. Arranging the sides of your shape in your ideal order will help you prioritize where to spend your time and energy and create a clear path forward.
Statement 7: You don’t love your boss, your organization, your role, or your team.
Generally, we align somewhere within the first six statements. However, if you find yourself in a situation where all four sides of your shape are off — something far from ideal — I encourage you to deeply understand the “why” behind each one. In each of the previous statements, you can work toward finding those answers for each side of your shape. You need to examine each carefully and ask yourself, what is causing this specific side of my shape to be unsustainable? Knowing what you don’t want will help you identify what you do want. Leadership coaching can also assist you in finding those answers, as well as gaining improved awareness of your strengths, personality, and communication preferences.
Summary
It’s important to understand the type of organization you want to join and why. Knowing who you will and won’t work for, and why, is essential, too. Recognizing what you value most in teammates and colleagues, and why, is also important. Additionally, you should balance your career goals, natural strengths, job types, sectors, and contributor roles, and understand what each of these means to you.
If you can find a way to balance these considerations and have confidence in your marketability — knowing your talent is both wanted and needed — you can create an environment where you might achieve extraordinary success. Now, it’s time to ensure you’re working in a healthy environment filled with passion, purpose, and fulfillment. Regardless of your current situation, if you’re willing to dedicate time to meaningful reflection today, you’ll make better choices for yourself tomorrow.