The three hats of leadership
Struggling to navigate the complexities of leadership? The three ‘leadership hats’ can help you inspire, empower, and drive success with confidence.
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A client recently shared about the time he realised his leadership style had to change.
“When I started as a manager, all I knew was command and control learned from years working for the Navy. That works in the military but not when I’m trying to help a remote team solve a technical problem in a mining facility.”
He invested in learning new leadership skills like building relationships, using influence, clarifying expectations, and empowering people. And that’s changed the way he works.
But now he has two new problems. People want to talk through difficult issues, except he doesn’t have time. And he hesitates to be directive even when it’s the right thing to do. Many of my clients, even very experienced ones, share the same challenge of having to adapt their style to changing circumstances and people, but aren’t sure what, when or how.
Years ago, when I was managing a business, a colleague gave me a brilliantly simple model to address this dilemma, helping me identify effective ways to be with whatever was in front of me.
Imagine there’s three leadership ‘hats’ - Coach, Manager, and Leader. We must become adept at selecting the appropriate hat and then switching as necessary. It’s nothing new, but difficult to learn and rarely demonstrated.
Learning this skill was transformational for me, and subsequently many of my clients, because instead of trying to dominate people and circumstances we can adapt.
Wearing the Leader’s hat, our job is to communicate a vision of the future, align people, and help them work out the strategy to get there. Unfortunately, not many managers ever get a chance to learn this skill, but it’s crucial for providing context and clarity where we’re all going.
Wearing the Manager’s hat, our job is to set clear expectations for performance and hold people to account whilst ensuring they have the resources and training to get the work done. We need to articulate the desired outcomes, values, standards and procedures, and manage performance without blame or shame. These conversations demand honesty and opportunities to learn.
It’s important to explicitly tell people when we put this hat on as it shifts both parties toward an intentional performance discussion.
Wearing the Coach’s hat, our job is to empower people, helping them grow by discovering their values and strengths, solve problems, face challenges, and find roles with the best fit. It involves a lot of listening.
It’s crucial to manage expectations, however. If we’re too busy to listen, there’s no point pretending and doing a bad job. Better to set up a good time for all.
It’s very rare for anyone to be good at wearing all three hats, so we must practice and learn to interpret.
For example: Is someone struggling with fulfilling their role (Manager hat)? Are people pulling in different directions (Leader hat)? Is the culture deteriorating (Leader hat)? Are there morale issues (Coach hat)? My biggest challenge was holding people to account (Manager hat).
My suggestion is first to try on the hats you’ve never thought before would fit. You owe it to yourself and the people you lead!
