How to structure effective leadership roles
Developing effective leadership roles is one of the most powerful ways to boost a leader’s effectiveness.
The way to do this is by developing your role as a unified persona. This will maximize the expression your leadership power.
I will show you how to structure a compelling leadership role in this guide.
There are three elements to developing strong leadership roles:
- Establish the parameters of your title
- Establish your constituent audiences
- Train in the application of the 4 components of all leadership skills
These three elements all roll up into a structure from which you project your leadership role.
Because there is a wide disparity about the definition of leadership, lets start at the beginning. Then we’ll examine the 2 kinds of leadership.
Learn more about the 3 phases of leadership training and development here:
How do you shape leadership roles?
In order to shape leadership roles, we need to establish some simple working definitions of what leadership is first.
For the purposes of shaping leadership roles we can begin with:
What is a leadership?
The definition of leadership is “Influencing a constituent audience using relevant types of persuasion.”
You use the 4 components of all leadership to generate this influence power.
What is leadership development?
Leadership development is “Developing audience influence skills within a functional or executive leadership role.”
Your role determines the level of functional vs. executive leadership development you’ll need.
What are leadership roles?
“Roles are a structure of beliefs that work together to create a unified persona that projects your leadership.”
The goal of structuring your leadership role is for all aspects of your persona to work together without conflict, so you are as effective as possible.
These definitions give us a starting place for perspective on how to develop leaders in any organization.
You can categorize leadership roles into either functional leadership roles or executive leadership roles. Lets look at these now.
But first, I’d like to introduce a bit of my background.
About the Author and Course Creator
Larry LaFata is a talent development specialist and the founder of modernleadershipcenter.com and defineyourcareer.com.
He has a unique ability to synthesize research and innovation into organized, usable concepts. This provides clients with streamlined leadership skills training and employee development solutions they can implement quickly.
After 30 years experience working with Fortune 500 companies, Larry turned to his passion: leadership development and talent development. The core of his course creation approach is customized self-assessment and skills development templates. No psychometric tests or psychology assessments are ever used.
Larry has authored: Define Your Career, Leadership Development Program, Employee Development Plan with skill templates and How to use Rewards to Motivate Your Team.
Larry’s mission is to better humanity through innovative talent development strategies. His continuing efforts in talent development keeps him in the forefront of thought leadership in the industry.
Functional leadership roles vs. executive leadership roles
For the purposes of structuring your leadership role, let’s look at two kinds of leadership: functional leadership and executive leadership.
This Venn diagram explains the spectrum of leadership and its overlap.
Leadership role development falls on a continuum from functional hard skills to executive emotional intelligence.
Functional leadership
Functional leadership is mostly carried out by employees to maintain productivity and operations. It can overlap with managers.
Employee development and leadership training for managers would typically center on occupational hard skills and some soft skills training:
- Technical skill
- Mechanical skill
- Industrial skill
- Specialized skill
- Soft skills
- Basic leadership skills
Management leadership
Management leadership is unique in that it includes both functional leadership as well as the overlap of intangible skills of executive leadership .
Management development could include:
- Functional skills
- Leadership soft skills
- Leadership skills
- Developing emotional intelligence habits
Management Leadership roles to develop can include:
- Coach
- Supervisor
- Manager
- Foreman
- Influencer
- Trainer
Executive leadership
Executive leadership is concerned with the maintaining and building the shareholder value of the entire enterprise.
This kind of leadership manages the functional operations, but is also focused on intangibles:
- Stock price/business valuation
- Reporting to board
- Building brand and good will
- Public relations
- Architecting a vision that motivates the enterprise and the marketplace
Executive leadership roles can include CEO, C-Level officer, Directors and business owners.
Executive leadership training would include:
- Leadership soft skills to develop emotional intelligence maturity
- Decision making skill
- Mentoring key managers
- Leadership team talent development
and numerous other advanced leadership training topics.
Now that you understand what leadership is, lets establish what leadership roles are.
What are leadership roles and how are they structured?
What are roles
Roles are a set of beliefs that work together as one persona. They give you a working structure to express your leadership.
Think of roles like the wood frame of a house. The frame supports the plumbing, electric, insulation, siding, and roof.
In that same concept, your leadership roles act as the working structure that hold all aspects of of your leadership.
What are leadership roles
Leadership roles are roles that incorporate all your personal, functional and executive qualities into one unified leadership persona.
This includes your beliefs, talents, skillsets and character traits – all working together as one – to powerfully lead your clients, customers, peers, and subordinates (collectively, your “audiences.”)
- Roles define your power – and also your boundaries.
- Roles are how you most authentically serve your audience.
- Roles define your leadership “brand.”
- Roles establish where you “fit” in the larger scope of the organization.
Roles don’t exist in a vacuum, they must be directed to constituent audiences.
This brings us to Element One of developing strong leadership roles: establishing your constituent audiences.
The 6 potential audiences every leader must address
An absolute key to leadership development and role development is to remember this one factor:
“Your audience determines your leadership approach.”
There are six potential constituent audiences that every leader must address:
- Clients/customers
- Subordinates/employees
- Peers/cohorts
- Suppliers
- Media
- Shareholders/Stakeholders/Regulators
Which of these 6 audiences you need to cultivate is determined by your leadership role.
For example, a CEO would need to cultivate all 6 constituent audiences to avoid a leadership vacuum.
A line manager or supervisor might only need to cultivate 2 or 3 audiences to be effective.
I show you how to establish your constituent audiences and apply the four factors of all leadership skills to them in my new Leadership Development Program. Find out more at the end of this guide.
The four components of all leadership skills
Element Two of developing strong leadership roles: the 4 building blocks of all leadership skills
Once you know who your audiences are, you need to develop strong leadership skills to properly lead them in your role.
My research has uncovered the meta structure that underlies all leadership roles. That structure is comprised of these 4 components of all leadership skills:
- Position power control
- Influence
- Vision
- Mentoring
Skilled development and use of these 4 components are the key to applying effective leadership roles to your audience.
You can better familiarize yourself with the 4 components of leadership skills here:
Bill Belichick or Reese Witherspoon: What kind of leadership role do you need to develop?
The right kind of leadership role for your organization requires looking at several considerations:
- Your audiences
- Your organization’s brand
- Your industry
- Your business objectives
- Your current leadership team
Beyond that, for effective leadership, you need to examine who you might want to model:
For example:
- Do you have a hard crowd of employees who need a Genghis Kahn style leader who is a merciless conqueror? Or do you have an artistic environment and want to develop a Taylor Swift lifestyle influencer?
- Do you want to develop the entrepreneurial leadership skills of an Elon Musk? Or do you want to develop a Bill Belichick style leader who is super prepared, and can make game time decisions on the fly?
- Do you want the leadership style of a Pete Rose, the ‘hardest worker in the room’ who leads by example? Or do you want a perky and humorously inclusive Reese Witherspoon style that keeps everyone delighted and focused?
These decisions need to be made based on what works for you personally.
- If you are not Bill Belichick, don’t try to be Bill Belichick.
- If you are not a perky Reese Witherspoon, don’t try to be one.
The more natural, authentic and in-tune you are with your leadership role, the more confident and effective you will be.
Summary of how to structure strong leadership roles
Develop strong leadership roles by establishing:
- What are the parameter of your leadership title?
- Who are your constituent audiences?
- Become fluid with the 4 components of all leadership skill
- Decide what kind of leader best serves your audience and your organization
- Develop a leadership role that is authentic to who you are personally
My concise new Leadership Development Program is focused on skills development templates. It can help you solidify an effective leadership role quickly.
Find out more here:
What makes a great leader?
The right leadership training, of course!
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