Leading Your People
Abstract: In this article, we will identify what leadership
Tim Woodman is the founder and
managing director of two companies,
Woodman Coaching and Management
Learning & Coaching. Tim is a graduate
in engineering, has a masters in
business administration, and is a
qualified business coach. As a trainer
and coach, he has been helping
managers to manage well for over
16 years, besides being a practicing
manager for over 35 years. Outside
work, Tim has regularly achieved great
success representing the Great British
triathlon age group team.
Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-809-0 (2017)
www.businessexpertpress.com
is and how it can apply to you at whatever level of lead-
ership you are at.
The problem is that if you ask a group of people to define
leadership, the words you are more than likely to hear
are visionary, inspirational, and charismatic. This is of
course fine if you have the qualities of one of the worlds
more famous leaders, but in most cases doesnt identify
what it is you need to do or be in the circumstances you
might find yourself in. Ask the same group of people with
a show of hands How many of you are visionary, inspir-
ing, and charismatic leaders, and you can now grasp the
difficulties we face in trying to determine what leadership
is and how to get better at it.
This article will identify exactly what leadership is
and, in the process, explore how you can develop your
own leadership qualities within the environment you
find yourself in.
It is hoped that this article will help leaders gain clar-
ity about how to identify what good leadership is within
the context of their own environment, what they can do
to develop their leadership skills, and how to put these
skills into practice.
Keywords: Leaders, leadership, leadership characteristics,
leadership traits, Leading, lead people.
The amount of words that are written about leadership
and what you can do to get better at it is mind-boggling.
When asked about leadership, people quote:
Leaders are born not made
Leading by example
Visionary, inspiring, charismatic
Gandhi, Mandela, and Martin Luther King to name a
few, we could apply the above quotes to and are excep-
tional history-changing people.
But you and I and our like? Not in a million years do the
quotes above even seem credible with where we work and
the people we interact with every day. So, what are they
all talking about? Why cant anyone accurately describe
leadership that I can connect with and work with? If you
look at Amazon and search the new book titles, there are
thousands of new business books with the word leader/
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 Leading Your People
leadership/leading in the title. No wonder
then that when people are challenged to de-
scribe, define, or detail what do leaders ac-
tually do and how can you get better at it,
most people default to that glazed look of
noncomprehension and That questions too
hard to even think about letalone answer.
So, what follows looks to demystify what
leadership is and what do leaders do and
how you (thats if you still consider your-
self one) can get immeasurably better at it.
Here is the big one to start us off:
As the leader, its your job (note the word
JOB) to:
Decide the mission, and then look after
the people that will help to get you there
The thing about this is, I cant find any-
one who I can attribute this quote to, but
isnt it really simple? I dont care where you
are in your organization, you can decide
what you want to achieve and then look af-
ter the people who will get you there.
Figuring out what your mission is in the
context of your organization is the next co-
nundrum. Here we will explore the great
work done by Katz and Kahn who identi-
fied what skills you need at different lev-
els of an organization and Ram Charran
and others who identified the challenges of
leading as you move up the organization.
In other words, if it is really explicit how
you can add value as a leader to your orga-
nization, notwithstanding at what level you
are, then you can make better sense of what
your mission actually is, personally and for
the organization, and then, with that clar-
ity, marshal your people toward that end.
Next, we need to work out how to treat
our people and this quote then becomes
appropriate:
There is nothing quite as unequal as
the equal treatment of unequals
This is a famous quote from Ken Blanchard
(One Minute Manager fame). Now we can
start to think about how to work with people
on an individual level and to choose a way
that is more likely to connect with and be
2 Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-809-0 (2017)
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appreciated by those who you want to lead.
However, it is still the individuals choice to
want to be led by you that leads me to my
next expose:
Why would anyone want to be led by you?
This is the title of a great book by Goffee
and Jones and explores what it takes to be a
leader and exposes the reality of what hap-
pens when you see someone who is good
at leading and what is it that they do to be
good at it. (Its quite simple but youre go-
ing to have to wait till later for this.)
Finally, what is the way that these most
natural of leaders have when interacting
with people. In his fab book
Its You Ship
Captain D. Michael Abrashoff shares
with us how he led his new command of
sailors on board US naval ship from being
totally dysfunctional and disorganized and
with low moral when he took this first com-
mand, to being the best ship in the US fleet.
Again, its something we can all do easily.
So, lets start
What Should Leaders be Doing?
As a leader, its important that you know
where you fit in an organization and the
part that you need to play. With this clarity,
you can then act with confidence regarding
what you are trying to achieve and the role
within which you are required to perform.
The model developed by Robert L. Katz,
and shown below, focuses on the manage-
rial skills necessary to be able to be suc-
cessful as a manager in an organization and
at different levels. As you can see, at the
first-line management level most of the
skills necessary are technical and human,
and as we go to the
top of the organiza-
tion the skills requred
are reversed. So the
conceptual skills, de-
fined as the abil-
ity to conceptualize
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 Leading Your People
the future, are exactly what you would
want of the people at the head of your
organization.
First-Line Management
Technical skills: Need to understand the
nuts and bolts of what your staff are do-
ing so that in the event they cannot fix the
problem you are sufficiently knowledgable
to be able to decide what to do. Either to get
involved directly or to find a person who
can resolve the issue.
Human skills: In your role, discipline
and adhering to the standards set by the or-
ganization are the key skills to master here.
Conceptual skills: The ability to look for-
ward for a time period between a week and 4
weeks is what is required to ensure the con-
tinuity of production on a day-by-day basis.
Middle Management
Technical skills: The ability to understand
from first principles so that in the event your
managers are also finding it difficult to re-
solve problems, you can think through from
first principles as to whats happening. You
also need to feed the technical challenges
the front-line staff have to the senior man-
agers for potential long-term resolution.
Human skills: Leading, coaching, and
building teamwork through your managers
are critical skills here. Being able to motivate
and communicate through a couple of lay-
ers of management to the front-line work-
ers and managers is also a requirement.
Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-809-0 (2017)
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Conceptual skills: Looking forward 6
months to a year are the skills required
here. Taking the plans for the future de-
vised by the senor management and mak-
ing them happen is a core part of the role.
Ultimate responsibbility for the day-to-day
production is also a key responsibility.
Senior Management
Technical skills: The ability to understand
what are the challenges facing the front-line
staff and how technology or organizational
development may make the organization
more productive, and then to use this in-
formation in the conceptulizing for the fu-
ture. Often not done here is to leave the
responsibility for day-to-day production to
middle managers.
Human skills: Leading and communicat-
ing across many layers is the critical skills
here along with communicating with the
key stakeholders outside the business.
Conceptualizing skills: It starts with the
business plan, the next level down is then the
organizational development plan that shapes
what and how the organization should look
like and the third level is the people plan,
which looks at the skills and people neces-
sary to fulfill the business plan and to then
look at where you are now and to identify
the gaps and have a plan to fill them. How
far forward you need to look is determined
by the technology used in your business
and it cycle of change. In computers, for in-
stance, looking forward a year is probably
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