Leading for Success: In Practice

Following my first blog on Action Centred Leadership where I covered the team, task and individual diagram, this time I'm going to look at a tool to help us address any issues that may occur within these areas of focus.

If you haven't already read that blog, I suggest that you start there.

Action Centered Leadership

There are numerous leadership frameworks in existence, I've found action centred leadership to be particularly easy to translate into actionable steps. It describes six key functions of leadership, collectively referred to as PICSIE, these are:

While there are numerous leadership frameworks, I’ve found Action-Centered Leadership to be particularly useful for translating theory into action. The model describes six key functions of leadership, collectively known as PICSIE:

• Planning
• Initiating
• Controlling
• Supporting
• Informing
• Evaluating

I personally cycle through these functions team, task and individual needs, identifying actionable steps.

Planning

The planning function is all about defining the task, setting objectives and collecting relevant resources. You could ask yourself the following questions to help identify actions:

• What, if any, unknowns are there, and is there anything we can do to address them?
• Does the plan contain sufficient detail for the current phase?
• Are the objectives clear?

Remember, it's important to ask these questions of yourself for each of the three areas.

Initiating

How many times has a plan been made, just for everyone to walk away not knowing what they can do to make it happen? It seems obvious, but without clear next steps, the plan, as good as it may be, is unlikely to actually happen. The initiating there to prevent this from happening. The key is ensuring that tasks have been allocated, and standards have been set.

• Have specific roles and responsibilities been assigned?
• Are the next steps clear?
• Are there any blockers to progressing?

Controlling

I like to think of the controlling function as like the bumpers in bowling - keeping things from straying too far in the wrong direction. Here we want to think about whether actions are contributing to the overall objectives (I.E. genuinely adding value), as well as any making sure we are staying the right side of any restrictions - for example corporate policies. It's good to ensure we're taking the right decisions for the long term, for example using the right tooling, not adding technical debt and maximising reusability of any artifacts we produce.

• Is this something we can be proud of?
• Is this team/task/individual aligned with the objectives?
• What, if any, negative consequences are there to each decision made?

Supporting

Supporting, other than the obvious, is really about keeping motivation strong, providing development opportunities and reconciling disagreements where they occur.

• Are the right tools and knowledge available?
• How much engagement is there?
• What, if any, opportunities are there for growth?

Informing

This is another fairly intuitive one - it's all about communications, both externally and also within the team.

• If the communications between and within the team wasn't good, what would happen; and are any of those things happening?

I love this little method - sometimes it can be easier to think of a question in reverse. Rather than asking if something is the case, instead, ask yourself, if it wasn't what would that look like? And then ask whether that is what you are seeing.

Evaluating

It's east to think of evaluation as a retrospective action, but of course we're always evaluating in advance too - we evaluate whether something is worth doing before starting it, for example. This advance evaluation is easy to forget about - I like the fail fast approach here.

• What is going well?
• What can be improved?
• What can we try?

#GoForIt

Using the PICSIE framework has helped me immensely in creating clear actions when leading teams. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, let me know!