Leaders Leading Leaders: 6 Leadership Mindsets of Front Line Leaders at Work
There’s a difference between being a manager and being a leader, and there’s a difference between being an employee and being a leader. Based on hundreds of interviews and years of research, here are what I think are the 6 most important mindsets any front line leader needs to embrace. It’s about leading front the front. it’s about leading themselves first and stepping up as a true leader regardless of their position in the corporate food chain.
Leaders Leading Leaders
I’ve always loved the mantra “we are leaders leading leaders.” So many great organizations around the world embrace that mantra because they recognize that true leadership happens at every level within an organization, and for you to rock it with your company, with your culture, you need to nurture leaders at every level within your organization. In my latest book, The Jerk-Free Workplace : How You Can Take the Lead to Create a Happier, More Inspiring Workplace, I talk about six mindsets of a front line leader, six mindsets that we need to nurture in all of our employees if we want them to step up and be leaders on their teams.
#1. Front line leaders understand that true leadership isn’t about position or job title or power. Leadership is about influence. There’s a difference between being a boss or a manager and being a true leader, just like there’s a difference between being a front line employee and being a leader. Leadership has nothing to do with your job title. It’s about your ability to positively influence the people around you towards a shared goal. Everybody has the capacity to be a leader. Leaders recognize this. They embrace this mindset and they don’t use their position on the corporate food chain as an excuse to not step up as a leader. They don’t use that, and I hear this all the time, “Well, I’m just a front line employee. I’m just a little cog in the big machinery of my corporation. I can’t do anything.” You will never hear that from a true leader.
Leaders embrace this idea that they really can step up as a leader and influence the people around them. They can find other influencers to affect change in their organization. I have so many stories of front line leaders from around the world in all sorts of different organizations who had no budget authority, no supervisory authority, and yet they stepped into that role of being a leader to impact their organization in incredibly powerful ways.
#2. Front line leaders and, well, leaders at every level within an organization recognize that leadership is about people, not the stuff. When I worked in previous jobs as a manager, as a senior manager, I now realize reflecting back most of the stuff I was doing was the stuff of management, not the stuff of leadership necessarily. It’s pretty hard to lead stuff. It’s pretty hard to lead a file or lead a budget. Conversely, people don’t want to be managed. Have you noticed this? Have you ever tried to manage your spouse? That’s a really good way to find out how comfortable your couch is. But people are hungry for leadership and leadership is about focusing on relationships.
It’s about connecting at that fundamentally human level. It is about taking the time to build trust within your team. It’s about taking the time to check in with your colleagues, about taking the time to think about how your communicating, how you’re coming across to your coworkers, to build that positive team environment
#3. Front line leaders see the entire picture. They see the entire pie. By that, I mean, they don’t focus on their little slice of the pie. They don’t just think about their own department and think in those silos where we put up those artificial barriers and we don’t cooperate or collaborate with our colleagues in other departments because, well, that’s their problem, and these are my resources, these are my people, this is in my job description. Have you ever worked with somebody who has said all the time, “Well, it’s not in my job description to do that so I’m not going to do that”? Aren’t those fun people to work with?
Now, I get it. We have job descriptions, sometimes for some very valid reasons. But I’m sorry. If you adopt that mindset that it’s not in my job description, you are never going to be seen as a leader on your team because leaders don’t think that way. They think about what’s best for their entire company, for their entire organization. If they see something that needs doing, they just do it. They don’t think about just their slice of the pie. They think about ultimately the big picture, how everybody needs to work together, how everyone needs to collaborate to create success for the entire organization.
#4. Leaders embrace a growth mindset. Now, a fixed mindset is when we tend to think that we’re just born with natural gifts, natural abilities. You’re either good at math or you’re not good at math. A growth mindset, though, takes the perspective that we can learn new things, that we can overcome obstacles and challenges, and if we face a setback, it wasn’t personal. We can figure out how to get around that setback. So of course, leaders embrace a growth mindset. The notion that they can, always, no matter what age, no matter what position they’re in, learn new things, learn new ways of doing things. They take the mindset that they can get around obstacles, that these are just temporary challenges that they can overcome.
It has nothing do with their inherent genetic gifts that they were born with. Part of having a growth mindset I think is constantly thinking about what we need to do to improve for the future. So leaders always have a future focused mindset that I think is related to having a growth mindset. They’re always thinking about what could we do just a little bit better than we did yesterday, than we did last month? What are those 1% improvement ideas that could make a difference within my job, within my team, within my organization? As I say to my clients all the time, if the pace of change on the outside of your organization exceeds the pace of change on the inside, it’s just a matter of time before you’re going to be in trouble, and true leaders who embrace a growth mindset embrace that philosophy. They embrace the idea that change is good. They’re not afraid of adapting to new challenges, to new circumstances because of that growth mindset.
#5. Front line leaders embrace a mindset of service, of just being of service to the people around them. They recognize that their job is to provide service both externally, obviously, to your customers or clients, but internally as well, by being a leader on their team means to provide good service to the rest of their teammates, that that’s part of leadership is how can I serve you in my role better? What can I do to make your life, your job easier? That’s the essence of true leadership. It’s about having a service first mentality.
#6. True front line leaders take responsibility for their actions. They are accountable for their actions. I remember years ago doing a workshop where this gentleman asked me, “Isn’t it my boss’ job to make me happy?” I remember thinking, “Why on earth would anybody outsource their own happiness at work?” So true front line leaders take responsibility for their own motivation and happiness. They take responsibility for their own attitude and behaviors. They are accountable to their teammates and to their boss and their customers and clients.
They truly do embrace this ownership mentality, which means they don’t blame mistakes on other people. They own them. They don’t just own their mistakes, they admit to their mistakes and they talk about what they’re going to do to rectify, to make amends or to improve in the future. Leadership is about ultimately taking responsibility for our attitudes, for our behaviors, for the words that we use and that perhaps more than anything else is the true defining essence of a front line leader. It’s about taking up and taking ownership of your work, taking ownership of everything you do, and being responsible and accountable to the people around you.
So what about you? What do you think defines a front line leader? What have I missed in my checklist of six mindsets? Is there something that I haven’t talked about? Please leave a comment in the comment box below. This is such an important conversation. We do not create great rocking, inspiring workplace cultures unless we get everyone thinking, or as many people as possible, thinking like a true front line leader. If you haven’t subscribed to my channel, Inspiring Workplaces, I would invite you to join our growing community where we talk about things like front line leadership and how not to be a jerk at work and how to rock it by creating truly inspiring, collaborative rocking workplaces that rock. I think I may have already said that, but you get the gist, we’re talking about rocking workplaces.
Michael Kerr, 2021. Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame business speaker and the author of 8 books including, The Jerk-Free Workplace: How You Can Take the Lead to Create a Happier, More Inspiring Workplace, Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire: How to Recruit, Onboard and Train New Employees to Live Your Culture Out Loud, and The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses are Laughing All the Way to the Bank.
