What if leadership wasn't a promotion?

Josh Bersin recently wrote a stellar post titled "The End of a Job as We Know It." One of the jobs that might end is the one called "boss."

For me, a "boss" is someone responsible for the performance of a group. There is plenty of leadership without position going on every day, all over the world, but I write this blog specifically for the men and women who are organizationally responsible for group performance. That requires position as well as influence.

Well, if Josh Bersin is right, many of those classic boss positions may become a thing of the past. He's not alone in that prediction. I recently wrote "You can eliminate the bosses, but," sparked by one of Harold Jarche's posts. Many others have said similar things. The powerful part of Bersin's post, for me, was the way he combined two insights. Here's one of them.

"What this all means is that in today's high performing companies, people now take on 'roles' not 'jobs.' They are responsible for 'tasks' and 'projects' and not simply 'functions.'"

That's pretty straightforward. I've heard it from Susan Finerty in our conversations over the last year or so. Susan thinks that every organization is becoming a matrix organization, whether it's officially called that or not. That means multiple relationships and reporting points, and, often, less hierarchy. Now here's the other Bersin insight.

"And leadership, by the way, is just a 'role' like any other - with its own particular set of skills."

That resonates with me because I think that leadership is a kind of work. Some people are suited for it, want to do it, and will do it well. Others will not.

Moving from individual contributor to a leadership role is more like a career change than a promotion. It's like changing from engineering to architecture. Leadership work is important work, but it's not more exalted work.

If we see leadership as a role, not a promotion or a position in the hierarchy, lots of things become possible. People can lead in situations where their strengths leverage the strengths of others and their weaknesses are irrelevant. Groups and teams can select a leader, instead of always having the leader selected from above. People can try out the role and decide if they like it and, if they don't, they can never do it again, with no stigma or career penalty.

Will things turn out this way? We can't ever be sure of the details of how big changes will end up. Because the change looks so clear, it's tempting to think it will happen quickly. Probably not. If history is a good guide, this kind of change will take a generation cycle or two to become the norm, so probably twenty to forty years.

Does all this make sense to you? How do you imagine that things will change?

http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2012/02/02/what-if-leadership-wasnt-a-promotion.aspx?ref=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.