Leadership and Seniority,

'I worry'. I find that statement from staff awkward. Then I think, if you are worried, do something about it. Get on the action side. Say this and that is what I am planning, maybe ask for approval, but then hup to work. Don't put the ball somewhere in the middle or give it to someone else. Should that other person take the coals out of the fire then? You have an idea to solve it, take the initiative and go ahead and do it. You have to want to, as I call it then, put your head between the vise, pick up things that can hurt you too.

To me, a senior is someone who - while maintaining relationship, let me make that clear - has the guts to say what needs to be said and understands what needs to be done. A person who looks beyond their own interests. Who understands that his responsibilities touch on a bigger picture. And if that bigger picture needs to go somewhere, picks it up and sets it in motion. That takes guts. Having guts means abandoning your own or team's interests for a moment, knowing that in this way, together, you will achieve the best results for the organisation as a whole.

Too often I still see the attitude among managers of not wanting to overcomplicate things, ducking a little when things get too exciting. Patch things up. This is how managers sometimes knowingly maintain a lot of misery in an organisation.

Daring and seeing the big picture go together. You can have courage, but if you don't recognise how you as a leader actively and loyally contribute to the overarching course that has been set, you won't be successful. Conversely, it doesn't work either if one sees the big picture but doesn't dare to intervene when others deviate from that course.

Getting space

Of course, as a leader, I must be allowed to show my seniority. A leadership deficit often arises when employees who want to show seniority are not given that space. Looking back, I have seen the coolest things happen where the company top brass explicitly invites employees to provide input. Where employees are allowed to have an impact on the decisions taken. On the other hand, there are companies where managers excel in guarding their own interests. In my observation, this defensive behaviour is often linked to a directive, micromanagement-like style of leadership by the top.

As an interim manager, I am very critical of this. As early as during my introduction, I check how actively my client seeks different views on the issue at hand. In those initial discussions, I want to experience interest in how I see it, rather than being told at task level what needs to be done and exactly what approach is expected of me.

How frequently the client himself is speaking also tells me a lot about the person sitting in front of me. Yes, I am quite keen on that kind of thing. I get the best results from clients who actively invite me to look for the best solution together.

Lost overview

The trick is to hang above the matter. As a manager, you have to see which elements can all matter, together form part of where you want to go. If your head is full of only one part of the total issue and you say 'the rest will come later', that won't work. Seeing that bigger picture is sometimes a challenge for managers. Then it suddenly becomes very big. One loses the overview. That is asking for resistance.

The trick in those moments is to make things small again, manageable. After all, you do have to get from A to B together. I therefore see it as my job to recognise the three or four main themes we need to focus on. And then reduce the time horizon to, say, three months and decide together what we are going to do in concrete terms for that period. That's how you make it small again.

And then again, you need the guts to move others to action. Then it comes down to your execution power: putting things under pressure to really achieve a result. Because don't forget that when a change is actually initiated, the organisation becomes insecure and eager to move back to the old. At those moments, as an executive, you need to be resilient to handle that tension, right then. Resilience, another important characteristic of seniority.

Vulnerable

Of course, sometimes the sweat is on my forehead too. Of course, I also feel how vulnerable I am when resistance comes. That there are much safer paths to take but do not lead to where we want to go as an organisation.

That path is definitely not a path of suffering, I certainly don't think. I want to achieve something that will make a substantial difference, I want to be able to look back and see what a great result we have achieved together and feel appreciation for it. Those are my deeper motives, call it my ideology, my identity.

And yet, I also notice this in myself, it starts with having confidence in myself. That's that resilience I was talking about. Do I sit in sackcloth and ashes when someone makes a remark about me, or can I deal with it effectively? Someone said to me the other day, how can an organisation pursue psychological safety if people do not yet feel safe with themselves? I thought that was absolutely spot on. I too feel this learning curve on a daily basis to stay with myself with resilience and confidence when things get tense. I too am never done learning in this.

Essence

Let us not forget that not daring to show seniority also arises because we go into a cramp as soon as a situation becomes threatening. But are those circumstances really that threatening? Learning to ask yourself that question, to count to ten and think for a moment whether your primary reaction of fleeing, fighting or freezing is the right one or whether it is inspired by emotion, that awareness is a very big step towards seniority. Learn to realise that we simply have a challenge to face together. That, to me, is an important essence of seniority: be able to interpret well, what is really going on here, what kind of solution is needed, and then act from conscious action.

The best thing is to also encourage this conscious action among employees. No, I don't want to give shelter. That is not leadership for me. In an organisation, I don't want to be a mother who constantly protects others. Nobody benefits from that. What I want is to transfer becoming resilient and learning to act consciously to others.

I am, you might say, in the next phase of seniority: that of transference. Teaching resilience to others is my own learning point. That is at the forefront of my mind now. I know, as a senior, you never stop learning.