Back in the 1980s, Michael E. Gerber, a business coach, wrote a book called The E-Myth : Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. The book became a management classic that has been updated and reprinted many times since. It popularised the common advice to business owners that when it comes to their business they should ‘work on it, not in it’.
The central lesson of The E-Myth is the distinction between technical expertise and leadership. It starts with a frazzled pie shop owner, a brilliant baker, who struggles with the financial, marketing and personnel aspects of her business. Things gradually turn for the better as she learns to be the leader of her business, rather than just work in it.
In our world, a person’s capacity to shift beyond their technical expertise when they move and grow into a leadership position is a strong indicator of their level of emotional health.
We all come into an organisation with some form of technical expertise. Sometimes that comes from a formal qualification, sometimes from experience, sometimes from a combination of these. Subject matter knowledge tends to be central to a role’s job description, particularly in our early career and in positions where our expertise is relied on.
In many cases, our expertise, particularly as it grows, can come to define us as individuals too, at least professionally. If we are the ‘go-to’ person for help on a particular piece of software, we are likely to feel some pride from the importance others place in our knowledge and how it can help them.
However, the centrality of our expertise starts to shift as we move into leadership positions, and especially more senior leadership roles.
In these positions, we typically have a number of people on our team or reporting to us. At least some of these will have technical expertise, skills and capabilities that we do not share.
In leadership, our role is definitely less about ‘getting our hands dirty’, at least not on a routine basis. It becomes more about ensuring that our teams are effective and emotionally healthy, which means providing direction, guidance and mentorship. It means building and/or strengthening a positive culture. It means ensuring that the behaviours, systems and symbols of the team align with those of the wider organisation. And it means leading by example in the way we go about our work.
It can also mean representing our team amongst our peers and others in the organisation, ensuring that the team has access to the resources they need to do their work. Sometimes it means finding ways to influence others and negotiate barriers that make it harder to do so.
Using the language of emotional health, effective leadership requires a low level of self-centredness. It is no longer about you – it’s about your team. It also requires a higher-than-average level of behavioural freedom – the ability to choose your response rather than react automatically when the pressure is on.
For some leaders (and probably all of us at some stage), letting go of the ‘call’ of technical expertise can be a challenge.
It may be because they have expertise they don’t want to lose touch with. After all, they’ve often dedicated years of their lives to building up that knowledge.
Sometimes it’s because they’ve been appointed to a leadership position as a consequence of being the most technically competent person in the organisation, as opposed to displaying the best leadership skills. Unfortunately, many find themselves in this situation without any of the leadership development or support needed to succeed with their new responsibilities.
And then there are the leaders who have not yet developed the emotional health necessary to allow them to succeed. These leaders often fall back on their technical expertise as a substitute for leadership. They are likely to micromanage. They are likely to issue instructions rather than engaging with their team. They frequently go below the line, reacting to testing situations with denial, blame, justification or defensiveness.
Thankfully none of this is set in stone for those who are willing to learn. Given the opportunity for vertical development, even experienced leaders can continue to grow, build their emotional health and work towards the extraordinary.
Gayle
Photo by Earl Wilcox on unsplash.com