One of the missing pieces in today’s leadership environment is an understanding of how nearly impossible it is to accomplish our goals without supportive systems.
Last Thursday and Friday, I had the honor to facilitate two different leadership development workshops, each custom designed to support the work for two different school boards. On Thursday, I worked with a board in a community that only a few years ago might have been considered suburban but who now has population density rivaling many cities. On Friday, I worked with a board in a rural community, where I passed ATV Right of Way signs on the way to a workshop in the comfort of a school board’s home.
But as in most cases, the differences were not as prevalent as the commonalities. While working to support relatively new board members on both days, once again I found evidence of how critical support systems and processes are for leadership in complex environments.
Because here’s a truth we don’t talk about enough: one of the missing pieces in today’s leadership environment is an understanding of how nearly impossible it is to accomplish our goals without supportive systems. And I’m not referring to emotional support systems, although they can also be critical. I am referencing logistical and procedural support systems. Communications protocols, responsibility agreements, decision making flow charts, role definitions – all critical infrastructure to support a team’s ongoing work. In the absence of these structures, misunderstandings and frustrations lead to group dysfunction and, in some cases, friction that carries over to the broader organization and community. And in most cases, that friction feels very personal which only leads to greater strain. What starts off as a systematic failure often times has to get untangled as a relationship breakdown that has impacted their ultimate mission.
So on both Thursday and Friday, we worked on both forming a shared understanding of what support processes, policies and frameworks each board had at their disposal, but also around what gaps they noticed. Gaps in common understanding, gaps in commitment to the systems, gaps in effectiveness. And – perhaps most importantly – we role played using those systems in order to gain better understanding of how each individual views them.
It sounds boring, or perhaps a waste of time, to invest in developing these structures when there is so much more to do. But I love how a board member from Walla Walla described it – it’s like putting off house maintenance. Yes, who wants to spend time and money on fixing a roof, but isn’t that much better than fixing a major water leak?
