Today’s brave new workplace is being fueled by a myriad of leadership agendas. It’s a difficult situation for employees as they grow more and more confused about which agenda to follow and buy into for their future. To eliminate the confusion, leaders must become more active and deliberate about sharing their agendas (goals, desires and aspirations for themselves and the department and/or functional areas they serve). If not, their lack of communication and seeming unwillingness to share their agenda with others may unknowingly, over time, be interpreted as a hidden agenda that potentially puts a strain on the organization and its people.
Every leader has an agenda and this is nothing to feel guilty about -- as long as the intentions behind it are good and for the betterment of a healthier whole. Unfortunately, leaders with self-serving agendas are all too common and this makes it difficult for employees to trust them and creates an environment of uncertainty in the organization. How leaders manage their agendas directly impacts their reputation, their relationships and the desired outcomes/results they are trying to achieve.
What many leaders fail to understand (especially newly appointed leaders) is that along with managing their own agenda they must equally serve the leadership agendas of others. Sounds like a lot of work, but this is an unwritten rule of leadership success and a responsibility not included on the job description.
So what does this mean? To get started, you must ask yourself the following questions and be as specific as possible in your responses.
- What is your leadership agenda for the department you lead?
- What do you believe is the agenda of the leader you report to?
- What are the agendas of the colleagues you interact most with and/or who can contribute most to your success?
If you don’t know the answers (especially with points 2 and 3), start to investigate; broaden your observations, listen to what is being said and interpret body language, detect common themes and identify intentions. In fact, start asking others in the organization for their perspectives to gather a general consensus.
Your objective is to begin to understand how to create clarity and alignment between your leadership agenda and that of others. To do this, answer the following questions:
- What are the specific interconnection points of influence that your agenda has with the agendas of others?
- How does your agenda feed into and support the ultimate intentions of the other leaders?
- How do their agendas potentially feed into your intentions as a leader and your ability to successfully execute your agenda?
I have found that the most prepared (and savviest) leaders know the answers to all of these questions, and they plan around and act upon them every day. It has become ingrained in the manner in which they think, how they navigate the workplace environment, who they do and don’t align themselves with (internally and externally) and how they make decisions. These are the leaders that have become political masterminds of the workplace; they have learned how to advance their agenda by playing into and influencing the corporate culture – rather than allowing the corporate culture to influence and potentially disrupt their agenda.
Leadership is a matter of influence. It’s about knowing who you can feel safe with and those relationships you must test until you know, with certainty, that they can be trusted or will not intentionally seek to disrupt any momentum that you are attempting to create.
Educate yourself well enough (i.e., types of people, their history, political landmines, probability patterns and variables, culture, etc.) to know the field of play before you begin playing on it. Think like an entrepreneur who would never invest in a business they didn’t fully understand.
No one is responsible for managing your leadership career but you. As such, you must continually take note of the dynamics that exist in your workplace surroundings in order to best navigate the opportunities that you are attempting to create – through and with others. Don’t ever think that you can go it alone. Manage the success of your leadership agenda through the agendas of others as much as your own.
If your leadership agenda is not in alignment with the agendas of others, it most likely will not be sustainable and runs the risk of losing momentum over time. Start your leadership journey with this mindset, and you will begin to see the multitude of opportunities that lie within not just your own agenda, but everyone else’s.
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