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Expertise Everywhere: The Mindset for Leading Across

This is part of a series on the critical capability of Leading Across the enterprise, based on research we conducted earlier this year.


I was debriefing a leader’s 360 assessment last week. Stakeholders rated this leader high on speaking frankly and honestly, working effectively across the org, and leveraging the expertise of team members. The glaring area of growth was establishing and communicating an inspiring vision. “I’m not good at that!” said the leader. “I know that a clear plan of action is what we need right now, but I’m not sure I can deliver on it.”


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“What makes you believe that you need to be the one to come up with the vision?” I asked. She had already extolled the expertise of some of her colleagues, including their creative ideation and ability to see around corners. Her eyes lit up. “I could facilitate a meeting with my amazing team and we could work out a plan together!” This leader realized that she could play to her strengths, which included developing strong relationships with colleagues who trust her and facilitating agreements across disparate groups. This would also mean that instead of coming up with a plan and then having to sell it to many of her stakeholders, she would have a committed team already bought into the plan that they helped create. This would move them into action faster, increase engagement and likely result in a better outcome than if she had created the initial plan on her own.


Our experience in working with hundreds of leaders is that many hold an outmoded mindset that strong leadership means having the answers. But our research on successful leaders who are able to mobilize people across the enterprise shows that these leaders not only don’t have all of the answers, they also know that they can’t and don’t need to. They rely on others, not just to pay lip service to inclusion, but because they truly believe that expertise can be found everywhere. As MIT’s Edgar Schein said, ‘Leadership is a group sport, not an individual heroic activity.”