"your job as a leader is to get out the way and let them do their job"


Is becoming a leader the pinnacle of a career? 

What makes a great leader?

Jasper Robertson,  Fellow of the CMC and founder of Springhall Solutions, who specialise in organisational development for hyper growth companies.  Jasper has coached many people to move into leadership and he warns that it is a huge transition from management. Find out why many of the skills, so how do you view the transition from manager – to leader.


Transcript:





Jaspar Robertson (00:40):
It's a different beast. It's a different animal. You need to behave differently. You need to recognize that you are on show 24 seven.

Kiran Kapur (00:50):
All coming up in the next 25 minutes on the Cambridge Marketing Podcast,

Graham Berridge (00:54):
The Cambridge Marketing Podcast from Cambridge Marketing College.

Kiran Kapur (00:58):
So you've just heard a little from today's guest, Jasper Robertson, fellow of the Cambridge Marketing College and founder of Springhall Solutions who specialiee in organisational development for very fast growing companies. Jasper, welcome. You've coached many people moving into leadership. So how do you view the transition from manager to leader?

people are operating very successfully as highly competent and highly professional managers automatically assume the next step is into leadership without actually thinking about what that really means in terms of what their role will be

Jaspar Robertson (01:18):
Well, Hi Kiran. It's actually one of the rather more complex moves that people will make. And unfortunately it's not always something that people really take on board and consider before they do it. Very frequently, I find that people are operating very successfully as highly competent and highly professional managers and they automatically assume the next step is into leadership. Without actually thinking about what that really means in terms of what their role will be, how they will perform and what it means for them on a personal level, as well as a professional one.

Kiran Kapur (01:57):
So you think there's quite a difference between a manager and a leader?

Jaspar Robertson (02:01):
I will be absolutely blunt, I think there are huge differences between the two. It is one that obviously we tend to spend a lot of time as we grow up and as we come up through a business and get a little bit more experience and get promoted up the proverbial corporate ladder. We start focusing on issues that are really important for the organisation, but also really important for us as individuals, as we move up. And essentially, as a manager, you are looking at how you can monitor and control the organisation, how you can make a direct contribution to the delivery of strategy. But it is about the implementation of somebody else's strategy. As you know Kiran, I've spent an awful lot of time teaching subjects like mastering metrics. And one of the key the things always comes out in that with the CIM is the age old adage of, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."

Jaspar Robertson (03:06):
However, with leadership, the adage does not say, if you cannot measure it, you can't lead it. And I think that's part of the real core difference. For me, the manager is about implementation. It's about command and control. It's about utilising resources and quantifying their use measuring efficiency. Whereas, leadership is much more about setting the direction. It's much more about considering what people need, what their role is and how does one actually give those individuals the freedom and the space to operate and to really have the freedom to show their capabilities.

Kiran Kapur (04:00):
I've heard you talk about the difference between outcomes and outputs and that managers do one and leaders do the other.

Jaspar Robertson (04:09):
Indeed. And essentially this is a topic I frequently return to when talking with people. Which is that we all tend to look at the outputs because they're easy to measure and they're easy to quantify. So whether that be how many customers you've talked to, whether it means how many potential new leads you've developed, whether it be the response rate that you get to a particular marketing campaign, the outputs are very easily quantifiable. They're very easily measured and therefore they fall in and they're really helpful to managers when it comes to setting objectives. Especially smart objectives, again, another soap box subject, but I won't go off on that at the moment.

Jaspar Robertson (04:59):
However, most organizations in reality, and certainly when you're leading an organisation, actually what you're interested in is not the outputs that are produced, but the outcomes that those outputs deliver. In reality, with any marketing campaign, actually what we're after is successful recruitment or enhanced sales or whatever the purpose of that particular campaign happens to be. How we do it, how it's implemented, that is a different matter. And actually if we focus too much on merely the outputs, rather than defining what are the successful outcomes from any particular engagement, then in my humble opinion, we're being a little bit short-sighted.

Kiran Kapur (05:48):
Can you give me an example of the difference between an output and an outcome?

Jaspar Robertson (05:54):
Certainly. Yes. If one is looking at, let's say, a recruitment campaign for new customers. Being absolutely blunt, the successful outcome that you're looking for is that you have X number of new accounts or new customers or people who are willing to take a trial or take a meeting or whatever it happens to be. And therefore it's those successful engagements which are actually your success factor at the end of the day. If however, you measure how many customers did you or potential customers? Did you talk to how many phone calls did you make? How many outbounds or how many inbounds? How many letters did you send out? Those are not actually the measures that you're really after. They are an interim measure, but they are part of the process of getting to your successful outcome. Now those are part of what a manager may well manage, but if you are the leader what you're really interested in is how do we achieve the outcome that we're after, which is in this particular instance, more customers.

Kiran Kapur (07:07):
Presumably also something about the right type of customers as well because it might just be that you get an awful lot of customers that buy once and don't buy again.

Jaspar Robertson (07:17):
Now you're moving onto phase two of successful outcomes. Absolutely. Because bluntly, you are 100% correct, if not 150% if one can do that. Which, let's not get into that argument. But essentially you're absolutely right because it is about achieving both new customers, but also the right type of customers who are going to retain with you, whose business you can actually understand. And that you can make a long-term commitment with to actually become a favored partner with them and really build up your relationship successfully. But there, we get into all sorts of other elements of what is success, as it were.

Kiran Kapur (08:04):
But actually that's a very important part of being a leader isn't it? Is defining what success looks like.

a very important part of being a leader is defining what success looks like


Jaspar Robertson (08:10):
It is very definitely defining what success looks like. Possibly actually more importantly it's about successfully communicating what that success looks like. Because the last thing a leader is wanting to do is to micromanage their team 24/7. Frankly, the team will resent it. You as a leader do not have time to micromanage everybody. And if you cannot build sufficient trust with your team, that you have the confidence in them to actually get on and move forward and to be innovative in their own right, then you're not being as successful a leader as you might be. And if I may make so bold, you're being a glorified manager.

Kiran Kapur (08:55):
Okay. So having presumably been chosen to become a leader because you are good at managing and possibly micromanaging, but just managing your outputs, then how do you move from that into being a leader?

Jaspar Robertson (09:14):
Well, the real challenge, first of all, I think is that it's not just a case that you are selected as a leader. Again, this is one of those two way streets where even if you are offered a leadership role, before you jump on that particular bandwagon or that bus, then you need to decide, is that a role that is right for you? Is it something that actually you're prepared for? Is it something that you're wishing to do?

some of us don't necessarily wish to be leaders

Jaspar Robertson (09:42):
Because actually some of us don't necessarily wish to be leaders. You have to understand what you're taking on board because actually as a leader, you are becoming the face of the organisation. You are expected to know absolutely all the answers all the time. You are expected to be able to operate in any scenario and any situation and you are expected to do so with confidence, with gravitas and with authenticity. Now that all sounds a great little shopping list and terribly easy to put together, but it's an awful lot more complex and an awful lot more draining than a number of people realise. Which is why you get such high references to things like executive burnout, et cetera, because actually leadership is a very tiring and, if I may say so, a very lonely role.

Kiran Kapur (10:34):
You make it sound a bit scary actually. So why do people want to become leaders?

Jaspar Robertson (10:41):
Well, I think there's two fold. One is that there are those people in this world who are natural leaders. They don't have a particular set of skills, but you can actually notice this and you notice it as early as primary school. If you watch any children's playground, you will see the natural leaders within that playground. You will see the child who all the others congregate around, who they wish to be with, they wish to follow them. And it's really interesting. As we grow up, then what we then find is that the natural leaders also just continue that. Now for some people they don't necessarily need the formal recognition of a job title of being chief whatever it is officer. Some people are very comfortable lower down the hierarchy, but making a really valuable contribution, being a core influencer and a key player throughout their various different teams and it really depends what wish.

Jaspar Robertson (11:54):
On the other hand, there are those whose professional and personal ambition is to become, now whether it be chief marketing officer, whether it be chief executive officer or chief financial officer, who knows? All of those titles are really important to people and the tendency is in many people's minds to work on the assumption that providing you've got the knowledge, the qualification and the appropriate set of skills, then of course you can do this role. But there are many other attributes that are actually required and needed. If you are going to be a successful leader.

Jaspar Robertson (12:35):
Now, there are hundreds of lists of out there and books have been written on the subject about the the X number of key skills that any leader must have, or the 10 most essential leadership skills for the future. For some reason, most of the lists seem to compromise either 7 or 10 things, which I'm not quite sure why those numbers are selected. But they are legion out there. And please don't get me wrong, they are really interesting reads. They are very helpful and they can assist people in looking at some of the attributes that are needed in a leader. However, I would argue that leadership is not formulaic. It's not something that you can say, "If I've got this, this, and this skill, then I am perfectly capable of being a leader." I think it is something that is much more akin to a particular art form, if you like. It is a very nuanced role and it's about being able to react in different circumstances in different ways.

Jaspar Robertson (13:46):
Tell you what, have I got time for a quick story here, Kiran?

Kiran Kapur (13:49):
Yes please.

Jaspar Robertson (13:50):
Oh, okay. Well, as you know, I spent many years as senior business development director for the Judge Business School part of Cambridge University. And whilst I was there, I met a great number of leaders, some from global organizations. As well as developing programs and designing courses for high performing individuals at organizations that identified as potential future leaders. Many of these organizations were well-recognized leading blue chip: Barclays, HSBC, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, for example. But there were also some that were operating in some really competitive and really high tech areas.

Jaspar Robertson (14:37):
The real point of the story was that whilst these were all about leadership development and what makes a leader, there was one real engagement that stood out for me, which was one that we developed a UNICEF for what they referred to as their country representatives. You and I would talk about them as being their leaders in individual countries. And we did exactly what you would expect. We did the trip across to UN Plaza in New York. We interviewed a great number of their senior leaders in their HQ, which was absolutely fascinating, some really incredible people and coincidentally and by chance, actually, we were able to meet a group of the individuals who would be participants in the course. And I was there with professor Dame Sandra Dawson and we were doing the needs analysis piece and designing the whole program.

Jaspar Robertson (15:35):
And one of the questions that we put to the participants was, "Just tell us a little bit about typical day and what do you have to do and how does it go on?" Almost with out fail, all of the participants that we spoke to at this point, and I think it was about 12 of them if I remember correctly, they all looked at us. And we're individual interviews. But they all look to the smiled and basically said, "Look, there is no such thing as a typical day." We basically have to deal with whether it be earthquakes, tsunamis, famines, drought, civil war, unrest, all sorts of really traumatic things. And after about the third answer that was identical, we started looking at each other and embracing an eyebrow. And the inevitable question came up, it was, "Well, how do you deal with such a challenge? They almost all said, and I paraphrase slightly, but they basically said, "Look, our job is to ensure that the team have the freedom to operate the resources that they need to do their things successfully."

Jaspar Robertson (16:43):
And that really struck a bell, both with myself and with Dame Sandra. And she referred to this as contextualised leadership. Namely there is not a predetermined set of actions. Everything is dependent upon the context that you're operating in. Many of the traditional approaches and many of the traditional courses revolve around the expectations that leaders will tell people what to do. They'll tell them how to do it and they'll tell them what their success is and what it should look like and all the rest of it.

Jaspar Robertson (17:18):
It's actually about understanding what is needed, what you as a leader have got to do in that particular situation. And in reality she boiled it down to a couple of points, which was, you don't tell people what to do, you ask them what do they need to do to be more productive. Ask them about what is it that will make your job easier. Understand what it is that actually they need and what are the barriers and the blockers. And it's only when you actually understand how they're operating, that you can then become a successful leader because then you can make sure that they know the brief that they're operating within. They have the freedom, the resources to operate. And basically, and it sounds awful, but your job as a leader is to get out the way and let them do their job.

Kiran Kapur (18:07):
You've watched people grow into leadership. Do you have some experiences you can share about people, perhaps some of the lessons you've seen them learn perhaps as they transition?

Jaspar Robertson (18:20):
Yes, certainly. At this point in time, we've got to recognize the fact we are going through some really dynamic changes. Who knows what the world's going to be looking like in X months time, let alone next year's time? But there has been a real transition which has occurred, which actually was identified quite some time back, Drucker I think it was that actually coined the phrase of knowledge workers. And we are now really in a world of knowledge workers, whether you call it the working from home, the distance worker, the remote worker, whatever phrase you wish to put around it. But the nature of work has changed somewhat. And the one thing that I have been observing over the past three, four months, certainly, although there was a real trend in it beforehand, is that the style of leadership and to an extent the style of management as well, but really the style of leadership has really changed quite a bit.

Jaspar Robertson (19:28):
It's become much more important to be flexible. It's certainly become more important to be more innovative. I hesitate to use that phrase slightly because it is one that is banded around ad nauseum. But I have to be honest, I keep going back to Tom Peters, the good old phrase, "Innovate or die." And that is, I think, true and now than it's ever been. The real thing that I've noticed has been a change and a move away from the directive style of management and, to an extent, the directive style of leadership as well. And if you wish to go back to theories, this is good old McGregor's X and Y theory.

Kiran Kapur (20:11):
Yes, it's probably worth pointing out that theory x was the idea of commander control and micro-managing and theory Y was looking very much at your outcomes. So it was part of your idea of allowing leaders to get out the way and allowing staff and teams to actually come together. You were also talking about how in times of stress we all default back to methods. Does that mean that somebody moving into leadership can start to default back into being a manager?

Jaspar Robertson (20:42):
That is very much the single biggest problem that people find they transition through. Being blunt, as I've mentioned before, there isn't a handbook, there isn't a formula to follow. It's a bit strange in some respects because it's the analogy that I always use from schools. Which is if you're looking to progress within a school you become a teacher, you become a really first class teacher and you get promoted and ultimately you then get moved into the role of a head. And as a head teacher, in most cases, you don't teach anymore. And therefore you've got to really change the whole approach and the role of a head teacher these days, especially in large schools, is very much that of an administrator within a teaching environment, rather than a teacher with some admin to do. And that change is very similar to the transition that people have to do as they move from management into leadership.

It's a really challenging role and a really difficult one and it is so easy to fall back into the same approach of providing all of the answers and telling people what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And that is not the role of the leader.

Jaspar Robertson (21:45):
It's a different beast. It's a different animal. You need to behave differently. You need to recognize that you are on show 24/7 and everybody expects you to have the answers to everything. Whether that be we've run out of coffee and where do we get some more from? To, what do we do in this crisis situation? To, where on earth are the extra staff that I was promised? And, Mary's not coming today so what do we do? And as a leader of that organisation, people expect you to have those answers. It's a really challenging role and a really difficult one and it is so easy to fall back into the same approach of providing all of the answers and telling people what to do, when to do it and how to do it. And that is not the role of the leader.

Kiran Kapur (22:38):
Jaspar, that was absolutely fascinating. Lots of insights, lots of ideas and advice about moving from management into leadership that was Jasper Robertson of Springhall Solutions.

Jaspar Robertson (22:49):
Thank you.