Level
While
“leader level” is not equal across all capabilities and
situations, most leaders settle into a particular level of
behavior, or center of gravity, which most satisfies those
needs and requirements present in their lives currently,
even if they are transiting to more complex levels over
time. The way people reveal CAPABILITY, BIAS, through
STYLE is at or of a LEVEL in life, work, and play—each
domain may be at a different level. In other words, the
density and frequency of our behaviors can be assigned to
leader levels, which can metaphorically be thought of as
being a particular “size, scope, range or level of
behavior.”
LeaderW@RE uses the following
designations as Leader Levels:*
• Level 0—not yet a manager, but aspire to become a
leader – Managing Self
• Level 1—pre-management (Team or Lead) – Managing Team
• Level 2—supervisory management level – Managing Others
• Level 3—mid management level – Managing Managers
• Level 4—upper management level – Managing Functions
• Level 5—senior management level – Managing Business
• Level 6—top management level (small) – Managing Groups
• Level 7—top management level (large –
Managing Enterprise
* Adapted from Lectica,org,
The Leadership Pipeline, and Requisite Organization.)
Each level is indicative of the types of problems and
challenges that are present at that level to be met by the
leader, which require the leader to reason using specific
algorithms, or concepts, which are particular to that
level of life work and relationships. These levels are
NEVER pure, and all leaders work across levels with
simultaneous entering, nodal and exiting behaviors
occurring intersubjectively. However, a center of gravity
can be valid.
Complexity crisis: Levels &
Tasks
“During the last 20 years, scholars
and practitioners in many disciplines have identified a
growing gap between the complexity of the workplace and
the capabilities of leaders. This gap has contributed to
what we refer to as a complexity crisis, in which leaders
are forced repeatedly to make decisions without an
adequate understanding of their ramifications.”
–
Dr. Theo Dawson, Lectica.org
The following
excerpted material provides another opportunity to look at
how the need for Level DYNAMICS can be positioned. It’s a
valuable read.
Individual Differences in
Strategic Leadership Capacity:
A
Constructive/Developmental View
“…the
skills required for effective performance are different at
different organizational levels. The higher one goes in
most organizations, the more complex the thinking skills
need to be. Executives must be able to deal with abstract
constructs that do not concern lower levels, and they need
to be more integrative in their thinking.
The personal demands of strategic leadership are enormous.
…the strategic leader operates in a highly
faceted, changing, probabilistic environment where the
consequences of strategic decisions will often not be
known for several years.
To operate effectively in
such an environment requires the vision, perspective, and
strength of character that are thought to come only from
years of experience in the real world. Yet, as the growing
literature on managerial “derailment,” experience [KSEs as
horizontal capability] alone does not seem to impart
strategic leadership capacity.
What, then, does distinguish effective strategic
leaders from ineffective ones, if not experience and skill
levels?
…what most often distinguishes
between effective and ineffective strategic leaders is
their level of conceptual capacity.
Simply stated, leaders who lack the
conceptual capacity to construct an understanding that
match: or exceeds the complexity of their work will be
unable to carry out their most critical tasks
effectively.”
Philip Lewis and T. Owen Jacobs,
STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP: A Multiorganizatonal-Level
Perspective
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You, Me, and We @F-L-O-W
Mike R. Jay is a developmentalist utilizing consulting, coaching, mentoring and advising as methods to offer developmental scaffolding for aspiring leaders who are interested in being, doing, having, becoming, and contributing… to helping people have lives.
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