Garrett Kincaid — Apr. 4, 2021

In many ways, leadership is hard to nail down. How’re you to know whether you should lead? If you chose to lead, how should you? What approach would be the most effective for the group, for the project?

Through a combination of my own trial and error, observing others’ (good and bad) leadership tactics, and my own personal preference, I have developed a clear idea of who I want to be as a leader and of what it means to lead effectively.

My leadership philosophy rests on one fundamental idea: Assuming a leadership position doesn't mean taking a place above others; it means taking a place in front of others.

In this post, I will offer a visual metaphor for my ideal approach to leadership, detailing the position, orientation, and responsibilities of an effective leader. Let’s get into it!

An effective leader takes a position in front of their team, rather than one above them. What comes with such a position? First and foremost, a leader is visible, like a performer on stage. They are vulnerable to scrutiny. And a they must be responsible, for a leader is subject to additional accountability.

That’s why not everyone wants to lead. One who steps in front to lead is unable to escape accountability and forfeits their anonymity.

Few people jump at the idea of taking on additional responsibility. And many cling to anonymity as a way to escape accountability. Effective leaders choose to lead only after understanding the sacrifice it demands — one that requires him/her to be vulnerable and constantly visible.

Leading from the front, though it’s a burden for the leader, has great benefits for the team. It puts everyone on equal footing and promotes a homogenous network of mutual respect. The title of “leader” should never be self-ascribed and must be earned and continuously maintained, along with respect from and for the team. One is not a leader because of a title or position in a hierarchy but because of how one acts and how one treats and inspires others.

Mere subjugation is not leadership; it’s aimless, baseless, self-serving posturing.

So, given that an effective leader steps in front to lead, what way should he/she face? A leader should face their team — tour-guide style.

For a moment, imagine that you’re on a guided tour of an art museum. How would you react if the tour guide never turned around, led you through the museum without asking what you were interested seeing, and explained each piece with his back to you — without any effort to involve you? Would you bail and drift out the back of the group? Would you confront the guide and take control of your experience? Certainly, the most painful thing would be to endure the rest of the uninspired tour.

That sort of leadership alienates the group from the leader, meaning that the leader isn’t really leading at all. That's why tour guides walk backwards.

Don’t leave your team in the dark, and illuminate yourself with the whole group’s ideas and input. Front-facing leadership leads to efficient and effective communication, allows for free-flowing feedback, and builds trust. A leader that faces their team accepts the responsibility to be visible and vulnerable and invites others to hold them accountable.

A leader should initiate two-way channels of communication for ideas, input, criticism, and feedback that run back to front as well as front to back.

Leading from the front, rather than from above, puts everyone on equal footing and establishes a network of mutual respect. But it's the leader's orientation — leading while facing the team — that coats the respect-network with a layer of trust. And the whole structure starts to crystalize.

At this point, we can materialize our visual metaphor and give effective leadership an avatar: the orchestral conductor.

The conductor steps in front to lead and, fully visible to the audience and the orchestra, faces her team. Both the position and orientation of the conductor are essential to the efficacy of her leadership; she couldn’t lead if even one of the members of her team were unable to see her, or if she were to conduct while facing the audience.

As we move to examine the responsibilities of an effective leader, keep the conductor in mind as an example of the ideal position and orientation of a leader.

There are three responsibilities of an effective leader. Each can only be fulfilled after establishing mutual respect and trust within the team.

The three responsibilities are:

To ensure that successes are shared with the team and not attributed solely to the leader, one must 1) acknowledge the team’s efforts; 2) remain humble upon the receipt of praise; and 3) give credit where it is due, expecting none in return.

This all comes naturally to our conductor. After a performance, she steps aside and faces the audience, becoming one with her team — abandoning her position and orientation only when accepting praise. She gestures to the orchestra, directing the audience’s applause to the whole group. Despite the fact that they could not have performed without her, she knows that the same is true for any section of the orchestra and expects no special credit for her efforts.

What if the end of a performance is met with air-born tomatoes, jeers, and calls for refunds instead of applause? A leader should face the audience, remain in front of their team, and do their best to block flying fruits. While the leader should share praise, she should shoulder blame. This is another responsibility of an effective leader and a sacrifice that one makes for the good of the team.

Not only is our conductor forthcoming with praise for her team and willing to endure scrutiny on their behalf. She also has high expectations for herself and, within her role, is an exemplar of effort. She never expects a member of her team to do anything that she’d be unwilling to do, though she may request it. She recognizes that each section of the orchestra is autonomous and assumes the unique responsibility of being the only one to relate each section to the others.

A leader’s main responsibility is to unite the team under a common vision. The whole team could work flawlessly but be out of sync or misdirected and produce something that fails to be cohesive. Such a failure falls squarely on the leader.

A piece of music is a great metaphor for this concept. Any piece of music is clearly more than the sum of its parts. The piece itself doesn’t emerge until each of the parts are put in perfect harmony and rhythm, which is the job of the conductor. Any one person within the team would have a different vision, so the leader must understand what single vision will unite everyone.

If a leader can effectively unite the team under a common vision, what they produce will be cohesive and powerful.

Through mutual respect, trust, effective communication, clear expectations, and a culture of complete effort, the team becomes a force to be reckoned with. It is leadership that can tip a team over the inflection point between a being a conglomeration of disparate parts with loosely connected responsibilities and being a cohesive unit with clear objectives and a vision driving its efforts.

Approach leadership as the conductor would; step in front to lead, face your team, and unite everyone under a common vision. In doing so, you will create something that is good in itself because of how it was made, regardless of how much applause it receives.