Four Roles for Leaders - Future Ready Leadership

There are many roles a leader can play when helping shape other leaders by supporting their learning journeys. Here are four of the most important ones:

Guide: A guide is a leader who points a way forward to success for others. In this context, the role of the guide is to provide a practical roadmap and helpful resources to help emerging leaders and leaders in new roles identify and navigate their learning journeys.

During Harvey Golub‘s legendary tenure at the helm of American Express (1993-2001), the company rose to become one of the world’s most powerful brands, and shares increased in value nearly 600%. One of the keys to Amex’s success was Golub’s relentless focus on guiding the development of other leaders throughout the company. Golub would regularly meet with high potential and emerging leaders to drill down on their businesses and to assess their potential for more expansive leadership responsibilities. In these one-on-ones, he regularly introduced readings, research and strategic challenges, encouraging promising leaders to engage with those resources and opportunities. He viewed his job not simply managing performance, but building emerging and high potentials toward growth.

Model: A model is a leader embodies essential leadership attributes and demonstrates them through behaviors in real situations.

Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill, is a classic example. At the height of the German Blitzkrieg, Churchill regularly visited bombed towns and bustling war factories, putting himself at personal risk to stand side-by-side with his countryman and convey the message, “I am one of you. Today, generations later, leaders continue to look to Churchill as a role mode for courageous and effective leadership.

Coach: A coach is a leader who helps others to discover their own solutions to difficult problems and challenging situations – in the process, empowering them to tap into and grow their potential.

Not long after Satya Nadella became Microsoft’s CEO, he concluded that the company needed to re-energize itself through a cultural transformation. Nadella’s vision was to transform Microsoft into a learning organization. He believed that a shift in leadership approach to a coaching model would be the best way to jump start and sustain the process. To start, he asked his leadership teams as well as many emerging leaders across the organization three nondirective questions, demonstrating that his role as a leader was to support rather than judge. Other leaders soon began to abandon directive precision questioning in favor of Nadella’s more coaching-oriented approach, which involved asking questions such as “What are you trying to accomplish?” “What’s working?” “What’s not working?” and “How can we help?” His leader-as-coach model ultimately shaped thousands of other leaders, which played a decisive moving Microsoft from a “know it all” to a “learn it all” culture.

How to Lead Like a Coach

Mentor A mentor is a leader who draws on personal experience and knowledge to help a less experienced leader grow professionally by providing expertise and insight.

Sheryl Sandberg has been a source of practical one-on-one advice to a generation of leaders around the world. In one prominent example, Sandberg mentored one of the emerging leaders who reported to her, Marne Levine, at a time when Levine was Instagram’s COO. Levine recalls countless conversations about the challenges she was facing at Instagram. Sandberg also created opportunities for Levine to collaborate with her on several projects, providing her with unique insights and opportunities. Levine, who subsequently went on to become Meta’s Chief Business Officer, credits Sandberg’s mentoring with fundamentally reshaping her approach to leadership.

Over time, as you move from focusing on your own learning to help other leaders grow, you will find it useful to become adept at each of these roles. Effective leaders develop the versatility to move from one role to another based on the needs of the emerging leader and the context of the situation.

Micro-Lessons for Shaping Leaders