I was recently taken by a quote from Lao Zi (an ancient Chinese philosopher and poet):

Govern a big country as you would cook a small fish.

It suggests a gentleness, attentiveness and care in exercising leadership that does not seem to feature in modern leadership theory and practice. Indeed, just the opposite. Modern leaders are told to be out-front, directing, planning, controlling, results-driven, and outcome-focused. So, I was wondering about leadership as a light touch.

Leaders exercise power. We should be clear about that. The further up the hierarchy of leaders the more your opinion carries weight and the more your view prevails. Leadership is the power to interfere. Our hierarchical organisations (and they are all hierarchical in one way or another) are systems for distributing power. But knowing this doesn't help much to either describe or explain what leaders do or how they might improve.

How leaders exercise power is important. It is choice.

We have designed organisational systems that control the flow of information and direct activity in order to create a sense of coherence and certainty. Does the way we have positioned leaders and leadership in our organisations orient their behaviour to more heavy-handed, interventionist approaches?

Have we positioned leadership and management in a framework that implicitly emphasises control theory and information exchange. Consequently, leaders are just processors of inputs, conduits for messages and generators of outputs—all of which we assume can be measured, assessed and thereby improved. In this view leaders (at any level) are just another reactive cog dutifully fulfilling a role in the well-oiled organisational machine. The leader has become a prisoner of events with a focus on the measurable here and now.

This contrasts starkly with our highly desired narrative of leaders as people of foresight and anticipation who are actively positioning the organisation to capitalise on emerging opportunities. Those who create a sense of certainty from uncertainty. Rather, we have created a picture of leadership that lends itself to control, centralisation, transaction and process. We are in danger of draining the life from leaders and leadership.

This description may be harsh and could reflect my own pessimistic tendencies. However, I suspect that elements of it will ring true for many of those currently holding leadership positions. Worse still, it may even ring true for those aspiring to lead.

Right or wrong, it is certainly a long way from the essence of leadership as similar to ‘cooking a small fish’.

How might we frame leadership as a light touch? We might argue that light touch leadership focuses on coherence and interpretation. They provide coherence to our collective efforts by pushing and nudging in the right place at the right time. This is constant work. They also interpret. They make sense, shape and direction in the boundary between the day-to-day and an uncertain future.

So, three thoughts on light touch leadership...

Thought 1: Distribute the power and authority to decide—let it go…

We are all under increasing pressure to tighten control to centralise decision-making. What are our concerns about distributing the power and authority to decide? We worry that when others exercise discretion there will be inconsistent decisions and we worry that we are responsible. We just want people to follow the rules. These concerns are legitimate but maybe they are not the right or most important concerns. They reflect a process-centric view of organisational capability—the strength is in the process. It is and it isn't.

As we increase managerial control the system becomes tightly bound and less responsive. We produce rule-following managers with little experience in exercising judgement in decision-making. We focus them so closely on their patch that they lose sight of the interdependence of the whole. Adaptation does not occur without permission and when crisis happens or opportunities emerge leaders do not have the experience to respond locally, effectively, and in the interests of the whole. We might be more concerned about this sort of failure than variations to standard procedure.

In over-emphasising control we make it easy for ourselves (in theory) because as the saying goes, it is easier to herd sheep than lions.

Thought 2: Foster independence and diversity of thought—and then listen…

But we want lions…don’t we?

We want those working with us that have an opinion and to take the initiative. Leaders who can look us in the eye without ‘fear or deference’ and speak their mind. We want people working with us that help us to lead, to help the organisation to be more effective.

We want lions that will seize opportunity and take calculated risks.

The extent to which those that work with us are able to be forthright and independent depends on the investment we have made in them. We must invest our time not in control systems but in creating the conditions that allow views to be expressed (and challenged) and judgement to be exercised (and learned from).

In this not everybody is equal. Where mutual confidence and trust has been established over time there is more freedom of action. Where that experience has not been developed (for example where the person is new to the team or inexperienced) there may initially be less room for movement. But it is the leader that invests the time and effort in moving people from one state to the other. Leaders invest their time in development not control.

Having lions about the place doesn't make life easy. They are troublesome and independent.
We don’t train lions as much as we co-habit with them. The relationship is one of mutual respect and interchange. Confidence and trust are established through interaction over time. If we make the investment of time and effort in lions the benefit to our organisations should not only be growth in the diversity of thought but also increased organisational capability and resilience—micro-management leads to just the opposite.

Thought 3: Focus on meaning—hearts, minds and imagination …

People are more than economic units of labour to be tasked, probed and measured. 
Leaders make meaning for others by placing people, information and action in a larger frame. Making meaning of a situation involves constructing a sense of what is, what actually exists, and what is important. Isaiah Berlin described Winston Churchill's wartime speeches to the British people as ‘speaking what was in their hearts and minds’. He tapped into what was shared but unspoken, and he gave it a voice. Meaning-making is an essential leadership skill.

The ability to make meaning for others involves seeing leaders as interpreters of uncertainty—they pay attention to the shape and direction of the pieces as they are moving. It is more art than science, more judgement than data, and more people than process.

Leadership is a pervasive and elemental part of the scaffolding in every organisation. It defines who has the authority to decide, direct and coordinate, but the way that power is exercised is fundamental to success (short-term and long-term). Leadership might be better exercised as a light touch with an eye to gentleness, attentiveness and care.

We might be better served by leading as if we were cooking a small fish.