Leading with guiding principles
Synthesizing my leadership philosophy into a coaching practice
Last Friday, I attended an event where I came to a realization that I hadn’t really said “out-loud” as something I want to do: to help and support leaders through a leadership coaching practice.
Back in 2018, I started the Inclusive Leader project after my manager reflected that I was guiding new managers and developing leaders in a Distinct and Different way than my peers: Jonathan-style. The question has stuck with me since, framing my paths and decisions, “what does that mean?”
Guiding Principles
An impactful practice I’ve picked up through the years is the concept of Guiding Principles. These are—essentially—a framework for a team and organisation’s decision making processes.
These are distinct from values—organizational culture & beliefs used to prioritize actions and shape behavior—in the fact that they’re applied to decision-making and actions.
Values ground.
Principles guide.
Their interconnectedness weaves a much more resilient foundation, that adapts for the situation at hand. Values can become dogmatic, building inconsistent & mis-aligned behaviors over time. With Principles, you can reflect on the interplay between the two wayfinding frameworks.
Leadership Principles
There’s all sorts of various leadership styles and theories. In practicality—and reality—you’re using more than one aspect or technique from a host of different possibilities.
As soon as you start working with people from places, histories, and cultures that have extremely little in common apart from shared humanity, things get exponentially more complex.
As a leader—just as your communication, facilitation, and collaboration styles adapt to purpose, so must your approach to leadership adapt to situations.
If you’re working in a company, there tend to be Company Values that you do not have the power to change. You may or may not agree with them…but you can control how you lead with them.
My guiding leadership principles
I’ve thought about this a lot—going back to one of my Tumblrs from January, 2016—a month or so before I started a new role as a manager of managers:
In recent months, I've been overwhelmed, stressed out, busy-busy-busy. When you add returning-to-where-I-grew–up with reading-this-book, plus a bit of relaxation, you get introspection and evaluation-of-self. When I was back [in North Carolina], I didn't have the time to sit down and write a list of virtues, like Benjamin Franklin maintained. But, the first opportunity I had, I wrote. This is what came out.
I listed my first, named, personal values: curiosity, self-discipline, confidence, frugality, humility, authenticity, tenacity, wonder, kindness, honor, purposeful.
They hold well now—I’d probably remove and adjust a few—but I have years more life experience and, hopefully, wisdom gained along the way.
These days, I ground my work with these guiding leadership principles:
Leadership is inclusive: I value diverse perspectives, creating safe spaces, and ensuring all voices are heard.
Leadership is accountable: I take responsibility for my actions, manage expectations transparently, and follow through.
Leadership is situational: I meet people where they are, adapting my methods to fit the needs of the team & organization.
Leadership is collaborative: I believe in collective power, leveraging diverse strengths through collaboration and coalition.
Leadership is adaptive: I embrace change with curiosity, actively listen to feedback, and adjust course as needed.
Leadership is iterative: I innovate by embracing a test-and-learn, growth mindset while experimenting with new approaches.
My First Coaching Package
This introspective wayfinding framework seems somewhat related to setting basal implementation intentions. When I’m confronted with the daily question—how should I approach this situation?—I refer back to this list.
For me, it’d be fun to have conversations with other managers & leaders—emerging, practiced, or tenured—as they create principles for themselves.
A 6-week coaching program focused on developing your own guiding leadership principles, telling the story behind them, and incorporating them into daily practice.
Active Voice sums it up on their company’s homepage purpose statement: “we help people…understand who they are and how they lead.”1
There’s something foundational to that.
I like it.
Jonathan-style.
Active Voice | Training & coaching for tech & design leaders. (n.d.). Active Voice. https://www.activevoicehq.com/