Bottom Up Leadership

You can recognise when you have become an organisational commodity when one or more of the following factors apply to you:

·         You feel unable to make the contribution that you know you are capable of making

·         You feel that you have become a ‘number’ in the organisation

·         You are frustrated at being managed by a person who constricts your ability to be truly effective

·         You are unclear about your role and the goals that you are expected to achieve

·         Your ideas and suggestions for making performance improvements are not taken on board by your managers

·         Your manager and other managers make it clear that you are a subordinate

·         You are not encouraged to collaborate with other units in your organisation 

If some or all of the above statements fit your situation and are unhappy with the working environment and what it is doing to you, yet are unsure how to escape from your corporate prison, then this series of blogs could be the key to open up a much brighter future for you.

Do you belong to one or more organisational tribes?

Another hierarchy factor that impacts adversely on employees is the compartmentalisation of the organisation into divisions, functions, departments, and smaller units. This setup encourages tribe like grouping to form with a propensity to use behaviour designed to protect their territory. The larger tribes are made up the following categories:

• Senior executives
• Managers
• Supervisors
• Unions
• Workers

 The whole system tends to absorb its people in focusing on rules and procedures designed to keep everyone in their appropriate place doing exactly what each tribe dictates its members should be doing. Most organisational language is about reinforcing the master/servant or parent/child relationship that appears to be an essential part of the military type of hierarchy. The following illustrates some of this language:

• Levels of command in the structure
• Executives/managers/supervisors/workers
• Boss/subordinates-them/us
• Positions described as at a ‘level’ in the organisation
• Going on leave
• “Lets talk to the troops”
• Going down to the front line
• People work for their boss and the organisation

The way forward

Become an Bottom-up leader and break free from the concept of being employed to one of contracting your services and talent to an organisation.  Being an Bottom-up leader means that you:

• Retain control of your life by establishing the conditions that you want to enable you to have the type of life that you want for yourself and those who matter to you.
• Can establish your personal brand in ways that spell out what you have to offer to those you wish to contract your services.
• Have the opportunity to negotiate exactly what would be expected from you, how it would be measured, and the rewards you can expect when you achieve the agreed outcomes.
• Are motivated to keep developing your capability to enable you to keep adding measurable value to those that matter to you in all aspects of your life.
• Enjoy life by having truly constructive relationships with all the people that matter to you.

I will describe each part of the process in separate blogs as a way of helping you to shape your personal brand in ways that will assist you to achieve your life goals. There will also be examples of the pitfalls to watch out for that exist  in organisations that could trap and disempower you and I will supply suggested ways of overcoming these should they raise their ugly head.

Tom Jaap