The Connected Leader: Embracing Leadership Through Openness

It’s not hard to see why so many leaders—bosses, coaches, teachers, etc.—default to a chain-of-command style of leadership. A hierarchy that gives direct orders has a history dating back thousands of years for many reasons, not least of which is its directness and understandability. You have a superior, they tell you what to do, and you do it. Increasingly, however, people are opting for a more Connected or Open Leadership type of approach and  see a strict chain of command as outdated.

There are basically two ways to understand how open a company’s leadership structure is. First, you have the organizational openness. The size of teams, the amount of oversight, and the nature of performance tracking all affect how loosely or strictly a company is structured. Second, you have interpersonal openness or the leadership style of individual people. While these are two distinct concepts, they either work in concert with one another or undercut each other. As such, you need to address both if you want to create a consistent leadership style in your workplace. 

Organizational openness

Tackling your business's leadership structure needs to happen on both a macro and micro level. The best way to get a snapshot of your current structure is to create an org chart of who reports to whom. The wider your org chart is, the more open your leadership structure. On the other hand, if you have a picture that looks like a vertical column, you run on a top-down model. 

Next  ask yourself how team members lower down the totem pole are monitored. Do they need to report their daily output for tracking? Do they have to ask permission for taking a lunch break? Is their PTO often denied? The answers to these questions are all small-scale decisions that affect your level of organizational openness. 

Interpersonal openness

The other piece of the puzzle is the nature of your leaders themselves. If organizational openness is largely a structural matter, interpersonal openness is more of a cultural one and can vary from team to team within a workplace. Leaders who take credit, deflect blame and don’t give their charges a chance to collaborate and influence decisions are the opposite of open. Those who are transparent, ask questions, take feedback, and empower their troops are more open or connected. One of my favorite ways to think about a leader’s openness is their “intellectual humility.” An intellectually humble leader is open to other viewpoints no matter how successful they are, they view situations objectively, and they never assume they don’t have room to grow. 

Developing a leadership style that works

Once you examine the current state of your leadership style, ask yourself what style you want. It’s not a matter of either/or, but rather a question of degree. Every company needs some amount of hierarchy and some amount of openness, but it’s better to actively develop where you stand rather than to let it form by happenstance. 

In a study from Stanford University, flat structures were demonstrated to produce happier and more functional teams. “The egalitarian teams were more focused on the group because they felt like ‘we’re in the same boat, we have a common fate,” says one of the study’s authors. “They were able to work together, while the hierarchical team members felt a need to fend for themselves, likely at the expense of others.”

Connected leaders who listen to their teams and are open to feedback are the key to developing an engaged company culture. Not only does this create greater employee fulfillment, but empowered employees tend to stay longer and are more committed to achieving your company’s goals.