© Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123

© Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123

The Leader in you

How do you know whether you are a good

leader, a wonderful leader, a bad leader or

actually not a leader at all? The primary

understanding that one needs to have is that

the mere concept of having subordinates

reporting to you doesn’t make you a leader.

This is just a point of reference, situation or an

environmental situation that has been created.

There are a host of books on leadership

abilities, team management and many areas

relating to people management. They talk of

extensive ways of building leadership traits, for

oneself, for the organization and for other

people around you. The idea of this note is not

to dwell deeper into any of those areas, but to

put down in some basic, simple to follow

manner the various ways of growing up as a

leader. And how you move from one stage of

team management to the other

Level One

The first level leader is the one who has to

manage people - below, they primarily act as

your extended hands. That is, primarily, they

are doing your work and do not have deliveries

or responsibilities associated with projects.

Your primary focus is task management. How

best can the people below you manage the

tasks assigned to them, the efficiency and the

speed. Normally all things associated with

doing a good job

Level Two

The second level of leadership is when you start

managing people who are still focusing on your

deliveries and your responsibilities, but are

assigned tasks or projects and are expected to

manage them to completion. Even though this

still happens under your supervision. That is,

they are still extended hands, but ownership

transmits, and from only a single owner task, it

becomes a joint owner task. Your primary focus

still remains task related matters, i.e: making

those below you manage the task effectively,

deliver the task effectively and be efficient in

doing the tasks assigned to them.

Level Three

As you grow in your leadership levels, the third

level of leadership starts to creep in. This is

when you manage tasks in your competency

area, but have people managing those tasks

with complete ownership, the delivery is done

by them, the planning is done by them and the

entire process from initiation to completion is

owned by them. You primarily are titled as

supervisor of the individual and by virtue of that

become supervisor of the task assigned to the

individual also. You have now moved into a role

which is not only limited to task management,

but has a fair percentage of people

management into it. To succeed here, you need

to not only focus on the historical competencies

of enhancing task efficiencies of the people

below you, you also need to manage them and

training them in managing others.

Level Four

The fourth level of leadership is when you are

really making the real change in life. In the

corporate world, it is this level which is moving

into strategy, into the senior management into.

For majority of the individuals, it is reaching the

4th level which is a major achievement. One can

reach the first 3 levels basis ones technical

competencies, however reaching the 4th level

requires a fair bit of assessment on things

beyond the technical skills and a host of

assessments go around figuring out who would

be an appropriate person to move into the level

4 roles. In this level you manage people

performing tasks that may not necessarily be

your area of competency. You are primarily

involved in providing vision, strategy and

direction to tasks and projects which you may

not be a trained technician on. The focus here

© Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123

© Mandeep Singh, http://in.linkedin.com/in/mandeeps123

is on managing the people aspects of the role

along with strategy, vision and direction, task

orientation is almost negligible.

Level Five

And the last layer of leadership is when you

actually do not manage anyone, it is moving into

the advisory roles, working on advising and

analysing how people around you work and

what they should do. You become someone

who can advise on people management, on

vision and forward strategic guidance to people

who are at the fourth level of leadership (or third

as the case maybe). A lot of organizations call

them coach, mentors and various other names

as per their system.

This is how you actually grown in life, so it is

good to figure out where you are presently in

your leadership journey and see for yourself

whether you are appropriately doing what you

should be doing. If you’re at Level Four or Level

Three, don’t forget to do a thorough analysis of

which Level Five leader you want to choose to

help you shape your leadership journey.

Happy Journey.