Facilitative Leadership & Culture of Failure

There is lots of talk about "Servant Leadership" lately.

I like this concept, and there is no doubt that the elements of a servant leadership style (listening & empathy, stewardship, commitment to grow people - just to name a few) should be part of any modern leadership style. Plus, the connotation of the word itself, that any leader should be a servant too, is true as well.

However, when we look up "servant" in the dictionary, it says that a servant is "one that performs duties about the person or home of a master or personal employer", and that sends a pretty passive message. For me, leadership and passivity do exclude each other. Thus, I like the term “Facilitative Leadership” much better to describe how a leader should act in today’s world. The leader shall be a facilitator and enabler who is passionate about finding ways to actively engage people in working on the issues that affect the organization and hence their professional (and sometimes private) life.

First, any person that considers himself a facilitative leader needs to be convinced about the team’s ability to master the challenges ahead of them. However, at the same time, this leader can see the areas ahead with extraordinary risks or challenges that the team doesn’t see (yet) or isn’t able to master (yet).a

Such a leader acts upon and makes sure that the team prepares itself for the things to come. In essence, such a leader is skilled in helping the team to navigate through the maze of today’s complex business environment without directly leading them. Navigating does explicitly not mean having all the answers; however, the facilitative leader has a compass (ethically and professionally) and can prompt the team to look for the right indicators, ask the right questions, and assists them in drawing the correct conclusions.

The second important aspect is that such a leader recognizes that each person is unique and can bring a different skill set to the team. He understands that this helps the team take continuously different perspectives on the challenges ahead of them; ultimately, this prompts the exchange of ideas on overcoming these challenges – this brings the team on a track to a collective learning experience.

For a facilitative leader, mistakes and even failure is accepted as the normal part of going into uncharted territory, and this gives everyone further chances to learn and grow. Accepting failure sounds awkward since our world depends on the reliability of processes and that everyone delivers the best results. To be clear, a process that is being repeated shall always have the same outcome. For example, while being aboard an aircraft, the zero-tolerance to variation in process-result is much appreciated by the passengers. When we expect that everything goes well and it doesn’t, we are in the area of accidental failure.

However, there is the area of controlled failure, where the team does something new, and the leader makes sure that the team knows the rules of controlled failure before it engages in the process. These CAPA-Rules of controlled failure are:

By definition, innovation happens in uncharted territory. The more you innovate, the more you will fail. Being very innovative can be summarized in the brilliant logic of «fail fast, adjust faster»

As everyone can imagine, this requires from the leader multiple shifts between roles along the day. Be the manager who ensures that the essential rules are being respected in one minute, act as a leader who creates confidence the next minute, and - in between - be a supportive coach and a professional consultant to the individuals of the team.

Playing these different roles sounds exhausting, and it sometimes is, but if the leader is given the freedom to cultivate this leadership-style, the company will benefit greatly from it.