Leadership Plain and Simple by Steve Radcliffe
“Your first and foremost job as a leader is to manage your own energy, and help manage the energy of those around you.”
3 Main Messages:
FUTURE: You need to articulate a clear vision
ENGAGE: Build relationships and your team
DELIVER: You need to manage your 4 energies and be able to have honest conversations
This book opens with thank yous and acknowledgements to all who helped in creating it. What a wonderful way to start, and a clear signal to the reader that this book is all about relationships. Radcliffe’s little book of Leadership has been sitting on my bookshelf for many years and, after eventually taking the time to read, I wish I had opened it years ago.
Radcliffe’s main message is that it’s important to always be “up to something” and that teams are preferably “up to something together.” He outlines how to build cultures in order to achieve results by following his simple FED process of Future, Engage, Deliver. Each of these stages is taken in turn and peppered with quotes, real life examples and case studies. Clearly this approach has worked multiple times over.
Radcliffe asks leaders to answer three questions in order to establish the desired future to work towards:
What do you care about?
What do you want to lead for?
The leader I want to be is…
And he reminds us that it is the leader’s job to see the big picture, to be strategic and to clearly articulate the goal/target/ambition/vision/direction of the team. In other words, paint a clear picture of the desired future.
His metaphors are familiar: I first heard of ‘making sure your ladder is against the correct wall’ at a Headteacher training session many years ago and am familiar with his concept of ‘moving from the dancefloor to the balcony’ as referenced by Brené Brown in her Dare to Lead podcast*. I found his alignment with other admired thought leaders rather reassuring and so read on with even greater interest.
In the ‘Engage’ section of the book, Radcliffe reminds us that “You have to have relationships big enough to get the job done.” He shares the typical different engagement levels of staff, asks leaders to map their staff against them and then explains what actions to take and conversations to have to encourage deeper engagement. His message is simple and clear: “Imagine a great future. Liberate the people. Build great relationships.”
Radcliffe shares step-by-step conversations which need to take place in order to ensure delivery and goes into detail to explain the 4 main energies and the importance of fuelling them. He asks us to consider what we are like at our best and our worst and, the ripple effects of these across our teams.
This book really is ‘what it says on the tin’: it is a plain and simple guide for what good leadership looks like and how to achieve it. Even if you only read the summary at the end of the book, you will have a better understanding of the steps you can take to improve how your team functions.
I may have come to read Radcliffe’s a little late, but I know that I will be constantly dipping into it from now on. It is a must-read for anyone learning how to lead.
*Dare to Lead podcast episode link: https://brenebrown.com/podcast/the-hardest-feedback-ive-ever-received-part-1-of-2/
