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Something Worth SharingReverse Engineering I was working with a client recently who had a challenge around leadership. He very much wanted to be seen as a strong leader by investors - to have clear visibility at the forefront of a project. Equally, he has superb self-awareness and wanted to make sure he allowed the team to have space and autonomy. Clearly the balancing act between being visible and creating space can be a delicate one. We reverse engineered the project to consider how success and the value he could offer would be ‘felt’ by all concerned - by the investors and his project team - at the successful end of it. We imagined interviewing these stakeholders at the end of the project and considered what he’d like them to say about him in an ideal situation. The first of these feelings was that “he allowed them to feel confident about their decision-making”. We repeated this process to create a list of 5 key things he would like to think his leadership would enable. Then we reverse engineered these 5 things to consider what behaviours were needed to create each one. In the case of allowing a team to make clear and confident decisions, one of the behaviours required by him would be to be an impartial sounding board, another idea was to help the team have clear goals for each decision, and so on. When we start with an end in mind - often the feeling we want to produce - it’s easier to then think about what behaviours will create it. If you want friends to think of you as open and warm, your behaviour won’t be to turn down all invitations for coffee!
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