In Stage 4, the leader ideally spends 10 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 70 percent wearing the Manager Face, and 20 percent wearing the Specialist Face.
Stage 4 is characterized by a leader who is actively developing a management team that leads strong departments.
In earlier Stages, the leader wore the Manager Face by managing the work and the staff. The difference in Stage 4 is that the leader is managing managers, who are then managing the work and the staff. The size of the company requires an organizational structure that formalizes a management team. While this management layer is critical, it also introduces a layer between the CEO and the staff. That’s why it’s so important that the leader is training, growing, and hiring strong managers. The managers should be encouraged to lead solid departments, developing an expertise about their functional area that may even supersede the leader’s.
Implementing and advancing the organization’s processes and systems is a major focus in Stage 4. Leveraging the leader’s knowledge and expertise to others in the organization comprises 20% of time spent wearing the Specialist Face. Additionally, continued involvement in business development activities is a common Specialist activity for a Stage 4 leader.
Wearing the Visionary Face, the leader must stay in touch with where the organization is headed. Mindful of a clear vision of the future, the leader must then ensure that the management team understands the vision so they can share it with their departments to maintain staff buy-in.
Even though the ideal allocation of time and energy among the Three Faces in Stage 4 is similar to Stage 3, it’s still common for a leader to have grown the organization through Stage 3 into Stage 4 without having transitioned away from a Specialist focus.
Leaders who fail to spend appropriate time in the Manager Face routinely face burn-out in Stage 4 with an organization that remains owner-centric. The organization is running them, rather than the other way around. Their management team is underdeveloped and docile, lacking the authority to fulfill their critical role in what should now be an enterprise-centric business. Without a strong management team, the organization’s growth potential is stunted—limited by the leader’s personal restraints of time and energy.
Three Faces of a Leader Misalignment
The CEO of a medical interpreting services company excels at bringing in new business. She is a natural networker who is consistently able to close deals. She’s also a talented interpreter, and even though her company has grown to 42 employees, she still loves that part of the work. She has made close connections with many of her clients and while she has managers responsible for certain hospitals, she tends to get contacted directly by the client when there is a problem. She also tends to make herself available to clients because it’s easier, in her mind, to simply take care of it herself.
The CEO has ambitions of growing her business to be the primary provider of medical interpreting services in the entire metro area. She’s frustrated, though, by the consistent need to work directly with her clients. She wants her managers to take the lead with customer service and quality issues so that she can focus on sales, writing proposals, and expanding the business, but they aren’t stepping up to do the job.
This CEO has overlooked the important role that she plays in developing her managers. After putting them in place, the next step she needs to take in this new stage of her business is to coach and mentor them. Rather than spending so much of her time selling, she should be developing a sales manager who can take the lead in that area. And rather than shortcutting her managers’ authority, she should equip her management team to handle issues with clients and enable them to find their own solutions.
The concepts from this article were taken from The Professional Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 34-57 employees.