You can work hard, carry considerable responsibility and still feel that your leadership is not providing enough direction. The four fundamental tasks of leadership help you explore what it takes to truly occupy your position.
You have explained the direction for the coming year. Agreements are in place. Everyone knows what needs to happen. Yet the work keeps finding its way back to you.
A difficult decision remains open for discussion. You try to bring the team along, but become increasingly caught up in explaining, solving and persuading.
It is tempting to look for a better approach. A different meeting structure. A clearer plan. Training in communication skills. Those things can help. But sometimes the situation first asks something else of you: to examine how you occupy your position as a leader.
In my work, I use the four fundamental tasks of leadership to explore this: tolerating loneliness, modelling success, delegating and exercising power. They offer a systemic perspective on what leadership asks of you, alongside the practical duties in your job description.
Start by clarifying your assignment
You lead on behalf of an organisation. It has a purpose, a history and goals you are expected to contribute to. Your team matters, but its interests are not the only ones you need to consider.
To do your work, you need clarity about your role, your task and your mandate. What are you responsible for? Which decisions can you make? What needs to be agreed with your own manager, client or supervisory board? And what room can you then give to others?
When these agreements are unclear, you can spend a great deal of energy carrying responsibilities for which you have little authority. The four fundamental tasks can also help you make that visible and discuss it.
1. Tolerating loneliness
As a leader, you occupy a different position from the people you lead. You can be warm, involved and approachable. At the same time, you assess performance, set boundaries and make decisions that will not please everyone.
Tolerating loneliness means being able to bear the difference between those positions. Your team does not have to like your decision to be expected to implement it. Nor do your employees need to reassure you that you are still a good or likeable leader.
This can ask more of you than you expect, especially if belonging matters deeply to you. A disappointed reaction can quickly become a reason to explain again, make an exception or move the boundary a little.
You need support yourself, but arrange it in an appropriate place: with fellow leaders, your own manager, a peer reflection group or a coach. That way, the team you lead does not also have to take care of you.
2. Modelling success
What matters to you becomes visible in what you do. You can say that employees are welcome to take initiative. If you then correct every proposal that differs from your own ideas, you demonstrate something else.
Modelling success asks you to take the lead in the movement you expect from others. If you want people to hold each other accountable, you also have conversations to have that you would rather postpone. If you want mistakes to be discussed openly, your response to your own mistakes matters.
This task also involves examining what success actually means. A result that is only possible because people continually exceed their limits deserves scrutiny. The aim is to contribute to the organisation's purpose while considering the consequences for others and for the longer term.
You demonstrate more than how to achieve something. You also make the choices and considerations behind it visible, and invite your team to follow that direction.
3. Delegating
Handing over a task is different from asking an employee to carry out the solution you have already devised. When you delegate, you give someone responsibility for an agreed outcome, together with appropriate authority and support.
You need to know what belongs to your role and what you can genuinely hand over. What remains your responsibility? Where can the other person decide independently? When should they involve you?
The most difficult step often comes afterwards. Someone chooses an approach you would not have chosen. Uncertainty arises. Things slow down for a while. Can you continue to guide them without quietly taking the work back?
Delegating asks you to let others do their work while remaining available for your own. If you continually take over the execution, people may become dependent on the help you offer so generously.
4. Exercising power
Leadership comes with the ability to make decisions, allocate resources and set boundaries. Exercising power means using that authority when your assignment calls for it.
That can be uncomfortable. You have listened, answered questions and examined objections. Still, someone keeps challenging an agreement. A moment comes when you need to make clear what has been decided and what you expect from the other person.
The question is what you are using your power for. Are you serving a defensible purpose, within your mandate? Or are you mainly trying to discharge your irritation, prove yourself right or prevent someone from disagreeing with you?
Exercising power carefully requires you to remain accountable for your own actions. You can uphold a decision while listening to new information or acknowledging that you misjudged something.
The tasks influence one another
Suppose an employee repeatedly fails to keep an agreement. You want to preserve the relationship and postpone the conversation. Eventually, you take over the task yourself. You solve the practical problem, but the lack of clarity remains.
Several fundamental tasks may be at play at once. Can you tolerate the other person's disappointment? Are you clear and consistent about agreements yourself? Do you leave responsibility where it belongs? And are you willing to use your authority when the conversation calls for it?
This is why it helps to start with a concrete situation. Look at what you do when tension rises. Do you seek connection, work harder, take something over or postpone a decision? What remains unspoken as a result?
You are also a member somewhere
Even as a leader, you belong to a larger whole. Within a management team, under a board of directors or in relation to a supervisory board, you have your own position as a member. That is where you receive direction, communicate what you need and account for your actions.
Leadership becomes heavier when you only carry responsibility and have nowhere to receive support yourself. The four fundamental tasks of membership help you explore that other side of your position.
Would you like to work with a situation in which your leadership feels difficult? In leadership coaching, we explore your assignment, your position and what is happening between you and the people around you. This helps clarify the next step that is yours to take.
