Levels of Leadership

Foreword

Once again, I'm NOT a corporate manager. The following article are subjective observations and opinions based on my student leadership experience.

The following article references ideas from big ideas of leadership, skim it through if you haven't :)

Leadership is complicated. It is never the case that someone is leading strictly within one level of leadership principles. Rather, one would be leading with principles across the different levels I categorized here, depending on their role, experience level, and style.

The Project Manager

This is the entry level of leadership. The story here is: given pre-defined resources, organization structure, and missions, get a specific project done.

Thus, the role for a leader here is that of a project manager. It means:

1. Receive, probe back at, and understand the project scope from stakeholders
2. Decompose the project into smaller tasks, possibly with dependencies among the tasks
3. Assign the tasks to different people based on their availability and expertise
4. Set reasonable deadlines, buffer time (super important), milestones, and backups
5. Track everyone's progress, remove roadblocks, and coordinate communication
6. When some aspects of the project get changed by stakeholders, adjust the tasks and timeline accordingly
7. Finally, deliver the project

The role is very much an execution role. It sits to power the bottom-most level of leadership: workflows and processes. It doesn't touch higher level concepts like organization chart, organization mission, organization resources, etc.

To do well as a project manager, the leader just needs to:

1. Have decent communication skill. Ask enough questions and listen carefully. Explain thoroughly and answer clearly.
2. Be knowledgeable about what needs to be done to accomplish the project. For example, if it's a website to be made, be knowledgeable about what steps are needed to build a website
3. Have a great sense of time and risk: know how long each step takes and what's the risk it will get delayed or go completely wrong
4. Knows about the team's basic skillset and personalities for effective task assignment
5. Knows how to run concise and effective meetings
6. Knows how to keep track of requirements, todos, and deadlines
7. Care about the project

The People Manager

At this level, the leader concerns themselves with one level above workflows and processes: the people that power them.

Whereas the project manager is all about projects, the people manager is all about team / sub-organization level mission, org chart, workflows, incentives, rules, and culture.

Thus, the role as a people manager includes:

1. Understand and continuously define the team / sub-organization's scope and mission with higher level stakeholders
2. Secure sufficient resources from higher level stakeholders
3. Recruit talented, committed, and collaborative individuals contributors or lower level people managers
4. Assemble the team in an effective organization chart by giving everyone clear ownership of responsibilities and defining clear flow of communication and collaboration
5. Establish incentives relevant to each team member, great work ethics, non-conflicting collaboration and communication, and reasonable logistical policies
6. Gravitate the team's tactical and strategic direction towards the overall scope and mission
7. Stay aware of what everyone is up to and offer support and advice as needed
8. Handle crisis: internal people conflicts, external breaking news, etc.
9. Cultivate and maintain good rapport, communication, and collaboration with higher level stakeholders, same level teams, and lower level teammates
10. Be the face of the team / sub-organization
11. Adjust aspects of the team / sub-organization accordingly to internal or external change drivers

When we talk about a "manager", this is what comes up in our head.

To do well as a people manager, the leader needs to:

1. Understand human incentives, human psychology, and human compassion
2. Be great at designing organizational chart, communication patterns, and collaboration patterns
3. Handle interpersonal stuff well
4. Present an inspiring, approachable image to the team
5. Be great at cultivating team culture and morale

And, the leader must not:

1. Micromanage, unless during crisis or something super important
2. Disrespect people
3. Stir up politics
4. Be out of touch
5. Disengage from what everyone is up to

The Strategic Executive

The Project Manager deals with workflows and processes, the People Manager deals with team-wide organizational chart, incentives, and all people related things, and finally the Strategic Executive deals with organizational-wide missions, resources, organizational chart, and everything at the top strategic level.

System is already in place. So in a static world, we just need a lot of people manager, project managers, and individual contributors, then the organization should run itself with existing workflows and processes, org chart, resources, and mission. In a static world, there won't be that much for the Strategic Executive to do.

But we live in a dynamic world, dynamic in the sense that, everything changes for better or worse. Change could mean:

1. Global events. An armed conflict. An economic sanction. Tariffs. A re-opened relation with another country.
2. National, state, and local policy changes. Decrease in tax. Increase in minimal wage. No alcohol can be sold after 1am.
3. Market events. Economy is better, so there's more market demand.
4. Technological breakthroughs. Someone just discovered the Transformer AI architecture and published the paper on it.
5. Supply chain events. A supplier raised the price. Another bankrupted. We have a old supply chain provider wanting to do business again.
6. Competitor events. A competitor is struggling, should we buy them or let it die? Another competitor just secured 100 million funding. And another industry is encroaching our business.
7. Customer events. If B2B, a customer just had a technical breakthrough, and now has the need for a new type of product we can provide them. If B2C, then there's a serious boycotting going on against us
8. Internal events. Our head of AI got poached. Our headhunter is able to convince a god-tier salesman from a competitor to join us instead. One of our business units is booming, another is dying, another is going through internal strife.
9. Legal conflicts. A customer sued us. A contractor sued us. Somebody is suing us.
10. Whatever random shit that happens. An alligator attacked a customer's kid in our hotel resort (Walt Disney example)

On another axis, a company is dynamic in the sense that, it is on a ticking-clock driven by its own lifecycle. Lifecycle could mean:

1. Our company is on the rise, so we need to try to innovate more products and services
2. Our company culture is rotting
3. Our company is running out of cashflow
4. Our company secured 1 billion funding
5. Our company is about to go public on NYSE exchange
6. Our company is about to go be delisted on NYSE exchange

Nothing stays but change.

For an organization, well-designed existing systems should be able to absorb some aspects the different dimensions, scopes, and magnitudes of changes that happen in the world. They should also be able to autonomously push themselves in their lifecycle.

However, for many super important things, existing systems isn't capable to absorb it in entirety unless the top leadership steps in to contribute some effort and steer the ship.

Thus, from my understanding, at the highest level of leadership, a strategic executive's role includes:

1. In light of all the changes, steer the organization to further its lifecycle and continue to deliver its evolving missions
2. Be the figure-head and top-diplomat of the organization
3. Be the top decision maker and strategist on people, money, and mission

So much had been said about leadership being a hands-on, push style role; "Stewardship", "Run the company", "Executive Officer", such titles strongly imply being hands-on and directing around. But at a higher level, leadership really is a mix of reactive, hands-off empowering others kind of role, plus decision-making, plus some push style role for innovation and crisis handling.

What are the qualities and skills needed at the strategic executive level?

I don't know. I mean I can list out some cliché ones:

1. Have a thorough understanding of the organization, the industry, and the world
2. Appreciate and be great at continuous innovation
3. Be inspiring
4. Understand the nitty-gritty of corporate law, finance, and human resources

But from my student leadership experience, I've never dealt with any strategic things beyond a school scope. Thus, I acknowledge my weakness in this final part of the writing as I am not qualified enough to discuss it.