When Strong Leadership Saves a Life

When Sophie was 14 days old, she weighed one pound and five ounces. About the same as four D size batteries. In the hush and beeps of a hospital neonatal intensive care unit, she lay in an incubator connected to intravenous lines and heart monitors.

My wife, Sharon, and I were first time parents. We waited, we paced, we prayed. We were lost, worried. Then Dr. Marleta Reynolds walked into the NICU. The moment she spoke, we were able to breathe again. We knew that we, and more importantly our impossibly tiny newborn daughter, were in good hands.

The right leader had shown up at just the right time.

Separating the Rock Star Leaders from the Rest

Screening 5,600 executives and deploying leaders around the world through our work at InterimExecs, we formed a trusted team of CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and other executives who we were confident would hit it out of the park…every single time. But the path to get here took time forming key relationships and observing what sets apart rock star leaders from all the rest.

Top executives had incredible track records and capabilities. But there was a pattern beyond that. The best leaders were more clearly delineated in how they selected and approached roles they took on. They had a unique leadership style, or mode of operation, which was independent of whether they ran a Fortune 500 company or something far smaller.

We saw that highly accomplished leaders typically have a dominant style, process and approach to leadership. In our new book, Right Leader Right Time, we share our framework to help leaders find and seek out roles that play to their strengths. We hope sharing insights from our years of matchmaking will help leaders unlock their true potential, discovering and embracing their highest and best use, while setting a framework for organizations to form collaborative and cohesive teams.

No leader — no matter how great or talented — is best in all situations. Making sure the right leader is in the right role at the right time — that’s when the magic happens.

FABS Leadership Styles

We identified four leadership styles: Fixer, Artist, Builder, and Strategist (FABS for short). Let’s dive into a quick summary of each FABS style in action.

The Fixer: This leader sees what’s broken, and one or more ways to fix it. Fixers are drawn to the most dysfunctional, even toxic situations. They bring order out of chaos. Send a Fixer into a company that is hemorrhaging, and they will stop the bleeding. But send or keep a Fixer in a stable situation and, at best, boredom will be the result. Much more likely, they’ll break something just so they can fix it.

The Artist: This leader views the world (and your organization) as a blank canvas on which to paint, whether it’s a new product, service, technology, project, or anything else. The Artist leader is a renegade wired for innovation, ingenuity, revision, and revolution. Send an Artist into a company in need of a jolt and a whole new future could emerge. But if you box in an Artist too tightly, they can feel as if oxygen is getting sucked from the room.

The Builder: This leader thrives in growth mode; market domination is their mantra. They put people, process, and product in place to ramp up a project, company or division. You need this leader to break through ceilings in growth. But once scale is achieved and markets dominated, don’t expect the true Builder to stick around. It’s time for a new challenge.

The Strategist: This leader operates at scale in both complexity and vast size. If the Builder makes great buildings, the Strategist makes the roads, bridges and towns that connect them together. Strategists lead multiple teams, see the many pieces at play on the field, and get them aligned around a common mission and vision.

Genetic DNA is made up of just four nucleotides, yet those four proteins express themselves in infinite variety. So, too, all great leaders are a mix of these four leadership styles and can call on various modes as needs be. But the best leaders know their strengths and double down on their dominant style, seeking out opportunities that play to their highest and best use, and rejecting what is not.

Search as you will, but you won’t find anyone who is both the best Fixer and also the best Artist, Builder, or Strategist. The most effective leaders excel at recognizing and promoting others with complementary styles, knowing that as organizations change, needs change.

When we are honest with ourselves, it is easy to acknowledge that while we can certainly weave, shift, and adapt in thought and action as our team, client, project, or organization grows, pivots, and hits bumps along the way, there is a limit beyond which adaptation just doesn’t work. At some point it just doesn’t feel fun or productive anymore.

Even when leaders seem unaware that they are not acting in their highest and best use, you can bet stakeholders around them see clearly the variability of results, while knowing when the leader shines brightest.

Dr. Reynolds saved my daughter, who is now a healthy and thriving young woman. We trusted Dr. Reynolds because she’s one of the best pediatric surgeons in the world, but I wouldn’t go to her as an adult. Nor would I ask my patent lawyer to serve as a criminal defense attorney.

Why then, in the management of organizations, do we think a great leader will perform just as well in any situation?

Leaders who come to embrace their highest and best use know their best leadership mode and can recognize the right opportunities to join — or reject — a company, project, client or team. That’s the path to finding more success, purpose, and love of the game.

BIO

Robert Jordan created Online Access, the first Internet-coverage magazine worldwide, landing on Inc’s 500 fastest-growing company list. After the sale of the magazine, he launched InterimExecs RED Team (Rapid Executive Deployment), matching rock star leadership with companies seeking to achieve extraordinary results. Jordan is co-author of Right Leader Right Time: Discover Your Leadership Style for a Winning Career and Company, author of How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America, and publishing partner for Start With No, Jim Camp’s bestseller on negotiation. A lifelong Chicagoan, husband & father, he shares an Instagram account with his dog Norman @Norman.clature.