What Google Earth can teach us about leadership
The other day, I came across a concept in leadership that was new to me: altitude. In his podcast, leadership coach Tom Henschel discussed the topic of executive presence and introduced ‘altitude’ as one of the things to consider when working on one’s leadership capacity.
Executive presence is a common coaching topic. It often comes disguised as we can sometimes think it’s all about confidence. But when we dig deeper, the actual coaching goal is often about something much bigger: it’s often about increasing the ability to show up and be recognised as an effective and respected leader, with gravitas and influence.
Altitude affects everything you do. How you think about your work, how you show up, how you operate, how you engage with others.
Are you quite close to the ground? With an excellent in depth understanding of all the details you and your team need to have your arms around?
Or higher up, with less focus on the detail but instead visibility of the bigger picture, adjacent projects, what’s happening elsewhere?
Or are you operating at a high altitude, seeing far and wide?
Tom Henschel uses Google Earth as an analogy. At the low level, we can see every little detail, buildings, cars, hedges, bridges – crucial for navigating the terrain. When we zoom out, we lose the detail but instead can see the whole neighbourhood, gaining awareness of what’s happening in the vicinity and what’s coming our way, risks and opportunities. When we zoom out yet again, we lose all the detail, but instead gain visibility of several cities, rivers, countries, even continents – the big picture.
If you want to contemplate your leadership altitude pondering some of these questions will be a good starting point:
What is your favourite leadership altitude?
At what altitude are you most comfortable? Why? What impact is this having on your work (good and bad)?
What altitude does your job mostly require you to be at?
Our roles, our organisation, as well as the people we work for (and with) often expect us to operate at a certain altitude. Do you know what these expectations are? Are there any conflicting expectations from the people around you? How does this impact the way you show up?
How often/ How easily do you float up and down?
To be effective we need the ability to operate at all levels, but due to lack of experience changing to a higher altitude can be challenging. Can you see things from your boss’s altitude? Your boss’s boss? Your CEO’s? And let’s not forget about your team. Do you remember what things look like at their altitude?
How can you use the concept of altitude to advance your leadership style?
Another take on altitudes in leadership
When I googled altitude in leadership, I initially came across a slightly different but equally interesting take on the concept. INSEAD professor Ian C. Woodward also talks about the different levels of altitudes in leadership: 50,000 feet (big picture thinking, strategy, looking into the future, seeing disruptions and opportunities, looking back from the future), 50 feet (the tactical level, taking action, getting stuff done) and 5 feet (reflecting about our roles, how we show up as leaders, why we do things in a certain way and the impact we are having on others). Highly effective leaders he claims, are able to seamlessly float between the different levels of altitude.
Last but not least he points out that some leaders suffer from so called altitude sickness, i.e. they get stuck at one altitude level (typically but not always at 50 feet) forgetting about the importance of the other two.
Watch this TED Talk if you want to find out more.
