What Does a Leader Do?

What do leaders do? In what activities does a leader engage? What are the core competencies of a leader? In some recent reading, I came across the three primary functions of a leader:

1. Diagnose. This is a cognitive function--the leader knows where the organization is located in space, time, and spirit in relationship to the mission/vision. How far are we from the vision? How long until we reach the next point? What's keeping us back? Have we taken a detour? What is the speed with which we're moving? How are people's attitude/participation with the task? The leader is constantly evaluating and diagnosing to understand where the organization is on the space/time/spirit continuum.

2. Adapt. The key to great coaching is the half-time adjustment. The team planned to pound the ball inside, but the defense continues to sag in with a 2-3 zone. Nothing is going into the paint. Can the coach adapt the game plan to take advantage of the open outside shots? Will he manipulate his defense to create more transition baskets to open up the game. That's what the leader does--he constantly makes half-time adjustments with the resources at his disposal. The leader who makes the right adjustments comes out the winner at the end of the game. While diagnosis is a cognitive function, adaptations is an intuitive function. There's often a gut feeling of this is what we need to do next to knock down that barrier and get back on track.

3. Communicates. This is the process function. The leader communicates the adaptations to the team in a way that they 1) clearly understand and 2) are motivated to participate. For that to happen, he needs to understand the process of change in an organization, how much change he has in his pocket, and what motivates the key members of the organization.

In the end, these are the three primary tasks of leaders--whether they are leading a home, a church, team, or a business. It doesn't matter if you lead a company that makes computer processors or home loans, these are the three jobs of a leader. It doesn't matter if you're leading a fifth grade basketball team or the Kentucky Wildcats, these are the three responsibilities of a leader. This is the leader's job description.