What does leadership look like for good implementation?
By Dr. Sobia Khan, Director of Implementation
5-min read
We know that leaders are incredibly important in implementation, which can make leaders the best facilitators and one of the most challenging barriers during the implementation process. The role and nature of leadership have been top of mind lately for many people that we have been supporting, and our conversations have been rich. Some of the questions we often get are:
What can we do to engage our leaders?
How can we think about leadership for implementation differently than we currently do?
How can leaders support our work?
How can we support leaders?
Thinking expansively about different types of leadership
Before getting into the nature of leadership, let’s spend some time conceptualizing leadership. Some people hold formal and visible leadership positions that give them decision-making power – these are the people who have authority that we tend to think about when we think about leadership. Next, there are informal leaders who may not have the same decision-making power but wield power through influence. For example, in hospital-based implementation work, people on the unity know those nurses that everyone else listens to – if they do something, others follow suit. Finally, it is also important to note that many of us can develop and possess leadership qualities and that we can step up as leaders in different ways to make things happen. From a power perspective, this means that we all have our own sources of power that we can leverage to do the things that need to be done. This is also the basis of a concept called distributed leadership, which research shows is the best form of leadership for systems transformation and implementation. Power comes from different sources in distributed leadership and is shared among many people to create change.
Engaging leaders effectively in implementation
We wanted to start by outlining different types of leadership because we recognize two truths: it is imperative to engage formal leaders because they make decisions, and formal leadership is not the be-all and end-all of change that we make it out to be.
People who struggle with engaging leaders often have difficulty with the process of “pitching” the change. Effectively engaging leaders is essential for most implementation efforts, but we never really learn how to do this. If you have to convince leaders to make a decision or express support for your initiative, it is likely that they could agree with the change but have not had the opportunity to think about the change and make sense of it the way that you have. What information do you need to give them to help them with the sensemaking process? How do you deliver this information in ways that help them see the bigger picture (e.g., in relation to other priorities) and that tap into their own values and perspectives? Giving people evidence only goes so far; creating a pitch by telling stories and appealing to the audience can help a lot more.
Another pitfall is that people assume that leaders know exactly what decisions need to be made and what support is required for implementation. The truth is, sometimes, leaders want to be told what they need to do. A very simple piece of advice we heard from leaders themselves is to be clear about the ask. Tell them exactly what you need.
Engaging formal leaders is an important skill to acquire, and at the same time, there is evidence that systems change almost never stems from formal leaders. There is usually a different source of change: people who recognize that things need to be different, who influence others to join the cause, and then work collectively towards change until official leaders finally take notice and formalize the change. This means that the best thing we can do in implementation is to understand how to be change agents and leaders in our own ways – as one community leader recently put it in a presentation she was giving at a meeting, “there ain’t one person coming in on a white horse to save us – we all have to work together to save ourselves.”
2. Understand: Promoting Deep Comprehension
The second core function, understand, involves promoting a deep comprehension of diverse perspectives and co-creating a shared understanding of the problems and solutions within an implementation project. Implementation support practitioners play a critical role in unearthing different viewpoints, facilitating collective sensemaking, and ensuring that all voices are heard and respected.
This function is particularly important in complex situations where multiple perspectives and power dynamics are involved. By promoting shared understanding, implementation support practitioners help teams navigate these complexities and develop adaptive solutions informed by a broad range of experiences and expertise.
Developing leadership competencies for change
What are some of the key leadership competencies that we can all develop to do good implementation work? A team at the University of California in San Diego has identified that leaders must be:
Proactive to recognize barriers and strategize to overcome them;
Knowledgeable and more importantly, committed to sharing that knowledge;
Supportive through motivational tactics, coaching, providing feedback, etc., and;
Perseverant to champion change through the ups and downs.
This taps into an important concept in leadership – rather than telling people what to do, leadership is about setting the right conditions for change to happen.
At TCI, we have done a lot of work with practitioners to dig even deeper into these leadership qualities that people who support implementation, in particular, require but typically do not build skills in. We believe that to do the implementation work, people must deeply understand other people and places and be able to take different perspectives; they must connect with others through trust-based relationships that balance power, and through a set of common goals and a collective vision; they must inspire others to change and do the change work by embodying the change, storytelling, lifting up others’ competence and other influential and motivational strategies; they must enable change by ensuring agency and ownership and being comfortable with uncertainty; and they must have a transformational mindset by being flexible, intentional and self-reflective. Many years ago, I examined what systems leaders specifically should build their skillsets in, and the competency areas for systems leaders overlap with those described above.
Leadership in action
A brief example: A few weeks ago, I did a school visit to understand how implementation was going at the school site. In speaking with the principal and teachers, a few key themes emerged: implementation was successful because the principal focused on relationship building; on lifting up all teachers by acknowledging their competence and agency; and on entirely embodying the change. The teachers were also leaders in the process by co-constructing a collective vision, spearheading their own aspects of the implementation process, and being intentional and self-reflective.
To implement and create change in any setting or system we work in, we need to shift how we think about leaders and what they do. Hopefully, we have provided some food for thought here to help you on your leadership journey!
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