The notion of the leader as ‘parent’ is a powerful one, and one which brings to mind words such as: protection, support, reliability and aspiration. The parent also has a huge role to play in transferring their values to their children through role modeling and the reinforcement of certain behaviours. In addition, the parent provides the backstop to their child’s development through their unconditional positive regard, i.e. they don’t give up on their kids (regardless of what they do) – and, related to that, their forgiveness.
Underpinning all of these behaviours is a commitment to the well-being of their offspring, which is governed by notions of duty, and self-sacrifice. Of course, we all know of parents who do not live up to these qualities and where that is the case we know the untold damage that can be done to the child. In actual fact, being a parent is a ‘tough gig’ and those of us who have been lucky enough to have had children are only too aware of the mistakes and errors of our ways.
Yet just as with a parent, a leader should be able to manifest all of these behaviours in a balanced manner with the aim of eventually allowing those for whom they are responsible to be able to ‘fly solo’. I know there will be some people who will object to the notion of leaders ‘patronising’ their colleagues – but in my experience any leader who is incapable of adopting this modus operandi as part of their leadership role is going to be a very ‘incomplete’ leader.
During my time as a headteacher and Director of Education I came across many parents who fulfilled themselves as ‘helicopter parents’. These were parents who hovered above their children – regardless of their age – and who saw it as their role to remove every obstacle from their child’s path.
So what is a ‘helicopter leader’? In a similar fashion to their parent namesake – the helicopter leader overcompensates and seeks to take away the need for their colleagues to think for themselves. Everything is done for them, and every decision is made for them. On first impressions this sounds like a great thing – leaving the colleague to get on with their job. Unfortunately – just as with the child – the ‘helicoptered’ colleague gradually begins to lose any capacity to think for themselves or to build any resilience to changing circumstances. The crunch comes in a number of ways, either when such a leader moves on; or when conditions change which require people to adapt, or have to think for themselves. Cut adrift from their dependency they lose confidence and the quality of their work deteriorates – if indeed it was ever of a high standard given that they merely complied with the instructions laid down by their boss.
In our modern working environment we must guard against the temptation to become a ‘helicopter leader’. Instead of making ‘benevolent’ decisions on behalf of our colleagues we need to create conditions where we help them to make decisions for themselves and to deal with challenges in a successful manner. Now this is more difficult than just simply handing over the controls. But if a leader truly aspires to create an environment where everyone doesn’t just look to them to come up with the solution, or to pick up the problems as they arise, then they need to climb out of the helicopter and get ‘alongside’ their colleagues in a true spirit of partnership – with a view to setting them free.
And so, with apologies to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749 – 1832, I’ll close with my amended version of his famous saying:
“There are only two things people need from a great leader: roots and wings”
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