Great community leaders know that it's all about choosing the right bait to suit the fish.
Traditional leaders often have an autocratic, top-down management style: "Do what I say” or “My way or the highway” or “This is the way it's always been done." I’d like to suggest another approach to leadership: the adaptive leader.
Adaptive leaders focus on how they can flex their leadership style to match the person they are trying to lead, whether it's an employee, volunteer, board member, or community member. It’s not about the leader being passive and letting individuals walk over them. Instead, it's about asking, “What’s my job as a leader, and how can I get the best out of my people?” It shifts from expecting individuals to adapt to the leader's style to the leader adapting appropriately to meet the needs of the individuals they lead.
Pause here and recall the concept of the Upside Down Leadership Model we discussed more than six months ago: to gain, we must serve; to receive is to give; greatness comes from humility; our weaknesses can be our strengths; we lead by serving. It’s not about the leader standing at the top of the triangle but rather at the bottom, serving and uplifting community members, staff, volunteers, other leaders, and outsiders.
This is where the analogy of choosing the right bait to suit the fish comes in. Ask any angler: one of the key ways to catch the fish you want—whether it's trout, bass, or any other species—is by using the right bait. Fishermen change up the bait to match the fish they want to attract. They don’t demand that a bass eat a particular bait or else. Instead, they use the bait that most suits the fish.
Similarly, leaders should adapt their leadership tactics and strategies to motivate and "catch" the star community members they want to nurture. We must put the right bait on our lines and hooks at the right moments to motivate the right people. The next question is: Who are the right people, and what bait will they respond to? What motivates one person versus another?
We do this by gauging and assessing individuals' levels of Aptitude and Attitude:
Aptitude refers to the competency, intelligence, and skills of a person, including multiple intelligences like emotional intelligence and the ability to adapt to change.
Attitude refers to the commitment, aspiration, and resilience of a person.
We can use Aptitude and Attitude to help identify a person’s level of growth and engagement, determined by their competency and commitment to the job, community, or organization. These factors not only guide our interactions with emerging leaders but also help explain some of the peculiar behaviors we observe as they develop. For example, we might witness poor customer service or a lack of quality in work from someone we are mentoring. As leaders, we can choose to address these challenges directly by providing immediate feedback or indirectly by offering deeper training or instruction, depending on the individual’s Aptitude and Attitude.
Direct Application: Let’s consider the example of a volunteer delivering mediocre to poor-quality work on a festival project. Using the Aptitude-Attitude (AA) model, we first assess the volunteer's Aptitude. We might ask if the poor quality results from a lack of knowledge, inadequate training, or anxiety about their skills. These questions help us determine whether the issue is related to Aptitude, which can be addressed through teaching, explaining, and directing.
Attitude, the pursuit of excellence, reflects an individual's motivation. There is a direct correlation between a person's commitment to a project, community, or organization and their attitude. We’ve all heard the saying, “Your attitude determines your altitude.” There is much truth to that. If in our scenario we discovered that it was not in fact aptitude, but an attitude/belief issue we would change up our leadership style to a more coaching, disciplining, goal setting, supporting and listening model.
As we consider Aptitude and Attitude as indicators of a person’s attributes, we ask ourselves as leaders: Do we have a smart person? Do we have a committed person? Are they good at their job? Do they know what they're doing? Are they passionate? Are they intelligent, good decision-makers, and dedicated? By answering these questions, we can better understand how to lead and support our team members effectively.