Action-centred Leadership

"Action-centred leadership is a popular and influential tool that was first published in 1973 by leadership expert John Adair. it highlights the core actions that you must take to lead your team effectively, rather than focusing on the leadership style that you choose. These actions are grouped into three areas:

Task: the actions that you take to achieve a goal.

Team: your actions at the group level to encourage effective teamwork and group cohesion.

Individual: actions that address each team member's unique needs"

Behaviour 4

Action-centred leadership is about employing all of the skills you have learned so far and being able to manage the disparate challenges that come from balancing your focus between the task, team and individual. It will call on you to remain centred, and to control your own anxiety & arousal as the pressure mounts up. It will also stretch your powers of attentional focus as you switch your attention between the people and the task.

Having a sound plan and taking the time to reflect on your own and your team’s performance will be critical, as you experiment, allowing your team to act with authority whilst you bear the responsibility. When you can balance the demands of task, team and individual you will finally have freed up all your attentional focus and thinking power as you allow your team to work semi-autonomously. This will enable you to consider higher order ideas. You will be able to dream big, reflect on the whole organisation, and imagine how you can begin to really inspire your team to be best in class.

Your display of action-centred leadership behaviours marks the beginning of a metamorphosis in form and function. for you, your team and how you go about achieving your daily tasks. Building on the firm foundations of self-leadership, servant leadership and values-based leadership, it is the springboard to creating an organisation driven by our mythical friend perpetual motion.

Arriving at a state of quasi-perpetual motion requires you to inculcate the behaviour of ‘'Followership’ in those around you. Developing followership in your team will mean that your team will be able to perform in a manner that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Your aim as the notional, or declared leader, is not to subjugate and control the thinking capacity of your team members through hierarchical control. Rather it is to encourage three particular emergent behaviours. These behaviours are:

· Individual proactivity.

· Fluid role-switching between leader and follower status as the task demands.

· A combined and sustained effort to act in the interests of the group first.