Chapter 3
The Pioneering Leader
Pioneering leaders cut through the brush and inspire the group to venture into uncharted territory. They have a natural passion to grow, expand, and explore. These leaders seize on opportunities that others might not even recognize. We’ll elaborate on the value of the Pioneering leader in Chapter 11, but in this chapter, we want to look under the hood to understand what makes this style of leader tick. More specifically, we want to help Pioneering leaders understand some of the hidden psychological mechanisms that can hold them back.
If you’re a Pioneering leader, you’re probably fairly high-energy and outspoken. People might regard you as charming and confident, and you’re more likely to take chances than others. Erin, the vice president of a national political organization, told us, “I think the best description I’ve ever heard of my personality was [when] somebody said that I was Type A masquerading as smooth jazz.” Hiding beneath your exterior are deeper motivations, needs, and assumptions that drive you to act the way you do. The more you understand these drivers, the more you’ll be able to consciously control and shape your leadership style.
Based on our research and experience talking to Pioneering leaders, the qualities listed below have a significant impact on how you lead.
An attraction to adventure
Consciousness of status
A bias toward action
Confidence in your own vision
A desire to be important
Enjoyment in the act of persuading and charming others
Reviewing this list, you may recognize that many of these qualities lead to your greatest strengths as a leader. As we discuss these qualities, however, we’ll put more emphasis on how they might limit your effectiveness. While you might not identify with all of these qualities, our experience has shown that a number of them probably describe you better than you may initially think.
An Attraction to Adventure
Pioneering leaders are driven to keep seeking bigger and better, and the act of exploration is central to their enjoyment of life. They assume that the goal is to take in more and more. They tend to have very high energy levels, and along with this comes a high need for excitement. Because of this, they tend to be risk-takers, and they don’t mind being under pressure. In fact, they’re more likely to view pressure as a positive thing.
Leaders with your approach don’t like feeling constrained. In fact, they have a high need for freedom. They tend to see a big, wide world of opportunity. People with other styles tend to put artificial psychological constraints on what they can or can’t do, but this isn’t true for Pioneering leaders. In fact, they’re more likely to stretch the boundaries and sidestep the rules. Their combination of desire to explore and high self-confidence leads them to believe that the rules don’t really apply to them. Pioneering leaders often have a sense that they see things that other people don’t; this helps them take chances, because they assume that things are bound to work out. Since they don’t always play by the rules, Pioneering leaders can often buck conformity to jump-start a dying organization or propel it toward new heights.
While you’re probably great at leading the group into new territory, that’s just one side of the coin. The other side is addressing the internal needs of the group. While you spend a good deal of energy convincing others to get on board with your ever-expanding vision, you may not take the time to understand the needs of your people. Because you’re busy driving toward your goals, others may feel that you’re simply inviting them to accompany you on your quest. The danger of this egocentric point of view is that by expecting people to adapt to you and your vision, you may lose touch with the evolving needs of the group.
Consciousness of Status
Pioneering leaders are generally interested in moving up the ranks. They seek more important positions, and they tend to be conscious of status; they may be more accommodating of the needs of people who they see as important players. However, their default behavior may be to overlook other people’s needs. This isn’t an intentional thing—they’re simply so engrossed in their own passions that they spend much of their energy convincing others how fantastic their ideas are. At times, they can err on the side of one-way communication. They love to talk, and verbal self-expression provides great emotional rewards for Pioneering leaders. This concept may be totally foreign to people who are less inclined to use the Pioneering Dimension.
While Pioneering leaders can often look upwards and meet the needs of supposedly important people, they sometimes have less interest in catering to the needs of those below them. In fact, they may not know how to figure out what those needs are. At best, Pioneering leaders will sometimes assimilate some group needs into their own vision; that is, they will squeeze those needs into their existing structure. However, they are less likely to actually accommodate—or overhaul—their visions to meet a group’s needs. Accommodating the group’s needs would require you to step outside of your own engaging internal world, and this may mean compromising your own vision. You’re probably used to getting other people to adapt to your vision, not the other way around.
A Bias toward Action
Pioneering leaders have a natural ability to be spontaneous that stems from their belief that they are well-equipped to adapt to emerging situations. They tend to be quick thinkers and quick talkers, and others may have trouble keeping up with them. They have a constant need for stimulation and variety, and this can make processes and structure less interesting to them. In fact, they may sometimes find themselves more interested in starting a project than in following through. When it comes to the routine parts, they may grow restless, and they may not take a lot of satisfaction in steady progress. They’re more attracted to the big score—progressing in leaps and bounds. Much of the time, they’re happy to delegate the details.
What’s at the heart of your spontaneity? Generally speaking, your mental outlook is probably more focused on the rewards of success than on the consequences of failure. This perspective allows you not only to act spontaneously, but also to take risks and promote bold action. Whereas people on the southern side of the model might be at a loss to improvise, leaders with your style see it as an opportunity. Sure, it’s a cliché, but it’s true—you tend to look at problems as opportunities.
Leaders like you aren’t afraid to take shortcuts as you come up with quick solutions, and this can be a great asset as a leader because it allows the group to move quickly. However, the same expediency can also cause you to overlook systemic problems. For example, you can get so immersed in the 80/20 mindset that you grow accustomed to operations not being entirely well-oiled. This can be healthy to an extent, but it also allows you to gradually accept work processes that are far less than ideal. When you’re so focused on pushing forward, it’s easy to let the inner workings of the organization get a little rusty, and, because you have such a strong bias toward action, you may not always spend a lot of time observing, listening, and asking questions.
Confidence in Your Own Vision
Pioneering leaders often have so much confidence in their own vision that they don’t see the need to build more structure around it. They tend to see things very clearly in their heads, regardless of how clear it would be if they explained their plans to others. They have a tendency to gloss over the specifics, and they may have a false sense of how well things are actually planned out. This lack of awareness sometimes gets them off the hook from having to go in and work out specific processes. Because things seem so straightforward, they don’t feel a nagging sense that more structure and processes are needed before moving ahead. Plans often feel ironed out to Pioneering leaders, even when others would describe them as quite loose.
Leaders like you trust their instincts, and they often keep track of things in their heads. They may feel that they know their work “by heart”—that they have a good big-picture handle on all of the mechanisms for which they’re responsible. Pioneering leaders have gut feelings about how things should proceed, and they’ll often step in to correct processes when they see something that strays from their vision. They may do this on the fly, sometimes addressing problems before taking the time to explore the complexity. This often results in a solution that addresses most of the problem but may leave smaller residual issues that will come up later.
Further, because they’re good at persuading and charming others, Pioneering leaders often come to believe their own press. The more they project their opinions with absolute confidence, the more internal confidence they have in those ideas. This is where they get into trouble. Take, for example, a study that followed the predictions made by political pundits for twenty years (Tetlock, 2005). First of all, they found that the pundits were no more accurate than the average well-informed person. But more interestingly, they found that the more frequently the experts were cited in the press and the more well-known the experts were, the more likely they were to be wrong. The more confident they were, the less accurate they were. The takeaway? Just because you can convince other people to see things your way doesn’t make your way right. A good salesperson can sell just about anything, but this doesn’t make your judgment infallible.
A Desire to Be Important
Pioneering leaders often describe themselves as being people-oriented—and in many respects, they are—but they also do have higher ego needs than leaders with, say, Humble as their primary dimension. Pioneering leaders often come across as extremely confident and charismatic. However, they have a fundamental, usually subconscious, insecurity that they are not as important as they desire to be. To deal with this insecurity, they often protect themselves by creating an exaggerated concept of self-importance. Much like Commanding leaders, they cope with their insecurities by focusing on their idealized selves and pushing aside their fears. While they’re usually happy to bring others along for the ride, they do have an internal mechanism that pushes them to seek higher personal status.
The fact that others will follow them feeds their feelings of pride and self-worth. For the same reason, Pioneering leaders often want to be associated with the “in” crowd. They’re particularly interested in being around “larger than life” people who show the most promise for creating exciting opportunities. People with your Pioneering approach don’t want to be stuck in the undifferentiated middle. They feel that they belong at the top, and they tend to believe that, given a fair chance, they will be given increasingly powerful positions. The idea of being powerless is extremely agitating, and they tend to believe that they have the power to shape their environment. If their power or influence is stripped away, it shakes them deeply.
Enjoyment in the Act of Persuading and Charming Others
Pioneering leaders often use their charm to open doors. People are attracted to leaders who are dynamic, energetic, and perhaps even funny. Pioneering leaders have a way of connecting with people—of inviting them into their exciting world—even if only on a superficial level. They not only have a strong vision of how things should be, but they have the confidence and the verbal skills to describe it. The act of persuading people can be very gratifying for Pioneering leaders, both in one-on-one and in team settings. Not only is it about forging connections, but it’s about the challenge of getting people to see things in a new way. When Pioneering leaders are successful in using their charisma to sway others, it reinforces their feelings of importance and power: “If I can persuade people, I am important. If I am important, I am good.”
Not only are Pioneering leaders good sellers, but they’re also good closers. They have the ambition to get things rolling, and they’ll push hard to get things finalized. While leaders with your style are able to cultivate relationships, they also don’t mind applying pressure when they need to. In fact, you may be willing to risk damaging a relationship to get what you want. Not only that, but you have a knack for instinctively recognizing what other people want and using that to your advantage. For example, when trying to motivate someone, you may hint at the possibility of recognition or a promotion. At times, you may even resort to intimidating tactics as you pour on the pressure. Yet, because you have such a charming way about you, you’re often able to return the relationship to a collegial state once compliance is assured. It may be unconscious, but most Pioneering leaders know how to use their power, and few people can resist the desire to be in the good graces of someone so interpersonally powerful.
Leaders are responsible for rallying and empowering people. Pioneering leaders do one side of this extremely well. They share their passion by painting a colorful picture of their vision, and they’re often able to get people excited, but after the inspirational speeches, they’re not always there to offer people support. They’re often too focused on advancing their ideas and driving toward their goals. All too often, people start to feel that the Pioneering leaders they work with aren’t really interested in supporting them or listening to them. If Pioneering leaders aren’t more intentional about this, they can lose followers along the way.
How to Navigate the Rest of the Book
You’ve had a chance to read about some of the psychological drivers that may hold you back as a leader, but what about the good stuff? What about the areas where you naturally excel? Chapter 11 in Part 3 is designed to highlight exactly that: the assets that Pioneering leaders bring to the table. There you’ll find the three lessons that everyone else can learn from leaders like you.
But, of course, other leaders have things to teach you as well. Looking at the model, you may have noticed that the Pioneering Dimension is opposite the Humble Dimension. Chances are that you may need to focus on this dimension, but depending on your individual situation, there may be others that are more important. Next, go to Part 3, where you’ll explore the lessons that are most important for you right now.