New Water Policy and Practice Issue 4, Number 1, Fall 2017 | Page 21

Growing as a Water Leader: Beware of Six Traps
3.3.2. Developmental Guidance
For stunted leaders who are suffering from a non-supportive work environment,
the developmental strategies are similar to the timid leader (see Section 3.2.2).
Coaches, mentors, and peers play an important role to help the stunted leader to
recognise the barriers to their development and explore possible new roles and
work environments. Career counsellors also commonly play a role. In the IWC
Water Leadership Program, some of our most distinguished and highly respected
executive ‘group mentors’ have been influential in helping stunted and timid lead-
ers to make the sometimes difficult decision to move from their current work role.
For stunted leaders who are struggling to overcome self-leadership imped-
iments, developmental strategies include increasing the frequency of feedback to
build self-awareness, one-to-one coaching and mentoring, and building individual
leadership plans that focus on self-leadership (e.g. frequently reflecting and using
different methods to solicit feedback). Some of these leaders also choose to get sup-
port from counsellors and psychologists to explore some of the underlying reasons
for their behaviour (e.g. why they strongly avoid feedback or struggle to respond
positively to it). For these leaders, it is recommended that the temptation to move
beyond self-leadership to address other aspects of leadership that involve influenc-
ing others (e.g. team leadership) be resisted during the developmental process until
fundamental self-leadership abilities such as self-awareness have been secured.
3.4. The Non-Strategic Leader
3.4.1. Description
The non-strategic leader struggles to be forward thinking, see the “big picture”,
and plan for the future. They typically come from technical backgrounds, like solv-
ing technical problems, and have a propensity to “get into the detail”. As they move
into leadership roles that require strategic thinking and planning, these strongly
developed tendencies become an impediment to their development. A significant
number of non-strategic leaders also suffer from the “chaotic leader” trap, as they
allow urgent, not important tasks to dominate their schedule at the expense of
longer-term, important, non-urgent leadership activities.
A common scenario is a team leader who is very good at addressing the
day-to-day issues within their team at a task and relationship level, but is poor at
thinking about what the team will need in the longer term and working outside
of their team. They have trouble seeing the “big picture” and making sense of the
work context. They also avoid or struggle with “scanning behaviours” (see Anders-
son & Bateman 2000), strategic social networking (see Ibarra & Hunter 2007), and
strategic thinking and planning (see Porter 1996; Sull 2007).
This trap is easy for relatively inexperienced leaders to fall into, as they have
not yet experienced the “pain” associated with failing to plan for the future. Ac-
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