Unbundling is a business strategy that seeks to take things apart with the purpose of creating a more functional or competitive business. GE, under Jack Welch, spun off or sold underperforming business units in order to focus on the most profitable divisions, Craigslist unbundled classified ad revenue from traditional newspapers, and the shift to digital distribution unbundled songs from an album in the form of MP3s.
Leadership strikes me as something else that could benefit from unbundling. Not as a theoretical term, but as the practical application of what happens when someone steps into a formal leadership role. By this I mean a role that, in addition to vision and influence, comes with positional power, responsibility for a team and/or function, and possibly P&L responsibilities.
When you step into a leadership role you’re often expected to get on with the work without much guidance or training. The new responsibilities, relationships, and altitude you need to think at are at best loosely defined in a career matrix, but more commonly have to be inferred from the organizational environment.
Faced with this murkiness, leaders take a number of approaches—mirroring the leaders around them, becoming the type of leader they always wanted but never had, or staying heads down and focusing on the work.
What I wish I had known, when I stepped into my first leadership role, is that leadership is a bundle of four different and somewhat distinct areas of responsibility: holding and communicating the vision, delivering outcomes, running the business, and developing talent. Each corresponds to a different role: leader, director, manager, and coach. While in practice the four blend together, it can be helpful to understand the distinct configuration of each.
Lead
Leadership is the embodiment of vision and values in action. Leaders connect people to purpose, make meaning of challenges, and inspire collective movement towards shared goals. The mindset of a leader is oriented towards the future, possibility, and innovation.
Key responsibilities include creating and communicating the vision, aligning efforts with core values, listening to what is happening in organization, helping people understand the “why”, and showing how individual and team work contributes to larger organizational goals.
Leaders must do this both for the people on the team/function/department they are in charge of, and also for their colleagues across the organization. They are responsible for making sure that the work they are responsible for is understood across the company and why it matters in the first place.
Reflection questions:
Vision & Purpose:
- How effectively am I translating abstract vision into concrete, relatable terms for my team?
- What stories am I telling that help people see themselves in our shared future?
- Does our vision still resonate with the team’s evolving needs?
Influence & Inspiration:
- Am I modeling the behaviors and values I want to see in others?
- How do I respond when my vision meets resistance or skepticism?
- What legacy am I creating through my leadership decisions?
Organizational Impact:
- How well do I understand the broader ecosystem my team operates within?
- Where might I be inadvertently creating silos or barriers to collaboration?
Direct
Directing is the practice of setting clear targets and making decisive choices about priorities and resource allocation. Directors focus on outcomes, establish boundaries, and make the calls that keep work moving forward. The mindset of directing orients towards clarity, decisiveness, and results.
Key responsibilities include defining outcomes and what success looks like, establishing non-negotiables, making clear decisions about priorities, setting timelines and milestones, and ensuring accountability for outcomes.
While directing shares some territory with managing, the distinction lies in focus: management is about systems and processes that create predictability, while directing is about outcomes and the decisions that drive toward specific results.
Reflection Questions:
Clarity & Focus:
- How clearly can my team articulate our top three priorities right now?
- Where am I creating confusion by trying to accomplish too many things at once?
- What decisions am I avoiding that are creating ambiguity for others?
Decision-Making:
- How quickly do I make decisions when the path forward is uncertain?
- Where might my desire for consensus be slowing down necessary action?
- When did I last change direction based on new information—and how clearly did I communicate why?
Accountability & Outcomes:
- Do people know exactly what they’re accountable for delivering?
- How do I respond when outcomes aren’t being met?
- Where might I be measuring activity instead of results?
Manage
Management is the practice of running a business—orchestrating work systems and processes to achieve predictable outcomes. The mindset of a manager orients towards operational excellence and structured thinking.
Key responsibilities include setting clear expectations in the form of shared agreements, establishing effective processes, identifying metrics of success, ensuring efficient resource allocation, and maintaining stability and consistency.
It is worthwhile to note that the role of manager and leader can often be at odds. While the role of leader orients towards new possibilities through innovation, the role of manager is focused on healthy and repeatable processes. Leadership can be a destabilizing threat to management predictability.
Reflection Questions:
Systems & Processes:
- What friction points are slowing down our team’s ability to deliver results?
- How do I balance standardization with the need for flexibility?
- Which meetings, reports, or processes could we eliminate without losing value?
Performance & Accountability:
- How quickly do I address performance gaps when they arise?
- Am I giving people the tools and resources they need to succeed?
- What would happen if I wasn’t here for a week—would things run smoothly?
Resource Optimization:
- Where am I over-investing or under-investing our team’s time and energy?
- How effectively am I protecting my team from organizational noise and distractions?
Coach
Coaching is way of developing talent by supporting people to achieve the results they want through self-awareness and behavior change. The mindset of a coach is one of curiosity and learning, a willingness to let go of knowing the answer and trust that each person has the capacity to figure out their own path forward.
Key responsibilities for the coaching role cover creating space for reflection, asking powerful questions, supporting others to connect with their inner wisdom, and expanding how people observe and understand the situations they find themselves in.
Mentorship also falls under the umbrella of coaching. The way I distinguish between the two is that coaching is designed to connect someone to their own inner knowing with support from the coach in the form of questions and observations, while mentorship is oriented around a more senior person sharing insights from hard-won experience in order to help a more junior person grow.
Reflection Questions:
Development & Growth:
- What assumptions am I making about what each person needs to grow?
- How often do I ask “What do you think?” before offering my own perspective?
- When have I seen someone surprise themselves with their own capability?
Creating Safety:
- How comfortable do people feel bringing me problems or admitting mistakes?
- What signals might I be sending that discourage open dialogue?
- How do I respond when someone’s approach differs from what I would do?
Letting Go:
- Where am I solving problems that others could solve themselves?
- How do I distinguish between when to step in and when to step back?
- What would it look like to be less helpful in service of others’ growth?
It is important to note that within each of these roles there is a wide range of variability. How you lead, manage, and coach will be shaped by your experiences, values, and beliefs about how good work gets done (and what qualifies as good work in the first place).
Give it a try this week—track each of your days and see where you lead, manage, and coach. You might find one role is more comfortable for you or that certain contexts require one role over the others. There is no one right way, but I hope that unbundling these three roles gives you useful insight to be more impactful as a leader.
