A good leader should have external perspective, says INSEAD's Herminia Ibarra

Herminia Ibarra, the Cora chaired professor of leadership and learning, and professor of organisational behaviour at INSEAD, has had a busy month. Shuttling across continents to launch her second book, Think Like a Leader, Act Like a Leader, she took time out to talk to Corporate Dossier over a sketchy Skype connection from her hotel room in New York. The book, she says, evolved over the course of her interactions with executives over ten years.

"Over the course of teaching executives how to transition into leadership roles, I identified some of the big hurdles and stumbling blocks and what are the strategies to help them step up," she says. When talking about stepping up to bigger leadership roles, she clarifies that this isn't the same as a promotion to a bigger title. "Increasingly today stepping up could mean taking up a bigger leadership role within the context of your current position either because it shows that you have the potential to be promoted to a bigger role within the organisation or because the business environment is changing so rapidly that even if your job title hasn't changed, your activities have."

In preparing to do so, the biggest mistake people make is trying to introspect about how to become a better leader. Ibarra says that this doesn't work. A lot of people say they would like to devote more time to thinking strategically, buy instead of insight, Ibarra says what the person needs is outsight, or an external perspective. To do this, she suggests getting involved in cross functional projects or meeting people outside of your network and daily routine whether within or outside the organisation. This will give you outsight on your job and help you grow, whether within your existing role or in preparation for a new one.

This also ties in with the title of her book where she emphasises 'act' before 'think'. Critics point out that this goes against the grain of being an authentic leader, but Ibarra has a counterview. "You can't think like a leader if your primary activity so far has been financial analysis or running a factory. You can read a book about it but being a leader means being in situations where you have to motivate people or get a group to come to a consensus," she says. She advocates putting yourself out there and looking for different experiences that allow you to experience leadership and change how you think. "While being authentic is great, you can't find it by introspecting but by doing things that fall outside your comfort zone or don't come naturally to you. As you do this, you get an authentic version of yourself and hone your leadership skills. It's a competency you carve out by stretching yourself," says Ibarra. Some of this also draws from her earlier research on unconventional strategies to reinvent your career by exploring possible selves and carrying out identity experiments.

She offers three key pieces of advice to people who are looking at transitioning to positions of greater responsibility. First, redefine your notion of what your job is. "Stop seeing your job as executing a directive that comes to you – an operational set of responsibilities— and see it as something that's strategic and ask questions that allow you to gain new insights. The other is to think strategically and to talk to people outside your network to gain an informed perspective," she says. The last bit is to change the way you see yourself and the way you lead. Most people see themselves as an expert in a particular area and not necessarily as a leader. Developing an identity that allows you to do stuff that doesn't come naturally to you isn't easy, but is also why people fall into competency traps.

Ibarra's advice on how to deal with competency traps is similar to gaining outsight. "Develop new competencies. It seems risky to do this in the context of your day job, but the only way to grow is to apply to projects that are outside your area of expertise and with a new set of people," she says. Doing this enables you to start getting new information and puts you in a different role that would make you act differently, and eventually, develop a new skill. It's important to be able to make that leap of faith to make the transition from an expert to a leader. She cautions that the process is not immediate. "Start by branching out, networking and experimenting with different styles. You'll find things that you enjoy and things that you don't and develop new capabilities as you go along." Soon enough, you'll find yourself acting like a leader without having to think about it.