I recently came across a book titled “Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical and Enduring Organisations.” This book was referenced by one of the SmartBrief newsletters that I subscribe to that had an inspiring piece on leading people with steel or velvet.
This metaphor caught my attention right away. I’ve often struggled to find the right balance between hard and soft whether at leading teams in the workplace or at home in parenting my daughters. My centre of gravity is definitely velvet but I wonder if I call on steel enough and when I do, am I overdoing it? Sometimes I’ve given the other person such a long rope and am so accommodating and nurturing but when nothing changes I may use my hard-edge too much.
The authors of Triple Crown Leadership have identified “flexing between the hard and soft edges of leadership or what they call steel and velvet” as one of five advanced leadership practices for building an organization or team that’s excellent, ethical, and enduring. If you’re curious about the other four traits of Triple Crown Leadership, you can dig deeper here.
Margaret Thatcher is the OG when it comes to steel leadership. Modern leaders include the likes of Jack Welch, Carly Fiorina or Melissa Mayer to name a few. Steel leadership involves:
Using power
Showing toughness
Demonstrating decisiveness
Instilling discipline
Leveraging confidence
Enforcing decisions
Ensuring execution
Instilling accountability
Steel leaders use their power and authority to lead their organisations.
Velvet leadership on the other hand involves:
Developing relationships
Collaborating effectively
Persuading people
Demonstrating humility
Showing vulnerability
Listening deeply
Building consensus
Nurturing people
Recognising others
Thanking people for their efforts
Leaders like Indira Nooyi, Arianna Huffington, Mahatma Gandhi embody velvet leadership.
If steel is the hard edge of leadership, velvet is the soft edge of leadership.
Either steel-only or velvet-only leadership styles are ineffective. The key is balance. Or rather flexing depending on the context and the people involved.
Each of us has an inclination towards one or the other. It comes to us naturally. But our leadership responsibility requires us to move beyond our comfort zone and embrace a harder or softer approach depending on the situation.
A hard-edge leader might need to lean on their softer side by being more empathetic, listening more and investing more in deeper relationships.
A soft-edged leader might need to be more comfortable with discomfort, pick up the courage to have difficult conversations and become more decisive.When a leader’s chosen style anchored in velvet invokes steel (or vice versa) it is important they explain the actions they are taking and why. A decade ago, I had to have a very difficult conversation with a senior client because his project had exceeded budgets and we felt they were taking advantage of us by demanding a lot of free work. The conversation did not go well because the client found me very out of character - I was generally soft in my approach. I had also not explained my actions very clearly. Learning from that incident, when onboarding clients now I tend to say that we’re generally very accommodating but will have the hard conversations when we need to.
I’m also reminded of the three different parenting styles- authoritative, permissive and assertive. Research shows that assertive parenting is the most effective. It is a good balance of velvet and steel. More velvet than steel but demonstrating consistent steel type behaviours as the situation demands.
Embracing aspects of the leadership stance that does not come naturally to you will take work. That is an essential part of your self-development journey.
If this has piqued your interest, here is a link for more inspirations on steel and velvet leadership.
Over to you now:
Have you identified your leaning as a leader or as a parent - are you more steel or more velvet?
Are there situations you are facing now which may demand you to lean in to the style that is less comfortable for you?
What actions might you engage in to develop your other style so you can easily flex as the situation demands?