If your team asks what you actually do with your time, how would you answer? I reply to emails. I sit in meetings. I work with group development. All are true but paint a fragmented picture. They say little about the craft of leadership. So what is leadership fundamentally made of? In this text, I am making an attempt at constructing a practical synthesis of leadership dynamics.
Leadership can take many forms, but upon closer inspection it appears to serve two fundamental purposes. The first is to establish expectations. The second is to create the conditions under which those expectations can be fulfilled. This is not an entirely new idea. Similar structures can be found in Karasek’s Job Demand-Control model (1979), The Yerkes-Dodson curve, Situational Leadership (Hersey & Blanchard), The Coaching vs Directing matrix and Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety. What follows is my attempt to synthesize that thinking into an easily comprehensible operative framework. Let’s refer to the two purposes as demand and support.
Demand encompasses everything a leader expects from individuals and teams. It provides direction by defining what is expected, what constitutes acceptable behaviour and what the organization is trying to achieve. Examples include setting goals, clarifying rules and requirements, demanding ownership and engagement, effort and results. And perhaps most importantly, act as a role model. It is when you live as you learn, that demand becomes respect.
Support encompasses everything a leader provides to increase the likelihood that the demands can be fulfilled. It increases the organization’s capacity to perform by removing obstacles and enabling sound decisions. Examples include providing operational infrastructure (budget, headcount, clear documentation and processes), providing a vision, helping with prioritization, diplomacy and negotiation within the group and outside of it, balancing strengths and weaknesses, emotional backing.
Depending on how they are balanced, the outcome can result in fundamentally different leadership environments.
Low Demand, Low Support
When neither expectations nor support are present, leadership leaves a vacuum. Direction becomes unclear, standards begin to vary and informal structures emerge to fill the space. The result is often inconsistency, uncertainty and fragmented ways of working.
High Support, Low Demand
Support without expectations creates comfort, but rarely development. People receive guidance, encouragement and assistance, yet are seldom challenged to grow or held accountable for results. Over time, this may foster dependency, complacency and bottlenecks around the leader.
High Demand, Low Support
High expectations without sufficient support place increasing strain on both individuals and teams. When goals are not matched by the conditions needed to achieve them, stress, frustration and unhealthy competition become common. Accountability remains, but the means to succeed are lacking.
High Demand, High Support
This is the environment in which both performance and development are most likely to flourish. Expectations are clear, but so are priorities, direction and support. Individuals are challenged while being given the conditions necessary to meet those challenges. High demand becomes sustainable because it is accompanied by high support.
My model, as those mentioned earlier, converges on the same conclusion: challenge without support is harmful, support without challenge is wasteful, and a strong combination of both is where people actually grow. What I’m trying to make clearer here, is that demand and support are not opposite ends of a spectrum, but two independent dimensions of operative leadership. Every leader, consciously or not, needs to exercise a healthy dose of both.
Balancing demand and support takes deliberate effort, and time is limited. But there is a substantial return on that investment. When you build a team anchored in high standards and robust support, you build resilience. Over time, performance ceases to rely on you being at 100% every single day. A reinforced team will keep performing even when you fall short. It’s a great investment.
This text is dedicated to the 21.