This document summarizes the six roles or "hats" that every leader must wear: 1) professor, to educate their people in a memorable way about the organization's purpose and direction, 2) preacher, to inspire meaning and soul in their people's work, 3) politician, to balance constituencies' needs and forge alliances to advance the organization's success, 4) planner, to allocate resources and remove obstacles for employees to satisfy customers, 5) police, to establish and enforce necessary conduct standards, and 6) poet, to use language's power to motivate and inspire people in extraordinary ways.

1. Every leader wears six hats, more or less simultaneously…
That is to say a leader has six roles to fulfil…
It isn't easy looking after all six, but someone has to do it…
Here are the six hats every leader wears…
Presentation inspired by Presentation created and produced by
leadership guru Thomas J. Lee, Alessandro Bottega
Arceil Leadership Ltd, www.presentationmatters.co.za
Minding Gaps blog
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
www.MindingGaps.com

2. • This leader as professor is an inveterate teacher
• He takes every opportunity to educate the people he is leading, in an important and
memorable manner
• The lessons have to do with the organization's purpose, situation, direction, challenges and
progress
• Like any good teacher, the leader is constantly learning, often from the students
themselves

3. • The leader as preacher is not a religious evangelist
• He asks people to think deeply about the meaning of their work and is looking after the
soul of the organization
• People who derive great meaning from their work are bound to contribute far more than
others who are just along for the pay check

4. • Bismarck taught us that politics is the art of the possible
• As a politician, the leader is striving to maximize the possible by looking after
constituencies and forge alliances, so as to balance and satisfy the needs of people whose
sponsorship is necessary for the organization to succeed
• The key constituencies usually consist of entities that provide mission-critical resources:
employees who provide talent and time, customers who provide a market, investors who
provide capital and neighbours who provide good will

5. • Every leader worth the name planner must allocate resources in such a way as to enable
employees to satisfy the needs of customers and meet the expectations of all stakeholders
• As a planner, the leader is also managing expectations and removing obstacles to the
work of employees

6. • The leader in a policing role must establish and enforce standards of conduct that are
relevant and necessary to the organization's mission
• No organization that makes commitments to customers can tolerate more than the
occasional and accidental lapse
• Whenever a pattern of lapses begins to emerge, the leader must lay down the law

7. • Somewhat counter-intuitively, every leader must use the power of language to create a
deep and powerful connection with people
• The poet, is not a writer of poems, but rather to a person who recognizes the lyrical and
magical power of words to motivate and inspire people
• If the work of managing people relies on ordinary prose, the work of leading people
reaches for extraordinary poetry – words that touch people in ways they may not
understand but can never forget

8. Produced by
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