Traditional leadership philosophies focus on what it takes for a leader to have sway over a team, to drive toward an outcome and to create coordinated movement. These aspects of reaching a goal are critical components of leadership, but they are one-dimensional.

Four-dimensional leadership asks leaders to enhance their abilities by developing additional leadership dimensions, with the goal of greater success. It encompasses four different styles:

• Self-leadership
• Leadership up
• Leadership across
• Leadership down  

Leadership down is the most practiced type of leadership and is the one described in the opening paragraph. It’s often called “downward-focused leadership” or “team leadership.” It’s an important dimension of leadership, but it is much more effective when combined with the other three aspects of leadership described here.

Self-leadership

Self-leadership is the ability to see yourself clearly and to direct yourself with intention. It is rooted in self-knowledge and includes insight into all aspects of yourself—the good and the less than great. It yields the type of humility that allows you to be neither overly inflated by your strengths nor unduly disheartened by your limits. It allows individuals to look outside of themselves for solutions to fill their gaps and methods to amplify their greatest assets.

Individuals who employ this leadership style walk with a level of inner confidence and certainty that’s unmistakable. They build dynamic and diverse teams, are deeply valued by those they lead and have firm foundations from which to develop the other dimensions of leadership.

Leadership across

Leadership across is all about how to win friends and influence people, Dale Carnegie-style, in a leadership capacity—but not in a traditional leadership role where positional authority is on your side. It’s the art of getting things done, of moving the needle, of selling ideas that lead to action specifically when you are not in charge and have no more organizational power than those upon whom you need to prevail.

It’s the most often ignored dimension of leadership—but the one most often necessary to be truly successful.

Whether you’re an executive leader trying to get peer support for an initiative that’s not perceived as important or a team member trying to get other members of your team to pitch in on a project, Leadership across employs essential skills. Without them, catalyzing people who are organizationally equal to you is a rarely effective upward battle.

Mastering Leadership across requires you to understand yourself (Self-leadership in action) as well as your peers. You must think about their roles, motivations and communication styles and work effectively with that knowledge.

For example, I worked with Kim, the senior manager of production, who was responsible for all post-sales activities until the hand-off to the field team for project completion: ordering, project management, scheduling, escalations and service.  A significant portion of her team’s compensation required the team to hit monthly order-volume metrics, and it had fallen short two months in a row. The whole team knew why: Sales consultants were dragging their feet on key communications required to get projects moved from sold to cleared-to-order. Had the sales team completed its tasks more quickly, the production team would have done its part and earned a bonus.

Kim brought the issue to the VP of sales (her peer in the organization chart) multiple times but couldn’t get him to acknowledge her concern and foster within his department a sense of urgency on uncompleted tasks.

Resentment was building.

Kim had tried various techniques to get her colleague to understand her dilemma. The one button she hadn’t pressed was the one critical to unlocking his willingness to help: money. The VP of sales was highly financially motivated. He took great pride in offering performance-based compensation packages to his team and helping maximize its earning potential.

He loved promoting financial success and wasn’t shy about it.

However, he had no idea that Kim’s compensation was being dinged substantially month after month by his team’s lackluster approach to administrative task completion.Kim felt it wasn’t appropriate to tell him the details of her comp plan, but I disagreed. While he didn’t need to know the numbers, he did need to know that his inaction was hurting Kim and her entire team’s earning potential.

Kim needed to understand his motivations and to speak to them. She needed to use that information and her knowledge of his personality to frame her request in a way that would catalyze him to engage his team differently.

He was a direct communicator and a fact-based decision-maker with a sense of justice and passion for teamwork. So she and I crafted a clear, fact-supported approach to the issue, and she presented it as a cross-departmental opportunity to work together toward maximized comp plans all around.

It worked brilliantly. By approaching the topic this way, Kim deepened her colleague’s respect for and trust in her and created an ally who from that day forward, consistently championed the needs of her team.

Leadership up

Leadership up skills are critical when you’re working to get someone who has positional authority over you or a high-level status that impacts your business or career (like a critical supplier or a board member) to get on board with your ideas or needs. This leadership dimension requires strong Self-leadership foundations and a healthy dose of finesse.

Think about it this way: If you like a lot of detail when you’re given a plan but your boss doesn’t, and you come at her with a 25-point masterpiece, her eyes are going to glaze over by point No. 3. She’s likely going to write the plan—and maybe you—off. Your approach not only makes your plan die on the sheet of paper you wrote it on, but it diminishes your credibility with her and doesn’t show you at your best advantage.

If you need the detail, go ahead and make a hyper-detailed plan, but go to your boss with the executive summary. She will listen, and you’ll look all the better for your diligence in your approach.

Leadership up is about being able to be heard effectively by speaking the language and dialect of the intended audience. It means being savvy and strategic. It requires careful observation, preparation and patience, and when you nail it, it can have a massive impact on your trajectory.

As a leader, knowing and teaching your team all four dimensions of leadership allows you to create maximum impact on all levels of your organization. Everyone can benefit from Self-leadership, and there are few who wouldn’t benefit from learning how to Lead across or even to Lead up.

Some leaders are concerned that teaching Leadership up skills to their team members means those members will know how to effectively lead up to their “teacher” (their boss), which these leaders worry will give their team “the cheat code”—and they don’t want to do that. However, when your team wins, you win, and when you win, the company wins. And who doesn’t like a win-win-win situation? 

Madeleine MacRae is the CEO and co-founder of Legacy Leadership Institute. She is a growth specialist who brings thought-provoking, practical, usable content to her clients that accelerates implementation and secures long- and short-term results. She loves the grit and determination of small- to midsize business owners and has dedicated her career to helping them and their teams. Reach her at homeprotoolbox.com.