Is This What Leadership Looks Like?
11.29.2005 | Chris BaileyI was chatting with my CEO yesterday when I noticed a stack of periodicals on his small conference table. On top of the stack was a trade magazine in which the latest issue deals with leadership (or at least I think so even though there seemed to be just one article on the subject). But what caught my attention was the cover picture:
Is this what leadership looks like? A person intensely gazing at nothing while others look up at the figure eagerly awaiting her decision? Okay…maybe that’s a loaded question. Or is it? Maybe I just like asking questions this morning(?) Here’s another one: if you had to draw a picture of leadership, what might it look like?
If it looks like the picture to the right, you might need to go back to the drawing board. For me, this picture seems to evoke the ideas of:
- dependency leadership – I’ll take care of you
- savior leadership – I’ll make everything okay
- oracle leadership – I’ll answer all of your questions because I know everything that’s going on here
I’m sure we’ve all experienced and maybe even practiced these different types of leadership (I have and it almost led to a nervous breakdown). More than likely, they proved ineffective for your organization’s employees, as well.
If you’re struggling with your own leadership abilities and defining your own leadership style, I highly recommend Peter Block’s book, Stewardship. It’s nothing short of a radical rethinking of how our organizations work. After reading it, you might just swear off leadership as a way of getting things done in your company or association.
26 Responses to “Is This What Leadership Looks Like?”
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Chris — that picture does look like much of what we call “leadership.” I sometimes sit in on executive or management team meetings to observe and give feedabck about the process, and to suggest alternative processes that will be more productive. You wouldn’t believe how much mileage I get in those situations simply by pointing out that team members don’t speak to one another but only to the leader, or that decisions about when to move on to another agenda item are made when the leader turns a page, or nods, or something equally as subtle. And you wouldn’t believe how powerful a difference it can make when a team recognizes that it is engaged in that kind of process and decides to do things differently.
I think also that it is important to point out that in those situations, unless the leader is a real control-freak or the team members are typically submissive, this behavior is often a matter of habit. When I point such things out to a team, it is rare to meet resistance to doing things differently/better.
Dick, your experience mirrors a classroom exercise I participated in when I took a decision-making course. During the first 10 minutes of the first class, the professor gave us three criteria that had to be met and then told us to design the course agenda. It was interesting to see how trends in leadership and followership emerged. We kept looking to the professor for ideas and approval, then we started to look to one other person who had a commanding type of personality.
It pissed me off to later realize that I played into the whole “dependency leadership” model, but then, it’s what I know (and I imagine it’s similar for most folks). Now, I try to be far more conscious of my urges to hand over my autonomy to the leader in the room. It sounds like your efforts have the same effect.
Yep! That’s it Chris — “dependency leadership model” describes it well. We start training kids for it early on.
When I point it out, people usually look abashed, as if to say, “Oh gosh. We are doing that and it really is no good,” or maybe, “Oh damn! We got caught!” But it is comfortable. The leader gets to feel like a “leader” able to blame the rest for lack of involvement, and the rest get to feel like “followers” able to lay blame at the leader’s feet if things go wrong. And it is so pervasive as to be almost laughable if it weren’t so dysfunctional.
I don’t intend to solely blame leaders here — the problem is not just one of leadership, but also one of others unwilling or untrained to take responsibility. I have seen leaders try to turn it around and it is sometimes a mighty struggle.
I think the answer, and I have seen it many times, is when leaders and their followers can also see one another as partners with equal responsiblity for their both their processes together and their shared outcomes.
Dick, you’re right on when you note that we train our kids to expect the dependency leadership model. One of my greatest problems with our educational system is that it is still structured to produce students prepared for an industrial age job. There’s a lot of similarities in the roles of teachers and bosses. And a lot of similarities to schools and workplaces.
Changing our beliefs and attitudes has to come right along with changing our structures.
Well…you have taken an important step in your last comment. From “dependency leadership model” to “expect the dependency leadership model.” I think that is close to the truth. The picture that started all of this reflects our “expectation” — our going-in position. Geez…how sad is that?!?
This is also suggesting to me that I ought to re-read The Cultural Creatives. I read it some years ago and now have inklings that it contained more wisdom about issues such as we are talking about here than I originally appreciated. The book keeps coming to mind as I notice “expectations about leadership”, the conflict about Intelligent Design, attitudes towrds the war in Iraq, Red/Blue states, and etc.
There is something deeper afoot here and I suspect it is in that book and I might have missed whatever it is.
Dick, this is all truly fascinating. It’s the beauty of swimming in a pool of ideas
Are you referring to The Cultural Creatives by Ray and Anderson (published 2001)? After a brief look on Amazon, it looks interesting. I’d be curious to learn more about your perspective on the connections between our discussion and the book.
I admit that the whole idea of not only inquiring into the expectation of leadership, but perhaps altering this expectation holds a lot of juice for me.
Thanks for keeping this thread going.
Certainly, there is a fine line to be walked here. While I am not a fan of the dependency leadership model, I think the demise of our education system in the U.S., in part at least, can be attributed to the deterioration of our educators as authority figures.
In the workplace, collaboration and empowerment are important, but ultimately, someone must provide direction. In the absence of a strong leader, others will move to fill the void.
This is not to say that a leader must be an authoritarian. Certainly, I am not. But a leader must be able to build shared vision and facilitate consensus or all empowerment and collaboration is for not.
…
Now it’s really getting juicy. Troy, one of your sentences speaks directly to the primary expectation of leaders that Dick and I have been mulling over:
In the absence of a strong leader, others will move to fill the void.
Do we need a strong leader (which begs the question: what exactly is a “strong” leader?) to get things done? Who gets to be the leader? Do we count on the leader too much to deliver on the expectation of building shared vision and facilitating consensus?
And coming back to the idea that the demise of the US educational system is partly due to the deterioration of teacher as authority figure…is the answer pinned to authority? In both schools and workplaces, we see teachers and bosses cling to a hierarchical authority where respect is expected based on position. Just as our boss is not our parent, neither is our teacher. Respect doesn’t come because of what you are, but who you are.
This is brilliant stuff, y’all. It’s exciting to challenge the very underpinnings of how we govern our workplaces and lives, eh?
I once coached an exec whose people told me that their major problem with him was that he was not present, unavailable, and they never knew what he thought. People who had worked with him in the past, however, called him autocratic, controlling, and meddlesome. After a bit of probing he told me that he had taken previous feedback about his autocratic way to heart and had changed. The problem was that he didn’t know how to show up differently, so he simply withdrew. In leadership-speak, he had gone from autocrat to abdicrat because he didn’t know how to occupy any middle space between the two.
I suspect that his experience is fairly generalizable: lots of people in leadership roles get it that autocracy doesn’t fly as much as it once did, but they don’t have models, training, or whatever else they might need to find a viable alternative. BTW – I addressed this in The Art of Winning Commitment, arguing that old leadership models don’t hold up in a culture as it is becoming more and more conscious of democracy.
As for educators, I once taught in a public school and my wife does today. I think that the same mechanism that I just described operates there as well–autocracy doesn’t fly, but alternatives are very poorly understood or enacted.
And…Chris…yes, that is the book I mean. The Publisher’s Weekly review on the amazon page is a good if too brief a summary.
Obviously, we are both painting with very broad brushes. I agree that challenging the underpinnings that govern our workplaces and lives is important, but some of these underpinnings are in place for a very good reason. They work. Others are terribly broken. Which are the former or latter, I think, is circumstantial.
Dick, thanks…I’m putting the book on my “wish list” for Christmas. Perhaps Santa will have some extra room in the bag o’ goodies.
Troy, you feel that some of the underpinnings of governance are in place for a good reason. Examples? I’m not promoting workplace anarchy as desirable, though I think we take far too much of the way things are about leadership and management for granted. If we have all of these excellent examples of leadership around us, why do we struggle with this question so much?
On the topic, I finally got to reading all the way through the latest issue of Fast Company. The Corporate Shrink in their Playbook addresses a question about the abrupt departure of a CEO to a competitor. While no one at that company would instantly agree that they have complied with “leader-worship,” their feelings of betrayal and loss offer a different story. My interpretation is that they sought their leadership from the outside rather than fully assumed the leadership they had within themselves. I doubt the corporate structure created a sufficient place to explore this latter concept.
The Corporate Shrink? I love Fast Company. I am a huge Fast Company fan, but FC is in the business of selling advertisements. They do this in large part by publishing witty quips and pop-management articles. Fast Company is not the Harvard Business Review. In November, FC published an article on the top 10 up and coming hubs for creative workers. They could have published the article as an opinion piece, but instead, they opted to spell out their psuedo-scientific formula. Check out Steve Sherlock’s Steve’s 2 Cents blog on November 21 for the debunk.
My intent is not to be an apologetic for corporations, corporate structure, the status quo, autocratic leadership, or anything else that looks, smells, or tastes like the Bush administration, but if examples of good leadership and good organizations is what you are seeking, you need look no further than the shelves of Borders or Barnes and Noble or Books a Million. In fact, you don’t even have to turn away from your computer. Simply, dial 1-800-CEO-READ. There you will find many more examples of good leadership than bad.
This said, freedom of expression and freedom to question, diversity, empowerment and collaboration are paramount to innovation and to the continued evolution of the workplace.
I think our personal philosphies about leadership, management, organizational structure, and probably politics, as well, are much more alike than different.
Keep on bloggin’ brother.
Troy, I have no doubt that we share some similarities, and my intent was not to get you riled up (well maybe a little). I should probably put a little disclaimer here in the comment area that states that all efforts to provoke are done out of love (you think I’m bad here, you should see me in action at home…I tend to sleep on the couch from time to time). Seriously, the one thing that I’m rather good at in this world is getting curious and questioning the things that seem the most sacred. The idea that “leadership is an absolute” is one of them.
And here’s my whole intent in provoking you and others on this particular topic of “what is leadership.” We can take all those books on the shelf at the local Barnes and Noble and they’ll all give us some different take on what leadership is. And this is fantastic. Yet, leadership concepts in a book still have to be applied in life and workplace. An organization still must decide how it will govern the culture that exists within it and then take action. All of this isn’t easy which is why new books on leadership pop up all the time (who knows, perhaps I’ll be writing one someday).
This is one of the most fun blog entries I’ve written just because it has elicited so much dialogue afterward…
RE: books…give us a different take
A few years ago I ran across a study of the use of the word “leadership” in American publications.The study concluded, “…that there is no specific definition of what a leader is, who the leaders are, what leadership is, or even if it is necessary to define these terms in only one way.” Difficulty arises, the study concluded, because, “There also appears to be an assumption of what a leaders is and what characteristics are needed for leadership.” In other words, when we talk about leadership with one another we may be talking about very different things while assuming that we are talking about the same thing.
A senior citizen stands up in a community meeting to advocate for a new bus to the mall — newspapers call that leadership. A student stays after class to help the teacher clean up — she calls that leadership. And so forth.
So I had to formulate my own definition to make sure people knew exactly what I was talking and writing about, Here it is: leadership means inspiring others to commit their energy to a common purpose.
It doesn’t account for “thought leaders”, but that wasn’t what I was studying.
Interesting threat this is, yes. I have been given first quality information by reading the comments above -that’s a thanks- but the definition that most matches my perspective too is the last one posted by Dick Richards, which, if I have understood all right, would be very similar to saying that leadership is about envisioning, facilitating direction and providing opportunities. I think we agree that the main idea behind the role of an excellent manager is to give back the power to the individuals on the company, “creating more leaders”. In big corporation today the role of a CEO can or cannot go paired to a desirable management, for bad or for good, but nevertheless he could be too conditioned by the shareholders’ decisions. If one has reached to the point of considering a CEO as a “thouht leader” it would be rather a personal problem for not getting oneself out of a negative situation after having tried to work out solutions. I guess “thought leaders” will be like that because we allow them to be so after all.
Omara — I use the term “thought leader” to desribe people like Albert Einstein or Sigmund Freud. These are people who gained “leadership” through the force of their ideas and not necessarily through “inspiring others to commit their energy to a common purpose” in the way that Ghandi, ML King, etc did.
A former client of mine once explained the difference between management and leadership in a lovely way. He said, “Management is about allocating the available human energy. Leadership is about raising the amount of human energy available.”
Omara, welcome and thank you for adding to what has been a terrific dialogue.
Dick, your former client’s explanation is truely lovely in its succinctness. We need both great management and great leadership in organizations that prize their sustainability. It’s in this ability for sustaining long-term business where customers find their needs fully met and employees find their uniqueness fully utilized.
Thanks for your welcoming Chris.
I meant to say “tough leaders”. I see what you meant with “thought leaders” Dick, I’ll call them genius. However even making this classification there have been many examples in history of “thought leaders” with ideas of force enough to change the world significantly that didn’t reach the laureated heighs of Einstein or Freud.
Wow, what an energetic look at leadership. There is thoughts, there is energy, and there are thoughtful voices creating a word mosaic of leadership. I appreciated Dick Richards ideas on leadership energy and the distinction his client made between leadership and management: “leadership means inspiring others to commit their energy to a common purpose…Management is about allocating the available human energy. Leadership is about raising the amount of human energy available.” That is quite helpful to me, kudos to all of you for the moving pictures of leadership
Well…David…I am really pleased that you are finding Chris’s post and this thread helpful, and that my notions of leadership resonate for you. But also, I love what you say about it at your blog’s header…”Leadership is strength, love, and energy.”
P.S. to my last comment…and in support of David’s notions about leadership…
I once attended a meeting of about 100 managers for the Mediterranean division of an American company that was a client of mine. The managers were Italian, Spanish, Greek. The meeting was held in Italy and the CEO of the division was Italian. I almost fell out of my seat when he said, “Of course we must love our products. Of course we must love our customers. But our success begins with loving one another.”
Beam me up Scotty…
I can feel the love. It will be 50 years, in 2006, since Erich Fromm wrote The Art of Loving. I plan to feature this book in my blog next year. He talks about discipline, concentration, and patience being the primary arts of love. I “loved” the quote to start the book off.
“He who know nothing, loves nothing. He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who undersands also loves, notices, sees… The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love… Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.” PARACELSUS
So much for sour grapes!
This is excellent
Great conversation! Take a look at this…
In a very recent worldwide study titled ‘Understanding CEO Capital ™’ by Burson-Marsteller:
1. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs topped the list of fifteen world business leaders, with Warren Buffett, Michael Dell and Richard Branson completing the top five (no mention of The Donald…”you’re fired” I guess!)
2. There is not ONE single woman on that list (despite pleas from Tom Peters to pay heed to their purchasing power, and the ‘reemergence’ of Martha)
3. The list is predominantly ‘geeks’…rich geeks that is
4. In addition to business skills and results, having a focus on ETHICS and COMMUNITY STEWARDSHIP also figured prominently in the 2005 results. That last factor is the main reason Gates, with wife Melinda and Bono won the recent Times ‘Person of the Year’ award.
Perhaps Servant Leadership is reemerging as a powerful force?
Brian, glad to have you drop in. I think you’re example connects right into the idea that ‘leadership’ not only means different things to different folks, but is comprised of so many diverse attributes. Undoubtedly, the Servant form of leadership offers a lot of upside.
Chris, this is a fabulous post and dialogue. I’ve referenced it on my site 1/4/06.