Yesterday, we offered one way of viewing the problems with the modern leadership movement’s argument that the fate of our organizations lies in the specially talented or trained persons of great individual leaders. An additional – and perhaps more damaging – problem is the most unfortunate elevation of that term beyond a generic reference to the boss to the gratuitously arrogant notion that leadership is separate from and superior to management.
On the one hand, leadership is being defined by this group as an individual characteristic, which it really is not. It is something that naturally occurs in groups organized to pursue collaborative aims and which managers cultivate and facilitate. Accordingly, to declare that it arises from individuals and, moreover, is superior to the function performed by managers is to make a real muddle of things.
It creates a class of people who fancy that leadership originates in them and flows downward and outward into their organizations. It is as if the organization is to be viewed as some sort of complex, multi-dimensional, social garment which, upon being donned, tailors itself to the leader in order to amplify his or her personal superior skills and qualities.
The behavior generated by such thinking ranges from the merely distasteful to the bizarre, but even when it coincidentally coincides with promising organizational results, it is an expression of a fundamentally flawed view of leadership. This typically sets the stage for inefficiencies arising from distortions in the internal dynamics of the organization which are triggered by this flawed approach. However, it can sometimes even bring whole institutions down.
On top of that, this view consciously belittles the role of the manager, and deflects important attention away from the field of management. This tendency to separate and elevate leadership above management is an essentially cosmetic effort which is ultimately doomed to exposure as the normal functioning of nature is revealed with the passage of time.
It is caused partially by the misidentification of leadership with individuals. Leadership is, after all, of fundamental importance in an organization. Without it, there isn’t much to manage.
As a result, if you identify it as an individual function, it is not unlikely that you would accord it great importance. If you further identify it as separate and distinct from management, no one should be surprised to find you as well declaring leadership to be superior to management.
Still, why would you separate leadership from management, defining it as an endeavor wholly distinct from management, performed by people who are fundamentally different than (and superior to) managers?
The main reason for this is unpleasantly straightforward. The leadership movement consists of a growing symbiotic aggregation of consultants, commentators, trainers, and authors, together with the executives, managers, and students that form their market.
The notion of leadership as a separate function serves all of these groups well. Providers of theory and training can create a need for their product and even a competitive frenzy to obtain it. The industry’s consumers can use the marketing and quasi-academic commentary generated by the providers to justify special powers, perquisites, and remuneration for themselves. Organizations themselves both produce and consume much of the material thrown up by this frenzied market interaction.
But, amazingly, for all this rabid buy-in and furious activity, we still can’t find anyone who can provide (from their general perspective) a satisfactory definition for us of what leadership – or a leader – is. In view of this stunningly enduring and fundamental failure, how long will we continue to kid ourselves about the chimera of singular individual leadership?
Are you sure you want to veer off on to this bridge to no-one-quite-knows where? Or is it not time to settle down and get serious about the real work of management – including the management of organizational leadership?
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Today’s tip: Speaking of disturbing loyalty to unproven – or even disproven – ideas, please see this essay by Charles Murray, published in the WSJ, about the state of university education in the United States.
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If you look at the contents section on the sidebar of the main page of this site, you will see a listing of the article series that have been published here. You can click through to view summaries of the pieces, and then read the full series or selections that are of most interest to you. Enjoy!
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8 Comments
Jim – Well put, and you raise key questions.
The differences are, it seems to me:
1) That most managers are not on a mission;
2) “Leaders” are not required unless you intend to have a high-performance organization;
3) Typically, managers do not have “followers”; and
4) “Managing” is a universal function, “leadership” is an anomaly.
You may not be able to reduce “love” to a simple definition. But we’ve all been afflicted by it. We still believe in it. The “managing” aspects are not what gives it its appeal.
Jim,
If what you say about the modern leadership movement is true, it is moving farther from reality than before. I say that as one who believes I know exactly what leadership is in a business or military environment and as one who has used it and taught it to subordinate managers with the result that together we achieved fantastic performance as compared to competitors as well as sky high morale, creativity, innovation and productivity with most employees loving to come to work.
Leadership is certainly not a function separate from normal management. Because it consists of what followers follow and what they follow are the values reflected in what management does, it is dependent upon and directly connected to management performance. Because of what followers follow, leadership is a 24/7 operation which goes on every second of every day and cannot be stopped or paused by anyone or anything.
I read your two linked articles and am more confused than enlightened.
You say – “Leadership, is inherent in the very nature of the organization. It arises from the peculiar relationships that form among people joined together in a collaborative effort. As such, it takes on an identity of its own, existing in these relationships, rather than merely in the individuals who enter into them. Thus, it both influences, and is influenced by, those individuals. It communicates their organizational impressions and needs throughout the organization.”
That definition confuses me and I have not the slightest idea of what leadership is. I may be dense today, but could you expand on that.
Best regards, Ben
Author “Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”
Jim,
I think Lee has done a good job of delineating the nuance of the leadership/management conundrum. To the average observer it might be seen as hair-splitting; to those of us involved in building organizations, the hair-splitting makes a big difference when it comes to assessment, development, and promotion.
I understand Ben’s confusion as well. I read the quote a few times and it reflects (to me) the organic nature of leadership. That is, in daily interactions someone will emerge as a leader depending upon the situation at hand, regardless of who the designated leader may be. The world abhors a vacuum.
However, it doesn’t actually speak to a definition of leadership which, after many years, many books, and many blogs, may point toward this:
1. There are characteristics exhibited by people we decide to recognize as leaders, but they aren’t all displayed in any one person.
2. Based upon that, there is not a single leadership profile that one can lay on as a template when deciding who is, or will be a leader, or not.
3. We have enough common data to know that in given situations there are leadership behaviors that need to be demonstrated in order achieve the desired results.
4. It’s a heck of a lot easier to say with certainty after the fact that one has been a real leader or not.
5. This should keep all of us intellectually engaged for the remainder of our lifetimes:-)
Thanks for the series.
Hello Lee, Ben, and Steve,
Since Steve linked Lee’s and Ben’s comments with his, I’ll combine my response, as well.
Let me begin by saying that I hear what all of you are saying – I really do. I have just arrived at the conclusion that the evidence points to a different way to view the matter than we typically do. It has happened slowly, in fits and starts, and certainly with various types of difficulty. But the perspective it offers I have found to be most satisfying on a number of levels, some of which you each touch on, here.
With respect, though, to this forum, here is a key problem I seem to be having: On the one hand, I have yet to be satisfied that any argument (modified in any way to appear to conform with increasingly awkward evidence) presenting or defending the traditional view of leadership – as originating in and being expressed (usually by specially anointed) individuals – stands up to the actual facts.
But on the other, I don’t seem to be able to effectively convey – at least not so far in the limited venue provided on these pages – what I’m getting at when I say that leadership is an organizational – not an individual – trait and function.
So, here’s what I propose: this week’s posts are planned, but they serve as a decent segue into a series that I will start next week, attempting once again to state my case. I will belabor several of the points in the hopes that you will find some chinks I may have missed (!) and that you will want to exploit – perhaps we’ll all learn something from that.
I will use some of the points you all have made here to guide my efforts.
For example, Lee, I love the suggestion that the management function is universal while “leadership” is an anomaly! And the “I know it when I see it” argument – well, you’ll be hearing about that again!
Ben, the heart of this will be to try to get past the difficulties with my definition which you cited – problems that I acknowledge. The matter does indeed require expansion.
Steve, your insight that we can recognize individual leadership more readily after the fact than otherwise may turn out to be a real pointer to what I’m getting at. We’ll see.
Thanks for all the ideas. I appreciate very much your visits and your frank and informed observations – You’ve given me a lot to do, and I hope you’ll be stopping in to see how it turns out.
A good and thoughtful post, Jim, with many rich comments sprinkled throughout. And great comments here, too. Let me stir the pot even more.
The older I get, the less I see the leadership/management distinction as meaningful when applied to people and the more I see it as meaningful when applied to work. If you have the job of being a boss you will need to do leadership and management work with supervision thrown in. That’s true for CEOs and shop floor supervisors.
The idea that leadership as a distinct function is only meaningful when applied to work (rather than individuals) gets right to the heart of my thinking on this, Wally. Your emphasizing this by insisting it permeates the organization rather than infiltrates it from the top is something I also agree with.
I’ll certainly be interested in your views of the defense of my definition as I attempt to unfold it.
Thanks for joining in!
In view of two comments, that of leadership being an anomaly and that leadership somehow permeates the organization, I would like to explain what I believe leadership to be in some detail as an alternative view.
From listening to my people for over 20 years of my 30+ years of managing people, after just a few years I learned from what they said that the followers among them (I would estimate that to be over 90%) followed the value standards implied by what they experienced in the workplace. (Although I discovered this in my first few years of listening to employees, continued years of listening to them only served to reinforce it.)
Those experiences came from various sources, most of which were actions and inactions by any and all of their bosses. But some of what they experience comes from those bureaucrats who have the power to affect what they experience, and some comes from peers to the extent that one of more have affected what they experience.
Most of their experiences emanate from the actions and inactions of their bosses related to the support which it is their bosses’ responsibility to provide. Support consists of training, tools, parts, direction, discipline, technical advice, information, rewards, benefits, compensation, planning, and the like. The quality of this support sends value standard messages to the employee. For example, if the tools are hard to find and/or obsolete, they send the message that poor quality work is OK and that the boss does not really care about employees.
By value standards, I found that it helped to think of each value having standards from -10 to +10 reflecting a spectrum from total dishonesty to total honesty, from indolence to industriousness, arrogance to humility, ignorance to knowledge/wisdom, disrespectful to respectful, unfairness to fairness, uncaring to caring, and so on for all values.
Each employee has a brain which like a computer uses some sort of algorithm to arrive at a standard for each value from all the experiences which reflect that value. It also helped me to understand frequency of occurrence and the level of the boss who created the experience. The higher the level, the greater the effect and the higher the frequency the greater the effect of that particular experience.
Peer pressure due to the possibility of greatly increased frequency compared to a higher level boss’ frequency, may be far more powerful than that boss in setting the standard which the employee uses to his/her work.
So the employee who is a follower arrives at a standard and uses that standard in performing work. We can say that the employees have been led by what they experience and this leadership determines how industrious, honest, knowledgeabe, respectful, etc, etc to be in doing their work and treating their customers, each other and their bosses.
If a boss at any level wants to change the resulting performance, that boss must change what the employee experiences from support. Each employee’s brain continually analyzes new experiences and uses them to arrive at a new average standard for each value. Experiences appear to be time-weighted such that they decrease in weight as they age. So any change has an effect soon after it occurs and if the frequency of occurrence of that change is high and the level of the boss effecting the change is high, then in response employee performance changes faster.
Peer pressure can be overcome by higher level and frequency changes by management, but low frequency and low management levels trying to effect change can often be drowned out by peer pressure.
All of the above I learned in the process of successfully turning around four severely damaged management situations including a nuclear-powered cruiser and a 1300 person unionized group in New York City. So I have had to deal with all types of exigencies and did learn how to deal with them.
In helping others to change the culture of their group, I have learned that lower level managers can successfully effect positive change even without the support of their seniors.
If I have been unclear about any of this, don’t hesitate to comment.
So leadership is most certainly not an anomaly. And I suppose that you could say that it “permeates” the organization but that characterization leaves far too much to the imagination.
Best regards, Ben
Hello Ben,
Thanks for the explanation of the basis for your views. There is the possibility that we will find some semantic disagreement, some of which will be irrelevant, and some of which may lead to meaningful differences.
But your description, for just one example, of the inter-influence of managerial action and peer pressure is not the least bit alien to my thinking.
As for my comment that leadership permeates the organization – it was meant only to point to the upcoming discussion. I hope you’ll be back for that next week!
Thanks again – I’ll be referring to this latest comment of yours in the coming days.
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