Managing Leadership^®

One of the most remarkable claims of the modern leadership movement is that the “leader” is of extraordinary importance to the fate of the organization. On the face of it, this would seem supportable. Certainly, there are market forces on both the demand and supply side that keep this assertion afloat.

But is it true? And even if it is, just how true is it?

Many of us who work in organizations are fully aware that a boss surely can be a major influence on the morale of a workforce, the productivity of the work environment, and even on the actual bottom-line performance of an outfit. Of course, this can work in both positive and negative directions.

So here are the questions:

Is a boss more likely to be a positive or a negative influence, overall, on an organization? Look back on yours, and think about how many of them who have stuck in your mind in this regard did so because they were extraordinarily constructive, or destructive, presences in your work.

If you look beyond the striking recollections of such remarkable bosses, how many of them really turned out to be much of an influence at all; who might actually have been, basically, unremarkable? Remember that we are considering the claim that “leaders” are the stars around which the rest of us otherwise wandering planets orbit. Do most bosses really do much more than their job, in a manner that could be done by one person as well as another – much like you and I do our own work? Bear in mind that there’s plenty to be proud of, there, without making an industry of ourselves.

And back to the beginning: even those who do seem to be of some overriding importance somehow, when you think about it, how singularly influential are they in the overall success of the organization? Even if we give them a disproportionate grade (again, either positive or negative), is it enough to pin the whole fate of the organization on, or were other factors, singly or in combination, more telling?

One of the most thought-provoking authors reviewed here, Nassim Taleb, argued in “The Black Swan” that the influence of a boss’s “leadership” and “presence” in an organization over its performance is greatly overstated. He regretted that the assertions in this regard were not adequately challenged.

But it turns out that they have been investigated. Phil Rosenzweig – the author of “The Halo Effect,” which will be reviewed here soon – reports a couple of studies of this subject that avoid the research mistakes that much of the book is about. One suggests that a manager‘s personal style may be responsible for as much as 4% of the overall performance of the company. Another found that the employment of the general set of management practices associated with good performance explained perhaps as much as 10% of a company’s results.

An individual’s influence may be – may be – as much as 4%, and the general adoption of a suite of best-practice management approaches could bring that number up to 10 percent. Are any of you writing home about that, yet?

How do you see these claims by the modern leadership movement, and the numbers by the referenced researchers, used in actual work situations? When things go well, we attribute that to the former, and when they turn south, we explain them away with the latter, do we not?

Which side of that argument do we have right?

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Today’s tips: Why not ask that last question to the subject of this WSJ piece about what happened at Citigroup, why, and who’s responsible? Once you’ve read that, read this editorial on the subject, also from the WSJ; is it really possible that no one can explain what this highly-paid person was paid to do – including him? (By the way, in what seems to be an inevitable irony in such cases, this person was singled out for praise in “The Halo Effect” for, essentially, the opposite of what he is now being hauled over the coals for.)

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