Before returning to the main topics in our current discussion of the problems with the prescriptions of the modern leadership movement (MLM), we’re going to take a brief look at two more types of what are generally regarded as genuine examples of “leadership” in organizations.

Today, we will explain why one of these examples actually is not leadership at all as it is understood by the MLM, and why it is more accurately seen as a symptom of an unwell organization. This is the sort of leadership we see in the person who steps up and “takes charge.”

Ordinarily, we don’t refer to someone as taking charge unless that person is filling a vacuum that has been exhausting the organization’s resources and energy. After all, if the organization’s positions of authority were properly distributed throughout, and their occupants routinely discharged their duties effectively, it wouldn’t occur to anyone to comment on the matter.

Moreover, if some of those position holders turned out to be inadequate to their tasks while others were doing fine, it still wouldn’t occur to any one working under the management of either of these groups to say that the latter one’s members were “taking charge.”

It is generally only when someone steps in to resolve a situation normally beyond his or her formal range of authority to save the day, to fill a void that is paralyzing the organization or one of its departments, do we say that someone has appeared on the scene to “take charge” of the situation. This doesn’t happen when you are effectively managing your assigned duties. It happens when you step in to the chaos created by the mismanagement of someone else’s responsibilities to establish order there.

This commonly occurs when a co-worker or operational manager observes the problem, and in order to resolve it, assumes an authority not normally his or hers. “What do you say we fix this?” he or she says, or “I think I see a way out of this.” Instantly, heretofore enervated fellow employees become energized and focused. “Lead,” they say, “we’ll follow.” Somebody do something. Anyone. Anything. Let’s just start getting this thing underway again and see if we can see the way forward better as we get going.

This is a valid form of leadership, but it should be noted that it is not organizationally designed. It doesn’t arise from the intent or planning of the senior leadership. Rather, it surfaces on its own as a result of the sclerotic incompetence descending from there into the organization. That’s a key feature of this: it occurs where it is needed due to organizational ineptitude; not where it is intended by organizational design. It is situation-dependent, not personality-derived.

Even the “followership” is more or less genuine in instances like these. But it is no more institutionally valid than the unconventional risk-taking form of individual leadership which generates it. Indeed, it is often just as risky for the followers to follow as it is for the “leader(s)” to take charge where those formally responsible have proven incapable (a fact painfully highlighted by the appearance of unofficial and unauthorized “take charge” leaders attracting equally unofficial and unauthorized “followership” at various points around the facility).

What’s more, such intermittent eruptions of leadership/followership are more expressions of relief than the sort of relationship with an individual leader that is described and promoted by the MLM. They are organizational reflections of the developing situation, rather than inevitable responses to particular persons due to their possession of specified leadership traits.

When the problem situation resolves, ordinarily the leadership/followership phenomena fades away with it. That is, it is an organizational response to a situation, not to a person.

In fact, it is not really individual leadership at all – it is a manifestation of what I refer to in these pages as organizational leadership. In the case postulated here, it arises from managerial incompetence, and is often suppressed and even punished by that management once the latter regains its bearings and, wholly mis-appreciating the import of what has happened, reasserts control.

This suggests, of course, the importance of managers who acknowledge and manage the leadership naturally existent in their organizations, rather than attempting vainly and dangerously to arrogate it all to themselves. That is to say that the best managers don’t assume they are themselves the sole font of the organization’s leadership – they “take charge” of it, though, by managing the organizational leadership inherently there so it can produce “take charge” leaders where and when they are needed – not to resolve crises or incompetence, but to head them off with authorized innovations, and to seize opportunities to grow and improve.

Which brings us to our next topic: we’ll look at why the type of preeminent individual leadership most enthusiastically promoted by the MLM as what ought to be designed into an organizations is usually – in truth, perhaps  inevitably – actually so destructive of them. We will also look at why it so commonly takes a terribly long time to realize that, as we willfully persist in misattributing its baleful effects.

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Today’s Tips: Speaking of managerial incompetence, if worse comes to worst, you may want to check out these fascinating products of the power and insight of market forces to help you mitigate them: CareerExcuse.com and Alibi Services. I haven’t used these, by the way; they were discovered in the course of reading an illuminating book called Liespotting, by Pamela Meyer.

And speaking of the wonders wrought by the marketplace of needs and ideas, please see this terrific Economist piece on an adaptation of vacuum tube delivery systems you all have seen in hospitals and similar institutions – this one is for delivering your online purchases . . . all the way to your home.

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Technorati Tags: leadership, organization, authority, management, mismanagement, worker, manager, employee, intent, planning, incompetence, design, followership, individual leadership, leadership trait, innovation, Pamela Meyer, Economist

Books on individual leadership, rather amazingly, continue to come out, and continue to promise great things from the superlative leaders their secrets will help readers become. What they also all do, though, is assume that there is no controversy regarding the location of leadership: it is in individuals, and emanates from them into the organizations which they grace with their presence. Indeed, many of these observers go so far as to say that the organization exists to give expression to the leader’s leadership – or, at least, must re-form itself around the unique ways each leader exhibits that leadership.

William Tate, a consultant in the United Kingdom with extensive experience as a senior manager, offers some long-overdue questions about these assumptions in his new book, “The Search for Leadership: An Organizational Perspective.” It must be said that he neither denies the essential concept of individual leadership, nor the destructive contention that it is separate from and superior to management. Indeed, he, curiously, offers a fairly rigorous justification of it.

The value he adds, though, is in the context in which he places the concept. Tate asks with disciplined focus what, precisely, leadership in organizations is intended to serve, and how we are to make sure that it does so. In the course of this, he comes to conclusions regarding the modern leadership movement that echo many of those expressed on this site. He is concerned that it has produced not merely an understanding of leadership that is untethered from the purpose it might ordinarily be expected to pursue, but that also has generated an industry that perpetuates fundamental errors in perspective and practice that can no longer be tolerated.

For example, he argues that leadership, in a phrase found often in these pages, should be “thought of as a resource to be managed.” This observation is the inevitable expression of the heart of his argument: that it is well-past time to stop thinking of leadership as principally a personal attribute, but rather to understand it as a set of actions that take place within and for the betterment of the organization.

He is especially concerned with the problem of leadership development as it is typically conceived and undertaken in contemporary organizations. He insists that it must not be allowed to continue as a patchwork of personal improvement modules pursued independently of the needs of the outfit.

The first step in the creation of such programs, he laments, is ordinarily an almost eerie disassociation from the organization’s needs. Rather, developers turn earnestly but disconnectedly to the assemblage of boilerplate individual leadership components. He argues repeatedly that such programs should begin not with a discussion of what the attendees may need, but of what the organization needs from the leadership it wishes to generate and benefit from in its strategic and operational efforts.

Tate urges us to understand that “the organization is not a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it.” “The popular mistake made by executives and their coaches,” he notes, “is to assume or pretend that leaders have more control than they really do.” To underscore this, he quotes a colleague on the attendant attribution error:

The tendency [is] for people to over-emphasize personality-based explanations for behaviours, while under-emphasizing the role and power of situational influences. In other words, people assume that what a person does is based more on what kind of person he or she is, rather than the social and environmental forces at work on that person.”

Tate is concerned not only that leadership should be conceived of as something in the service of and bound to the organization – rather than the reverse – but also that it should be supervised, held accountable, and redirected when necessary. As he says, “there is a need to manage leadership, however oxymoronic that may sound.”

But, of course, it’s not oxymoronic at all, despite the author’s curious presentation in sundry chapters of the standard patter about what leadership is, who expresses it, and how it is even presumably superior to management. At bottom, he rightly makes a strong case for the view that leadership is, at the very least, inferior to the organization.

And he does so in an engaging, readable manner, reinforced with vivid expression and memorable metaphors. This book represents an important full forward step in the right direction toward an effective understanding of leadership – and how to rein it in.

Buy “The Search for Leadership,” by William Tate. You will enjoy it, and find yourself considering questions that you may not have encountered before, deepening and enriching your strategic effectiveness as a manager.

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Today’s tip: Many think that the notion of raising a family and running a business is also oxymoronic. But the truth is that it most decidedly is a logical – and even a natural – proposition. Please see this Forbes.com column by Sramana Mitra for an excellent illustration of why and how.

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Technorati Tags: individual leadership, leader, leadership, organization, William Tate, consultant, United Kingdom, manager, assumption, management, purpose, industry, perspective, practice, development, executive, coache, Forbes, Sramana Mitra

When you are in charge, however imposing your principle duties may seem, the most difficult problem you face is often the struggle to maintain perspective. That is, to remain focused on those duties, rather than to allow the hopes pinned on their accomplishment to deteriorate into hopes abjectly pinned on you.

It’s bad enough when others replace a collaborative focus on the project, under your direction, with a passive dependence on your magical insight and unerring acumen. But the problem rises to almost insurmountable dimensions when, under the unrelenting pressure of such disorienting faith in your personal ability, you fall prey to it yourself.

Once that happens – or even merely becomes an issue – clarity dissolves into confusion, and your decisions and actions become at least as much about you as about the actual matter at hand. When your putative status as a singular leader competes with your work in the minds of you and your team, your effectiveness is at an end. Your faux influence may retain some momentum, but that simply means that you’ll ultimately take more people down with you.

Leadership is not a solution, but rather is a problem when it is directed at impressing your personality on the organization, as opposed to cultivating and mobilizing the insights and acumen of your team. If you are having a powerful, productive personal influence on your outfit, fine. But if you then focus on that instead of on the work, you will lose that influence.

It’s a real danger. It can come from your own misguided self importance, or from the projection of that onto you by your advisors or staff. It happens at all levels of business and government. It is one of the side issues you must manage intelligently, in order to prevent it from coming between you and the core issues.

Keep a sharp eye out for this problem – in you and others, at work and in the community at large.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of influence and effectiveness, please see this piece by Wally Bock about someone who genuinely exhibited both.

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Did you know you can now read the Managing Leadership Blog on your Kindle? Amazon charges all of ninety-nine cents for a month – but the first two weeks are free – give it a try!

Technorati Tags: perspective, project, direction, dependence, insight, clarity, confusion, decision, action, leader, work, effectiveness, influence, Leadership, solution, organization, productive, business, government, Wally Bock

Many of us have a tendency to anthropomorphize the concept of evolution. We think of it as animated by a sort of ingrained competitive instinct, or, perhaps, straining toward a pure standard of excellence, a state of perfection.

Often, we unconsciously connect this kind of thinking with the more general, even teleological, sense that there is a goal it is aiming for, attainable in some distant future. Which brings up another assumption we generally make about evolution: we view it as occurring across time.

But the truth is that it has none of these characteristics in an inherent sense. It makes tentative, but random, alterations; multitudes of essentially pointless experiments. These steps are not necessarily forward; they may be, but they might also be sidesteps, or even backsliding – rejections of blind alleys.

They are not a considered response to a SWOT analysis. They are accidents, arising both from pure coincidence and interaction with life, and in either event acting in new ways upon life.

They do not anticipate the future. The address the present. Their only relation with time is that they occur in it; adaptive mutations become the new norm, finding themselves in a new present.

And speaking of that, it is not really proper to think of them as occurring chronologically, with a cumulative, linear logic. They occur in space. One branch of a species here does not mutate, but another over there does. The latter’s mutation interacts with the the local environment, thus prompting evolution of the environment itself, and of other species in it. Thus, related branches continue into the future side by side, or one – which one? – proves the more successful and the other fades away.

So, the evolutionary process is not sentient. But we are.

Can you see, then, any ways to anthropomorphize the concept of evolution as described above into the design, management, and growth of your local, regional, national, or international organization? Can you combine conscious aims with both deliberate and coincidental – but observed and captured – adaptations across space and time, in order to improve your competitiveness, to alter your environment in ways favorable to you, your customers, and your partners?

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Today’s tips: Speaking of evolutionary backsliding, please see this Management-Issues piece about how it is getting to be more of a jungle out there.

As for the standard evidences of progress, you will definitely want to see this finely expressed refutation of some of them, with respect to management, as related by the owner of Sippican Cottage.

Learning doesn’t occur, either, in a straight line – sometimes it can get stuck for long periods until evolutionary adaptations appear that bump it up. Please see Gannon Beck‘s engaging and instructive explanation of some of these.

Finally, you will surely take some comfort from Peggy Noonan‘s latest WSJ column about pressures to adapt in unpleasant ways, resisted from what many might believe to be unexpected quarters.

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Note: This month’s Leadership Development Carnival, hosted by Dan McCarthy, is up at Great Leadership – please be sure to stop by and see how Dan has grouped some truly worthwhile contributions into St. Patrick’s Day themes!

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Technorati Tags: evolution, excellence, perfection, goal, SWOT, analysis, mutation, environment, design, management, organization, adaptation, competitiveness, customer, partner, Management-Issues, progress, Sippican Cottage, Gannon Beck, Peggy Noonan, WSJ, Dan McCarthy

One of the problems with the word “leadership” is that it is pretty slippery. You can define it to mean whatever you wish to emphasize, under whatever circumstances you face, at any given moment.

So, let’s just consider the two basic categories into which definitions of leadership, or its presumed components, tend to fall. One is loosely related to matters of insight – vision, method, innovation, creativity, and the like.

As obvious as it may appear to many that all of these are expressions of leadership, the matter is far from clear. Nevertheless, that argument can be made, and these do have the effect of helping to clarify purpose and action, and of lining up organizational energy behind those.

But the thing about these is that it can also be argued that they are best identified or cultivated (depending on which we are talking about) from within the organization, rather than drawn exclusively from its top leadership. This offers a broader, more informed, and typically more open-minded and fertile field for such examples of insight to surface from, than is reliably provided by a select group of specially cultivated individual leaders.

The other group of presumed leadership definitions might be contained under a category called “command.” These are the functions that provide discipline. Force of character, strategic guidance, operational policy, the power of personal example, and so on. It is instructive to note that this category necessarily also includes the full range of communication skills. And, moreover, they are all classic functions of management.

This group is an example of the problem about discussions of this type that we have referred to – the tendency to define as leadership whatever happens to suit the speaker’s purpose. But it points to another one, as well: we habitually award a positive value to whatever we define as leadership. But it most certainly does not inevitably warrant that.

And all of this, in turn, suggests two reasons why we need to maintain leadership in a position subordinate to management. One is that the former is a characteristic, a function, a process – suit yourself; but it is not a discipline; the latter is that. Moreover, those elements of it that are most clearly actual examples of leadership are best sought where they are most likely to be found: within the organization, not atop it.

The other is that whatever we settle on leadership as being, and wherever we choose to insist it is located, it is not inevitably constructive, much less disciplined to the goals and purpose of the organization. It is management’s role to ensure that it is those things.

And this is why the position taken here that ownership of the decision-making process cannot be given to employees, but must remain with managers, to whom it is contractually assigned, is not inconsistent with the principles of “managing leadership” promoted in these pages. Leadership – like decision-making and other forms of delegated authority – can and often ought to occur throughout the organization, but it must be managed in order to ensure that it constructively serves designated organizational aims.

Thanks for staying with us through the development of this argument. Please be sure to offer your thinking about it, as well. And in the meanwhile, have a great weekend!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of flexibility thriving from a firm foundation, please see Miki Saxon on how to develop a healthy culture without dissolving into formlessness or descending into bureaucracy.

And, or course, despite today’s argument, many of you will insist on retaining your leadership – rather than management – development programs. That’s fine. But at least be sure to follow Dan McCarthy‘s timely advice on how to design and fund it.

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Why not try out this feature provided here by Answers.com: If you double-click on any (non-hypertext-linked) word on the main page of the site, a window will open providing definitions or encyclopedic material about that term, together with links to additional sources of information. Try it out – it’s interesting and fun.

And, of course, while you’re clicking around, don’t forget to click on your choice of an email or RSS-feed subscription to these pages – we’ll be proud to have you join us!

Technorati Tags: leadership, insight, vision, innovation, creativity, purpose, action, energy, organization, leader, command, discipline, communication, management, ownership, decision-making, employee, manager, managing leadership, authority, flexibility, Miki Saxon, culture, bureaucracy, Dan McCarthy

There has been a lot of talk lately about liberal and conservative personalities. A political analysis of the presidential race in the United States recently offered a map of the political cultures of whole states. How useful is that? And on what basis do they draw their conclusions – whether about individuals or states?

That’s an important question. We all think we know what a liberal or a conservative is. We don’t see anything controversial about the matter, so we don’t look more skeptically at it. But it might be worth wondering: if we’re so sure we know what the definition of a liberal or a conservative is, how sure are we that others share those definitions?

I recently read a book by a psychologist purporting to describe how he could assess personality – including things like political leanings and intellectual/creative abilities – on the basis of the general state of a person’s office space or home. It was hardly reassuring in this regard.

I began to develop some skepticism from his repeated and unnecessary references to himself, his students, and his colleagues as “scientists.” Moreover, they always seemed to be “doing science.” Many psychologists do indeed do good science, but the prominent and frequent episodes of “physics envy” encountered in this book do not bode well for the “research” and “findings” produced by this one.

For example, this psychologist tended to associate creativity, egalitarianism, and open-mindedness with liberalism. To take just one of these, he described open-minded people as likely to be found browsing the philosophy section of a book store. Really? Not the travel, science, literature – even the management – section?

Of course, you can see the other shoe falling: conservatives, according to this fellow, are more dogmatic, less interested than liberals in diversity, and resistant to – even fearful of – change. Does that seem right to you?

Are liberals – especially politically – more open to new ideas than conservatives, less dogmatic? Are conservatives really resistant to change – or is that even the issue for either group, rather than simple rational conformance with what each side perceives as reality?

Let’s just consider one example this psychologist provided as an especially illuminating example of the way he makes such assessments. He cautions against leaping to conclusions based on one clue alone. For example, if a job candidate presents herself with a firm handshake, you shouldn’t irrevocably conclude that she is creative or open-minded.

What if she mentions that she likes Garth Brooks and owns a lot of his albums? Or, perhaps she is wearing a “conventional GAP outfit.” You would – immediately, he specifies – have to alter your initial impression.

One has to wonder what sort of clothing, precisely, a young women must actually wear to a job interview to impress this particular scientist with her creativity and open-mindedness?

What sort of clothes are the people in the philosophy section wearing?

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Today’s tips: There is some very promising work being done of the kind that can actually be helpful in trying to manage leadership. Some of this involves trying to understand the dynamics of an organization by using location-reporting badges worn by employees, similar to RFID chips, to track the nature and pattern of interactions that take place within it. Admittedly, a little creepy – but it will be interesting to see where this goes.

The WSJ recently reported on another such effort to interpret what is really going on in organizations, using similar badges, called “sociometers,” which somehow measure the nonverbal activities of their wearers. The piece describes how the researcher has learned that we sometimes draw conclusions – even make important decisions – on the basis of body language that seems to convey something rather inconsistent with the nature or veracity of the overt messages being delivered.

While that is far, certainly, from a new insight, it might be interesting to observe just how extensive this sort of thing is in our organizations. It will also be worthwhile to maintain a healthy reality-check on the assumptions used as the basis of the essentially mechanical analyses methods like these use.

Speaking of politics, open-mindedness, and the US elections, please be sure to stop over to see Michael Wade‘s advice regarding the behavior we all will undoubtedly exhibit upon our selection of the next American President.

Also, please stop over for Miki Saxon‘s insightful observations about the dangers of developing “leaders” on the basis of their identification as such early in their careers – or their lives.

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Technorati Tags: liberal, conservative, United States, scientist, science, physics, creativity, egalitarianism, open-mindedness, philosophy, management, leadership, organization, employee, RFID, WSJ, Michael Wade, American, Miki Saxon, leader

The most sensible thing Peter Drucker ever said about leadership is this:

Leadership is all hype. We’ve had three great leaders in this century – Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.”

He was right. Those guys had it all: vision, oratorical ability, relationship building skills, charisma, relentless focus, outside the box thinking, follower-attracting magnetism.

Supply your own essential leadership characteristic, and it should not be difficult to make the argument that these fellows had it, or could have been argued by themselves or their followers to have it. Moreover they had the unconstrained maneuver room to give their leadership the untrammeled free rein that the modern movement’s gurus also insist is vital.

Is their fate, and the fate they delivered to countless others, only the naturally logical outcome of following the modern leadership prescription of investing virtually unbounded faith in the limitless expectations made of presumptively superlative individual leaders? Must we simply hitch our organizations to these wildly careening creatures whose spirits we, by definition, don’t understand and cannot control or even influence – indeed, which we specifically are advised by the gurus not to attempt to do?

Have we not complied passively and repeatedly in something like this manner in various ways during the numerous frenzied enthusiasms that such leaders have driven through the business world over the past few decades, each followed by a dreadful collapse and devastation of the livelihoods and futures of those who trusted them, and more? Are we not going through something like that now? How’s that been working out?

The problem is that such examples of individual leadership are more than merely a distortion of what defenders will scramble to argue is the true ideal of leadership itself – they represent a distortion of the true nature of leadership. By celebrating its arrogation, like a royal prerogative, to certain divinely sanctioned potentates to be wielded over we benighted masses whose fates, in any event, are of little moment other than to the extent that they support and serve as a backdrop to the glory of our betters, we perpetuate a feudal fiction into the modern age of organizations.

It is more than possible – even reasonable, given the evidence – to argue, as Peter Drucker broadly hinted, that the concept of individual leadership as described and promoted by the modern leadership movement for employment in contemporary business and other organizations is, essentially, a fraud. The intent of this current series, certainly, has been to present the case that it is at the very least an unfortunately ill-conceived distinction that has a distorting, and usually destructive, influence on modern organizational dynamics.

As we have seen, leadership is a natural instinct that arises not in individuals (other than, in an important but limited sense, in entrepreneurs) independent of something to be led. And it is important to recall that it is promoted in precisely this way: as an individual – and as an essentially portable – characteristic that is independent of organizational context and which can be carried with the individual leader from setting to setting and then unpacked for implementation strictly on its own merits.

It is much more effective – as well as, I think, more balanced and healthy both for organizations and individuals – to view it as an organizational characteristic. These organizations are administered by managers who cultivate, deploy, and manage all the assets available to further the goals of the organization and its owners. These assets include the unique characteristics of the organization itself. Those characteristics stem from the corporate culture, and they inescapably include organizational leadership.

This exists whether or not managers – or “leaders” – are aware of its presence; and that explains many of the supposed concerns arising from various ways organizations may fail to passively yield to individual leadership from above; so-called “resistance to change” is commonly an example of this.

Management’s role, then, is not to subordinate itself to leadership, nor to operate separately or in some parallel fashion alongside or downstream of it. Management’s role with respect to leadership is to manage it.

So, back to work. This is the last post in this series. Tomorrow we’re going to talk a little about efforts to define or predict individual political or ideological proclivities from apparently unrelated personal preferences or behaviors. See you then!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of devastation caused by outside forces (and the promise of more of it from the current global financial crisis), please take a moment to see this essay about how we nevertheless always seem to manage to live through it, by Cam Beck at ChaosScenario. Read it all, then ponder and enjoy the concluding sentence.

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Technorati Tags: leadership, vision, charisma, follower, business, individual leadership, Peter Drucker, entrepreneur, manager, organization, owner, corporate, culture, leaders, Cam Beck, ChaosScenario

One of the problems with traditional views of leadership is the tendency to confuse other characteristics with it. A common way we do this is by becoming so impressed by the seemingly powerful presence of one or another trait presumptively indicative of leadership as to uncritically assume that there is more behind it than there may actually be – sometimes even simply equating it with leadership, itself.

This tendency is important to our topic, today, of explaining why “followers” are typically not really followers at all. Because it is so large an element of this argument, we will restrict ourselves here to one example of it: idea generation.

People who do this are widely viewed, for that reason alone, as leaders. As it happens, however, we frequently make this connection – and the associated award of the title of leadership – after the fact, when we trace an accepted and important idea back to its source.

But it is not just an idea, but the adoption and adaptation of it to organizational purpose that combine to make up true, meaningful, corporate “vision.” And this is rarely accomplished solely by single – or singular – individuals.

It is a collective, collaborative effort in which various people play separate interconnecting roles. Some of these are more visible – but none are more important or vital than others to the overall process.

The thing is that lots of ideas are generated all the time throughout our organizations. But only some of them progress into actionable projects that become influential elements of our operations.

So, why do we only notice the people who generated ideas we wind up acting on, and refer only to them as leaders? Why aren’t the others who propose initiatives which turn out to be infeasible, or un-actionable for whatever reasons, also leaders?

Because, really, neither of them are leaders at all. Rather, all of them – including those in the latter group – are giving expression to organizational leadership.

And they’re not the only ones.

The rest of the organization evaluates the ideas simmering within it. Everyone tries them on for size, determines how they contribute to current ways of doing things, or improve outputs produced or received. They test them, generate feedback, and then drop or modify them, or send their architects back to the drawing board.

The idea generators, then – or, actually, their ideas – are like candidates waiting for the decision of the panel of judges. They – successful or otherwise – all note the results and the reasons for them, and proceed with their next efforts while bearing those lessons in mind. Often, but certainly not necessarily, the innovators and assessors alternate roles over time and as events dictate and dynamics evolve.

So, in a healthy outfit, leadership flows and reverberates throughout the organization. It is multidirectional, becoming richer and more informed as it acts upon itself in the course of pursuing organizational aims at all levels.

Leadership in an organization isn’t like a research demonstration in a laboratory, with scientists acting on experimental material to produce predictable results. In an organization, no one can introduce specifically calibrated stimulants downward into a container of otherwise passive preparations in order to generate particular outcomes. After all, in organizations, the objects “leaders” propose to act upon – well, they’re alive.

And they don’t live and breathe for the very thought of being able to follow you. They are there to collaborate with you. Best for you if you collaborate with them.

Tomorrow, we’ll conclude this series with a brief look at how you might do that. See you then!

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Today’s tips: A couple of days ago we referred in this section to a WSJ piece challenging commonly-held assumptions about the formidable and generally dreaded institution of the performance review. Wally Bock, the author of Three Star Leadership, noted the article, as well. His take, though, is to cut right through all the angst about the institution, and instead to go after inept instituters. Please be sure to visit his must-read piece about stepping up to the plate and doing your job as a manager – and as a developer of managers.

And speaking of ideas, please stop over to see Eric Brown‘s discussion of the various sizes they come in – and which of them may turn out to be the best fit.

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Technorati Tags: leadership, follower, leader, purpose, corporate, vision, organizational leadership, organization, feedback, WSJ, performance review, Wally Bock, Three Star Leadership, manager, Eric Brown

In attempting to make the case for my argument that leadership is best viewed as an organizational – rather than as an individual – characteristic, an intermediate purpose has been to reduce the false distinction made by many between leadership and management. The thing is, though, that this sort of thinking is a tough nut to crack.

Moreover, as Shaun Kieran delicately points out to me in a comment to Wednesday’s post, “Creatures of culture,” the people who engage in it are hardly drooling idiots. Nor, he adds, are they necessarily evil for stubbornly persisting in promoting this approach to the topic.

It would, of course, be much easier to argue the matter if my opponents in this debate were at least one or the other. But I am perfectly happy, from my own experience, to stipulate with Shaun that they are neither. They are thoughtful people who are eager to help us learn how to better run our organizations. Moreover, for all that I think they have this particular issue quite wrong, many of them are nevertheless very effective indeed in advancing that cause.

But if we stipulate to that, I think it is fair enough to ask them to stipulate to this: they have not made their case. No one has proven that leadership is different from management, much less that it is a characteristic inherent in individuals independently of the context in which those individuals operate, one that they carry with them from one organization to another and which they then instill into groups otherwise bereft of it.

We’ll just stick with the distinction issue, today. In the past several days I have seen several posts on other sites addressing this issue, defending the contention that leadership is distinct from and superior to management. What they all seem to do, however, is to fall back on one or both of two types of argument:

1) They simply repeat their conclusions with increasing energy and insistence, but offer only their personal certainty as evidence.

2) They cite the great number of other people who proffer the same conclusions – even, for some reason, advancing personal testaments to the intelligence and character of some particular individuals from that group.

It is of no moment – indeed, it is really quite unfortunate – that thousands of books – some of them, we are inexplicably reminded, thousands of pages long – repeat this claim without being able to substantiate it in a way that generates consensus on the topic. After all, much of what has been written by some academics has been thoroughly discredited by others and, as we are learning from still others, we quite possibly should simply give up listening to any of them about anything in any event.

Neither is it of much help to their cause that they are intelligent, nice, or well-intentioned sorts. Are we lacking in evidence today that such persons can still get things exactly wrong – and carry vast numbers of equally intelligent, nice, and trusting people along with them to destruction into the bargain?

One thing they all do seem to share is the tendency to fall back on slogans about placing or climbing ladders, doing right or right doing, or the like. The more popular of these phrases are repeated in many of these arguments, and are presented as though they are unanswerable deal-closers. And it must be acknowledged that they are surprisingly effective for recruiting new disciples to the individual leadership movement.

Like the best such rhetorical devices, they seem to capture a profound truth in a brilliantly telling and memorable way. But if you take a moment to examine them, you see that their surface profundity is false. They are, when all is said and done, just catchy phrases void of supportable content. If the case were otherwise, the content would be offered and supported. But it never is; rather, promoters of these views simply resort to method 1) or 2), above.

So, it is sufficient here, today, to reassert this contention: it remains unproven and unconvincingly demonstrated that management and leadership are incompatibly distinct practices which are exhibited separately; the former by a type of person who is incapable of demonstrating the latter, or the latter by another type who wouldn’t deign to practice the former.

On Monday we will return to the main track of the current discussion, and will hopefully be able to draw it to a close later that same week. Won’t that be nice!

Have a great weekend – see you soon.

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Today’s tips: The always creatively thought-provoking Eclecticity has a theory that I am at risk of going over the deep end on this topic. He has tested it by posting possibly the best physical evidence yet produced that management and leadership are indeed different. Please stop over to see it. While you are there, note two things about the exhibit: 1) it shows management in a position superior to that of leadership, which is only as it should be; and 2) it indicates that while they may be different, they do intersect. That is an interesting idea: to examine them at the point of intersection. Perhaps we’ll look at that in the future – thanks Eclecticity!

And speaking of recent posts on the general topic of this debate, please see Nina Simosko‘s essay called Hands-off Management – she describes what I would refer to as the managerial duty, not necessarily to personally provide leadership, but to establish and maintain a purposeful leadership environment. Please take a moment to read this thoughtful view of the matter by Nina who is, by the way, a finalist as best service industry female executive in a major, prestigious international recognition program – do stop over to learn more and offer your congratulations and support.

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Technorati Tags: leadership, management, organization, academic, Eclecticity, Nina Simosko, executive, Shaun Kieran

I use the phrase “purposeful organization” frequently in my attempts to explain what I mean by “managing leadership.” Admittedly, it is a bit of a redundancy. That is, you don’t organize an effort – create an organization – without a purpose for it in mind. The intent behind pairing the words, however, is twofold.

First, I want to emphasize the very redundancy: the purpose of an organization is inherent in its creation; it is not provided after the fact by a “leader” who wanders or parachutes into the group. In this sense, it is the leader – viewed as someone whose presence is required in order to invest an organization with purpose (expressed in your derivative term of choice – vision, for example) – that is redundant.

Certainly, that purpose can and often should be modified – sometimes even changed altogether. However, in my view it is not the place of someone other than the owner – even if you refer to such a person as a visionary leader – to unilaterally make alterations like these. Only the owners or their agents can legitimately do that. To the extent that this fundamental element of organizational integrity is violated by the modern CEO/leader (even with the complicity of the owners or their agents), we open many doors to many moral hazards. We have seen waves of varying sorts of these over the past decade or two.

Second, I hope to draw attention to the self-organizing and self-managing characteristics of organizations, so well elaborated by the brilliant Mary Parker Follett three-quarters of a century ago. When people join organizations, they have a tendency to immediately seek ways to order their activities in a way that conforms with and contributes to the larger efforts and aims of the group. Moreover, in the absence of specific guidance regarding how to do this, normal people in normal situations don’t just shut down like conflicted robots; they tend to develop their own solutions, whether individually or collaboratively.

There is a very close relationship between this phenomenon and the expression of leadership within an organization. We will talk about that briefly tomorrow. For now, it is worth noting that self-management and self-leadership can be both encouraged and given direction by senior management, or suppressed by it and arrogated to the top management team.

It is also useful to note that the tendency of groups to self-organize, self-manage, and even self-lead does not mean that we have no use for top-down direction or management. The role of senior executives is vital; my argument, however, includes the contention that executives deplete the vitality of that role by arrogating organizational leadership exclusively (or even just primarily) to themselves, rather than enhancing it by building upon and managing the leadership inherent in the very nature of the purposeful, collaborative organization.

Please stop in tomorrow as we continue elaborating this line of the argument. And please also don’t hesitate to dispute it – the resulting dialogue can only sharpen the thinking and improve the effectiveness at work of all of us.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of forcing our assumptions, intentionally or otherwise, down certain paths of docility, please take a look at this eye-opening piece by John Phillips, who authors The Word on Employment Law, about our ongoing relationship with the company store.

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Technorati Tags: organization, leadership, purpose, leader, vision, owner, visionary, agent, integrity, CEO, moral hazard, self-organizing, self-managing, self-management, senior management, management, direction, executive, organizational leadership, assumption, John Phillips, The Word on Employment Law, company store, Mary Parker Follett