Leadership is the last thing that large organisations want despite the rhetoric.
Over dinner recently with a good friend who is a CEO, the topic of leadership arose. He was surprised when I stated “Leadership is the last thing that large organisations want! Organisations confuse their managers by continually promoting ‘leadership’ when what they require them to be is more effective managers.”
Before we explore this contentious statement further, it is important to discuss ‘leadership’ and what it means in the context where it is exercised. Like so many other terms, the word ‘leadership’ has been liberally applied, (or is that misapplied?), as a ‘buzz-word’ by management and Organisational Development ‘gurus’.
Mention the term ‘leader’ and many people will immediately bring to mind one of history’s greats. They may recall politicians such as Churchill, John F. Kennedy or Margaret Thatcher; military leaders such as Joan of Arc, Napoleon or Sun Tzu; despots such as Hitler or Stalin; adventurers such as Shackleton or Columbus; civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa or Nelson Mandela; religious icons such as Jesus, Mohamed or Buddha; business pioneers such as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Sakichi Toyoda, Bill Gates and more recently Steve Jobs, Geoff Bezos, Elon Musk; et al.
Each one of these legends, and so many more leaders similar to them, believed that significant change was necessary and then set about inspiring others to actively change the situation to create what they believed to be ‘a better way’. Where they perceived the established rules, laws, status quo or ‘truths’ as intolerable, they tirelessly worked to create new ways and, at least in their minds, a ‘better situation’.
Manager versus Leader. Contrast the actions of the leaders referred to above to the practice of management in the modern organisation.
A definition that explains the act of management in an organisation is: The division of tasks and the allocation of resources to achieve the required outcomes. To achieve the outcomes that their organisations demand of them in their position, managers must acquire the right talent, allocate them to the appropriate tasks, provide them with the necessary resources and then ensure that they complete the tasks ‘on time, in full and within budget’.
By definition, a leader is someone that others choose to follow. It is the requirement for managers to get the people that report to them to effectively perform their roles that is the basis of confusion between management and leadership in the organisational context.
Following or Being Managed? The people that report to a manager do not necessarily choose to follow their manager. They have accepted a position in a company for their own reasons with their position being part of an organisation structure that has them reporting to a management position.
The company chooses the person that fills the management position with the person that they believe will most effectively get the results they require. The people reporting to the company appointed manager generally do not have any say in who is appointed to be their manager. Their livelihood relies on them fulfilling their position description with their actions being administered by a manager that they did not choose.
In the ideal situation the staff will respect the appointed manager, with their values aligning with those of the manager so that they do choose to see the manager as their ‘leader’ once they have had time to evaluate the manager as a person. Where they do not choose to follow the manager as a leader but see that their livelihood relies on them being managed by that manager, they will ‘do what is required to keep their job’. In this instance, the people are not following a leader, they are being managed, whether that is a willing relationship or not.
Provided the required metrics are being met by the organisational unit being managed, the organisation is not concerned whether the individual in charge of that unit is by definition a manager or a leader (that their people choose to follow).
Why the focus on ‘Leadership’? In the never-ending drive to improve results, organisations have leveraged as many tools as they can to work out how to get the maximum output from their investment in infrastructure in a business, both inanimate and human. With ongoing research, there have been many theories espoused on how to get people to perform at their maximum. The texts are full of theories that are as much written to further the career of the authors as they are to effectively explain how to get the maximum output of human resource.
The infamous “Hawthorne Effect”[i] is a classic example. Conclusions were drawn from experiments at a Western Electric plant in Illinois, USA in the 1920s that if workers were shown special attention by management (e.g. by improving lighting) that their output would improve. In detailed analysis of these experiments, it has been suggested that the reason the output of those workers at the plant improved was because there were ‘time and motion experts’ checking their outputs for the experiment and therefore that if they didn’t improve their output their jobs were at risk. This perspective was supported due to the fact that the output improved when the lighting was increased and then further improved after the lighting was reduced back to normal. Apparently the workers believed that they were turning the lights down in preparation to close the plant and that they needed to further improve output to prevent the closure.
As management theory progressed in the 20th century, the concept of introducing methods of leaders in non-business pursuits such as the military, sport, religion and eastern culture permeated the reference literature in management education. This analysis of ‘great leaders’ who achieved outstanding feats and the application in the work place of how they motivated their constituents blended well with the application of new theories derived from the parallel psychology research into why people do things and how to get them to act in particular ways.
The logical conclusion derived from the study of how leaders gained magnificent results and the psychology of why people do what they do resulted in the conclusion that to improve business results: “Leadership is the answer!”.
Leadership training. As a result of the ‘Leadership is the Answer’ approach to how to improve results, a whole Corporate Leadership Industry has evolved. This industry relies on leadership ‘guru’ instructors who are often ex-sports people, ex-military specialists or martial arts gurus that largely rely on experiential training. This ‘gung-ho’ approach has trainee and existing managers hanging off cliffs, jumping out of aeroplanes, karate-chopping pieces of wood etc. ad nauseum in an attempt to have them better understand how to get their people to do things that they would not normally do. Of course, everyone understands that abseiling down a 50m cliff translates perfectly to managing a team of clerks or leading a team of Contact Centre Customer Service Agents.
Despite the investment in leadership training, when the managers that have been exposed to ‘how leaders do things’ return to the workplace, very little, if any, of the training can be implemented due to the requirement for the manager to adhere to the processes, complete their often onerous reporting, fit in to the overarching corporate culture that must be observed and above all, achieve set targets in order for them to retain their position. Effectively, setting the expectation that the managers can return to their day to day routine and act as a ‘leader’ in the fullest sense of the term perpetrates the ‘leadership myth’.
Exploding the Leadership Myth in Organisations. There can be no doubt that effective managers need to understand how to get their teams to work together toward achieving the organisation’s objectives and then enabling them to perform at their best given the organisational framework/rules. Rather than perpetrating the Leadership Myth and risking losing very good managers (and hence many of their good staff) because they have become disillusioned by being unable to practice visionary leadership, the following is recommended.
Demonstrate a clear Organisation-wide Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy. This may seem obvious but so many organisations have verbose documents that purport to articulate these but ‘on the shop floor’ none of them are demonstrated by the organisation beyond their immediate manager, if at all.
Make it clear that ‘you are on the bus and if you don’t like where it is going, get off’. Jim Collins wrote about this in the seminal work “Good to Great” [ii]. In the book, the ‘Bus’ is the organisation and people need to understand where it is going. If they don’t like where the Bus is going, they need to get off (work somewhere else). Unlike the organisation’s leader (CEO and Board), the manager does not get to set the Vision and choose where the organisation is headed. The manager’s role is to interpret how their unit contributes to the organisation Mission and devise/execute plans to achieve the required results.
Be honest with Managers. It is pointless training managers to be ‘leaders’ and then holding them accountable for their performance against tight methods that they have no ability to change. The managers must positively ascribe to the organisation’s Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy but they can only be the mentor/coach/manager to their teams on how they can apply their expertise to achieve their required results. Unlike true leaders that have a vision of where they are going and then inspire others to follow them, the manager has no ability to change the organisation to fit their vision. They must be satisfied with devising plans within the limits of the organisation’s Standard Operating Practices, Statutory Regulations, Safety Standards, Operating Procedures etc. It is most important to be honest with managers and let them know that they cannot act as a leader in the true sense of the word, but that they do need to be able to demonstrate various leadership methods within the tight confines of their management position. Failure to honestly inform managers that they cannot exercise free will as a leader and that they must be a well-rounded manager will lead those with the attributes of leaders to become disillusioned and leave the organisation
Do not hire entrepreneurs to be managers. The closest thing to a leader in the organisational world is an entrepreneur. These people see opportunities, what can be achieved by pursuing them and then take the necessary risks required to achieve their vision. They inspire people to follow them into unchartered territory. They either create the rules or break the rules that may exist in order to pursue and succeed at their vision. Such people have no real place in the tight confines of the established organisation. If they do happen to fit in for some (probably short) time, they will either cause significant organisational disruption or get frustrated and move on.
Train managers to be better at working with their people. Rather than perpetrating the ‘Leadership Myth’, set the correct tone of training for managers by calling it what it actually is. For example, use titles such as Management Training, Managing People, Organising Teams, Managing for Results etc. Leave the term ‘leadership’ out of the title but definitely cover some of the aspects of how leaders inspire people to follow them in the management training.
Know where you stand. Look around your organisation and see if it is perpetrating the Leadership Myth. If you are in a position to address this, do so immediately or risk losing good managers. If you are a manager in an organisation that is caught up in the Leadership Myth, discuss it with your manager and agree on how you can manage within the confines of your position/organisation whilst still achieving the required results. If it is clear to you that your ability to execute along the lines of the Leadership Myth are impossible, assess where you stand and either ‘play the game’ or find a new one.
© Philip Belcher
[i] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect or any number of management texts for more background
[ii] (Collins, 2001),
