Managing Leadership^®

Have you ever had a boss that clearly had his (or her, of course) act together? He seemed to have all the answers, could grasp the core issue of a problem and resolve it on the fly, and understood every aspect of the business from everyone’s perspective – employees, vendors, customers, even prospects.

This all made him the focal point of everyone’s attention. Everything emanated from him, and everything that was sought but not found could be asked of him. This is all pretty heady leadership material, isn’t it?

But wait, there’s more:

In spite of these superlative abilities, he wasn’t the least bit arrogant. Not only did his attitude seem refreshingly humble, but he had an almost zen-like self-effacement about him. And when you spoke with him, he turned and gave you his full attention, as if he was about to learn something important from you, that listening to what you had to say was absolutely the most valuable use of his time at that moment.

Wow! Now that’s a real leader, isn’t it? Intelligence, technical ability, focus, drive, humility, people skills, all adding up to a magnetically charismatic personality. The whole package. All the things the Modern Leadership Movement’s (MLM) experts say are what make a leader.

In fact, they say that those are precisely what make him a leader, and what can make you one, as well, if you only purchase their products and follow their prescriptions.

So, now, let’s consider that for a moment. Do you think that’s what your boss did? Do you think he learned to be a “leader” as we’ve observed him to be from a seminar or a book? For example, when he was listening so attentively to you, do you think he was truly focused on the import of your message, or was he silently reminding himself that this was the perfect opportunity for putting that leadership attribute on display?

Let’s go back to his role as the answer-man. Did he get that (genuine) ability just from being smart, or perhaps from technical reading, or from his own personal experience?

Or did he get it from seeking out and listening to everyone’s perspective – employees, vendors, customers, even prospects. In fact, listening attentively and fully, not placing himself – and his pet projects, personal biases, or professional prejudices – between him and what his informants were saying to him about his business and their relationship with it?

That’s how first-class bosses come to obtain the set of qualities that MLM experts erroneously try to reverse-engineer “leaders” from. Real managers like these get it from the work, and from everything and everyone related to the work. And the only way they can do that is by subordinating themselves to the work and to those who can help them make it succeed.

That “leadership” they’re radiating is really you reflecting back on you, because they have enough sense to know that – unlike the arguments of the MLM community – it’s not about them. It’s not about their personal qualities. It’s about the business, how it’s perceived by everyone connected with it, and how that knowledge can be obtained, harnessed, and employed to make it more successful. That process, of course, is a classic description of management.

If you are all about attaining these specific personal qualities MLM-style, then you are doomed to failure. Seeking the cynically marketed magical aura of leadership will undermine both the work at hand and you as well.

On the other hand, if you are about the work, you may find that you are beginning to be perceived as that mythical creature: a leader. But don’t fall for your own PR – the moment you do is when it all begins slipping away.

You just keep working on how to be a better manager for your business. You’ll learn how from the effort itself, as well as from the unique nature of your industry and your place in your company. Put the leadership books down. Get out of the office. Observe. Pay attention. Ask questions. Forget about yourself long enough to listen to and absorb the answers.

The qualities often associated with leadership aren’t its building blocks; rather, to the extent they exist at all, they’re wholly incidental consequences of the focus on their duties invested by dedicated managers. They’re likely not even actually the personal qualities of the person with whom they’re associated, but rather are those of a diverse cadre of people and experiences that person draws them from.

Next we’ll look a little more particularly at how this idea plays out at different levels of management, in different industries. See you then!

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Technorati Tags: boss, business, employee, vendor, customer, prospect, leadership, leader, Intelligence, technical ability, focus, humility, people skills, charisma, experience, manager, work, management

The purpose of this current discussion is to identify the key and fundamental problems with the notion of individual leadership in modern organizations as it is professed and propounded by the modern leadership movement (MLM); to outline the case against this misguided concept. Many of these have been addressed to one extent or another, as well, in other discussions on these pages.

But today’s subject is one that belongs firmly in our current topic. It is easily among the most astoundingly ill-conceived, and even dangerous, of the many bafflingly preposterous claims made by the MLM.

It is that you can and must abandon who you’ve been, and change your personality into the “leadership” persona.

Think you can do that?

You are, after all, the sum of the immensely complex and interacting admixture of your upbringing, experiences, relationships, and multi-faceted contemplations, not to mention the never-ending self-assessments arising from all of these.

Do you really believe that you can simply read a book or attend a seminar, and suddenly realize you’ve missed the point all these years? Never mind that, as we have seen, there is no such thing as a (non-pathological, or inherently constructive) leadership personality, nor a magical leadership ingredient, or character trait, that will transform you willy-nilly into such an unfortunate creature. For our purposes here, suspend that inconvenient truth for just a moment.

Do you really think all you need to do is to find your inner child, think outside the box, or even enter into a brand-new journey of self-discovery? Now? After all these years?

Can you really wrench yourself out of the path (not the rut) that leads to the “you” you are today? Should you?

You realize that this path isn’t static. With each step you trod along it, you established perspectives, insights, experiences on the bases of which you developed habits and decision-making patterns.

Consequently, the junction where you find yourself today isn’t a simple intersection, divorced in time and space from your past or your future. It is not a place where you abandon one and enter, essentially reborn, into another. You cannot simply turn left or right entirely independently of what has gone before, or of where it is propelling you.

For you do not stop and contemplate the panorama of choices before you here; you add and modify, grow and mature. become better or worse, step by step, adding definition and meaning to not merely the path that brought you here, but to the very momentum that bears you along it, which momentum is also the “you” presently pondering the diversity and realism of these alternatives even as they rush by.

Think you can wrench yourself out of that into some superficial, wide-eyed, “you can do it!” personality prescription written by the latest “researcher” or “scientist” who rolls into town, promising to cure whatever ails you as a leader? The idea that you can taps in to a long and distinctly American sense of self-sovereignty and control. It is powerful and seductive, and it continuously lures millions of us into its ambit.

Unfortunately, the foundation for this one (as for many others) is false. But even if it were real, to attempt to re-write the whole script of your life, your meaning, your core self, would be at best ill-advised, and possibly quite wrenching indeed into the bargain.

And we will point out just one example of why and how in our next installment. Thank you for staying with us!

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Technorati Tags: individual leadership, leadership, researcher, scientist, leader, American

It was once popular, some years after a best-selling management book highlighted specific companies as exemplars of this or that fad, to reassess those businesses and to delight perversely in how far the putatively mighty had fallen. It’s not always fair to blame the companies per se – perhaps new managers had proven inept or had strayed from a decent methodology, or more fundamentally negative influences had washed over the outfits from the markets or government.

But for all that, it can be instructive to run down the rolls of champions touted as winners for their expression of this or that management philosophy, and to see to what dire straits – or even oblivion – so many of them have tumbled. What does that say about the management models those companies were used as the poster children for?

It’s a fair question – and not just of management fads in general, but of arguably the most specious one of all: the notion of individual leadership in modern organizations, which continues to be propounded with unflagging enthusiasm by every corner of the modern leadership movement (MLM).

Countless books have been and are published on this topic. And each one is also typically garnished with numerous champions intended to illustrate one or another tenet of the particular “philosophy” on display.

Whatever trait, characteristic, style, personality type, or the like is being promoted, a particular individual will be presented as an illustration, and his or her accomplishments will be rehearsed and cast as expressions of the topic at hand. But just as with the more general management model books, there are at least two problems with this approach.

First, the subsequent review can be quite instructive. Ask yourself: where are all these leaders, or their reputations, today? What has happened to, or has been learned about, those who had been deemed such superlative specimens of individual leadership as to be showcased as special models of it? Inevitably, many of them have stumbled from their pedestals, sometimes spectacularly – some have even been convicted of criminal activity.

Their use in such books is an inescapable device for attempting to prove a point. That so many of them have subsequently turned out to have feet of clay is actually a more trenchant indictment of the idea of individual leadership in organizations which they were used to exemplify than that of the fallen companies is of the various management theories they were associated with.

But the second problem is no less damning. And that is the internal incoherence of the manner in which these individuals are offered as “proofs” of the nature and importance of individual leadership.

The most relentlessly risible example of this is the tendency to use a different “leader” to illustrate each of a leadership philosophy’s portfolio of traits or styles. I cannot recall ever reading such a book in which it wasn’t painfully obvious that the individual being touted as the very personification of one “vital” leadership trait also happened to be the antithesis of one or more of the others, equally identified as essential ingredients of leadership, in the same book.

Another aspect of this form of presentation of the leadership argument is that the persons selected for display as having the desired characteristic or personality type obviously can also be presented as having been extraordinarily successful. The connection between the alleged expressions of leadership and results is assumed to be causative, or is artfully argued to be so.

However, at least three things are left out of these “analyses.” First, the causative relationship is not proved – merely persuasive asserted. Second, in many of these relationships it can seem quite possible to someone who isn’t under the influence of the Kool-Aid that the causation has been reversed; that the business success achieved for who-knows-what reason has convinced – or, rather, deluded -  the “leader” of his or her individual essentialness and invincibility.

Third, these presentations overlook the vast numbers of perfectly similar people in similar positions in similar organizations who have not seen the results imputed to the “leadership” of those highlighted in these books for our supposed edification.

In this context it is worthwhile to recall Warren Buffet’s admonishment that a good business can survive bad management. The problem is that a really good business can actually fool both bad management and its observers into the erroneous belief that the managers are not merely good, but that they are indeed exemplars of leadership.

Buffet’s corollary that good management cannot rescue a bad business should be borne in mind when we read books ascribing everything to leadership. The truth is that the more inclined we are – or are persuaded by the MLM to believe – that their success is a function of our own exceptional characteristics, the more likely is the management of them to become de-linked from the fundamental realities upon which they truly depend. Or, to borrow another Buffet aphorism, when the tide goes out you’re likely to see the concept of leadership exposed for the disappointment it really is.

But in this, too, hope continues to triumph over experience. Eagerly as ever, we buy the books, attend the seminars, follow the scripts.

Rummage around in this stuff all you like, though. Wade through all the stupendous quantity of material that continues to issue forth on the subject. When all is said and done, you’ll find there’s no pony in there.

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Today’s tip: A site that periodically offers general management advice recently posted a list of blogs published by business professors – an interesting idea. This one is headed most appropriately by Professor Bob Sutton’s Work Matters. Take a look – you’ll surely find much of interest you’ll want to subscribe to.

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Technorati Tags: management, manager, market, government, leadership, trait, characteristic, style, personality type, leader, individual leadership, organization, Warren Buffet, business