Managing Leadership^®

John Dryden, in “All for Love,” had one of Marc Antony’s generals say this about him:

I love this man, who runs to meet his ruin;
And sure the gods, like me, are fond of him:
His virtues lie so mingled with his crimes,
As would confound their choice to punish one,
And not reward the other.

We’ve talked here before about this – the idea that the presumptively great virtues inescapably come with equally great vices. Where this is the case, it seems, sadly, that the former inevitably succumb to the latter. It is the person’s vices that ultimately determine his or her fate; the virtues merely determine, by their scope, the scale of the ensuing tragedy.

But what if these aren’t two sides of the same coin? What if they are the continuous surface of the same entity; in truth, always revealing the same thing, albeit in differing ways? Or, perhaps, the matter is like the masks of Tragedy and Comedy: whichever is worn at any given moment, the same actor, facing in the same direction, is wearing it.

Is this the real meaning of the colossal collapses we have experienced, crashing on us like waves breaking over one industry after another, over the past decade or so? How much of the grand scale of these failures is the result not merely of the terrific heights from which they fell, but also of their very ascension to them under the same leadership?

Was the hubris, much talked of lately, that brought their ruin not merely the consequence of their success, but its cause as well? Are the virtues of these so-called leaders not so mingled with what are increasingly adjudged their crimes as to essentially reflect not two confounding aspects of their characters, but one coherent truth about them?

And we – should we not be more cautious about rewarding one, lest we find it necessary to punish the very same later? Indeed, might we be rather less distinct than we flatter ourselves to be from these destructive dynamics, but rather fully complicit in them?

And yet amid the rubble born of this delusion we retreat back into it. We talk on and on about individual leadership, how we need more of it, how it is composed of this or graces us with that, how we may not know what it is but we recognize it when we see it.

Perhaps that last is true, but we just don’t recognize it for what it truly is, what it actually reflects about us – or does to us. But it just seems like madness to me.

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Today’s tip: John Phillips has been doing an incisive and even-handed series on this topic of intense current interest, and this installment is a perfect example of why you should stop over to peruse it, and to make his site a part of your daily reading.

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Technorati Tags: Dryden, All for Love, Antony, virtue, vice, fate, tragedy, industry, leadership, hubris, success, crime, character, truth, reward, punish, individual leadership, John Phillips

The issues we’ve discussed here over the past weeks revolve around ill-considered or non-existent premises for individual leadership. These, as we’ve attempted to show, result in attempts to unthinkingly apply antiquated models today, or in dreamy notions that are propelled to our attention with great fanfare and excitement, but that then, lacking foundation, simply drift pointlessly and aimlessly away.

There is one thing we do fairly consistently, though. As we develop leaders in accordance with each succeeding leadership enthusiasm, we encourage them all to rely unquestioningly on those skills, and to assert them with a sure-footedness calculated to inspire the attraction and compliance of followers.

But if we can agree that people are less likely to follow an uncertain trumpet, does it follow that they should uncritically follow a certain one?

Here are some more questions for you:

• Why is it that we focus with such angst and hope on the reputed leadership characteristics without more carefully considering the question of whether there is a positive relationship between them and successful performance?
• Is it not entirely possible that there is no such relationship at all?
• Do we not have sufficient evidence, actually, that there is not?
• Alternatively, can the evidence not be interpreted to suggest that whatever relationship there is might be a negative one?
• Have you never known someone who had all the putative leadership traits – including the ability to get people to eagerly and willingly follow – but whose projects seemed in retrospect to be off the mark?
• Have you ever understood a colleague to be a universally well-regarded and genuinely successful “leader” who also, when you thought about it, had none of the generally touted evidences of personal leadership?
• What do you do, personally, when confronted with a promotion choice between someone whose record is unremarkable, perhaps even spotty, but who positively glistens with leadership charisma, and another whose contributions have been increasingly and demonstratively indicative of his growing worth and importance to the company, but who just doesn’t seem to look or act the part?

These point to only a few problems with the leadership dialogue as it is conducted today – and, what’s more, not even to the worst one. We will take a tour through some of these in the coming days.

Thanks for joining us. See you tomorrow.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of the power of overriding individual leadership, please see this Wally Bock piece on how that played out at Home Depot over the years.

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Technorati Tags: premise, individual leadership, leader, leadership, skill, follower, characteristic, performance, trait, promotion, charisma, Wally Bock, Home Depot

We saw yesterday that Occam’s Razor cuts both ways. But it certainly is worth keeping close at hand. As in so many things, an even more serious problem than oversimplifying an issue can be the obfuscation of it with superficial complexity.

Many people thrive on this. They confuse simplicity with a lack of refinement, and presume that only great, imposingly labyrinthine conceptual structures reflect true sophistication.

This problem can appear in two forms. The most common is to toss intellectual fairy dust over a topic, creating delightfully ornate and energetic edifices all around it. They blink and shine and amaze, but fade away, essentially a transitory distraction from that which they falsely embellish.

The other is to probe with conspicuous eruditeness into the origins of the subject. With respect to leadership, though, this is usually done – as are so many things in this area – with the desired result in mind. Consequently, the foundation either seems dangerously adulterated with distantly tangential components, or precariously unsuited to the structure erected on it.

Occam’s Razor teaches us to select the theory that answers all our questions while making the fewest assumptions, and positing the smallest number of constructs from them. Those that are devoted to complexity for its own sake, on the mistaken belief that concepts, in order to be valid, must be impenetrable, usually make one or both of those errors while missing the overall point altogether.

But there’s another aspect to the problem that is more mystifyingly persistent, yet. We will take a look at that tomorrow, before turning to some of the more pernicious implications of all of this. Looking forward to seeing you then!

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Today’s tips: Yesterday’s post was about the peculiar relationship often asserted to exist between individual leadership and charismatic swagger. But Cultural Offering points us to another important aspect of the term. Please stop over to click through to it. I have linked you to the main page, rather than the post, because if you haven’t already, you are going to want to become accustomed to a daily visit to see what he’s noticed over there, and what he has to say about it.

Speaking of looking to the origins of an issue, please see how this is done with eloquent directness and relevance, by John Phillips.

Books on history typically aren’t reviewed here, and this one won’t be either. But I nevertheless definitely want to encourage you – as managers – to read Adam Nicolson’s “Seize the Fire,” about the 1805 naval battle of Trafalgar. You will learn more about the dynamics of leadership in an organization – and their management – than even the author may have intended. Many thanks to Michael Wade for the tip.

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Technorati Tags: Occam’s Razor, complexity, simplicity, refinement, sophistication, leadership, theory, assumption, individual leadership, charisma, Cultural Offering, John Phillips, manager, Adam Nicolson, Trafalgar, organization, management, Michael Wade