Managing Leadership^®

The past several posts have discussed Professor John Adair’s comments to the author about Managing Leadership. In general, these comments were very positive and were greatly appreciated (to see them in a new window, please click here). However, Professor Adair also posed some astute reservations, and the current set of posts is designed to explain and address them. Last week, we outlined one of Professor Adair’s observations about the concept of organizational leadership as described in Managing Leadership.

Managing Leadership describes organizational leadership as

inherent in the very nature of the organization. It arises from the peculiar relationships that form among people joined together in a collaborative effort. As such, it takes on an identity of its own, existing in these relationships, rather than merely in the individuals who enter into them.

According to Managing Leadership, the executive’s role is to manage this leadership - not supplant it.

Professor Adair, however, maintains a “high doctrine of strategic leadership,” which, he argues, is the legitimate leadership “role” discharged by the individual leader. This role contains a set of core functions, and the leader must possess or develop the ability to discharge them. These core functions may be summarized as: 1) vision, 2) strategic thinking or planning, 3) management and administration, 4) maintenance of organizational equilibrium in the midst of continual adaptation, 5) development of organizational spirit or esprit de corps, 6) maintenance of healthy contact with other institutions, and 7) leadership development. I will not go into these at great length, here, due to space constraints. However, in an upcoming post I will provide a review of Professor Adair’s excellent book, “Effective Strategic Leadership,” in which these concepts are explained.

For the present, we will take another look at these core functions from the perspective of the concepts of Managing Leadership. As mentioned last week, the basis of this review can be found in two key chapters of the book.

Chapter Six, “Leadership from Within,” completes the argument for the core concept of organizational leadership made in Managing Leadership. Here, the importance of group cohesion and its role in generating organizational leadership is explained. Further, the manager’s role in developing an awareness of these, and the ability to cultivate and harness them to the benefit of the organization, is emphasized. The manager’s role is to use these phenomenon to help generate constructive organizational leadership, and to promote organizational self- and environmental-awareness. This addresses the fourth through sixth of Professor Adair’s core leadership functions.

Chapter Seven, “Managing Leadership,” discusses the manner in which the book’s concept of organizational leadership is used by management to address the traditionally defined leadership functions. Here, the manner in which management shares or generates the expression of the organization’s leadership functions is described in greater detail. In particular, the chapter emphasizes three areas of import for Professor Adair’s core leadership functions:

First, vision is properly expressed by the owner (board, establishing institution, shareholders), not by the senior executive. The executive’s arrogation of this function is at the bottom of what is wrong with the prescriptions of the modern leadership movement, and of many of today’s institutional scandals. The chapter explains why and how to properly address the issue of vision in an organization. This addresses Adair’s first core function.

Second, regarding the second core function described by Professor Adair, the chapter supports the notion that decision-making is properly a managerial function, and that strategic decision making should be reserved largely to management. Organizational leadership should support the strategic functioning of the organization. However, the management of this leadership’s expression of the organization’s activities should be directed principally at the operational and tactical levels. But the chapter also explains why this is a managerial - not a leadership - issue, supporting the book’s contention that, in an organization, management must be maintained in a superior position to leadership.

Finally, the chapter (and the book, generally) argues throughout that management should address itself to understanding, cultivating, and harnessing all available assets to the benefit of the organization’s ability to accomplish its goals. This includes the organization’s inherent leadership. This addresses Professor Adair’s third and seventh core leadership functions.

Looked at from the perspective of Managing Leadership, Professor Adair’s concept of strategic leadership is not incompatible with the concept of the management of organizational leadership. The role of the leader, as argued by him, is essentially the role of the senior executive manager, as argued in Managing Leadership. One major exception is with regard to the expression of organizational vision. Certainly, vision is fundamental to leadership, whether you accept Professor Adair’s or my idea of where that leadership originates. However, my argument is that in an organization, entrepreneurial and organizational leadership need to be distinguished. Vision properly belongs to the entrepreneur, or owner. When the operation of the organization passes to professional management, the ownership of its vision doesn’t - it stays with the owners. The organizational leadership (whether from within or atop) is hired help. It does what it’s told - it doesn’t decide what that is.

Next week, we’ll move on to debate another of Professor Adair’s observations. We hope you have enjoyed this discussion - and that you’ve been persuaded, as well! Please let us know your thoughts.

Coming up for discussion:

In the coming weeks we will continue to review Professor Adair’s observations about Managing Leadership. Stop in to see how we address his ideas about inspiration, the relationship between leadership and the leader, and the relationship between the leader and the group. We will also discuss further his concept of strategic leadership, by means of a brief review of his excellent book, released in 2002, “Effective Strategic Leadership.”