Managing Leadership^®

This is pretty big. Its importance to leadership has been talked about for millennia, from admonitions against sounding an uncertain trumpet to the most modern calls for leaders who confidently pursue, as one of today’s most celebrated academic gurus put it recently, “Big Hairy Audacious Goals.”

It must be said, the quality of the rhetoric would seem to have degraded a bit over the centuries - perhaps that of the thinking behind it has, as well. Let’s take a look at that.

On the face of it, confidence in one’s intelligence, discernment, and ability would appear to be an obvious plus for a manager - or, certainly, for a leader, if you must insist on that term. But how much, well - confidence, should we have in someone who is so sure of him or herself?

Many find this sort of self-confidence positively inspirational, capable of transforming a vacillating, uncertain organization into an irresistible dynamo, all of its force united in a laser-like focus on a compellingly enunciated aim. Some even identify this as perhaps the key quality of leadership, the fundamental requirement for a sure-footed advance into an uncertain future.

What’s more, the rest of us, burdened and hobbled by cognitive dissonance, uncertain of what all the events around us mean - even of which ones apply to us - are desperate for someone who seems able to cut through to the heart of the matter and find something solid to build traction on. We welcome anyone who can dispel the disorienting uncertainty and fill us with comforting resolve.

But the question is: what need, exactly, are we satisfying by taking recourse to the swaggering bravos that ride in to our rescue? Where have these square-jawed, clear-eyed visionaries, for all their apparently attractive qualities, led us in the past? What evidence is there, really, that the possessors of these qualities are the best custodians of our fortunes?

Krishna Kumar, who authors Thought Clusters, observed in a comment to Tuesday’s post on this topic that “. . . people prefer a confident (but wrong) person to a correct person who deals in nuances and detail.” Indeed, he went on, “. . . loyalty of their followers is a more important consideration to many leaders than other traits. They may ignore all kinds of sins done by them as long as they gain their support.”

Does that ring true to you, about leaders like this, who establish their leadership on the basis of their rock-solid self-confidence in their own abilities and vision? We saw, perhaps, an example in yesterday’s essay that may give us pause in this regard. You may want, as well, to visit this one, also alluded to yesterday, for another perspective on the distortions this sort of overweening self-confidence can generate.

The overall result may be a sort of frantic, mutually reinforcing co-dependence that desperately denies evidence of its lack of veracity. Is that the sort of dynamic you want developing in your organization? What sort of dynamics would you expect to unfold there if you place such a leader at the top; one whose position is predicated upon a personal expression of unshakable trust in his or her inherent ability?

We’ll take one more quick look at how this ties in to our overall discussion, tomorrow, before moving on to see if we can pick out a light at the end of this tunnel. I hope to see you then!

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Here is a list of all the posts in this popular series:

1. Radiating Imbecility
2. Rays of hope
3. Pulsating inconsistency
4. Radiating confidence
5. Blind faith
6. Mirror, mirror . . .
7. Socratic genius
8. Socratic ignorance
9. Socratic method
10. First principles
11. The Socratic attitude
12. Why we do what we do
13. Recon by fire

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Technorati Tags: leadership, leader, guru, confidence, intelligence, ability, manager, self-confidence, inspiration, transform, organization, cognitive, dissonance, uncertainty, resolve, Krishna Kumar, follower, vision, perspective, Dunning-Kruger effect

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