Not Strictly PG - Leadership
Qualityworld
We don't need another hero
Research from three associates of Ashridge Business School has brought to light the leadership values for the 21st century. Gone is the CEO superhero dispensing wisdom from on high, and in its place is the human leader with frailties and weaknesses like the rest of us. Here, Ashridge associates George Binney, Gerhard Wilke and Colin Williams reveal their blueprint for legendary leaders
Some people believe that leadership is something you are born with. They think it a quality possessed by a few great figures (usually men) who have the ability to see ahead, take courageous stands and inspire others.
It is often associated with those who have charisma - an almost magical ability to persuade and inspire others. It is something a few demonstrate from the school playground onwards. You either have it or you don't. It's not something you can develop. We at Ashridge Business School disagree, and suggest there are three themes of living leadership.
Leading happens between people
Leadership is not the property of the leader - nor of the followers. It is what happens between people in a particular moment or situation. Leadership is a social process, the result of interactions between individuals and within groups. It is both very personal and a product of the overall business and wider organisational context.
Leaders are on stage, playing a role for and with others. They embody certain qualities or characteristics for other people. They become public property onto which other people project things, whether the leaders like it or not. Sometimes people make their leader a hero, sometimes a scapegoat. Leaders can't avoid these dynamics but they can work with them and look for opportunities to harness them in the service of their organisations. To be effective they have to focus on and connect with the people around them and not just the work to be done. People work for people. It is the quality of the relationships between those designated to lead and those who depend on them that is the vital ingredient.
If leadership happens between people, it is important to look at the dynamics of the situation, organisation or group as well as the individual leader. Leadership books have focused too much on the individual; we need to look at the people around the leader, and how leadership works for them. Instead of seeing the leader as the 'top dog' - doing things to organisations from on high - we believe leaders should be thought of as part of the organisation, in the middle, having an influence but also being shaped by the organisation and the business context.
Leading in context
The leadership that comes to exist between a leader and followers is context-specific. The social and political environment, the business situation and the culture of an organisation (its characteristic patterns of thinking and behaving) shape the type of leadership that is given. Yes, the personality and working style of the leader are significant but more important is the context within which people are working.
For many people this is an uncomfortable conclusion. They are so used to thinking - or taking for granted - that individuals can change the world that it can be shocking to be reminded about the limits within which leaders work.
We found that leaders could not transform their business environment, organisational culture and people and group dynamics in the way they hoped. All but one of the leaders studied set out to achieve a complete change - a business turn-around, a fundamental overhaul of culture or the development of a new enterprise. Try as they would to wrench their organisations into submission, their organisations bit back. Without exception, the transformations they sought were not achieved. The results were more down to earth than the original expectations - though mainly they were regarded by their companies as great successes.
Successful leadership is a living thing. It cannot be bottled and reduced to a simple formula. What constitutes leadership is subtle and situational. In one moment it can be to direct people, to say clearly, 'this is what needs to be done, this is what I want you to do.' Or it can be to offer a goal or objective and ask others to decide how to get there. In one moment, it can be to face uncertainty, to say, 'I don't know where to go or how to get there but together we'll find out.'
Because context is so important, what works in one moment, with one group of people, does not work with another. You can test this by seeing how people evoke different responses at different times and in different situations. In one context an individual gets a powerful response from others and is able to lead; at another time he tries to lead but no one follows.
People recognise this pattern but don't want to discuss it. It's time to talk openly about the realities of leading, what can be achieved and what can't. The leaders in our study became more effective when they accepted the contexts they were in and focused on how to turn them to their advantage. Instead of wringing their hands at difficult business environments they looked for footholds for the direction they wished to travel. Instead of denouncing their organisational cultures, they looked for the 'magic' in them on which they might build.
The damage done by the transforming hero concept
Unreal expectations
'Today's CEOs have little time to prove themselves', according to a new national study by public affairs firm Burson-Marsteller. 'Building CEO Capital reveals that today's CEO has only five earnings quarters on average to prove him or herself'.
Followers lean back
The heroic leader idea encourages followers to be passive onlookers. The natural reaction, if the leader has all the limelight, the applause and the rewards, is to lean back and think: 'OK, you're the hero, you do it. Only don't expect too much of us.'
The connection between leader and followers is destroyed
If the leader is the hero, then there is no chance of the mutual respect, trust and engagement that is essential to 'getting connected'. If you treat others as the audience for your performance, then they will applaud from time to time - or throw rotten eggs - but they are unlikely to get up on stage and help you.
Leaders feel they can't live up to the ideal
The identification of leadership with lone individuals standing apart and wrestling their organisations into shape paradoxically disempowers leaders and stops them giving their best. The leaders themselves feel they cannot live up to the hero ideal.
People are most effective when they bring themselves to leading
If leaders are to connect with others and understand the context, they need to bring themselves to the job of leading. Leaders can do this in the following ways:
they come across to others as genuinely human, and don't wear any kind of mask
they draw on all their humanity, their intelligence, their emotions and their intuition. They don't stay in their heads and draw solely on their rational selves. They make use of all their senses and intelligence
they remember what they know from their life experiences and make use of them in the world of work
Our research suggested that when leaders did this, in a particular moment and context, the people around them responded to their lead. 'Bringing yourself' is different from 'being yourself '. Because leading happens between people, any leader is on stage and is performing in the best sense. At the same time people sense quickly if others are wearing a mask or pretending. The people who work with you are also weighing you up instinctively: 'Is this someone I can trust? Can I get a feel for the real person here?'
There isn't a particular type of leader - directive or consultative, outgoing or introverted, visionary or practical - who is more successful than others. Our research highlighted many different styles of leadership that were effective. What mattered was that the leaders were playing a role that suited them; it was one that they could credibly bring themselves to and one that those following saw as authoritative.
Another part to 'bringing yourself ' is the ability to come alive in the moment, to be fully present with others. The most effective leading we saw was when leaders had a quality of personal presence which was remarkable. At their best, people who were with them had a sense that they had all the leader's attention. They were focused on the people with them and not distracted by other pressures. The leaders weren't looking over their shoulders at the next person, the bosses in the background or the next task. They were here, now, concentrating on the people around them.
The idealised picture of leadership that many managers have needs to be tackled. In our research we saw many leaders and followers trapped in the idea that leaders should be transforming heroes.
It is so pervasive in the business and organisational world that often people don't see the model. They take for granted that leaders should be or act a certain way - even if it is not how they are in reality. The picture of heroic leaders can be inspiring as it plays to the age-old need for heroes. Yet, in the end, it has been deeply damaging. We have a bold message. In the last 20 years the business and organisational world has overdosed on the idea of leaders as transformational heroes. The age-old desire for heroes has been overlain with a largely American business model. Leadership has often been identified with transformation and vice versa. In a time when people are generally sceptical of heroic figures, business keeps looking for great individuals to bring about monumental change.
Our research indicates that the model doesn't work, has many damaging consequences and is now crumbling. It's time to kick the habit and get back to reality - time for a more realistic and flexible picture of leadership to emerge.
A summary of the research
The transforming hero picture of leadership is everywhere in the organisational world. In many places it is taken for granted that leadership involves visioning, knowing, directing, aligning and measuring.
It's a myth leaders could not live up to and the pretence is becoming unsustainable and deeply damaging. It preaches empowerment but in reality overburdens leaders and paralyses leaders and followers. People are looking for a new picture of leadership.
There has been much talk in recent years of 'empowerment'. Yet what we have experienced more often is organisations skilled at disempowering their potential leaders. In many places there is a lack of leadership. People at all levels of an organisation fail to take opportunities to lead. They don't speak up when they feel there is something important to say; they don't challenge when things are going wrong; they don't follow through on good ideas. To understand why there is this leadership shortfall, we need to look in more detail at the picture of leadership that dominates the organisational and business world.
The idea of 'transformational heroes' was neatly summed up for us by the number two in an organisation (who was criticising his boss for 'not understanding what leadership is'). 'A leader', he said, 'must have a clear vision of what he wants the organisation to be in the future. He must communicate the vision powerfully and inspire others to adopt it. And he must demonstrate a steely resolve to align decisions and actions so that they support the vision. He should measure performance to ensure that the organisation is moving in the right direction and that corrective action is taken if actions are not aligned.'
And we can add that in the modern version of transformational heroes, the leader is also tasked with 'empowering' people to find their own ways of contributing to the vision. Leaders are seen as rodeo riders; the more resistance there is, the more leaders need to push back and bring them under control. They seek to impose their will and make their organisations understand where their true interests lie. The spotlight in this picture of leadership is on the heroic individual and his qualities (it usually is a man), his experience and understanding, his determination to drive through change. The clear, if implicit, message is that the strength and ability of the leader are the decisive factors.
Business leaders are regularly heard committing to turn around their companies, to change their cultures and ways of working, or to transform them into enterprises that will deliver reliable increases in shareholder value year after year. Others promise to reshape their companies and move to faster growing or more profitable sectors. Politicians and managers promise to transform public services. The pressures on them to promise to change the world are intense.
Throughout history people have had a need for heroes. Identifying with famous figures can make followers feel stronger and more powerful. It can seem to simplify complex problems and make them apparently easier to tackle. However, it can also mean the abdication of responsibility, sitting back and passing the buck to the leader.
The transforming hero
Our research demonstrated that the heroic idea of leadership was pervasive - for leaders and followers. Everywhere we went we met it. It exists as an idea, often as an accusation: 'Here's what I - or my leader - ought to be.' The transformational hero concept sits on the shoulders of managers as a sense of what they ought to be doing as leaders - even if they cannot quite live up to the ideal. Other ideas of leadership - the leader as servant, steward or figurehead - have been crowded out. People believe that if leaders are not there to transform their companies or organisations, they are not real leaders.
A transformational leader is:
visionary
inspiring - 'an outstanding communicator'
a 'doer' with 'a steely resolve'
heroic
empowering
All but one of the leaders in our research were called upon to bring about transformations - the turn-around of a failing business, a radical change in organisational culture or the creation of a new enterprise. The only one who was not - because he was waiting to take over from another leader - was soon parachuted into another division of his company and asked to transform the costs structure and service level of that business.
Leaders seemed to have the idea that not only were they there to bring about transformation but that they needed to be inspiring individuals and outstanding communicators to achieve the required change. Communication has become a priority for many leaders and business writers. The assumption is that the leader knows where the organisation should go - and how to get there - but occasionally does not do enough to communicate that direction to colleagues.
We often heard managers say that organisations from time to time need a 'tough guy' - someone who is insensitive to people, ruthless and determined to ensure that they confront the changes that are needed if they are to succeed. We were struck in our research by how powerful this folk image is, how often managers talk about the risk of organisations becoming complacent unless challenged, occasionally, by this 'tough guy'. Yet we found in our research that transformational leadership is a myth, an idea that exists in the minds of people but that bears little relationship to the leadership that is provided, day-to-day, in real organisations. People know at some level that the transformational hero is an unattainable ideal. Think about it. How many transforming heroes do you know in your organisation? In our research we saw many people attempting and none succeeding to be a transforming hero. Suddenly, the Emperor has no clothes.
From hero to zero
The recent history of business and organisations is littered with examples of leaders who sought to bring about transformations only to find their dreams crumble to dust. We remember colleagues only a few years ago who identified Enron as a new type of business model and Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling and the other leaders there as visionaries who were pioneering the 'new economy'. Now Enron seems like a very old type of business model, the latest in a long line of business scandals in which managers encourage investors to part with their funds by persuading them that they have found a new way of making money.
Not long ago, Jack Welch, the chief executive of General Electric, was held up as a business icon in the US and Percy Barnevik, the chief executive of ABB, was a hero in Europe. Both were credited with transforming their companies and turning dull engineering companies into reliable money-making machines. Now these achievements are seen more critically and the regular increases in shareholder value were not so assured after all.
In our own research - on a much less dramatic scale - the would-be transforming heroes did not achieve the transformations they sought. All the leaders in our research had to let go of an initial dream and come to terms with a more ordinary, yet still satisfactory, achievement. With one exception, they were all seen by their organisations as successful leaders, yet none achieved the transformation they originally sought.
Case study
In the 1960s, British General Electric Company, was run by Sir Arnold Weinstock, a brilliant but uncharismatic leader. Weinstock managed cautiously, extracting profit and building up a legendary cash pile. Twenty years later, Weinstock retired and was replaced by a would-be transforming hero, George Simpson. Simpson transformed the company. He sold all the defence and heavy electrical engineering businesses, bought many telecoms companies in the US and declared that in future the company - now to be called Marconi - would be a high-growth technology business. In two years the transformation was complete - only it was not the transformation that Simpson had in mind but a journey to near-bankruptcy. Far from being a high growth area, the telecoms market crashed, companies in the US turned out to be much less valuable than expected and the famous cash pile evaporated. Shareholder value of £35bn was turned into half a billion and innumerable individual lives were turned upside down.
The research
The work of Binney, Wilke and Williams differed from most management research in that they lived alongside leaders and their organisations for periods of 12 to 24 months. The research took four years and was in three phases.
The first phase involved over 40 interviews with company chairs, chief executives, human resources directors and senior head-hunters across Europe. The purpose was to hear the issues as perceived by these key players in leadership transitions and thereby map out the ground they needed to cover in the main part of the research.
The centrepiece of the work was a set of eight case study stories that were researched in depth. The researchers accompanied new chief executives, general managers and heads of function - and the people around them - for between 12 and 24 months in their new jobs. They talked to a range of people - such as non-executive directors, senior and middle managers, human resources specialists, as well as chief executives - in each organisation. Most valuably, they held review sessions with each leader and their team to make sense together of the leading and following in the group.
The researchers corroborated what was found in the case studies with many hundreds of managers and leaders in meetings, workshops and conferences across Europe.
Transformations don't happen to order
But don't organisations sometimes need transformations and isn't it part of the job of leaders to lead change? Of course. Our point is that transformations do not happen to order. What we saw in our research was a reminder that transformations in organisations do not occur because one person, or even a number of leaders, wills the change. They happen as the result of the complex interaction of business circumstances, political and social forces, technical change, organisational culture, the dynamics of groups and the choices of both leaders and followers.
Don't leaders have a huge impact on their organisations? Yes, they do. But there are two qualifications. First, it takes time. We found in the research that it takes between 18 and 24 months for the transition connected with a new leader to work through and the new leader to become fully effective. Until that time the new leaders were too anxious and the people around them too unsettled for the leader to have full authority. It takes many more years for powerful leaders to leave their imprint on organisations.
Second, the impact of leaders is not necessarily the one they expect or want. Effective leaders are constantly learning about the impact of their statements, actions and behaviours because they know from experience that the impact they have is often not what they intend. You say one thing, but often people hear another. You focus on one issue but people are more interested in something else. You take a position that you think is important but no one notices while another message you sent out inadvertently strikes a chord for many. The most important signal a leader may send out may be a chance conversation or remark or action that at the time he or she hardly notices.
The gap between intention and impact does not exist because leaders are stupid or incompetent. It's how human interactions work. Everything you do as a leader has to pass through other people's filters and be interpreted by them. There's no use complaining about this. The best you can do as a leader is have some good feedback mechanisms to see what the impact is.
Biography
George Binney is an experienced business academic and consultant who for 12 years has worked with Ashridge teaching business strategy and leadership. Formerly a senior manager in Courtaulds and GEC and a consultant with McKinsey & Co, he trained as a barrister and has a MBA. He can be contacted at e: george@binney.info
Gerhard Wilke is a group analyst who has developed a consultancy method that combines anthropological and psychoanalytic thinking. He has coaching, leadership development and culture change clients across Germany, the UK, Denmark and Switzerland. He can be contacted at e: gerhard@gerhardwilke.com
Colin Williams specialises in leadership development and organisational change. He designs and runs management development globally and has an MBA. He has worked with Ashridge for 20 years in a variety of consulting, teaching and management roles. He can be contacted at e: colin.williams@atlas.co.uk
We don't need another hero
Research from three associates of Ashridge Business School has brought to light the leadership values for the 21st century. Gone is the CEO superhero dispensing wisdom from on high, and in its place is the human leader with frailties and weaknesses like the rest of us. Here, Ashridge associates George Binney, Gerhard Wilke and Colin Williams reveal their blueprint for legendary leaders
Some people believe that leadership is something you are born with. They think it a quality possessed by a few great figures (usually men) who have the ability to see ahead, take courageous stands and inspire others.
It is often associated with those who have charisma - an almost magical ability to persuade and inspire others. It is something a few demonstrate from the school playground onwards. You either have it or you don't. It's not something you can develop. We at Ashridge Business School disagree, and suggest there are three themes of living leadership.
Leading happens between people
Leadership is not the property of the leader - nor of the followers. It is what happens between people in a particular moment or situation. Leadership is a social process, the result of interactions between individuals and within groups. It is both very personal and a product of the overall business and wider organisational context.
Leaders are on stage, playing a role for and with others. They embody certain qualities or characteristics for other people. They become public property onto which other people project things, whether the leaders like it or not. Sometimes people make their leader a hero, sometimes a scapegoat. Leaders can't avoid these dynamics but they can work with them and look for opportunities to harness them in the service of their organisations. To be effective they have to focus on and connect with the people around them and not just the work to be done. People work for people. It is the quality of the relationships between those designated to lead and those who depend on them that is the vital ingredient.
If leadership happens between people, it is important to look at the dynamics of the situation, organisation or group as well as the individual leader. Leadership books have focused too much on the individual; we need to look at the people around the leader, and how leadership works for them. Instead of seeing the leader as the 'top dog' - doing things to organisations from on high - we believe leaders should be thought of as part of the organisation, in the middle, having an influence but also being shaped by the organisation and the business context.
Leading in context
The leadership that comes to exist between a leader and followers is context-specific. The social and political environment, the business situation and the culture of an organisation (its characteristic patterns of thinking and behaving) shape the type of leadership that is given. Yes, the personality and working style of the leader are significant but more important is the context within which people are working.
For many people this is an uncomfortable conclusion. They are so used to thinking - or taking for granted - that individuals can change the world that it can be shocking to be reminded about the limits within which leaders work.
We found that leaders could not transform their business environment, organisational culture and people and group dynamics in the way they hoped. All but one of the leaders studied set out to achieve a complete change - a business turn-around, a fundamental overhaul of culture or the development of a new enterprise. Try as they would to wrench their organisations into submission, their organisations bit back. Without exception, the transformations they sought were not achieved. The results were more down to earth than the original expectations - though mainly they were regarded by their companies as great successes.
Successful leadership is a living thing. It cannot be bottled and reduced to a simple formula. What constitutes leadership is subtle and situational. In one moment it can be to direct people, to say clearly, 'this is what needs to be done, this is what I want you to do.' Or it can be to offer a goal or objective and ask others to decide how to get there. In one moment, it can be to face uncertainty, to say, 'I don't know where to go or how to get there but together we'll find out.'
Because context is so important, what works in one moment, with one group of people, does not work with another. You can test this by seeing how people evoke different responses at different times and in different situations. In one context an individual gets a powerful response from others and is able to lead; at another time he tries to lead but no one follows.
People recognise this pattern but don't want to discuss it. It's time to talk openly about the realities of leading, what can be achieved and what can't. The leaders in our study became more effective when they accepted the contexts they were in and focused on how to turn them to their advantage. Instead of wringing their hands at difficult business environments they looked for footholds for the direction they wished to travel. Instead of denouncing their organisational cultures, they looked for the 'magic' in them on which they might build.
The damage done by the transforming hero concept
Unreal expectations
'Today's CEOs have little time to prove themselves', according to a new national study by public affairs firm Burson-Marsteller. 'Building CEO Capital reveals that today's CEO has only five earnings quarters on average to prove him or herself'.
Followers lean back
The heroic leader idea encourages followers to be passive onlookers. The natural reaction, if the leader has all the limelight, the applause and the rewards, is to lean back and think: 'OK, you're the hero, you do it. Only don't expect too much of us.'
The connection between leader and followers is destroyed
If the leader is the hero, then there is no chance of the mutual respect, trust and engagement that is essential to 'getting connected'. If you treat others as the audience for your performance, then they will applaud from time to time - or throw rotten eggs - but they are unlikely to get up on stage and help you.
Leaders feel they can't live up to the ideal
The identification of leadership with lone individuals standing apart and wrestling their organisations into shape paradoxically disempowers leaders and stops them giving their best. The leaders themselves feel they cannot live up to the hero ideal.
People are most effective when they bring themselves to leading
If leaders are to connect with others and understand the context, they need to bring themselves to the job of leading. Leaders can do this in the following ways:
they come across to others as genuinely human, and don't wear any kind of mask
they draw on all their humanity, their intelligence, their emotions and their intuition. They don't stay in their heads and draw solely on their rational selves. They make use of all their senses and intelligence
they remember what they know from their life experiences and make use of them in the world of work
Our research suggested that when leaders did this, in a particular moment and context, the people around them responded to their lead. 'Bringing yourself' is different from 'being yourself '. Because leading happens between people, any leader is on stage and is performing in the best sense. At the same time people sense quickly if others are wearing a mask or pretending. The people who work with you are also weighing you up instinctively: 'Is this someone I can trust? Can I get a feel for the real person here?'
There isn't a particular type of leader - directive or consultative, outgoing or introverted, visionary or practical - who is more successful than others. Our research highlighted many different styles of leadership that were effective. What mattered was that the leaders were playing a role that suited them; it was one that they could credibly bring themselves to and one that those following saw as authoritative.
Another part to 'bringing yourself ' is the ability to come alive in the moment, to be fully present with others. The most effective leading we saw was when leaders had a quality of personal presence which was remarkable. At their best, people who were with them had a sense that they had all the leader's attention. They were focused on the people with them and not distracted by other pressures. The leaders weren't looking over their shoulders at the next person, the bosses in the background or the next task. They were here, now, concentrating on the people around them.
Lessons from the research:
leading is a social process, it happens between people
the success or failure of leaders is dependent on their ability to work within the context
it also depends on the ability of individuals to bring themselves, warts and all
using your life experience is more productive than seeking to perfect your leadership competences
you don't have to be a superhero to be a leader
what works is to get connected, to get real, to acknowledge your limits and value who you really are
it takes time
The idealised picture of leadership that many managers have needs to be tackled. In our research we saw many leaders and followers trapped in the idea that leaders should be transforming heroes.
It is so pervasive in the business and organisational world that often people don't see the model. They take for granted that leaders should be or act a certain way - even if it is not how they are in reality. The picture of heroic leaders can be inspiring as it plays to the age-old need for heroes. Yet, in the end, it has been deeply damaging. We have a bold message. In the last 20 years the business and organisational world has overdosed on the idea of leaders as transformational heroes. The age-old desire for heroes has been overlain with a largely American business model. Leadership has often been identified with transformation and vice versa. In a time when people are generally sceptical of heroic figures, business keeps looking for great individuals to bring about monumental change.
Our research indicates that the model doesn't work, has many damaging consequences and is now crumbling. It's time to kick the habit and get back to reality - time for a more realistic and flexible picture of leadership to emerge.
A summary of the research
The transforming hero picture of leadership is everywhere in the organisational world. In many places it is taken for granted that leadership involves visioning, knowing, directing, aligning and measuring.
It's a myth leaders could not live up to and the pretence is becoming unsustainable and deeply damaging. It preaches empowerment but in reality overburdens leaders and paralyses leaders and followers. People are looking for a new picture of leadership.
There has been much talk in recent years of 'empowerment'. Yet what we have experienced more often is organisations skilled at disempowering their potential leaders. In many places there is a lack of leadership. People at all levels of an organisation fail to take opportunities to lead. They don't speak up when they feel there is something important to say; they don't challenge when things are going wrong; they don't follow through on good ideas. To understand why there is this leadership shortfall, we need to look in more detail at the picture of leadership that dominates the organisational and business world.
The idea of 'transformational heroes' was neatly summed up for us by the number two in an organisation (who was criticising his boss for 'not understanding what leadership is'). 'A leader', he said, 'must have a clear vision of what he wants the organisation to be in the future. He must communicate the vision powerfully and inspire others to adopt it. And he must demonstrate a steely resolve to align decisions and actions so that they support the vision. He should measure performance to ensure that the organisation is moving in the right direction and that corrective action is taken if actions are not aligned.'
And we can add that in the modern version of transformational heroes, the leader is also tasked with 'empowering' people to find their own ways of contributing to the vision. Leaders are seen as rodeo riders; the more resistance there is, the more leaders need to push back and bring them under control. They seek to impose their will and make their organisations understand where their true interests lie. The spotlight in this picture of leadership is on the heroic individual and his qualities (it usually is a man), his experience and understanding, his determination to drive through change. The clear, if implicit, message is that the strength and ability of the leader are the decisive factors.
Business leaders are regularly heard committing to turn around their companies, to change their cultures and ways of working, or to transform them into enterprises that will deliver reliable increases in shareholder value year after year. Others promise to reshape their companies and move to faster growing or more profitable sectors. Politicians and managers promise to transform public services. The pressures on them to promise to change the world are intense.
Throughout history people have had a need for heroes. Identifying with famous figures can make followers feel stronger and more powerful. It can seem to simplify complex problems and make them apparently easier to tackle. However, it can also mean the abdication of responsibility, sitting back and passing the buck to the leader.
The transforming hero
Our research demonstrated that the heroic idea of leadership was pervasive - for leaders and followers. Everywhere we went we met it. It exists as an idea, often as an accusation: 'Here's what I - or my leader - ought to be.' The transformational hero concept sits on the shoulders of managers as a sense of what they ought to be doing as leaders - even if they cannot quite live up to the ideal. Other ideas of leadership - the leader as servant, steward or figurehead - have been crowded out. People believe that if leaders are not there to transform their companies or organisations, they are not real leaders.
A transformational leader is:
visionary
inspiring - 'an outstanding communicator'
a 'doer' with 'a steely resolve'
heroic
empowering
All but one of the leaders in our research were called upon to bring about transformations - the turn-around of a failing business, a radical change in organisational culture or the creation of a new enterprise. The only one who was not - because he was waiting to take over from another leader - was soon parachuted into another division of his company and asked to transform the costs structure and service level of that business.
Leaders seemed to have the idea that not only were they there to bring about transformation but that they needed to be inspiring individuals and outstanding communicators to achieve the required change. Communication has become a priority for many leaders and business writers. The assumption is that the leader knows where the organisation should go - and how to get there - but occasionally does not do enough to communicate that direction to colleagues.
We often heard managers say that organisations from time to time need a 'tough guy' - someone who is insensitive to people, ruthless and determined to ensure that they confront the changes that are needed if they are to succeed. We were struck in our research by how powerful this folk image is, how often managers talk about the risk of organisations becoming complacent unless challenged, occasionally, by this 'tough guy'. Yet we found in our research that transformational leadership is a myth, an idea that exists in the minds of people but that bears little relationship to the leadership that is provided, day-to-day, in real organisations. People know at some level that the transformational hero is an unattainable ideal. Think about it. How many transforming heroes do you know in your organisation? In our research we saw many people attempting and none succeeding to be a transforming hero. Suddenly, the Emperor has no clothes.
From hero to zero
The recent history of business and organisations is littered with examples of leaders who sought to bring about transformations only to find their dreams crumble to dust. We remember colleagues only a few years ago who identified Enron as a new type of business model and Kenneth Lay, Jeff Skilling and the other leaders there as visionaries who were pioneering the 'new economy'. Now Enron seems like a very old type of business model, the latest in a long line of business scandals in which managers encourage investors to part with their funds by persuading them that they have found a new way of making money.
Not long ago, Jack Welch, the chief executive of General Electric, was held up as a business icon in the US and Percy Barnevik, the chief executive of ABB, was a hero in Europe. Both were credited with transforming their companies and turning dull engineering companies into reliable money-making machines. Now these achievements are seen more critically and the regular increases in shareholder value were not so assured after all.
In our own research - on a much less dramatic scale - the would-be transforming heroes did not achieve the transformations they sought. All the leaders in our research had to let go of an initial dream and come to terms with a more ordinary, yet still satisfactory, achievement. With one exception, they were all seen by their organisations as successful leaders, yet none achieved the transformation they originally sought.
Case study
In the 1960s, British General Electric Company, was run by Sir Arnold Weinstock, a brilliant but uncharismatic leader. Weinstock managed cautiously, extracting profit and building up a legendary cash pile. Twenty years later, Weinstock retired and was replaced by a would-be transforming hero, George Simpson. Simpson transformed the company. He sold all the defence and heavy electrical engineering businesses, bought many telecoms companies in the US and declared that in future the company - now to be called Marconi - would be a high-growth technology business. In two years the transformation was complete - only it was not the transformation that Simpson had in mind but a journey to near-bankruptcy. Far from being a high growth area, the telecoms market crashed, companies in the US turned out to be much less valuable than expected and the famous cash pile evaporated. Shareholder value of £35bn was turned into half a billion and innumerable individual lives were turned upside down.
The research
The work of Binney, Wilke and Williams differed from most management research in that they lived alongside leaders and their organisations for periods of 12 to 24 months. The research took four years and was in three phases.
The first phase involved over 40 interviews with company chairs, chief executives, human resources directors and senior head-hunters across Europe. The purpose was to hear the issues as perceived by these key players in leadership transitions and thereby map out the ground they needed to cover in the main part of the research.
The centrepiece of the work was a set of eight case study stories that were researched in depth. The researchers accompanied new chief executives, general managers and heads of function - and the people around them - for between 12 and 24 months in their new jobs. They talked to a range of people - such as non-executive directors, senior and middle managers, human resources specialists, as well as chief executives - in each organisation. Most valuably, they held review sessions with each leader and their team to make sense together of the leading and following in the group.
The researchers corroborated what was found in the case studies with many hundreds of managers and leaders in meetings, workshops and conferences across Europe.
Transformations don't happen to order
But don't organisations sometimes need transformations and isn't it part of the job of leaders to lead change? Of course. Our point is that transformations do not happen to order. What we saw in our research was a reminder that transformations in organisations do not occur because one person, or even a number of leaders, wills the change. They happen as the result of the complex interaction of business circumstances, political and social forces, technical change, organisational culture, the dynamics of groups and the choices of both leaders and followers.
Don't leaders have a huge impact on their organisations? Yes, they do. But there are two qualifications. First, it takes time. We found in the research that it takes between 18 and 24 months for the transition connected with a new leader to work through and the new leader to become fully effective. Until that time the new leaders were too anxious and the people around them too unsettled for the leader to have full authority. It takes many more years for powerful leaders to leave their imprint on organisations.
Second, the impact of leaders is not necessarily the one they expect or want. Effective leaders are constantly learning about the impact of their statements, actions and behaviours because they know from experience that the impact they have is often not what they intend. You say one thing, but often people hear another. You focus on one issue but people are more interested in something else. You take a position that you think is important but no one notices while another message you sent out inadvertently strikes a chord for many. The most important signal a leader may send out may be a chance conversation or remark or action that at the time he or she hardly notices.
The gap between intention and impact does not exist because leaders are stupid or incompetent. It's how human interactions work. Everything you do as a leader has to pass through other people's filters and be interpreted by them. There's no use complaining about this. The best you can do as a leader is have some good feedback mechanisms to see what the impact is.
Biography
George Binney is an experienced business academic and consultant who for 12 years has worked with Ashridge teaching business strategy and leadership. Formerly a senior manager in Courtaulds and GEC and a consultant with McKinsey & Co, he trained as a barrister and has a MBA. He can be contacted at e: george@binney.info
Gerhard Wilke is a group analyst who has developed a consultancy method that combines anthropological and psychoanalytic thinking. He has coaching, leadership development and culture change clients across Germany, the UK, Denmark and Switzerland. He can be contacted at e: gerhard@gerhardwilke.com
Colin Williams specialises in leadership development and organisational change. He designs and runs management development globally and has an MBA. He has worked with Ashridge for 20 years in a variety of consulting, teaching and management roles. He can be contacted at e: colin.williams@atlas.co.uk
posted by T at 4:29 pm
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