Learning From Leaders
As long as there have been groups of people and individuals leading them, other people have looked at those leaders and wondered 'What makes them special?' and 'How can I be more like them?'.
As societies have grown and the power of individual leaders has grown with them, the number of people thinking these thoughts has likewise increased as has their diversity. Two thousand years ago, Alexander the Great was an inspiration and a role-model for generals and their soldiers. Today it is business people who are looking to key figures for lessons in management and leadership.
As I write, People Management, the magazine of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, is running a poll amongst its readers asking 'Who do you believe is the greatest leader of all time?'. The introduction to the poll goes onto say:
'The question is a difficult one. But it is of great relevance to HR professionals in their day-to-day working lives, as it hinges on the qualities they believe are fundamental to good leadership. For some, ethical behaviour plays an important part in defining a great leader; for others, vision or charisma may be more important.' [People Management, 14th October 2004]
The fact that suggestions have ranged from Boudicca to Ghandi, from Walt Disney to Arsene Wenger seems to bear out the idea that arriving at a single definition of what makes a 'great leader' is quite a challenge.
This, however, is precisely the point where the modern study of leadership began; with the so called 'great man' theory.
This theory holds that leadership is inbuilt and a leader a particularly special type of person who is fated or destined for greatness. Leadership is something you either have or you don't, end of saga.
With the rise of trait theory in the 1930s and 40s, people began to ask whether leadership could be defined and measured as a selection of traits that were common to all leaders. Many studies were undertaken with this aim in mind but overall the results were found to be contradictory and inconclusive; the only vaguely consistent qualities found were that leaders tended to be very slightly taller and slightly more intelligent than other people, two assertions quick to draw counter examples whenever they are stated.
From traits, the focus of researchers moved onto behaviours; studying what leaders do rather than who they are. Patterns of behaviour were grouped together and labelled as styles. Examples of this approach are task-focus versus people focus (Blake and Mouton 1964) and directive contrasted with participative (for example, the theory of X and Y types, McGregor 1960). As with traits, the secret formula of the perfect leader seemed elusive, with different styles seen to be applied with differing degrees of success in different contexts and situations.
This gave rise to the concept of 'situational leadership' (Hersey and Blanchard, 1969), i.e. that leaders match their style to the context they find themselves in. In this model, leadership is described in terms of two sets of behaviours, directive and supportive, that are combined as appropriate to the levels of competence and commitment of subordinates. Fiedler's contingency model (1964) applies a similar process but based on the factors leader-member relations, task structure and position power.
Today, the dominating theory within the leadership landscape is 'transformational leadership' (Burns, 1978; Bass 1985) which treats leadership as a process focused on transforming organisations with the leader playing the role of change agent.
In contrast to the early 'great man' and trait theories, the consensus amongst researchers and experts in the field of leadership now seems to be that leadership is definitely something that can be learned and developed (Bennis, 1994). A host of tools and metrics are available to allow people to assess their starting point and understand how to develop as a leader (e.g. Transformational Leadership Questionnaire). Likewise a quick search of available literature will show an enormous number of books describing key behaviours or techniques that, when mastered, will enable one to become a leader. The message is that anyone can be a leader and, further, that leadership is something to be encouraged at all levels of an organisation, not just at the top.
Despite this democratisation of leadership in principle, in practice people continue to seek inspiration and to learn from leaders whom they consider to be exemplars. As ever, the market has sought to cater for this demand and there has recently been a spate of biographic books offering readers the chance to 'learn leadership lessons from the great Antarctic explorer' (Shackleton), gain 'timeless insights from Shakespeare's greatest leader' (Henry V) and develop as a leader based on 'strategic lessons from the leader who built an empire' (Elizabeth I), among many others. For the aspiring leader, there is a positive wealth of 'great leaders' to choose as personal mentors; having access to their knowledge is one thing but applying it is another.
There is a challenge, though, with using such 'great' examples. Reading such inspirational stories, naturally, can be inspirational but sometimes the lack of relevant context means that this inspiration is a temporary buzz that dissipates when the reader returns to the here and now of the workplace, particularly when using examples that are so far removed from an individual's own context (apologies to any monarchs or explorers reading this).
At the other end of the scale, someone could decide to take what they have read about, for example Alexander the Great, and apply it literally to their situation, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase 'boardroom battle'. Neither outcome can be said to be a firm basis for self-sustaining, genuine personal development.
So why then use such distanced examples in the first place? Why not stick with business leaders for business people? The answer is that presenting people with a story, model, tool or example that is far removed from their own context is an excellent and widely used method of encouraging creativity. It challenges people to take a fresh look at their situation and, in doing so, generate innovative options for tackling any issues they may have that they might not have considered had they limited their perspective to their own, familiar context.
This challenge to think 'out of the box' is one familiar enough to most business people to have become a cliché, but it is still a useful shorthand for describing this particular way of what Rickards (1990) describes as 'escaping from stuckness'.
As always when using this technique, the crucial stage of the process is the final one, that of reapplying the distantly gathered ideas to the here and now in a way that means they can be turned into action that will be carried forward.
One way of doing so within the setting of personal development is to ask people to build their own model of leadership, creating a framework that is not one-size-fits-all but that is appropriate and useful for that person and their role. In this way, an individual can transpose those behaviours, ideas and tactics that they have read about into their own situation. Crucially, they can do so in a manner that is authentic and appropriate, incorporated as an extension of their own style rather than as a 'bolt-on' set of techniques. The process could be described as a kind of benchmarking, with individuals using great leaders as sources of best practice or standards of excellence that provide the basis for innovative adaptation.
This approach isn't limited to looking at books about leaders; it can be an effective way of exploring any kind of knowledge and in any subject. It is particularly useful when the topics are quite removed from the workplace situation, for example studying insects or animals for ideas around communication and teamwork, or looking at historical examples of change or organisational structure like the Roman Empire or the construction of the Great Pyramid.
The key thing to remember when embarking on such a process is that it is not a search for a generic solution, it is a means of creating a starting point specific to an individual. The question to ask is not 'what does this tell me?' but 'what can I learn from this?'.
The process is not to everyone's taste; some people expect a magic bullet, a seven point solution that is proof against all eventualities. It may be that this process can create that, but only with several rounds of iteration based on an individual's experience of what works and what doesn't. In effect, each individual is carrying out their own, bespoke leadership research programme and, in common with the research of the last hundred years, it may be a programme that is 'ongoing' in the broadest sense of the term. However, as Thomas Carlyle (often cited as an inspiration for the 'great man' theory) said:
"Ideals must ever lie a very great way off; and we will right thankfully content ourselves with any not intolerable approximation thereto!" [On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History, 1897]
Bibliography:
Axelrod, A. (2000) Elizabeth I, CEO. Prentice Hall Press.
Bennis, W. (1994) On becoming a leader. Addison-Wesley.
Carlyle, T. (1897) On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History [eBook]. Digireads.com
Cawton, D.L. (1996) "Leadership: the great man theory revisited" in Business Horizons vol. 39(3) pp1-4.
Morrell, M & Capparell, S. (2001) Shackleton's Way. Nicholas Brearly Publishing.
Northouse, P. G. (2004) Leadership, theory and practice. Sage Publications.
Olivier, R. (2002) Inspirational Leadership. Spiro Press.
Owen, H. (2000) In search of leaders. John Wiley & Sons.
Rickards, T. (1990) Creativity and problem solving at work. Gower Publishing.
