Just back from Academy of Management annual conference where I attended many
sessions on "leadership” topics, I’ve
concluded that leadership scholars (and many others) are engaged in a massive
punning game. That is, the words leader and leadership are uttered ubiquitously
and have multiple meanings, often ironic, yet very few people take time to
consider the implications of the punning.
Most speakers at conference sessions did not directly divulge
their own definitions of leader and leadership. Instead, those being punned at,
had to sort out meanings for themselves.
Not surprisingly at a conference dominated by participants from
business schools around the world, the most common meaning of leader was CEO,
or possibly member of a firm’s senior management team. Some scholars extend
this view to include the nonprofit and political realm – that is, leaders are
not just CEOs but also executive directors and Presidents, or other people with
visible and powerful positions.
These scholars – from what might be called the "top dog” school
– tend to define leadership in one of two ways.
It may be the sum of the people in top positions in a firm, nonprofit, or
government agency – as in, "The leadership has issued a policy about
employee benefits”. Alternatively, leadership may be more process or
action-oriented – that is, leadership is about what these top people do. They
set direction, make strategies, promulgate visions, drive change, and the like.
Another group of organizational scholars has a somewhat more
expansive view: middle managers are also considered leaders of their units or
divisions. In behavioral terms, they do some of the same things the top dogs
do, but they answer to their "bosses,” while leading "subordinates.”
Another group of scholars, onetime renegades at an event like
this conference, say, wait a minute, what if we consider the possibility that
everyone in an organization may be the instigator of change? What if we see
relationship building and teamwork as key aspects of leadership? Wouldn’t
people who do this anywhere in the organization be exercising leadership, and
if so, might we call them leaders?
What if we see organizations as systems and recognize that
system dynamics may have more impact on outcomes of a top team’s new policy
than anything the team actually does? Wouldn’t anyone in the organization have
a chance to influence those dynamics in ways that prompted needed change?
Everyone has heard the story of the low-level employee who came up with an idea
that saved the organization millions or led the way to a valuable new product
or service. Was this employee a leader?
Maybe the organization or the system itself functions as a
leader…
So what does this mean for evaluating leaders, for helping
people become leaders? All meanings are flying around and have force, but the
first two are incredibly limiting and disempowering – spend too much time
trying to identify the essence of what successful CEOs and bosses do, heap
praise on those who turn their companies or their countries around, and how
with outrage when they disappoint us and start talking about the "leader” with
irony. Prep for leading where you are. But recognizing that positions in
organizations and networks often add formal authority and power over resources
that people outside those positions don’t have.
Agree with argument that we need more rather than fewer leaders these days.
Maybe a helpful way of thinking is big l versus little l
leadership. Helping people to lead within their sphere of influence, but also
recognize that they will often be followers. Ability to move in and out of
follower roles, but see themselves as always active in the leadership work.
Maybe we’d be less prone then to utter the word leader with
ironic quote marks.
Posted September 10, 2008Se
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