Superior organisational performance is undoubtedly promoted by the presence of a superior guiding mind but is it a valid presumption that this individual must always be a leader? By leadership and transition expert, Anthony Holmes
Leadership planning is predicated on the idea that leadership is required continuously and, although not plentiful, that there is a sufficient supply of candidate leaders to make planning feasible. But what if leaders are beneficial only occasionally and otherwise can be damaging? And what if true leaders are extremely scarce and very hard to identify? Can leadership be planned under such conditions?
Leadership is a concept with which we are familiar. We regard it as desirable and want to develop leaders just as we want to produce doctors. In times of vulnerability we are relieved to defer to a leader just as we follow the instructions of a doctor when the situation demands. We consider our well being to be so positively influenced by their presence that planning to ensure one is readily available is fundamental. But leadership is a complicated concept and identifying a potential leader not a simple selection process.
The concept is slippery, controversial, contested and open to catastrophic abuse. We cannot discuss leadership satisfactorily if we remain at the superficial level and leadership planning cannot be reduced to a programmatic process that is capable of an easy explanation codified into a set of ‘how to’ steps. To unpack leadership we must first explore what it is to be a leader. For some 5000 years we have tried unsuccessfully to ground what it is that makes a leader but still we have no settled set of characteristics that identify a true leader. All that can be said with confidence is that we only recognise a true leader in retrospect and that, in times of crisis, we yearn for such an individual to ensure our salvation.
True leaders can be distinguished from those who take the title for themselves in the belief that it authenticates their possession of domestic power and from those who promote aggressive conquest to impose their hegemony over strangers. True leaders are those individuals whom people follow voluntarily. They are enigmatic and are as rare as autocrats are numerous. The leaders we desire are the true leaders but our search for these individuals comes with the elevated risk of opening the door to tyranny.
Stereotypical examples of the leader as saviour are Moses, Churchill, Gandhi and Mandela and those of the leader as aggressive conqueror are Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and Hitler. Although members of both groups satisfy the criterion of being supported by voluntary followers there the similarity ends. They differ from authoritarians who adopt the title to symbolise their acquired persona and reinforce their superiority while implying a false mutualistic relationship with those they dominate. Examples of this genre are; Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and sundry other monarchs and rulers who are more aptly called tyrants.
Compared with true leaders, tyrannical individuals are numerous and their abundance confirms that in real time we find it impossible to distinguish between the strong and the good. Interestingly true leaders are not associated with the preservation of stability. This is intriguing because stability is the state we most desire and the condition that we want the leader to facilitate by ending a period of turbulence. True leadership seems to be about promoting radical change and navigating a way through the chaos of disorder to a new stable point that facilitates the well being of those who follow but, significantly, their attraction to the leader seems to decline when the turbulence ends.
The alchemy of leadership is temporary because the willingness of followers to engage voluntarily and altruistically is fickle. Through their achievement successful leaders inevitably eradicate follower’s need for them.
Understanding that a true leader’s positive influence is transitory complicates the task of leadership planning but does not explain why the characteristics of leaders cannot be educed. An emerging idea suggests an individual’s leadership capability may be an episodic attribute that becomes conspicuous only when the person gains power in a suitable situation. In an unsuitable situation the latent leader’s non-conformity may be regarded as eccentric and disruptive. In stable times organisations tend to expel such aberrant individuals in the cause of harmony and orthodoxy and hence there are rarely any suitable internal candidates available when the need for a true leader arises.
The attraction of this idea is that it explains the difficulty experienced in identifying the traits of leaders as they are suppressed when not exposed to the conditions that catalyse them and it also clarifies the inability to identify potential leaders when they are detached from the events that stimulate their talent. More controversial is the suggestion that leaders have an episodic psychological condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This condition is so difficult to discriminate from similar disorders that it is arguably impossible to diagnose during its dormant periods.
Leadership courses do not teach narcissism as a desirable attribute. But nourishing narcissism can lead to hubris and the creation of a toxic leader who, as the reward for previous achievement, demands absolute power that is subsequently misapplied. Leadership planning is so focused on the recruitment of the leader that preparing for the avoidance of hubris and toxicity is neglected. Even without a crisis, leadership remains attractive because leaders are synonymous with performance enhancement. Consequently those engaged in any activity that offers exceptional rewards for outstanding achievement conclude that their ambition will be served by subordinating their will to that of a leader.
Perhaps people recognise, subliminally, the limitations of the managerial toolkit and regard the recipe as incomplete without a leader to sprinkle the magic dust that turns pedestrian plans into an aspirational journey. The notion of leadership planning arises from this idea but, in the sense that it necessitates identifying, recruiting and developing leaders, it is a flawed concept. It is flawed because without a settled set of characteristics that discriminate a leader from a superior and charismatic manager it is impossible to recognise the individuals who possess the magic dust or who will flourish when presented with the pressures of turbulence.
It is flawed because, even if a candidate leader could be identified, too little investment is devoted to predicting when periods of turbulence will arise so each emerges as a surprise and, given their temperament, it is not feasible to hold a suitable alternative guiding mind in reserve. Keeping a tiger as a pet just in case you find yourself unexpectedly in the jungle is incoherent. It is flawed because despite the plethora of courses designed to develop leaders they cannot be found to order when the need arises.
That positive leadership may be a unique but temporary reaction between an individual and a situation is an empirically satisfying thesis that should shape the notion of leadership planning.
This takes to my second point. We have become accustomed to regarding a leader as more accomplished than a manager and, hence, hierarchical supremacy appears to imply that the top individual has to imitate a leader even when their competency and inclination is managerial. But leaders are not superior managers. Managers impose control in stable times and leaders regain stability from turmoil. Managers implement controlled incremental steps toward an objective. Leaders are intuitive, eccentric individuals who inspire others through the force of their personality rather than the erudition of their plans.
We know that, as an unavoidable phase in their lifespan, all organisations encounter periods of instability when planning becomes ineffective and incremental progress is not possible. Most stumble upon this phase without preparation after passing through periods of denial, failed containment and unsuccessful concealment when those in power seek to preserve their authority in the face of mounting evidence of failure. This is the period in which managerial orientation must give way to leadership. HR directors have a vital task in recognising when the organisation is entering a phase of turbulence in which the status quo will probably not survive.
They must understand the cyclical pattern in which the organisational guiding mind has to oscillate between manager and leader. There is insufficient space here to develop this contention but, briefly, dominance by a managerially orientated guiding mind will ultimately be unable to maintain organisational stability but usually remains in position until forcibly ejected for demonstrable failure. A leader follows who has no legacy to defend and, if successful, manoeuvres the organisation to a new position of stability. At this moment of triumph the leader should hand over to a new managerially oriented guiding mind tasked to consolidate the new position.
Engaging incumbent senior management in this leadership planning debate is problematic as the objective is to specify in advance, perhaps at the time of their success, the conditions that will trigger, what they regard as, their premature departure. These trigger points are not the conventional moments of termination determined by managerial failure but points of transition that anticipate their situational incompetence before people are allowed to confirm this by confronting a situation for which their toolkit and mindset are inappropriate.
Albeit difficult, an organisation’s prosperity may depend on its board’s preparedness to confront the inevitability of the manager/leader cycle and to formulate plans for the transitions that must occur. It is a debate that the HR director must lead with the support of the independent directors. I also argue that it is necessary to prepare an organisation to accept a transition to a period of leadership and that this is where leadership planning should be focussed.
Subordinates who have been schooled in a different ideology may find it problematic to suddenly suppress their modus operandi in favour of the less systematic approach advocated by the new guiding mind. To cope with this behaviour after a period of highly structured managerialism is tough. After all, people are being tasked to accomplish what they thought was beyond their ability by conducting themselves in a way they had been conditioned to believe was unacceptable. The resulting anxiety can significantly impair performance and occasionally lead to psychological problems.
A further consideration is that an organisation cannot endure a period of significant turbulence for longer than 3 years without exhaustion. It follows that organisational ambitions for leaders should be limited to restoring stability within two years. Planning who should be the organisational guiding mind should not be exclusively about leaders. HR directors must accept that they are engaged in a process of ensuring effective succession over the cycle. Where leadership planning is deficient is in not preparing the organisation for the change that is to come and without this groundwork every change will be received as a surprise and the effectiveness of each transition will be suppressed. There is too little debate about this and no forum in which HR Directors can explore the subject. There ought to be more.
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