Leadership – current thinking and how it developed

Leadership – current thinking and how it developed

by Paul Tarplett, OPM

Introduction

Without an understanding of how current ideas have developed then we lack an important tool in evaluating them. This can leave us in the hands of the airport lounge management gurus, unable to distinguish between recycled ideas, the latest fad and genuinely helpful developments in thinking and practice. This paper provides a brief summary of the main strands of leadership thinking.

A brief history of thinking about leadership

Trait theories – these date back to the start of the century and have been surprisingly resilient with research continuing in an attempt to find the magic ingredients. This work has led to long lists of the characteristics of effective leaders. The weaknesses of this approach are probably already known to you but in brief – the lists of characteristics are so long that they can be found anywhere and can be inherently contradictory e.g. decisive and deliberative/involving. Such theories don’t explain how leaders with these characteristics can suddenly move from being successes to failures or vice versa e.g. Margaret Thatcher or Winston Churchill.

Behavioural theories – the initial work in this area was done in the 1940’s through to the 1960’s. It was classically concerned with leadership in small groups but the concerns of these thinkers with leadership styles have continued to the present day

Situational and contingency theories – thinking of this kind began in the 1960’s and recognised the importance of context in determining what leadership is needed and what is likely to be effective.

Followers determine leaders or more formally, exchange and path- goal theories – there are several strands to this way of thinking. Part of it is that a leader needs to attend to the needs of their followers i.e. the leader as servant e.g. the leader doesn’t push to the front of the queue but helps serve his/her people first. A slightly different take is that followers have expectations which they project upon their leaders, to which the leader has to respond either by meeting expectations or challenging and renegotiating them. A variant on this is that leaders enact what followers expect and articulate the messages that are in tune with what followers will hear.

New Leadership – charismatic, visionary, transformational – the 1980s saw a resurgence of thinking about leadership but now in terms of the whole organisation and this has continued to the present day, Part of the organisational leadership role can be - cognitive or meaning making, in these theories leaders make sense of the complexity of the environment and the organisation’s role within it.

Learning organisations and distributed leadership – again is concerned with the whole organisation and there are different strands but this time the emphasis is on recognising the key leadership role in creating opportunities for others to learn and to take leadership. This has led relatively recently to what might be termed “post transformational”leadership that looks beyond the heroic or charismatic leader.

Summary

It is clear that some of the above theories are contradictory. The notions of distributed leadership fight with the belief that difficult times demand a charismatic or transformational leader. In trying to make sense of this I found John Storey’s idea that there are a number of enduring themes that are essential to any systematic analysis of leadership: context, perceived leadership need, behavioural requirements, capabilities and development methods.

Context

From my own experience in both financial services and in the public sector I know that the requirements are quite different and that success in one wouldn’t guarantee success in another. Beverly Alimo Metcalf’s work on the leadership requirements in local government in the UK show how these are quite different to those in the private sector in the USA for example.

Perceived need

Much of the thinking in the 1960’s suggested that the context would drive the need e.g. a production environment would be different to a research environment. However there has since the late 40’s been a social as well as a technical aspect to organisational analysis so it is not surprising to find some theorists arguing that there is an ideological aspect to the perceived need for leadership; e.g. “top management ….do not want to believe that people obey them because they have power … they want to feel they command because they are gifted to lead” – Miller and Form 1964.

Even setting aside the social and psychological needs of top managers and taking the perspective of staff and other stakeholders – then the perceived leadership requirements of a particular situation will probably partly reflect the reality of the situation and also the expectations of these individuals/groups. And these expectations will themselves be a reflection of existing cultural norms. For example the reality of leading in a customer service centre is different to that of an audit team but also the perceived needs and expectations and the underlying cultures will also be different and these will affect the type of leadership that is effective.

Behavioural requirements and competencies

The competency movement of the 1980’s picked up the work of the human relations school in the social aspects of work and the impact of different behaviours on group effectiveness. These competency frameworks were widely adopted in the 1990’s. Two current favourites in leadership thinking are closely connected to the competency movement. The Transformational Leadership Questionnaire (TLQ) is based on Alimo Metcalfe’s analysis of the competency needs of local government managers. The Emotional intelligence work of Daniel Goleman has been turned into competency statements and related assessment tools and draws on the earlier competency work of Boyatzis. Although there are many competency models around most contain elements of 3 meta clusters:

  • Cognitive – making sense of the big picture and the direction of change
  • Making change happen – this is in part motivational and in part relational requiring the ability to deliver through others
  • Inter–organisational – working with partners to achieve goals.
Current Thinking

Transformational leadership (TL) and emotional intelligence (EI) are probably the two most popular views of leadership at the moment. Not that popularity means they are “right”. Indeed one of the real problems in the whole area of leadership is the validity of the research – so a minor detour.

Evidence based leadership – methodological problems

I’m no great social science researcher but it does seem that there are problems with a lot of the research into what type of leadership will work. Often the base is narrow and often the people being interviewed are potentially self justifying. Even when people are not justifying their own style, it is very difficult to distinguish between what people know to be true because they have evidence and the extent to which they are simply feeding back contemporary wisdom. I liked Alimo Metcalf’s point that it is important to talk to the recipients of leadership not just the senior managers but even the followers are not immune to giving researchers what they think are the right answers.

So I think we should proceed with caution, not discard well researched work but be sceptical. The research base for Goleman’s EI work seems rigorous to me and it built on well researched work by others. The TL stuff is more variable but Alimo Metcalf’s work had a good database.

Transformational leadership

The term was used to distinguish it from transactional leadership or management. This distinction is well captured in the following diagram from John Kotter.

Likewise the summary from Anderson, TD (1992) gives you a good flavour of TL: Transforming Leadership is vision, planning, communication and creative action which has a positive unifying effect on a group of people around a clear set of values and beliefs, to accomplish a clear set of measurable goals. This transforming approach simultaneously impacts the personal development and corporate productivity of all involved.

You will see that the heart of TL is the notion of the inspiring vision, communicated in a way that motivates people to give extra effort and thereby achieve extraordinary results, often in times of change and very demanding circumstances. The following list of characteristics is a summary of what many of the writers about TL were highlighting.

  • Charismatic: Highly esteemed, role models whom followers strive to emulate who align others around a vision, common purpose and mission
  • Inspirational: Provides meaning and optimism about the mission and its attainability
  • Intellectually Stimulating: Encourages followers to question basic assumptions and to consider problems from new and unique perspectives
  • Individually Considerate: Works with followers, diagnosing their needs, transcends their self-interests, enhances their expectations and develops their potential.

And while it wasn’t always intended to imply that one larger than life figure was needed to provide such leadership was there a time in the 1990’s when even the public sector was driven to look for and appoint such figures? And where they were appointed did they bring success and whether yes or no was there too high a price to be paid by those who experienced the shadow side of transformational leaders? Your reflections on these questions will give answers that are as valid as mine but for what it is worth I think we should recall that the T/L movement was given a lot of impetus by Tom Peters. His prescriptions about what was wrong with many companies (and the public sector would be worse) and what was needed struck a cord but many of those he cited as successes quickly failed. The same has been true in the public sector where leaders who took their eye off the core management issues of finance and government output targets have had to go. As to the shadow side – well great characters are likely to have great weaknesses, which can be damaging for them, their colleagues and their organisations.

This is painting a rather negative image of T/L, which I don’t feel. I think this is because in the last decade T/L has moved beyond the implied great leader to distributed leadership and has become more balanced in recognising the importance of good management. In this context it emphasises the importance of outcomes as well as processes, of values as well as tasks, of experimentation and continuous learning as well as embedding good practice and of teams as well as individuals. John Storey gives Michael Fullan as an example of this new thinking and since I had been very impressed by his book (Leading in a Culture of Change) I am happy to recommend it to you.

Perhaps the most relevant aspect of Transformational Leadership from our perspective is the work done by Beverly Alimo-Metcalf. This has been developed into a 360-feedback questionnaire (TLQ) – this is summarised in Appendix 1 – it has 3 clusters of competencies: Leading and Developing Others, Personal Qualities and Leading the Organisation. Beverley Alimo-Metcalf argues that her research contrasted with other TL findings, particularly that done in the USA. The latter emphasised charisma and vision and acting as a role model for staff, whereas the UK public sector work emphasised what the leader needs to do for their staff and the engagement of a range of stakeholders in the development and achievement of a shared vision.

Emotional Intelligence

This term and its application to leadership is primarily associated with Daniel Goleman although others have written about it as well. As far as I am aware the particular insight of Goleman was to link behaviours to neuroscience in a way that links human thinking and feeling and shows how our emotions can hijack our brains. Hence the first building block of EI is self awareness and then self management, which he termed personal competences. His research showed that these are best learned young and indeed were a better predictor of adult success that IQ. Those youngsters who scored low in these two areas often had criminal records in their teens but programmes with adolescents showed that it was possible to develop these abilities later.

Goleman adapted his thinking about EI to a consideration of leadership. The personal competences allow the development of the social competences needed by leaders, these are social awareness and relationship management.

Working with Richard Boyatzis, Goleman researched the effectiveness of a range of different managerial or leadership behaviours. (Boyatzis was the author of the Competent Manager back in the early 1980’s which pulled together an enormous database to identify those competencies that distinguished the superior performing manager. His involvement with this work gives it a prima facie methodological credibility – although I haven’t looked closely at their research methods or database).

The impact of the different leadership styles are summarised in the table below:

In terms of long term impact the two on the left are strongly positive, the next two positive and the two on the right negative.

The message from this work seems to be that we need to develop the competences and be able to flex our style. This may be quite difficult for the reasons given by Michael Fullan – “Pacesetters and coercers are terrible listeners. Affiliative and democratic leaders listen too much. This is why leadership is complicated. It requires combining elements that do not comfortably go together.”

The other criticism that might be made is that the EI model pays insufficient attention to the context in which leadership takes place.

Summary Exercise

Do you have a favoured view of leadership – if so can you see where it fits?

What aspects of the two models (T/L and EI) do you like and are there any that you don’t?

How would assess your own strengths and weaknesses against these models

Appendix 1

Scales measured by the transformational leadership

questionnaire (TLQ)

LEADING AND DEVELOPING INDIVIDUALS
Showing genuine concern / Genuine interest in staff as individuals; vales their contributions; develops their strengths; coaches, mentors; has positive expectations of what his/her staff can achieve
Enabling / Trusts staff to take decisions/initiatives on important matters; delegates effectively; develops staff’s potential
Being accessible / Approachable and not status conscious; prefers face-to-face communication; accessible and keeps in touch
Encouraging change / Encourages questioning of traditional approaches to the job; encourages new approaches/solutions to problems; encourages strategic thinking
PERSONAL QUALITIES
Being honest and consistent / Honest and consistent in behaviour; more concerned with the good of the organization than personal ambition
Acting with integrity / Open to criticism and disagreement; consults and involves others in decision making; regards values as integral to the organization
LEADING AND DEVELOPING THE ORGANIZATION
Focusing team effort / Clarifies objectives and boundaries; team oriented to problem solving and decision making, and to identifying values
Supporting a developmental culture / Supportive when mistakes are made; encourages critical feedback of him/herself and the service provided
Inspiring others / Charismatic; exceptional communicator, inspires others to join him/her
Being decisive / Decisive when required; prepared to take difficult decisions, and risks when appropriate
LEADING THE WAY FORWARD
Building shared vision / Effective in gaining support from a wide range of stakeholders; articulates a clear vision for the organisation/department; involves others together in achieving the vision
Networking / Inspiring communication of the vision of the organization/service to a wide network of internal and external stakeholders; gains the confidence and support of various groups through sensitivity to needs, and by achieving organization goals
Resolving complex problems / Capacity to deal with a wide range of complex issues; creative in problem solving
Facilitating change sensitively / Sensitivity to the impact of change on different parts of the organization; maintains a balance between change and stability

The most obvious feature of this model is the staggering complexity of the nature of leadership in the UK public sector. What emerges is also of a very different tenor from the US ‘new paradigm’ models. Typically, the US models place an overwhelming emphasis on charisma and vision; that is, on the leader as primarily acting as the role model for his/her followers. One might speculate that this is the product of adopting research methodologies, which focus solely on the views and /or observations of top managers.

In contrast, the results which emerge in our studies – based on asking the recipients and ultimate arbitrators of leadership effectiveness, namely the staff who work in the public sector, how they perceive leadership – present a very different model. What these staff are clearly stating is that the most important role for the leader is what s/he can do for his/her

staff. This is very reminiscent of the model of leader as servant, which is described in the writings of Robert Greenleaf (1970). However, leadership is not only about meeting staffs’ needs; it is much more than that. The UK model suggests that leadership is fundamentally about engaging others as partners in developing and achieving the shared vision, and, as such, it relates to distributed leadership. The UK concept of leadership is also about creating a fertile, supportive environment for creative thinking, for challenging assumptions about how public services should be delivered. And it is about sensitivity to the needs of a range of internal and external stakeholders. It is about connectedness! How else, one might ask, can the daunting challenges of delivering modern public services be achieved?

Another very positive feature of the findings is that what emerges in the UK public sector significantly reflects aspects of the government’s modernization agenda, including partnership working, valuing staff, aiming for best practice, removing the traditional barriers between agencies working together within the community. What is encouraging is that there would appear to be a high degree of congruence between what those who work across the public sector believe to be leadership and the espoused leadership tenets of government.

Source: Leadership in public sector organizations, Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe and John Alban-Metcalfe

Future Leadership programme page 1