Leadership in General (You can lead a horse to water, but can you make him drink?)
“Leadership is a complex phenomenon, involving the constant interaction of three essential elements: the leader, the followers, and the surrounding situation or context. An effective leader must know something about each, and how they interact.” (Wren, 1995) A leader cannot exist without followers, and vice versa. Leaders must have someone to lead and followers must have someone to follow. However, it is possible for the leader to be his/her own follower in circumstances of isolation, which in effect require characteristics of a leader to be demonstrated by a typically submissive personality in order to achieve a desired goal, such as staying alive in extreme cases. More often than not, leaders appear to be more predominant in group situations. The discussion of this paper will focus on the leader and groups of multiple followers.
The aforementioned surrounding situation usually consists of a common goal shared by the group which can often bring the leader to light by revealing the person most passionate about achieving the goal, who is also able to convey and transfer that passion into the other members of the group. Groups not bound by shared goals, beliefs, and values, typically do not require a leader, or at least not a very strong one. (I would call these groups Democrats.) All kidding aside, groups in business, politics, and life in general have little chance of survival when their understanding or foundation is not based on common ideals and vision.
“Leadership is, in essence, a process: a series of actions and interactions among leaders and followers which lead to the attainment of group goals. A leader who aspires to be an effective leader must be proficient in this process.” (Wren, 1995) In order to be a successful leader, a leader must keep their constituents vested in the goal(s) of the group. Traits like persuasiveness, likeability, integrity, and forward thinking are a few of the necessary qualities of successful leaders. An average leader can “lead a horse to water”, but only a proficient leader can convince the horse “to drink” and feel like they have accomplished a great feat in attaining that drink.
“Everything big that I’ve seen done has come about because somebody has had passion about something they felt had to be done, and they were able to enlist others in it and then overcome obstacles and move it through to the solution. …recognizing the need for external knowledge, is going to call for a great deal of sustained personal leadership to achieve the results that we all need and want.” (Prescott & Miller, 2001) A leader normally has more knowledge and experience pertaining to the surrounding situation or goal than the other members of the group. In turn, a good leader shares this knowledge and experience with their followers in order to bring out the best in them to obtain the goals as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“Leadership is, as you know, not a position but a job. It’s hard and exciting and good work. It’s also a serious meddling in other people’s lives. …one way to think about leadership is to consider a jazz band. A jazz band is an expression of servant leadership. The leader of a jazz band has the beautiful opportunity to draw the best out of the other musicians. We have much to learn from jazz-band leaders, for jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals. One becomes a leader, I believe, through doing the work of a leader. It’s often difficult and painful and sometimes even unrewarding, and it’s work. There are also times of joy in the work of leadership, and doing the work of a leader is necessary in our society.” (DePree, 1992)
When the “band” begins to understand the whats, whys, and hows involved in achieving their collective goals, then they literally can function as a finely tuned instrument and make beautiful music together. Only the conductor or leader can help them to see the vision succinctly. Every piece of music can be interpreted differently. Largo, for example, is a broad spectrum. If half of the group is at the faster end of largo and half are at the slower end, then the timing will be way off. Likewise, you can tell three different people to go paint a bowl of fruit and one might paint a painting of a bowl of fruit, another might literally put paint on a bowl of fruit, and the other may paint bananas and oranges instead of apples and grapes. With so many varying interpretations, a good leader must know how to paint, conduct, or lead a group into a common frame of mind.
Leadership in Business (Can you lead to manage, and manage to be a leader?)
“People of vision…. It takes…leadership to create an intelligence organization.” (Prescott & Miller, 2001) “So now the chief job of the leader, at all levels, is to oversee the dismantling of dysfunctional old truths and to prepare people and organizations to deal with – to love, to develop affection for –change per se, as innovations are proposed, tested, rejected, modified and adopted.” “…leaders must above all confront –and master –a series of paradoxes –that is, willingly embrace (test, learn about) across-the-board challenges to conventional wisdom.” (L1) (Peters, 1987) Leaders must constantly be learning in order to adapt, grow and remain successful in a professional society where the only constant is change.
“…developing and preaching a vision which clearly sets your direction, yet at the same time encourages initiatives from everyone…” (L2) “The core paradox, then, that all leaders at all levels must contend with is fostering (creating) internal stability in order to encourage the pursuit of constant change. The vision must be clear enough (consistent, etc.) to encourage continual risk-taking and failing, or else the continual testing and stretching and enhancing –changing –of everything will not occur, or not occur fast enough.” (Peters, 1987)
Manage by example – L3, Practice Visible Management – L4, Pay Attention! (More Listening) – L5, Defer to the Front Line – L6, Delegate –L7, Pursue “Horizontal” Management by Bashing Bureaucracy –L8, Evaluate Everyone on His or Her Love of Change –L9, Create a Sense of Urgency –L10 (Peters, 1987) These are all essential practices for the leader thriving on chaos, which will be delved into further in future papers.
“Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. Leadership isn’t mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having “charisma” or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it… Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment.” What Leaders Really Do by John P. Kotter. (Wren, 1995)
In short, management skills are used to organize and control “stuff”; leadership skills are used to organize and guide people. A balanced compliment of both is necessary to become a proficient leader, who can find success in the harshest of environments.
Leadership seen Scientifically (Which came first, the leader or the follower?)
“The scientific study of leadership can be roughly divided into three periods: the trait period, from around 1910 to World War II, the behavior period, from the onset of World War II to the late 1960s, and the contingency period, from the late 1960s to the present.” (Contemporary Leadership Theory by Martin M. Chemers). (Wren, 1995) This theory focuses mainly on the leader’s traits, behaviors, and contingences. It is also beneficial to study the effects of the group’s dynamic on the style of the leader. It is shown that good leaders are able to adapt as necessary in chaotic environments in order to be affective. Therefore it can be assumed that the leader’s traits, behaviors, and contingences would be different in different situations. Because of this, it is not fully accurate to define a leader by these three factors, but better to define by their techniques used to adapt. Simply, a leader cannot be completely defined without defining the group or situation in which they are endowed with leadership status.
Ralph M. Stogdill surveyed several studies to try to define leadership, which he published in The Journal of Psychology and then was reprinted in Wren’s book. This report shows that a leader cannot simply be defined by traits and behaviors, but by their ability to adapt and alter those traits and behaviors as necessary in different environments. “The qualities, characteristics, and skills required in a leader are determined to a large extent by the demands of the situation in which he has to function as a leader.” (Wren, 1995) A leader in one situation often is not as equally skilled in a different situation; certain situations demand certain skills.
Possibly the group came before the leader, but certainly not much before. How long can a group of people be gathered before someone steps up to take charge of the situation? Even the basic act of a group of two or more people meeting on the street by chance and having a conversation, tends to result in one of the two being the “moderator” of the conversation.
Leadership is not unlike Communication. They both are forms of interactions between people, which are equally hard to define due to the infinite number of elements left to the interpretation of the definer. As beauty is to the eye of the beholder, so is leadership to the eye of the observer.
As this paper began, “Leadership is a complex phenomenon, involving the constant interaction of three essential elements: the leader, the followers, and the surrounding situation or context. An effective leader must know something about each, and how they interact.” (Wren, 1995) Therefore the definition of leadership is demonstrating the necessary abilities to understand situations, the groups that inhabit those situations, and the role of the leader, in order to achieve the tasks or goals of the group in that specific situation.
References
DePree, M. (1992). Leadership Jazz. New York: Doubleday.
Peters, T. (1987). Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Prescott, J. E., & Miller, S. H. (2001). Proven Strategies in Competitive Intelligence: Lessons from the Trenches. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Wren, J. T. (1995). The Leader's Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Ages. New York : The Free Press.