Introductory Chapter: Business Leadership And The Mythical Manager

The role of the leader in business has reached a point where it has become a distinct element of competitive advantage.

The traditional role of that mythical creature the manager involves activities such as planning, organising, delegating, measuring and controlling. The manager essentially has to deal with organizational complexity – if things are not organizationally complex, then management is not needed, as people will organise work themselves.

Teams of experts, such as lawyers, doctors, or consultants may handle highly complex issues but the organization of their work is not complex and may be handled by an assistant who keeps their diary appointments and schedules meetings for them. The manager is primarily a resource controller, allocating labour, money and materials to work areas. The manager prepares the budget and is responsible for it during execution. The manager’s prime objective is to ensure completion of the project, task, unit of time, financial year or otherwise as set out in the budget.

The role of a leader involves envisioning, inspiring, motivating, communicating and risk-taking. The leader inspires people to work towards a goal and helps people to be the best they can be. If management is about rationality, analysis and processes then leadership is about imagination, intuition and people. Good business leadership is about all of the above.

Management addresses the part of organizational behaviour that is like the tip of the proverbial iceberg – above water, visible and easily measurable. Business leadership addresses behaviour but also addresses values, beliefs, feelings, and attitudes – things that are not quite so easy to measure, yet form by far the greater part of the iceberg. Indeed, it is all these things going on below the surface that shape what we see above water. The iceberg’s course is almost solely determined by what is underwater.

Much research has been carried out into leadership and what makes a good leader – a significant library of investigations, analyses and conclusions all of which contribute something, but none of which has yet managed to bottle the essential elixir of leadership for resale in the local drug store. The relationship between the person doing the leading and the people doing the following is complex indeed, but it is this relationship that we endeavour to explore.

Leadership is like architecture; you can describe it in language, but no amount of prose can come close to actually experiencing it, seeing it, touching it, being with it. Distilling the leadership research down do its axiomatic essence, people follow leaders for two reasons:1) What they do; 2) How they do it.

In the past, emphasis was given to the ‘what’. If the results were good, little attention was paid to the means by which they were achieved. The dominant paradigm was of that other mythical creature rational economic man. The theoretical purpose of an economic enterprise was to make a profit through gaining competitive advantage in a marketplace that would naturally balance supply and demand.In reality, neither rational economic man nor the economic enterprise exist: Man’s behaviour is complex, situational and highly irrational; and business’s prime goal is to stay in business, to survive.

21^st Century reality check: The ‘what’ of leadership is about adding real value to the business, taking actions, making things happen, doing stuff which people perceive as being of value and which only the leader can do.

 The ‘how’ of leadership is at least as important, if not more so. The ‘how’ is about creating an environment for people to grow, achieve and enjoy what they do. It’s about values, behaviour, optimism and trust. The psychodynamics of the leader’s personality will determine what sort of leader he becomes, how he behaves and why people follow him. This is especially so under stress when higher-level mental discipline gives way to more instinctive behaviour. Given a period of time in a leadership role, leaders will naturally fashion an organization in their own image: The organization culture will reflect the leader’s own psychodynamic profile. It will adopt, consciously and unconsciously, the leader’s priorities, interests and values, but also his shortcomings. We will return to this very vital subject at many points later in the book.

Why People Follow Leaders

The essence of leadership is followership, as the axiom goes, but followers follow leaders for a variety of reasons. A number of leadership paradigms are outlined in the table below.

All the above can be found in various parts of our world today. The paradigms are, of course, not mutually exclusive: all business leaders will be charismatic to some degree and will exert influence through their control of resources, through politics, knowledge and even through their spirituality. As Napoleon said, leaders are essentially merchants in hope. All the paradigms entail the followers projecting their hopes onto the leader. Conversely, the leader peddles his hope for a better world, a brighter future and fulfilment for followers.

The post-charismatic leader is in essence an organization architect - a creative shaper of strategy and builder of organization culture. There was nothing inherently wrong with the predominance of the charismatic leadership style in literature of recent years, but there were simply too few super heroes on the planet, and charisma did not automatically entail an ability to deliver or execute.