Leadership delusion?
October 11, 2007
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Johnie Moore likes to throw up interesting ideas that make you think. Yesterday, he suggested that we may overrate Leadership as an important reason for strong organizational functioning.
I might even ask whether the label of “leadership” really is anything other than a fancy way of giving approval? I’m interested in what Gabriele Lakomski says here, summarising her book Managing without Leadership.
“Our everyday experience tells us that organisational life is messy and complex and that those in positions of leadership are neither omniscient nor infallible. Why, then, do we quite readily believe that there is a causal link between organisational functioning and leadership? Why do we not believe our own experience that how things work in organisations is much more complicated?
Gabriele Lakomski explains that she wants to look at organizational practice with a different theoretical perspective:
I propose that we consider the phenomenon of leadership in like manner, and conceive of it as part and parcel of organisational practice. In a naturalistic redescription of the phenomenon, we might view it as an emergent, self-organising property of complex systems. There would then be no need for engaging in more leadership studies: instead, we could redirect our attention to the study of the fine-grained properties of contextualised organisational practice.
This view shows an old fashioned notion of leadership. This portrays an organization as a hierarchy where only the people at the top have to be leaders.
But what if we think of leadership as a personal attitude about life and work? What if everybody in an organization saw themselves as leader?
- Everybody would be looking pro-actively to make their work better, to increase their impact on the organization.
- Nobody would blame the circumstances. Instead they will look for ways in which they can make a difference.
- All team members would raise the bar, instead of complaining when the one in charge asks to improve and innovate.
- Everybody would focus on results, not tasks.
- Everybody would approach their work as a freelancer doing projects that their livelihoods depend on, rather than workers doing a job.
- People would hold themselves accountable for mistakes, and share successes gladly with others.
- Leaders are vulnerable all the time, because they put themselves on the line for something they think is terrifically important.
Now, that is leadership. That would make a great organization. We need a lot of leaders, not just a few. A strong organization cultivates more leadership, rather than less.
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Thanks for the link Niels and I kept thinking about your comments on this. An awful lot of CEOs and managers are paid very high salaries, presumably entirely based on the older notion of leadership. The acid test for whether they subscribe to the newer ideal would be whether they continue to insist they’re worth many multiples of their workers’ pay!
Thank you Johnnie. I am not one to appreciate extraordinarily high salaries that are so out of step with what others make. Another acid test would be to see if these CEOs will actually acknowledge leadership that others show in their organization, and then share the wealth with them. Will they put the money—their money perhaps—where their mouths are?