Organizational Leadership

"We all know what leadership is until someone asks us to define it specifically" - R.A. Barker in The Nature of Leadership Human Relations 2001 Vol 54 (4)

How often have you been in conversations where people 'talk past' each other because they haven't clarified what it is they are talking about?

Some people emphasise leadership personality, others character traits, other roles and behaviours others still leaderhip processes. Here are some definitions:

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." - Dwight Eisenhower

"A leader is a dealer in hope."- Napoleon Bonaparte

"To lead people, walk beside them ... As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate ... When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves!'" - Lao-tsu

image - Leading The Way -by Njugnga


When we use the word 'Leadership' we often overlook the noun/verb distinction and fall into the trap of nomilization. This means we focus on the 'name' or label of the thing and overlook the process.

In this way, we might approach the question -"what makes her a good leader?" rather differently than if we ask - "what is it about her leading that makes her good?"

The first approach gets us focussed on the characteristics of the leader and the second on the process or what Gemmill and Oakley call "the process of dynamic collaboration".

Professor Keith Grint goes as far as saying:

"Leadership is not simply about leaders. Leadership is an essentially social phenomenon. Without followers there would be no leaders"

Now look at the picture again!

Leadership has intrigued people for thousands of years, from Sun Tzu 2,500 years ago, through Machiavelli to modern writers such as
John Adair:

The Best of Adair on Leadership and Management

Sociologists Rittell and Webber explained that people make sense of the world by seeing it in terms of either 'Tame' or 'Wicked' problems.

People who see a world full of tame problems see it as predictable and manageable, requiring the application of familiar tried and tested solutions to get by.

On the other hand people who see the world as full of wicked problems see it as ambiguous, full of trade offs and not sorted with quick fixes.

Leadership writers Murray Clark and Tudor Rickarts talk about leaders needing the ability to NOT HAVE THE ANSWER!

Dilemmas of Leadership

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." - Peter F. Drucker.

So it seems that Leadership is something bigger and better than management.

Henry Mintzberg disagrees:

"Managers have to lead and leaders have to manage. Management without leadership is sterile; leadership without management is disconnected and encourages hubris"

Managers Not MBAs

Good leaders are said to be able to create a compelling vision. How do they do this?

Karl Weick believes this is to do with the skill of 'sense-making. This is the process of:

"authoring as well as interpretation, creation as well as discovery"

L.Thayer says:

"A leader at work is one who gives others a sense of meaning...the leader is the sense -giver. The leader always embodies the possibilities of escape from what might otherwise appear to us to be incomprhensible"

Sensemaking in Organizations
(Foundations for Organizational Science)

image credit Freeimages


One of my favourite approaches to leadership is the one explained by Don Beck and Chris Cowan.

These writers developed the ideas of social psychologist Clare Graves. to create what they called Spiral Dynamics

This approach classisfies different 'world views' and for simplicity color codes them. For example:

A highly ordered, ritualised and bureaucratic world view is 'blue', a commercially driven resource using world view is 'orange', and a community minded equality minded word view is 'green'.

There are positive and negative aspects to each 'world view'

The idea of the spiral is that humans develop and grow their world view over time. The dominant world view of an era (such as the Middle Ages, or the late 20th century) is the so called the Value Meme of the time.

Value Memes are the things that govern the way problems are understood and the way solutions are created.

Effective Spiral Leaders are able to apprecicate competing Value Memes by undertstanding where the other person is 'coming from' and they are skilled at using a repertoire of Value Meme positions to suit different life conditions.

We become 'laminations' of world views (like tree rings) rather than progress from one stage to the next because there is always a value in using pre-existing Value Memes in certain situations. For example the competitive 'red' Value Meme is always useful in sport or chess game.

Spiral Leaders are "Systemic Thinkers and Integrative Problem Solvers"

Spiral Dynamics:
Mastering Values, Leadership and Change