Published by The Royal Bank of Canada

Leadership at Work

Is a manager a leader? Some are andsome unfortunately aren’t, but they

all should think of themselves asleading the people who work under them.Here, some thoughts about leadershipin business and everywhere else...

[] No form of social organization has ever existedwithout leaders. To have someone in charge is asnatural as the birds and the bees, the former withtheir pecking orders, the latter with their queens.In human affairs, even those who reject traditionalleadership structures find a need for leaders them-selves; anarchist parties dedicated to the destruc-tion of the state regularly elect slates of officers.The Bolsheviks who strove for the dictatorship ofthe proletariat wound up with the pure and simpledictatorship of one man.

Like cream, it seems, leaders naturally rise tothe surface. But unlike cream, they are not neces-sarily the best part of the whole. The wizardryof popular leadership has been applied at least asmuch to evil as to good over the course of history.The example of Adolph Hitler springs to mind-a charismatic leader whose ability to muster amass following for his twisted visions broughtimmense suffering to mankind.

There are those who would argue, however, thatdictators like Hitler and Stalin were not reallyleaders. They may once have led in a demagogicfashion, but they turned into tyrants when theabsolute corruption of absolute power took hold."A leader and a tyrant are polar opposites," wroteJames MacGregor Burns, the award-winning Amer-ican political scientist. In his 1978 book Leader-ship, Burns drew a strict line between those wholead and those who wield blunt power.

This may seem like an overly idealistic view ofthe question, since so many so-called leaders aredemonstrably quick to force people to do their

bidding. But it does fit in with the theory, if notalways the practice, of democratic rule. The demo-cratic system tries to guard against excessivepower and its attendant corruption. In the Water-gate affair the world witnessed the system inaction when no less a personage than the presidentof the United States was driven from office forabusing his power.

One of the reasons for the restraints on power isto control ambition. The democratic system recog-nizes that ambition always has been and alwayswill be a vital force in human affairs. It seeks toharness this force to the best interests of thepeople. Similarly, the private enterprise economy,with its rewards for performance and risk-taking,pools the efforts generated by personal ambitioninto a general effort to produce an endowment inwhich everyone shares.

When viewed in the light of ambition, Burns’sdistinction between tyrants and leaders stands outvividly. The tyrant’s ambition is for himself alone;he may use other people to gain it, but they are nomore than his tools. In contrast, the leader isambitious not only for himself, but for a causewhich he shares with his following. Rightly orwrongly, he believes that his followers will bebetter off when and if they reach their commongoal. (Neither leaders nor tyrants are exclusivelymales, of course; the masculine gender is usedthroughout in a generic sense.)

It is the presence of a following that compelsleaders to act responsibly. They occupy their posi-tions only by others’ consent. Responsibility is the

lynchpin of leadership in a democratic society. Aprime minister is responsible to the electorate; ageneral to the civil authority; a chief executiveofficer to the shareholders of his company. Andevery leader is responsible to those who follow him,no matter how many or how few.

It would be naive to suppose that this systemprecludes autocratic behaviour. There will alwaysbe those who love power for its own sake, and whowill short-circuit the system to put their ownambition first. A tyrant refuses to work for acommon cause, and is pathologically afraid ofrivals. He "suppresses every superiority, does awaywith good men, forbids education and light, con-trols the movements of the citizens, and, keepingthem in perpetual servitude, wants them to growaccustomed to baseness and cowardice..." Thatwas written by Aristotle in the 3rd century B.C.,but such tactics linger on today.

Yet if tyrants continue to carve out places forthemselves in offices, on shop floors and elsewhere,they are no less vulnerable to overthrow than theircounterparts in palaces. They may be mistaken forleaders, which they often believe themselves to be.But they are not because they force people to goalong with them instead of bringing them alongwith them. They bully and blackmail and manip-ulate; they do everything but lead.

Unfortunately, leadership is very often confusedwith something else, its antithesis included. Burnscited a study in which people attributed 130different meanings to the word. His own definitionwas the product of years of research and thinkingabout the subject. It is that leadership is a sym-biotic relationship between those who lead andthose who are led.

The art of the possiblein business leadership

"Leadership is inseparable from the followers’needs and goals," Burns declared. His theory takeson flesh and blood when you think of what happensin democratic politics. Each party leader vies forfollowers by attempting to create a symbiosis-a feeling that "we need each other." Any intel-ligent leader will attempt to adjust his needs andgoals to those of his potential followers withinthe limits that principle allows.

"Leaders are essentially politicians and mustdeal with political forces," wrote psychologistHarry Levinson in his excellent Levinson Letter.He was referring to managers in business andother organizations, who, he insists, should thinkof themselves as leaders ahead of anything else.Apart from having to gain and hold a constituency,manager/leaders must practice the political art ofconciliation. They are subject to pressures fromabove, below, and sometimes on the same levelfrom other departments. It takes political acumento smooth these pressures out.

No one is exempt. The chief executive officermust be mindful of the disparate interests ofdirectors, other shareholders, employees, con-sumers, governments, and the general public."Middle managers" might ruefully conclude thatthey are in the middle like the ham in a sandwichas they try to cope with demands from on high formore production while the union is insisting onadherence to work rules. The foreman must tryto meet his schedule on days when his crew seemsto be all thumbs, one of the machines is down forrepairs, and the shop steward is raising hell overa grievance. If politics is the art of the possible,it is never more so than in the leadership of abusiness concern.

Using routine as a blockto stop needed changes

It should be stressed, though, that the politicsof leadership is quite a different thing from whatis commonly called "office politics." Political in-trigue within the organization is usually counter-productive, and greater productivity is the ul-timate goal of a leader with the best interests ofthe organization at heart.

"Leading does not mean managing," wrote org-anizational expert Warren G. Bennis in his 1976book The Unconscious Conspiracy. By definition,a leader’s mission is to make progress; those whomanage but do not lead are mired in the statusquo. Office politicians generally fall into this cat-egory. The routine in which they take such delightmay be the wrong routine; it may be outmoded or

useless in the first place. But they are adept atusing routine to block off needed changes. Theyalso tend to be empire builders, and the biggerthe empire, the harder it is to change.

They will sometimes accept change, but onlywhen it suits their own purposes. This clearlymakes them non-leaders from Burns’s point ofview. They are thinking of themselves first, not ofthe good of the organization or the people who workwith them. Their ambition--and it is oftenintense- is aimed at a personal, not a collective,goal.

But even those who genuinely want to leadfrequently find themselves managing the statusquo against their own wishes. Their schedule isjammed with daily chores, interspersed with trou-ble-shooting current crises. Very little time is leftover for leadership functions such as planning andmaintaining staff morale.

A case of running as fast asyou can to stay where you are

In a study of the working days of five top U.S.executives, management scientist Henry Mintz-berg found that they rarely had time to thinkabout anything except the question immediatelybefore them. Half of the activities they carried outlasted less than nine minutes, and only 10 per centlasted more than an hour. They "met a steadystream of callers and mail from the moment theyarrived in the morning until they left in theevening," Mintzberg recorded. "Coffee breaks andlunches were inevitably work related, and ever-present subordinates seemed to usurp any freemoment."

Nor was this frenetic regimen confined to theexecutive suite. A study of 160 British managers,mostly in the middle ranks, found that they wereable to work for a half-hour or more withoutinterruption only once every three days or so. Theworking lives of foremen were even more frag-mented. A study of 56 foremen in the U.S. showedthat they averaged an astonishing 583 activities,or one every 48 seconds, per eight-hour shift.

It would seem to be a case of running as fastas you can to stay where you are. How, in suchconditions, can anyone afford to function as a

leader? The first answer would seem to be to askwhether you might not be using routine as asubconscious excuse to avoid more difficult, long-term activities. ~’I think that all of us find thatacting on routine problems, just because they arethe easiest, often blocks us from getting involvedin the bigger ones," Warren Bennis observed.

It may call for a considerable reordering ofpriorities to pay more attention to leadership, butit rightly should be at or near the top of thepriority list for any manager. "Free time is made,not found, in the manager’s job; it is forced intothe schedule," wrote Mintzberg. Time should bemade with determination to plan, to introduceneeded changes, to appeal to the motivation of thestaff, and to develop people’s potentialities ifleadership is to be accorded the importance itdeserves.

There are various ways of eliminating routine,including the greater employment of specialists topresent managers with well-thought-out prioritiesand alternatives for decision. The way that fitsbest with good leadership is the delegation ofauthority and tasks. Delegation often requiresforbearance on the part of the superior, who maybe able to handle work better and more easilythan his deputy. There is always a temptationwhen watching an inexperienced person gothrough the trials and errors of an unfamiliarexercise to do or redo it yourself.

But it is foolish to believe that your way is theonly way of doing something; the method is lessimportant than getting the work done satisfac-torily. When things go wrong with delegated work,a conscientious leader will point out the mistakesin the hope that they will not go wrong the nexttime around. Delegation should be used to bringforth new leaders by training them in an ever-broadening range of experience and responsibility.Many leaders fail to give sufficient weight to thecontinuity of leadership in the positions theyoccupy. In a sense, they should be work.ing them-selves out of their present jobs by preparing othersto take over. Delegation is a method of doing justthat.

Certainly it would seem to be the right approachfor dealing with the present and coming genera-tions of working people. They are better educated,more assertive and more sceptical than ever before.

Changes in values in the past two decades havebrought a variety of fresh forces to bear on theleadership of all types of institutions. In 1958Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidtpublished a paper in the Harvard Business Reviewentitled "How to Choose a Leadership Pattern."In 1973 they felt called upon to write an addendumto it in the light of the social changes that hadtaken place in the meantime- the rise of theyouth, civil rights, ecology and consumer move-ments, and concern with the quality of life in theworkplace and everywhere else.

They concluded that all this called for moresensitivity and flexibility in management. "To-day’s manager is more likely to deal with em-ployees who resent being treated as subordinates,who may be highly critical of any organizationalsystem, who expect to be consulted and to exertinfluence, and who often stand on the edge ofalienation from the institution that needs theirloyalty and commitment," they explained.

Employees today are noteasily scared or fooled

The social atmosphere has cooled down some-what since that was written in the early ’seventies,but that does not change the fact that a distinctlynew breed of workers has emerged. They have beenbrought up in their homes and schools to expecta say in decisions that affect them. They aredownright suspicious of institutional motives as aresult of media muckraking into the sins of the"Establishment," some of it valid, some of it not.They are jealous of their rights, real or perceived.They are forward in making demands for a fairshare of rewards and recognition. They demand tobe treated as individuals. They are not easilyscared or fooled.

Some walk around in T-shirts exhorting: "Ques-tion Authority!" Though they stop short of display-ing their sentiments on their chests, the majoritywould subscribe to Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s viewthat ~’authority is entitled only to the respect itearns, and not a whit more." No longer does a titleon a door or a carpet on a floor command automaticdeference.

With the rise of the new worker, leadership hasbecome a matter of eliciting co-operation rather

than commanding obedience. Co-operation meansa willing effort on both sides; the first definitionof the word in the Oxford Concise Dictionary is"working together to same end." This brings usback full circle to Burns’s definition of leadershipas a relationship in which the leader and followersshare the same goals and needs. Nowadays, theirneeds are apt to be similar. Recent studies showthat modern workers are highly concerned withpersonal autonomy, appreciation of their efforts,and a chance to realize their potenti.alities. If theycannot fulfil at least a portion of ghese needs atwork, the energy generated by the drive to meetthem is the organization’s loss.

In the present setting, management scholarDouglas McGregor has suggested that ~’the essen-tial task of management is to arrange organiza-tional conditions and methods of operation so thatpeople can achieve their own goals best by direct-ing their own efforts toward organizational objec-tives." For the manager, this implies a thoroughunderstanding of the individual personalities ofthe people he is called upon to lead. It also impliesthe exercise of some of the finest human values --respect for the individual, justice, considerationand understanding. The old-fashioned boss accus-tomed to the servant-master system might protestthat this approach can only lead to slackness. Butgiven that bosses must get tough at times, it wouldseem that people will respond to toughness morepositively when they know that it is justified by arecord of fair play.

In the final analysis, leaders can expect theirdecent treatment of others to be reciprocated. Itis this reciprocation that makes the differencebetween an outstanding and an adequate job, andinspires people to pitch in with an extra effortwhen the going gets rough. Lao-Tse was a poetand philosopher, not a management consultant,and he lived almost 2,500 years ago. But he showedthat the principles of leadership are timeless whenhe wrote: ~’Fail to honour people, and they will failto honour you; but of a good leader, who talks little,when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they willsay, ’we did this ourselves’."