Leadership and Leader’s Performance
A Healthy Leader
A leader is one who builds up a group that accepts him and uses his power to influence the thoughts and actions of that group by giving direction and inspiring them by being an example himself.
Leadership:
Leadership is the function of the Leader, the group and the situation1
Leader:
A leader is one who builds up a group that accepts him and uses his power to influence the thoughts and actions of that group by giving direction and inspiring them by being an example himself.
The Group:
The group refers to the followers and their needs and values.
The Situation:
The situation varies constantly and the leader plays a significant role in building the environment.
The performance of a leader is defined by the harmony between the inner self and the outer personality. It requires a blend of a highly developed intellect and a high emotional Intelligence quotient. This necessity arises out of the self-reflective nature of every human being. The leader is referred as a Martyr. He suffers for others… willingly. Jesus can be an excellent example of a leader who continuously suffered for others willingly. In the process the leader is always willing to accept chaos and tolerate failures. Unlike managers who use well-tried and proven methods to succeed leaders strike out in new directions and in the process delay the results to understand the issue better. Leader, in the course of leading the team to its success faces the greatest threat in the form of the power that he exercises. First, he runs the risk of equating the power to get immediate results; second, he may ignore the myriad ways of accumulating power; thirdly, as many have fallen, the risk of losing self-control for the desire for power.
Not all managers can be leaders but all leaders definitely are Managers. Leaders are managers in the sense they exhibit the toughest part of management in managing themselves. As mentioned earlier a leader has to be self-reflective and hence his inner self is revealed through his actions. A Leader who can manage himself and keep his emotions and reactions in control can lead better. Here comes the time-tested argument; Manager or Leader? Abraham Zaleznik clearly states the difference on the basis of attitude, conception of work, relations with others, the senses of the self and by the very personality itself. Organizations today have both a need for a good manager and a great leader. The issue here is that managers blend and amalgamate with the organization, but leaders separate themselves from their environment. They may work in organizations, but they never belong to them. Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly—sometimes before they fully understand a problem’s significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully. This clearly depicts the performance of a leader and answers various questions on efficiency of a Leader. The efficiency of a Leader who tries out new ideas and maverick methods tend to decrease but will inevitably result in the future performance boost. Leadership necessarily involves Management and Entrepreneurship. In the article titled “Zeitgeist Leadership”, Anthony J. Mayo, Nitin Nohria, in HBR Oct 2005, have mentioned the three archetypes of leadership. They have stated that a leader has to play the role of a leader, manager and an entrepreneur in business.
He is an Entrepreneur when he thinks ahead of time and starts a new venture
He optimizes the business as a manager by reading the current zeitgeist
He then leads the organization through change as a dynamic Leader
The Leader is susceptible to the follower’s influence too. As Douglas MacArthur said, “A General is as good or as bad as the troops under his command make him” Lynn R. Offermann in Jan 2004 HBR Featured article calls such Leaders as “Cognitive Misers” These leaders tend to succumb to automatic thinking rather than a considered examination. This is the very reason that some good leaders end up making poor decisions because of united followers with a definite course of action. She has suggested six ways of countering waywardness.
ü Keep vision and values front and centre
ü Make sure people disagree
ü Cultivate truth tellers
ü Do as you would have done to you
ü Honour your intuition
ü Delegate, Don’t desert
A leader is able to perform well when he is healthy. A healthy leader is one who is able to live intensely. They are passionate about what they do. They are able to experience the full range of feelings without any filtering. They take personal responsibility. They strongly believe in their ability to control events that have an impact in their lives. Such a Leader is one who is able to manage the three functions of leadership. As John Adair states,
Leadership is the function in relation to the needs of the task, the team and the individual. The overlapping circles indicate the interdependence of the three needs. Lack of one means incompleteness. These qualities must be exhibited through various levels of leadership namely Team Leadership, Operational Leadership and Strategic Leadership each differing in the number of followers.
A leader therefore is a manager and an entrepreneur who exercises his power based influence on a group that which accepts him and the group to which he is an example. He can choose to be a healthy leader or an underperformer by the group that he forms and the level of power he exercises.
1.John Adair TM
References:
1. The Concise Adair on Leadership, John Adair
2. HBR – The Seven Ages of Leadership – Warren G. Bennis
3. HBR – Putting Leaders on the Couch – A conversation with Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries
4. HBR – When followers become toxic – Lynn R. Offermann
5. HBR – The Leader’s Secret Self – Thomas A. Stewart
6. HBR – Left on a Mountain Side – Julia Kirby
7. HBR – Managers and Leaders- Are they Different? – Abraham Zaleznik
8. HBR - What Makes a Leader – Daniel Goleman
9. HBR – Narcissistic Leaders: The incredible Pros, the Inevitable cons – Michael Maccoby
10. HBR – Understanding Leadership – W.C.H. Prentice
11. HBR – Leadership- Warts and All – Barbara Kellerman
12. Lead Like Jesus – Ken Blanchard, Phill Hodges
