| Apparently we don't want people who lead by example
March 7, 2012: Apparently we don't want people who lead by example
As my half dozen frequent readers know, I am fascinated by the topic of leadership, in part because I moved into leadership roles without ever having that ambition, and thus with a sorely lacking background of leadership training and education; and in part because watching good leaders and bad leaders motivates me in the same way that bad teachers influenced me as a teacher even more than the good ones.
Part of this fascination is that every week one can find an article in a major online journal/newspaper (Forbes is frequently one source) about bad leadership. This Washington Post article I discovered yesterday on how to destroy an employee's work life is brilliant. If this doesn't reduce the effects of poor leadership to a one-page newsletter, I don't know what can. I'm sure everyone who reads this has that moment of "Oh my God, these writers had to have worked here." Well, maybe not everyone, as there are bound to be the upper managers/CEOs/Presidents who don't get this at all.
And that's what makes me ask: what is going wrong? Are there an unacceptable number of incompetent leaders around the country (maybe the world)? If so, where did they go wrong in their training? Do any of these articles such as the Washington Post one penetrate them at all? Do the articles, and ideally, leadership training and education programs that reflect these same lessons, reach an understanding audience of future leaders?
I've of course bitten off more than I can chew with all of these questions and such a short blog. For today, I think I'll just start with a reflection on curricular leadership programs. Stanford's online courses for leadership seem a good place to start. Can't ask for a more credible school than Stanford.
The courses sound right (these are about half of the ones offered):
- Biases in Decision Making
- Leadership for Strategic Execution (unless this is actually about how to fire people)
- Leading Change from the Middle
- Leading Strategic-Decision Making
- Managing Without Authority (my personal favorite)
Drilling down to the course description and the syllabus (although I might quibble with what Stanford calls a "syllabus" here), one finds, in the case of Managing Without Authority, that it may not be quite what I would envision. That title connotes a philosophy of collaboration and empowerment of others. Do others agree that is not quite what one sees in the course description?
Learn how to maintain positive relationships yet get things done in a project-based matrix environment in which you lack direct authority. This course demonstrates effective techniques and provides plenty of practice in using them. You'll acquire knowledge and skills you can leverage to negotiate priorities, get people to work together productively, manage highly charged situations, resolve performance problems, and keep projects on track despite the challenges that inevitably arise.
Matrix environment suggests, to me, that the point is not to concede your authority to get things done, but to manage situations where there are multiple authorities. This is not irrelevant (anyone who has worked in an environment with "matrix partners" knows what I am talking about). In addition, maybe it is the nature of Bloom's Taxonomy that leads to certain verb usage, but every "topic" still reflects the individual leader and not the collaborative whole:
- Influence decisions others make that are critical to your success and your project's or program's success
- Hold people accountable through means other than hierarchical authority
- Communicate performance problems in a fact-based, non-punishing manner that encourages mutual problem solving
- Appropriately diagnose the root causes of performance problems in order to plan immediate and effective corrective action
- Gain commitments from project team members who are not direct reports, so as to meet expectations and fulfill agreements
- Deal with strong emotions that can arise among customers, partners, employees, and managers
- Reduce the conflict inherent in a project-based matrix environment
- Promote higher productivity, efficiency, and performance
I want to see course objectives that reflect a different mentality:
- Reach collaborative decisions that are critical to your unit's, project's or program's success
- Create accountability from the lowest levels that flow back through the organizational hierarchy
- Develop mutual problem-solving through open communication about performance challenges
- Appropriately diagnose the root causes of performance problems in order to strategize immediate and effective correction
- Gain commitments from employees in other units to work together for the betterment of the organization
- Manage strong emotions that can arise among customers, partners, employees, and managers
- Reduce the conflict inherent in any work environment
- Promote and reward higher productivity, efficiency, and performance
I guess I am ultimately titling my course "Managing Without Needing Authority."
So, sadly, if you take the time to review all of the rest of these courses, you'll see that the courses still have a ego-centric view of a leader. Am I too naive, too hippy-like, too waif-like to see this as the wrong approach? I don't believe so, as I come back to the weekly "how not to be a good leader" articles. See this recent article on "Seven Deadly Sins That Derail Innovation," for example. It doesn't even use "pride" the way I would in suggesting how egos can derail creativity. It references pride as an "inflated view of quality, which can result in overshooting what the customers really want." Read the whole article to see the very clever connections between the seven deadly sins and the organization. It says that gluttony is the worst of the sins, when an abundance of people and resources creates bloated research efforts when what’s really needed are simpler, quicker approaches.
If that isn't a message for higher education, I don't know if there is one.
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