- Email: [email protected]
A little leadership, please?
Books,managementconsultants, and corporateexecutivespour out answers to today’s “leadershipcrisis. ” But are they asking the Tight questions?
ALittle Leadership,Please. MICHAEL
E. MCGILL
n June 14,1996, in Kansas City, Cal Ripken, Jr., Baltimore Orioles’ shortstop, played in his 2,216th consecutive major league baseball game, eclipsing the world record previously held by Sachio Kinugasa of the Hiroshima Carp. Ripken had surpassed Lou Gehrig’s Major League consecutive game record of 2,130 in June of 1995, but by besting Kinugasa’s 17-year performance, Ripken became the true and undisputed Iron Man of professional baseball. Barely two weeks after Ripken’s remarkable achievement, Peter Angelos, owner of the Orioles, unhappy with his team’s trailing the league-leading Yankees by 5 l/2 games, called Ripken’s leadership into question. Said Angelos, “The truth is, this team is in desperate need of leadership on the field and in the clubhouse, and no one is more qualified to provide it than Cal Ripken. If Cal accepted that challenge with as much zeal as he plays, there is no question the Orioles would reach their potential.” In his 14-year pursuit of the consecutive game record, Cal Ripken, Jr., has done considerably more than just show up for work every day. From 1982 to 1987, he played in 8,243 straight innings (every inning in over 904 games). Since the streak began, he has played in 19,427 of the Orioles 19,593 innings (99.2 percent). He has been named to 14
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straight all-star teams, held a lifetime batting average of .276, led the major leagues in double plays, and won Golden Gloves in 1991 and 1992. All of this and still his leadership is challenged because, as Ripken put it, “I don’t get up on the dugout and wave a towel.” What are we to make of this? At one level, Angelos looks like a blustery baseball owner in the style of George Steinbrenner or Marge Schott-classic command-and-cudgel leadership behavior. More charitably, it could be observed that whatever Angelos’ views on leadership are, he is clearly not a believer in leadership by example. Viewed more broadly, the Angelos-Ripken exchange succinctly captures the state of leadership in many organizations today. It is a metaphor for the modern-day leadership morass.
THE LEADERSHIP
LABYRINTH
It is commonly believed that in order for organizations to succeed in today’s environment (whatever their sphere of activity), they must dramatically change their business processes and, simultaneously, develop and draw on the commitment of their people to implement these new processes. This is both the challenge and the contribution of leadership in
The authors would like to acknowledge the comments and cogent suggestions made by Don VandeWalle and the Executive MBA Class number 21 at SMU. WINTER
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Michael E. (Mick) McGill is executive vice president of corporate human resources, education, and training for The Associates. Formerly a professor of organizational behavior at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dr. McGill remains primarily concerned with issues of personal and organizational learning now in corporate venue of $50 billion in assets and 20,000 employees providing financial services worldwide. Dr. McGill has authored numerous articles, many of which have appeared in Organizational Dynamics, as well as five books, including The Smarter Organization (Wiley, 1994), co-authored with John Slocum.
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our time-to engineer change and to evoke commitment. There is widespread belief that leadership is sorely needed at every level of every organization. It has become commonplace to view government as mired in legislative gridlock for lack of leadership; businesses as trapped in reactive cycles of restructuring/reengineering/reduction in force for want of effective leadership; community organizationschurches, schools, charities, sports teams-as floundering while they wait for someone to “get up on the dugout and wave a towel.” The urgency of these clarion cries of crisis suggests that absent effective leadership, organizations face extinction; unless something very dramatic is done by someone very soon, it is going to be too late. If arousal led directly to action, things would be pretty crowded atop the dugout. But, as yet, the leadership alarms have led only to crowded shelves in the leadership section of bookstores. Perhaps because the leadership crisis is perceived to be so pervasive, biographies of leaders and advice about how to lead abound. Most popular treatments of leadership today theorize and proselytize a The premise is that in “new leadership.” today’s complex organizations, the context of leadership has changed; therefore, so too must the content and conduct of leadership. It is generally true today that whatever the organization, followers are more skilled and sophisticated, tasks more complex, and the consequences of decisions to reengineer or redesign more daunting. The context of leadership truly has changed. Consistent with this new context, new models of leadership have emergedmodels that are “non-positional,” team-based, or empowering. These new models call for new leader behaviors. Leaders who act as coaches, stewards, servants, or partners are seen as dramatically different from the leaders of old who used the power of their position, and/or their persona to exert their influence. Arguably this new appreciation of the role and responsibilities of leaders would give rise to more than enough new leaders to meet the many leadership crises chronicled. This has
not occurred; the new theories have produced neither dramatic new leadership practices nor dramatic numbers of new leaders. If they had, there would not be a leadership crisis. Instead, the leadership agenda, framed as it is today, forestalls the very acts of leadership it intends to motivate. It does so in four ways: 1. The scale of the purported leadership crisis in many organizations activates not leadership initiatives, but rather, arousal, frustration, and helplessness, which has resulted in a decline in the quality of thinking about leadership and the quality of leadership itself; 2. Would-be leaders at whatever level in organizations find it difficult to identify with or learn from currently popular leadership examples; 3. Proposed theories of leadership are not: relevant to the situations for leadership that exist for most of us in most of our organizations; and 4. In all that is currently promoted about leadership, there are few proven prescriptions for how we can find and/or develop the leadership we need now and/or in the future. Lacking a sense of self-efficacy, and without relevant models or means to develop appropriate skills, it is little wonder that just when it is most needed, individuals shy away from leadership. When we consider these dimensions of the current state of leadership, the case for a “little” leadership becomes compelling.
John W. Slocum, Jr., holds the 0. Paul Corley Professorship in management at the Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University. Before joining the faculty at SMU, he was a member of the faculties at Penn State and Ohio State. He served as the 39th president of the Academy of Management and editor of the Academy of Management Journal. He is currently editor-in-chief, Journal of World Business, and associate editor of Organizational Dynamics and Decisions Sciences. He has written over 130 articles and 18 books covering subjects ranging from human resources management to organizational design. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, Decision Science institute, and Pan-Pacific Management Association.
The Problem with “Large” Leadership In 1984, social psychologist Karl Weick wrote a wonderfully insightful article, “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems.” Weick’s thesis was that: When the magnitude of problems is scaled upward in the interest of mobilizing action, the quality of thought and action declines, because processes such as frustration, arousal and helplessness are activated....People often define social problems in ways that overwhelm their ability to do anything about them. WINTER
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Weick’s prescription? Think in terms of small wins. “Calling a situation a mere problem that necessitates a small win moderates arousal, improves diagnosis, preserves gains, and encourages innovation.” Published in the American Psychologist, Weick’s wisdom had little immediate impact on either leaders or students of leadership. It is only recently, amidst the turmoil of constant change and continual resistance, that organizational observers have come to appreciate that small is beautiful. Harvard’s Professor of Leadership, John Kotter, has enumerated eight steps for leading change. Number six on his list is “Planning for and Creating Short-Term Wins.” As Kotter observes, “Without short-term wins, too many people give up or actively join the ranks of those people who have been resisting change.” The same can be said of leadership. Without small, achievable acts of leadership, too many people simply never attempt to lead. Unfortunately, the street-wise wisdom of small wins has yet to migrate from leading change to leading per se. Today, everything about leadership is conceived on a grand scale-the problems, the people, and the potential. The leadership crisis is: (a) global; (b) nationwide; (c) community-wide; (d) with the family as institution; (e) all of the above. The problems that leaders must address are: (a) peace, (b) poverty, (c) diversity, (d) family values, (e) the existence of the corporation, or (f) the future employment of millions. Such leadership sirens draw attention, but at the same time frustrate action. When most of us think about the awesome challenge of leadership, there is a tendency toward one of two reactions: (1) The leadership challenge is so important and its magnitude so daunting that there is no way we can act upon it; or (2) Whatever action we calztake is so insignificant as to have no appreciable impact on resolving the issues facing my organization. In either case, the response is the same: Rather than rising to the leadership challenge, we retreat from it. Ironically, by making leadership so important and the need for it so 42
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great, we have dramatically diminished the potential number of leaders. Who among us wants to risk failing at something that is so important? Consider an example of the kind of situation that, unfortunately, hundreds of companies face each year. Camelot, the retail record and tape distributor, is in the midst of Chapter 11 restructuring. Rumor has it the owners are looking for a buyer. Revenues are projected to fall by 90 percent from 1995 levels in 1997; stores have been closed and employees laid off. Serious questions exist about the company’s future. In the face of this bleak scenario, Camelot’s task force on “Employee Morale” sees its task as a case of “rearranging the desk chairs on the Titanic,” as one member of that task force put it. When celebrity leaders such as Lee Iaccoca issue challenges such as “Lead, follow, or get out of the way !“, one can’t help but wonder how many organization members see a fourth choice-stay here and do nothing at all. Among the many behaviors that a leadership crisis may compel, experience shows that surely the most common response is to stay and do nothing, because that is the one thing we all can do.
Large Leaders If the problem of leadership doesn’t inspire, what about the leaders themselves? In the recently published book TJze Leader of the Future (The Drucker Foundation, 1996), 31 academics, consultants, and organizational leaders turn their attention to the subject of “new (leadership) visions, strategies, and practices for the next era.” Their essays, which capture the state of the art in leadership thinking today, presume the critical need for leadership and propound upon its scope in today’s organizational world. Consider some of the essay titles in this collection: “Leading From the Grass Roots,” “Creating Organizations with Many Leaders,” “The Power of Partnering,” “Self-Leadership,” “The Leader Who Serves.” The language certainly evokes images of a kind of leader different from that we have
traditionally known. Unfortunately, the examples given hearken back to the same leadership models and theories that have always been with us. For all of the talk about a different kind of leadership, one that relies neither on position nor persona, these leaders have both: Larry Bossidy (Allied Signal); Ben Cohen (Ben & Jerry’s); Max DePree (Herman Miller); George Fisher (Eastman Kodak); Louis Gerstner (IBM); Robert Galvin (Motorola); Phil Knight (Nike); Anthony Martinez (Sears); Jack Welch (General Electric), and others. Whatever one might say of the enlightened leader behaviors of these successful executives, there is no denying that each has the position power to back up whatever persuasive or coaching leadership skills he chooses to exercise. Moreover, these executives are gifted to a man (there’s an additional point to be made here) with considerable personal presence and charisma. Despite the hype over this season’s new leadership and new leaders, the picture we typically see is a rerun-white males in their 50s leading from atop large organizations using (or being perceived as capable of using) their ample position and personal power to engineer change and to evoke commitment. Of course there are other leaderswomen, minorities, young, elderly-in other contexts-churches, schools, community organizations-but they are rarely held up as examples of how to lead. Indeed, when examples are drawn from these groups (e.g., Frances Hesselbein, Girl Scouts; Anita Roddick, Body Shop; Colin Powell, U.S. Army) they look, save for gender and race, very much like successful corporate executives, with comparable positional and personal charisma. As we struggle to make sense of the workings of large complex organizations, their successes and their failures, it is common to ascribe to leaders control and responsibility over events and outcomes whose very scope seems to defy understanding. How can any of us begin to understand how General Electric, a corporation of over 200,000 people, working in over 100 countries, producing and selling
$70 billion in products last year, really works? It’s much simpler to believe “Jack did it.” Similarly, when things don’t work, such as at American Express, IBM, the UN, or the Boston Red Sox, rather than conduct a comprehensive analysis of the contributing causes, we simply suggest a change in leaders. We have developed highly romanticized, heroic views of what leaders do, what they are able to accomplish, and the general effects they have on our lives. Romantic, heroic, transformational figures require dire straits and dramatic deeds as a context for their heroism. Leadership anthologies today are replete with both. The level of alarm is deafening and the acts of leadership dramatic. At one turn, there is a crisis in leadership in America, at another, the leadership exploits of Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, Bill Gates, or Herb Kelleher are being extolled. The leadership that is alive in America today is one of great men, responding to great needs, by doing great things. It is the very popularity of these examples of great leaders that defeats acts of leadership among the rest of us. Few of us think of ourselves as being “great” or even having the capacity for greatness. Most of us shy away from the need to be great. We struggle daily in the hopes of being “good enough.” If greatness is the stuff of leadership, then leadership is going to have to be found elsewhere.
Theories at Large With all of the attention to great leaders, it is increasingly difficult to separate who leaders are from what leaders do. It is hard to distinguish the person from the process. For this reason, theory-building has been virtually indistinguishable from personality profiles. Consider a dominant leadership theory of the last 10 years, transformational or visionary leadership. James M. Burns coined the term “transformational leadership” in 1978 in reaction to the “transactional” leadership of the previous two decades. Burns and others criticized the leadership theories and contingency models of the 1970s and 1980s for being WINTER
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contractual, mechanical, and promoting procedures over purpose. These observers argued the need for a leadership that would be unifying and encouraging from the heart rather than merely utilitarian. Transformational leadership was seen as a way to bind leaders and followers “in mutual pursuit of higher purposes.” Transformational leaders were said to bring about this mutual pursuit by virtue of their charisma, inspiration, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Coming, as it did, at a time when community criticism of business ethics was on the rise, transformational leadership’s promise of a virtuous and moral vision brought instant attention to the theory in academia and business. It has been difficult for the potentialleader-in-the-trenches to distinguish between the transformational leadership of today and the charismatic, great man, “leaders are born not made” theory of old. Attempts to clarify this distinction by focusing on concepts such as common vision, core values, and empowerment have only clouded the issue. Too often, the examples given evoke the traditional perceptions described earlier. Creating and communicating a common vision seems to many to be a task beyond comprehension, let alone completion. The ability to inspire others via value-related activities or empowerment appears to be largely a function of personality and charisma. When Jack Welch, the transformational leader of GE, speaks about the subject, he talks as if the concept of leadership and the character of the leader are one and the same:
Max DePree, son of the founder and current CEO of Herman Miller, Inc., has been widely (and rightly) heralded as a transformational leader. His book, Leadership Is nn Art, has been acclaimed as a mustread leadership primer by the president of the United States, business leaders, and academics. The book is an elegant treatise, but not particularly educational. In its own way, his advice is intimidating-“Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice.” As DePree writes about transformational leadership and, indeed, as most proponents of this contemporary theory address it, it is a mostly mystical, transcendent, and deeply personal practice, rightfully called the “art” of leadership. As is often the case, art lacks a certain practicality. Few of us in organizations imagine ourselves to be artists; fewer still are. Artists have the ability to put the ordinary and commonplace into a larger perspective in a way that forces others to see the world differently. Absent an artistic “eye,” those who are down in the organization easily lose perspective-staring all day at routine tasks impairs our “vision.” Mike Raffanelo has a vision with value. A member of the Tyler, Texas, Rotary, Raffanelo serves on the board of a special program to teach underprivileged kids to sail. The board has a vision, the club has empowered members, and they have the necessary resources, but in Mike’s words:
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. Above all else, though, good leaders are open. They go up, down, and around their organization to reach people. They don’t stick to the established channels. They’re informal. They’re straight with people. They make a religion out of being accessible. They never get bored telling their story.
The program is still in dry dock. As clear as our vision is, the sailing program is still a very low priority for the club; the funding agencies we’re trying to work with to identify kids are unorganized and lack follow-through. Everyone is getting so frustrated by the difficulty of getting this thing from idea to implementation that they are ready to give up, It’s a poor pun, but it sure hasn’t been clear sailing for the sailing program.
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Criticism of the scale of leadership today could be set aside were there within the call to crisis and the commingling of character and concepts something that would-be leaders, such as Raffanelo, might learn from. There is precious little to be learned from popular approaches to leadership today. Learning to be a leader from these theories is a bit like learning to be an NBA star from the Gatorade commercial, “Be like Mike!”
Little Learning Recently, Fortune columnist John Huey reviewed 19 newly published books on leadership. He determined four to be “readable” (although it should be pointed out, not necessarily instructive). He summarily dismissed the others by saying, “The rest of the leadership books fall into one of three categories: boring thoughts of great men; motivational books by people who are in the business of selling their wisdom to executives; and honest-to-goodness novels masquerading as practical business books. This grouping you might call ‘What on earth were they thinking?“’ Consumed as we are with the leadership crisis and celebrity leaders, there is a seemingly insatiable desire for learning about leaders. We want to know who leaders are and how leaders do what leaders do. Most of all, we want to know how to develop our own leadership abilities so that we can deal effectively with the leadership situations we face at work and in our communities. On this score, large leadership fails miserably. Most leadership theories and practicaVpersona1 treatments of the subject do not even broach the topic of how to develop leaders, for obvious reasons. Thinking of leadership on a grand scale gravitates naturally toward a reliance on either position power or personal power, or both, as the engine that drives effective leadership. The curricula that derive from this perspective are necessarily limited, consisting mostly of the study of the personal histories of great positional leaders. Where is the learning in that for the chairman of the church steering committee? Or the task force leader
of a multidiscipline new product group? Or the coordinator of a management team in a multinational, multipartner company operating group? Among the many variables that influence the leader-follower are the characteristics and behavior of the leader, the characteristics and behavior of the followers, and the specific elements of the situation-organization, group, task, technology, politics, intended outcomes, and more. The one indisputable lesson from the history of leadership is that what works at one time, in one place, with one cast of characters may not work at another time, in another place, with another cast of characters. Under these circumstances, defining a leadership development program becomes an onerous task. Any leadership development activity must be circumstance specific; certain “little” questions mwst be addressed: 1. What situations face our organization now? What leader behaviors are required? Do we have people who can provide that kind of leadership? 2. What situations will we face in the future (time specific)? What leadership capabilities will be needed? 3. How can we find and/or develop the leadership we need now and in the future? Learning about leadership is all in the details. It is only when the scale of leadership is reduced to the situation at hand that real learning about leadership can take place. On the heels of that learning, we may find that there is a little leadership in all of us.
A LITTLE LEADERSHIP FOR BIG EFFECTS A reasoned and realistic approach to leadership can be achieved by reducing, not increasing, the scale of the problem. It begins with a specific assessment of the leadership scenario, targeting leadership actions, and engaging in specific leader behaviors. A little leadership can be practiced regardless of one’s position power or personal power. Leadership is a-n exchange relationship between those who choose to lead and those WINTER
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who decide to follow. These relationships occur in the context of a specific organization between specific individuals, many of whom have differing goals. The first step in exerting a little leadership is to become aware of the locus of leadership. You need not have position power to be an effective leader, but you must have an understanding of positioning. What is the group to be led? Where does it fit into the organization? Why does it exist? Who is involved? What are the goals? Given a broader mission and vision, what specifically is the group trying to do? What is the time frame? This organizational orientation to leadership points you to the next critical line of inquiry. Who? Who is likely to be influential? What are their points of view? What are their power bases? You have to know who in order to know what to do to lead them. Leadership is a relational activity.
Little Acts of Leadership A critical factor for little-leadership acts to be effective is trust. Trust results from the perception of the leader’s ability, beneficence, and integrity. The trust and respect afforded leaders are results not only of what they do but Izow they do things. If a leader has been unable to establish trust with others or if the leader’s actions have destroyed trust in the past, the willingness of others to comply with the leader’s wishes will be greatly diminished. The relationship between a leader’s actions, however small, and followers, speaks more loudly than words. We believe that there are four small acts of leadership that exert great influence. Knowledge of job. Leadership at any level in any context demands that you have a thorough knowledge of your job, not only in the details of the tasks at hand, but in a grasp of the total situation as it is and as it may develop. Leaders use their knowledge to see the developing situation and to influence the situation in ways they wish it to develop. When Rachel Hubka joined Chicago’s Stewart Bus Company as a dispatcher in 1978,
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she wanted to learn every job. She mastered the complex routing systems for scheduling school buses, hired and trained drivers, developed and implemented a safety program, scrubbed floors, and otherwise became an expert in school bus operations. When the owners decided to get out of the business of operating school buses, Rachel seized the opportunity and bought it. In Chicago alone, 50 providers vie for contracts with public schools. Hubka won a contract for the North Lawndale area because she promised the board of education that she would hire drivers from this high unemployment area. This was risky because she knew her bus company would have to hire people with marginal employment histories. To make it work, she also had to foster a professional attitude among people who had never held “responsible” positions. Rachel’s Bus Company offers drivers with no experience a comprehensive free driving training program. To install a work culture of pride and professionalism, the company asks that drivers carry route clipboards and wear ID badges, white shirts, dress slacks, and ties. All drivers who qualify to drive charter routes are chosen because of their past performance records. They are given personalized business cards to distribute to clients. If a client asks a driver for future trips, the driver receives a 10 percent commission on the revenue for the trip. Rachel takes pride when people leave her firm to start their own businesses. All she asks is that they create a “teaching environment” in the new organization. To create her own teaching environment, her door is always open. There is no chain of command. She’s a great listener who is able to engage others in meaningful conversations. Because of her own thorough knowledge of her job, Hubka was able to see the possibilities in a situation and create the learning environment she desired. I-Ier intimate knowledge of the bus company enabled others to make it happen. Say and do. A second little act of leadership is a willingness to set the example by behaving in ways that are consistent with the
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organization’s shared values and to create a climate for others to do the same. The willingness to speak up and to speak back establishes a norm of openness that bonds leaders to followers and groups to their actions. In any leadership endeavor, there must be a relationship between what is said and what is done such that the one is the embodiment of the other. Leaders who encourage creativity and risk-taking must be certain that they create an atmosphere such that others feel free to speak and hear the truth. Expelled from both college and seminary for disciplinary reasons, Jack Stack got a fresh start as a mail clerk at International Harvester. During the next 15 years, he held ten different jobs and watched the company fail. He noticed that he was the only person, apart from a plant manager, who actually visited other departments-and that was because he was a mail boy! Stack saw the disastrous consequences of contemporary versions of Taylor’s “scientific management.” Workers didn’t care about quality, despite the harangues of five general foremen. When he was finally made superintendent of machining, it became clear that he needed to devise his own management solutions. After learning that the division was capable of delivering a production rate of $10 a person higher than it usually did, he challenged his team to exceed its top performance. If they did, he would bring them coffee the first week; the second week, coffee and rolls; the third week, pizza at his house. Over 200 workers showed up for pizzamuch to his wife’s dismay. What made this little trick work was Stacks openness and his appeal to people’s latent desire to do something that made them feel proud. Stack believes that “People just love to have little wins.” For people to have little wins, management must give employees the truth. When International Harvester decided to sell its Springfield ReNew Center, Stack and his associates bought the plant. All employees were trained to read the company financial records and keep track of their own performance. They also learned how production
line work could affect warranty claims and subsequent sales, and how sales affected cash flow and, in turn, capital investment decisions. Bonuses are paid quarterly so employees can celebrate accomplishments and see the trade-offs between their short-term wins and long-term investment goals. The ready availability of information creates a climate of openness that makes Stack a trusted and effective leader. Foster listening. As much as leadership thrives in a climate of openness and celebrating small wins, it is promoted by active listening. Listening creates involvement and, through involvement, commitment. Large leadership is given to mass meetings, roll-outs of visions that rival the hoopla of new product announcements, and “managed” feedback opportunities. In many organizations, there is a greater willingness to listen to customers than to employees. Listening to customers can make an organization an industry leader-listening to employees makes anyone an organizational leader. When Paul Stern, former CEO of Nortel Tel, appears before a darkened auditorium full of 2,000 employees, preceded by a video production, flanked by lieutenants, and asks, “Are there any questions?“, none should be surprised that no one feels heard. Listening requires more than giving someone the chance to be heard-it means registering the content and the character of their concerns. The listening that enhances leadership and builds commitment takes place in conversations, not in convention halls or through email or voice mail. When Judy Wicks opened the White Dog Cafe in inner-city Philadelphia, she didn’t follow a blueprint. She simply listened to customers. Customers asked her to invite speakers to talk to them at breakfast before they headed off to work. The talks became so popular that other customers started complaining that they couldn’t attend at breakfast time. This sparked a business epiphany. Wicks knew that Monday nights were traditionally slow, so she started a Table Talk series.
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Strangers attracted by the same topic got to know each other over dinner. To promote Table Talks, she started a quarterly newsletter, Tulesfrorn the White Dog Cafe. The newsletter has become a highly effective vehicle for marketing all sorts of special dinner events customers wanted, and for recognizing customers who had made outstanding contributions to the community. Create a context of choice. A final little act of leadership that creates and builds effective leader-follower relationships is the constant awareness and confrontation of the choices to be made. Because the leadership relationship itself is a choice (the relationship exists between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow), every choice made is an opportunity to reaffirm the relationship. When choices are not made apparent, it is the same as if there were no choices to be made. A leader who confronts a group with choices provides opportunity for the display of knowledge, openness to input, and listening-the little acts that build leadership. Choices are the context for leadership. “We told employees that they were empowered, but they didn’t know what it was that management wanted them to do,” lamented Janet Gott, a plant manager for Super Sack manufacturing in Bonham, Texas. Like Prometheus’ gift of fire to humanity, employee involvement has the potential to create a learning environment, but can also cause an organization’s financial ruin. Super Sack’s initial try was a disaster because management did not give workers all the information they needed to make astute choices. Learning from its mistake, the plant’s management reassembled all of its 325 employees, who manufacture flexible bags for agriculture, food, and pharmaceutical industries, and told them of their decision to hold employees responsible and accountable for the firm’s success. Each team would have to make choices of how to perform its tasks. This would include discussing quality, going over work orders, and reviewing the prior day’s production runs. To perform these activities, workers had
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to learn how to perform every aspect of sack production. Duties changed depending on the customers’ needs of the day. Team leadership responsibilities rotated within the teams, with each team member filling the leader’s role before anyone would get a second term. Teams could transfer a member because the individual lacked the skill needed for a particular task, but not because of personal incompatibility. And finally, workers had the opportunity to shape and modify their base pay as well as a bonus plan based on each individual team’s production. Workers earn 10 percent of all sales beyond the plant’s break-even point. To make the plan work, management had to share all financial information with the employees. A context of choice confirms leadership.
CONCLUDING
THOUGHTS
Beyond these four little acts of leadership a broader profile emerges of effective leaders. Effective leaders model leadership-they set examples of the behaviors they seek in others, consistent in their own words and actions. Effective leaders manage leadershipthey see every conversation with others as an opportunity to exert a little leadership by constantly engaging in the little acts of leadership while monitoring relationships. As a consequence of the above, leaders mentor leadership; that is, they exhibit a personal interest in the leader behaviors of others, teaching leadership as they practice it, encouraging from the heart, and fostering collaboration by giving power away. A little leadership has what followers want and what leaders can do. Moreover, it can be learned. No less important, it is exactly the amount and kind of leadership that most organizations need. For those who want to stand atop the dugout, dance with elephants, fly with buffaloes, soar with eagles, or perform other mystical and heroic acts of large leadership, our little leadership may seem all too managerial, too modest, and too mundane. To those who have such lofty aspirations and are blessed
with the position and persona to realize them, and a heartfelt “thank we say “hooray” you”-there are issues and organizations aplenty that need your vision and your valor. For the vast majority of us who are not so blessed, but are no less burdened, who find ourselves without position, portfolio, or per-
sonal charisma in groups whose cause we care about, a little leadership may be just the right thing. To order reprints, call 800-644-2464 (ref. number 8932). For photocopy permission, see page 2.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY For the supporting materials, see “Sports of the Times,” New York Times, July 1, 1996; Karl E. Weick, “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,” American Psychologist, Vol. 39 (1984), No. 1, pp. 40-49; John I’. Kotter, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” Hurvard Business Review, March-April 1995, pp. 5967; Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard (eds.), The Leader of the Future (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 1996); J.M. Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978); Noel Tichy and Ram Charan, “Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence: An Interview with
Jack Welch,” in J.J.Gabarro, Managing Peopleand Organizations (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1992); Max DePree, Leadership Is an Art (New York: Doubleday 1989); John Huey, “Take Me To Your Leadership Books,” Fortune, July 25,1994, p. 239; and Michael E. McGill and John W. Slocum, Jr., The Smarter Organization (New York: John Wiley, 1994). The examples of little leadership acts were drawn from Theodore B. Kinni, America‘s Best: Industry Week’sGuide to WorId Class Manufacturing Plants (New York John Wiley, 1966) and David Bollier, Aiming Higher (New York: AMACOM, 1996).
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ALittle Leadership,Please. MICHAEL
E. MCGILL
n June 14,1996, in Kansas City, Cal Ripken, Jr., Baltimore Orioles’ shortstop, played in his 2,216th consecutive major league baseball game, eclipsing the world record previously held by Sachio Kinugasa of the Hiroshima Carp. Ripken had surpassed Lou Gehrig’s Major League consecutive game record of 2,130 in June of 1995, but by besting Kinugasa’s 17-year performance, Ripken became the true and undisputed Iron Man of professional baseball. Barely two weeks after Ripken’s remarkable achievement, Peter Angelos, owner of the Orioles, unhappy with his team’s trailing the league-leading Yankees by 5 l/2 games, called Ripken’s leadership into question. Said Angelos, “The truth is, this team is in desperate need of leadership on the field and in the clubhouse, and no one is more qualified to provide it than Cal Ripken. If Cal accepted that challenge with as much zeal as he plays, there is no question the Orioles would reach their potential.” In his 14-year pursuit of the consecutive game record, Cal Ripken, Jr., has done considerably more than just show up for work every day. From 1982 to 1987, he played in 8,243 straight innings (every inning in over 904 games). Since the streak began, he has played in 19,427 of the Orioles 19,593 innings (99.2 percent). He has been named to 14
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straight all-star teams, held a lifetime batting average of .276, led the major leagues in double plays, and won Golden Gloves in 1991 and 1992. All of this and still his leadership is challenged because, as Ripken put it, “I don’t get up on the dugout and wave a towel.” What are we to make of this? At one level, Angelos looks like a blustery baseball owner in the style of George Steinbrenner or Marge Schott-classic command-and-cudgel leadership behavior. More charitably, it could be observed that whatever Angelos’ views on leadership are, he is clearly not a believer in leadership by example. Viewed more broadly, the Angelos-Ripken exchange succinctly captures the state of leadership in many organizations today. It is a metaphor for the modern-day leadership morass.
THE LEADERSHIP
LABYRINTH
It is commonly believed that in order for organizations to succeed in today’s environment (whatever their sphere of activity), they must dramatically change their business processes and, simultaneously, develop and draw on the commitment of their people to implement these new processes. This is both the challenge and the contribution of leadership in
The authors would like to acknowledge the comments and cogent suggestions made by Don VandeWalle and the Executive MBA Class number 21 at SMU. WINTER
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Michael E. (Mick) McGill is executive vice president of corporate human resources, education, and training for The Associates. Formerly a professor of organizational behavior at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dr. McGill remains primarily concerned with issues of personal and organizational learning now in corporate venue of $50 billion in assets and 20,000 employees providing financial services worldwide. Dr. McGill has authored numerous articles, many of which have appeared in Organizational Dynamics, as well as five books, including The Smarter Organization (Wiley, 1994), co-authored with John Slocum.
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our time-to engineer change and to evoke commitment. There is widespread belief that leadership is sorely needed at every level of every organization. It has become commonplace to view government as mired in legislative gridlock for lack of leadership; businesses as trapped in reactive cycles of restructuring/reengineering/reduction in force for want of effective leadership; community organizationschurches, schools, charities, sports teams-as floundering while they wait for someone to “get up on the dugout and wave a towel.” The urgency of these clarion cries of crisis suggests that absent effective leadership, organizations face extinction; unless something very dramatic is done by someone very soon, it is going to be too late. If arousal led directly to action, things would be pretty crowded atop the dugout. But, as yet, the leadership alarms have led only to crowded shelves in the leadership section of bookstores. Perhaps because the leadership crisis is perceived to be so pervasive, biographies of leaders and advice about how to lead abound. Most popular treatments of leadership today theorize and proselytize a The premise is that in “new leadership.” today’s complex organizations, the context of leadership has changed; therefore, so too must the content and conduct of leadership. It is generally true today that whatever the organization, followers are more skilled and sophisticated, tasks more complex, and the consequences of decisions to reengineer or redesign more daunting. The context of leadership truly has changed. Consistent with this new context, new models of leadership have emergedmodels that are “non-positional,” team-based, or empowering. These new models call for new leader behaviors. Leaders who act as coaches, stewards, servants, or partners are seen as dramatically different from the leaders of old who used the power of their position, and/or their persona to exert their influence. Arguably this new appreciation of the role and responsibilities of leaders would give rise to more than enough new leaders to meet the many leadership crises chronicled. This has
not occurred; the new theories have produced neither dramatic new leadership practices nor dramatic numbers of new leaders. If they had, there would not be a leadership crisis. Instead, the leadership agenda, framed as it is today, forestalls the very acts of leadership it intends to motivate. It does so in four ways: 1. The scale of the purported leadership crisis in many organizations activates not leadership initiatives, but rather, arousal, frustration, and helplessness, which has resulted in a decline in the quality of thinking about leadership and the quality of leadership itself; 2. Would-be leaders at whatever level in organizations find it difficult to identify with or learn from currently popular leadership examples; 3. Proposed theories of leadership are not: relevant to the situations for leadership that exist for most of us in most of our organizations; and 4. In all that is currently promoted about leadership, there are few proven prescriptions for how we can find and/or develop the leadership we need now and/or in the future. Lacking a sense of self-efficacy, and without relevant models or means to develop appropriate skills, it is little wonder that just when it is most needed, individuals shy away from leadership. When we consider these dimensions of the current state of leadership, the case for a “little” leadership becomes compelling.
John W. Slocum, Jr., holds the 0. Paul Corley Professorship in management at the Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University. Before joining the faculty at SMU, he was a member of the faculties at Penn State and Ohio State. He served as the 39th president of the Academy of Management and editor of the Academy of Management Journal. He is currently editor-in-chief, Journal of World Business, and associate editor of Organizational Dynamics and Decisions Sciences. He has written over 130 articles and 18 books covering subjects ranging from human resources management to organizational design. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, Decision Science institute, and Pan-Pacific Management Association.
The Problem with “Large” Leadership In 1984, social psychologist Karl Weick wrote a wonderfully insightful article, “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems.” Weick’s thesis was that: When the magnitude of problems is scaled upward in the interest of mobilizing action, the quality of thought and action declines, because processes such as frustration, arousal and helplessness are activated....People often define social problems in ways that overwhelm their ability to do anything about them. WINTER
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Weick’s prescription? Think in terms of small wins. “Calling a situation a mere problem that necessitates a small win moderates arousal, improves diagnosis, preserves gains, and encourages innovation.” Published in the American Psychologist, Weick’s wisdom had little immediate impact on either leaders or students of leadership. It is only recently, amidst the turmoil of constant change and continual resistance, that organizational observers have come to appreciate that small is beautiful. Harvard’s Professor of Leadership, John Kotter, has enumerated eight steps for leading change. Number six on his list is “Planning for and Creating Short-Term Wins.” As Kotter observes, “Without short-term wins, too many people give up or actively join the ranks of those people who have been resisting change.” The same can be said of leadership. Without small, achievable acts of leadership, too many people simply never attempt to lead. Unfortunately, the street-wise wisdom of small wins has yet to migrate from leading change to leading per se. Today, everything about leadership is conceived on a grand scale-the problems, the people, and the potential. The leadership crisis is: (a) global; (b) nationwide; (c) community-wide; (d) with the family as institution; (e) all of the above. The problems that leaders must address are: (a) peace, (b) poverty, (c) diversity, (d) family values, (e) the existence of the corporation, or (f) the future employment of millions. Such leadership sirens draw attention, but at the same time frustrate action. When most of us think about the awesome challenge of leadership, there is a tendency toward one of two reactions: (1) The leadership challenge is so important and its magnitude so daunting that there is no way we can act upon it; or (2) Whatever action we calztake is so insignificant as to have no appreciable impact on resolving the issues facing my organization. In either case, the response is the same: Rather than rising to the leadership challenge, we retreat from it. Ironically, by making leadership so important and the need for it so 42
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great, we have dramatically diminished the potential number of leaders. Who among us wants to risk failing at something that is so important? Consider an example of the kind of situation that, unfortunately, hundreds of companies face each year. Camelot, the retail record and tape distributor, is in the midst of Chapter 11 restructuring. Rumor has it the owners are looking for a buyer. Revenues are projected to fall by 90 percent from 1995 levels in 1997; stores have been closed and employees laid off. Serious questions exist about the company’s future. In the face of this bleak scenario, Camelot’s task force on “Employee Morale” sees its task as a case of “rearranging the desk chairs on the Titanic,” as one member of that task force put it. When celebrity leaders such as Lee Iaccoca issue challenges such as “Lead, follow, or get out of the way !“, one can’t help but wonder how many organization members see a fourth choice-stay here and do nothing at all. Among the many behaviors that a leadership crisis may compel, experience shows that surely the most common response is to stay and do nothing, because that is the one thing we all can do.
Large Leaders If the problem of leadership doesn’t inspire, what about the leaders themselves? In the recently published book TJze Leader of the Future (The Drucker Foundation, 1996), 31 academics, consultants, and organizational leaders turn their attention to the subject of “new (leadership) visions, strategies, and practices for the next era.” Their essays, which capture the state of the art in leadership thinking today, presume the critical need for leadership and propound upon its scope in today’s organizational world. Consider some of the essay titles in this collection: “Leading From the Grass Roots,” “Creating Organizations with Many Leaders,” “The Power of Partnering,” “Self-Leadership,” “The Leader Who Serves.” The language certainly evokes images of a kind of leader different from that we have
traditionally known. Unfortunately, the examples given hearken back to the same leadership models and theories that have always been with us. For all of the talk about a different kind of leadership, one that relies neither on position nor persona, these leaders have both: Larry Bossidy (Allied Signal); Ben Cohen (Ben & Jerry’s); Max DePree (Herman Miller); George Fisher (Eastman Kodak); Louis Gerstner (IBM); Robert Galvin (Motorola); Phil Knight (Nike); Anthony Martinez (Sears); Jack Welch (General Electric), and others. Whatever one might say of the enlightened leader behaviors of these successful executives, there is no denying that each has the position power to back up whatever persuasive or coaching leadership skills he chooses to exercise. Moreover, these executives are gifted to a man (there’s an additional point to be made here) with considerable personal presence and charisma. Despite the hype over this season’s new leadership and new leaders, the picture we typically see is a rerun-white males in their 50s leading from atop large organizations using (or being perceived as capable of using) their ample position and personal power to engineer change and to evoke commitment. Of course there are other leaderswomen, minorities, young, elderly-in other contexts-churches, schools, community organizations-but they are rarely held up as examples of how to lead. Indeed, when examples are drawn from these groups (e.g., Frances Hesselbein, Girl Scouts; Anita Roddick, Body Shop; Colin Powell, U.S. Army) they look, save for gender and race, very much like successful corporate executives, with comparable positional and personal charisma. As we struggle to make sense of the workings of large complex organizations, their successes and their failures, it is common to ascribe to leaders control and responsibility over events and outcomes whose very scope seems to defy understanding. How can any of us begin to understand how General Electric, a corporation of over 200,000 people, working in over 100 countries, producing and selling
$70 billion in products last year, really works? It’s much simpler to believe “Jack did it.” Similarly, when things don’t work, such as at American Express, IBM, the UN, or the Boston Red Sox, rather than conduct a comprehensive analysis of the contributing causes, we simply suggest a change in leaders. We have developed highly romanticized, heroic views of what leaders do, what they are able to accomplish, and the general effects they have on our lives. Romantic, heroic, transformational figures require dire straits and dramatic deeds as a context for their heroism. Leadership anthologies today are replete with both. The level of alarm is deafening and the acts of leadership dramatic. At one turn, there is a crisis in leadership in America, at another, the leadership exploits of Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, Bill Gates, or Herb Kelleher are being extolled. The leadership that is alive in America today is one of great men, responding to great needs, by doing great things. It is the very popularity of these examples of great leaders that defeats acts of leadership among the rest of us. Few of us think of ourselves as being “great” or even having the capacity for greatness. Most of us shy away from the need to be great. We struggle daily in the hopes of being “good enough.” If greatness is the stuff of leadership, then leadership is going to have to be found elsewhere.
Theories at Large With all of the attention to great leaders, it is increasingly difficult to separate who leaders are from what leaders do. It is hard to distinguish the person from the process. For this reason, theory-building has been virtually indistinguishable from personality profiles. Consider a dominant leadership theory of the last 10 years, transformational or visionary leadership. James M. Burns coined the term “transformational leadership” in 1978 in reaction to the “transactional” leadership of the previous two decades. Burns and others criticized the leadership theories and contingency models of the 1970s and 1980s for being WINTER
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contractual, mechanical, and promoting procedures over purpose. These observers argued the need for a leadership that would be unifying and encouraging from the heart rather than merely utilitarian. Transformational leadership was seen as a way to bind leaders and followers “in mutual pursuit of higher purposes.” Transformational leaders were said to bring about this mutual pursuit by virtue of their charisma, inspiration, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Coming, as it did, at a time when community criticism of business ethics was on the rise, transformational leadership’s promise of a virtuous and moral vision brought instant attention to the theory in academia and business. It has been difficult for the potentialleader-in-the-trenches to distinguish between the transformational leadership of today and the charismatic, great man, “leaders are born not made” theory of old. Attempts to clarify this distinction by focusing on concepts such as common vision, core values, and empowerment have only clouded the issue. Too often, the examples given evoke the traditional perceptions described earlier. Creating and communicating a common vision seems to many to be a task beyond comprehension, let alone completion. The ability to inspire others via value-related activities or empowerment appears to be largely a function of personality and charisma. When Jack Welch, the transformational leader of GE, speaks about the subject, he talks as if the concept of leadership and the character of the leader are one and the same:
Max DePree, son of the founder and current CEO of Herman Miller, Inc., has been widely (and rightly) heralded as a transformational leader. His book, Leadership Is nn Art, has been acclaimed as a mustread leadership primer by the president of the United States, business leaders, and academics. The book is an elegant treatise, but not particularly educational. In its own way, his advice is intimidating-“Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice.” As DePree writes about transformational leadership and, indeed, as most proponents of this contemporary theory address it, it is a mostly mystical, transcendent, and deeply personal practice, rightfully called the “art” of leadership. As is often the case, art lacks a certain practicality. Few of us in organizations imagine ourselves to be artists; fewer still are. Artists have the ability to put the ordinary and commonplace into a larger perspective in a way that forces others to see the world differently. Absent an artistic “eye,” those who are down in the organization easily lose perspective-staring all day at routine tasks impairs our “vision.” Mike Raffanelo has a vision with value. A member of the Tyler, Texas, Rotary, Raffanelo serves on the board of a special program to teach underprivileged kids to sail. The board has a vision, the club has empowered members, and they have the necessary resources, but in Mike’s words:
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion. Above all else, though, good leaders are open. They go up, down, and around their organization to reach people. They don’t stick to the established channels. They’re informal. They’re straight with people. They make a religion out of being accessible. They never get bored telling their story.
The program is still in dry dock. As clear as our vision is, the sailing program is still a very low priority for the club; the funding agencies we’re trying to work with to identify kids are unorganized and lack follow-through. Everyone is getting so frustrated by the difficulty of getting this thing from idea to implementation that they are ready to give up, It’s a poor pun, but it sure hasn’t been clear sailing for the sailing program.
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Criticism of the scale of leadership today could be set aside were there within the call to crisis and the commingling of character and concepts something that would-be leaders, such as Raffanelo, might learn from. There is precious little to be learned from popular approaches to leadership today. Learning to be a leader from these theories is a bit like learning to be an NBA star from the Gatorade commercial, “Be like Mike!”
Little Learning Recently, Fortune columnist John Huey reviewed 19 newly published books on leadership. He determined four to be “readable” (although it should be pointed out, not necessarily instructive). He summarily dismissed the others by saying, “The rest of the leadership books fall into one of three categories: boring thoughts of great men; motivational books by people who are in the business of selling their wisdom to executives; and honest-to-goodness novels masquerading as practical business books. This grouping you might call ‘What on earth were they thinking?“’ Consumed as we are with the leadership crisis and celebrity leaders, there is a seemingly insatiable desire for learning about leaders. We want to know who leaders are and how leaders do what leaders do. Most of all, we want to know how to develop our own leadership abilities so that we can deal effectively with the leadership situations we face at work and in our communities. On this score, large leadership fails miserably. Most leadership theories and practicaVpersona1 treatments of the subject do not even broach the topic of how to develop leaders, for obvious reasons. Thinking of leadership on a grand scale gravitates naturally toward a reliance on either position power or personal power, or both, as the engine that drives effective leadership. The curricula that derive from this perspective are necessarily limited, consisting mostly of the study of the personal histories of great positional leaders. Where is the learning in that for the chairman of the church steering committee? Or the task force leader
of a multidiscipline new product group? Or the coordinator of a management team in a multinational, multipartner company operating group? Among the many variables that influence the leader-follower are the characteristics and behavior of the leader, the characteristics and behavior of the followers, and the specific elements of the situation-organization, group, task, technology, politics, intended outcomes, and more. The one indisputable lesson from the history of leadership is that what works at one time, in one place, with one cast of characters may not work at another time, in another place, with another cast of characters. Under these circumstances, defining a leadership development program becomes an onerous task. Any leadership development activity must be circumstance specific; certain “little” questions mwst be addressed: 1. What situations face our organization now? What leader behaviors are required? Do we have people who can provide that kind of leadership? 2. What situations will we face in the future (time specific)? What leadership capabilities will be needed? 3. How can we find and/or develop the leadership we need now and in the future? Learning about leadership is all in the details. It is only when the scale of leadership is reduced to the situation at hand that real learning about leadership can take place. On the heels of that learning, we may find that there is a little leadership in all of us.
A LITTLE LEADERSHIP FOR BIG EFFECTS A reasoned and realistic approach to leadership can be achieved by reducing, not increasing, the scale of the problem. It begins with a specific assessment of the leadership scenario, targeting leadership actions, and engaging in specific leader behaviors. A little leadership can be practiced regardless of one’s position power or personal power. Leadership is a-n exchange relationship between those who choose to lead and those WINTER
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who decide to follow. These relationships occur in the context of a specific organization between specific individuals, many of whom have differing goals. The first step in exerting a little leadership is to become aware of the locus of leadership. You need not have position power to be an effective leader, but you must have an understanding of positioning. What is the group to be led? Where does it fit into the organization? Why does it exist? Who is involved? What are the goals? Given a broader mission and vision, what specifically is the group trying to do? What is the time frame? This organizational orientation to leadership points you to the next critical line of inquiry. Who? Who is likely to be influential? What are their points of view? What are their power bases? You have to know who in order to know what to do to lead them. Leadership is a relational activity.
Little Acts of Leadership A critical factor for little-leadership acts to be effective is trust. Trust results from the perception of the leader’s ability, beneficence, and integrity. The trust and respect afforded leaders are results not only of what they do but Izow they do things. If a leader has been unable to establish trust with others or if the leader’s actions have destroyed trust in the past, the willingness of others to comply with the leader’s wishes will be greatly diminished. The relationship between a leader’s actions, however small, and followers, speaks more loudly than words. We believe that there are four small acts of leadership that exert great influence. Knowledge of job. Leadership at any level in any context demands that you have a thorough knowledge of your job, not only in the details of the tasks at hand, but in a grasp of the total situation as it is and as it may develop. Leaders use their knowledge to see the developing situation and to influence the situation in ways they wish it to develop. When Rachel Hubka joined Chicago’s Stewart Bus Company as a dispatcher in 1978,
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she wanted to learn every job. She mastered the complex routing systems for scheduling school buses, hired and trained drivers, developed and implemented a safety program, scrubbed floors, and otherwise became an expert in school bus operations. When the owners decided to get out of the business of operating school buses, Rachel seized the opportunity and bought it. In Chicago alone, 50 providers vie for contracts with public schools. Hubka won a contract for the North Lawndale area because she promised the board of education that she would hire drivers from this high unemployment area. This was risky because she knew her bus company would have to hire people with marginal employment histories. To make it work, she also had to foster a professional attitude among people who had never held “responsible” positions. Rachel’s Bus Company offers drivers with no experience a comprehensive free driving training program. To install a work culture of pride and professionalism, the company asks that drivers carry route clipboards and wear ID badges, white shirts, dress slacks, and ties. All drivers who qualify to drive charter routes are chosen because of their past performance records. They are given personalized business cards to distribute to clients. If a client asks a driver for future trips, the driver receives a 10 percent commission on the revenue for the trip. Rachel takes pride when people leave her firm to start their own businesses. All she asks is that they create a “teaching environment” in the new organization. To create her own teaching environment, her door is always open. There is no chain of command. She’s a great listener who is able to engage others in meaningful conversations. Because of her own thorough knowledge of her job, Hubka was able to see the possibilities in a situation and create the learning environment she desired. I-Ier intimate knowledge of the bus company enabled others to make it happen. Say and do. A second little act of leadership is a willingness to set the example by behaving in ways that are consistent with the
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organization’s shared values and to create a climate for others to do the same. The willingness to speak up and to speak back establishes a norm of openness that bonds leaders to followers and groups to their actions. In any leadership endeavor, there must be a relationship between what is said and what is done such that the one is the embodiment of the other. Leaders who encourage creativity and risk-taking must be certain that they create an atmosphere such that others feel free to speak and hear the truth. Expelled from both college and seminary for disciplinary reasons, Jack Stack got a fresh start as a mail clerk at International Harvester. During the next 15 years, he held ten different jobs and watched the company fail. He noticed that he was the only person, apart from a plant manager, who actually visited other departments-and that was because he was a mail boy! Stack saw the disastrous consequences of contemporary versions of Taylor’s “scientific management.” Workers didn’t care about quality, despite the harangues of five general foremen. When he was finally made superintendent of machining, it became clear that he needed to devise his own management solutions. After learning that the division was capable of delivering a production rate of $10 a person higher than it usually did, he challenged his team to exceed its top performance. If they did, he would bring them coffee the first week; the second week, coffee and rolls; the third week, pizza at his house. Over 200 workers showed up for pizzamuch to his wife’s dismay. What made this little trick work was Stacks openness and his appeal to people’s latent desire to do something that made them feel proud. Stack believes that “People just love to have little wins.” For people to have little wins, management must give employees the truth. When International Harvester decided to sell its Springfield ReNew Center, Stack and his associates bought the plant. All employees were trained to read the company financial records and keep track of their own performance. They also learned how production
line work could affect warranty claims and subsequent sales, and how sales affected cash flow and, in turn, capital investment decisions. Bonuses are paid quarterly so employees can celebrate accomplishments and see the trade-offs between their short-term wins and long-term investment goals. The ready availability of information creates a climate of openness that makes Stack a trusted and effective leader. Foster listening. As much as leadership thrives in a climate of openness and celebrating small wins, it is promoted by active listening. Listening creates involvement and, through involvement, commitment. Large leadership is given to mass meetings, roll-outs of visions that rival the hoopla of new product announcements, and “managed” feedback opportunities. In many organizations, there is a greater willingness to listen to customers than to employees. Listening to customers can make an organization an industry leader-listening to employees makes anyone an organizational leader. When Paul Stern, former CEO of Nortel Tel, appears before a darkened auditorium full of 2,000 employees, preceded by a video production, flanked by lieutenants, and asks, “Are there any questions?“, none should be surprised that no one feels heard. Listening requires more than giving someone the chance to be heard-it means registering the content and the character of their concerns. The listening that enhances leadership and builds commitment takes place in conversations, not in convention halls or through email or voice mail. When Judy Wicks opened the White Dog Cafe in inner-city Philadelphia, she didn’t follow a blueprint. She simply listened to customers. Customers asked her to invite speakers to talk to them at breakfast before they headed off to work. The talks became so popular that other customers started complaining that they couldn’t attend at breakfast time. This sparked a business epiphany. Wicks knew that Monday nights were traditionally slow, so she started a Table Talk series.
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Strangers attracted by the same topic got to know each other over dinner. To promote Table Talks, she started a quarterly newsletter, Tulesfrorn the White Dog Cafe. The newsletter has become a highly effective vehicle for marketing all sorts of special dinner events customers wanted, and for recognizing customers who had made outstanding contributions to the community. Create a context of choice. A final little act of leadership that creates and builds effective leader-follower relationships is the constant awareness and confrontation of the choices to be made. Because the leadership relationship itself is a choice (the relationship exists between those who choose to lead and those who choose to follow), every choice made is an opportunity to reaffirm the relationship. When choices are not made apparent, it is the same as if there were no choices to be made. A leader who confronts a group with choices provides opportunity for the display of knowledge, openness to input, and listening-the little acts that build leadership. Choices are the context for leadership. “We told employees that they were empowered, but they didn’t know what it was that management wanted them to do,” lamented Janet Gott, a plant manager for Super Sack manufacturing in Bonham, Texas. Like Prometheus’ gift of fire to humanity, employee involvement has the potential to create a learning environment, but can also cause an organization’s financial ruin. Super Sack’s initial try was a disaster because management did not give workers all the information they needed to make astute choices. Learning from its mistake, the plant’s management reassembled all of its 325 employees, who manufacture flexible bags for agriculture, food, and pharmaceutical industries, and told them of their decision to hold employees responsible and accountable for the firm’s success. Each team would have to make choices of how to perform its tasks. This would include discussing quality, going over work orders, and reviewing the prior day’s production runs. To perform these activities, workers had
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to learn how to perform every aspect of sack production. Duties changed depending on the customers’ needs of the day. Team leadership responsibilities rotated within the teams, with each team member filling the leader’s role before anyone would get a second term. Teams could transfer a member because the individual lacked the skill needed for a particular task, but not because of personal incompatibility. And finally, workers had the opportunity to shape and modify their base pay as well as a bonus plan based on each individual team’s production. Workers earn 10 percent of all sales beyond the plant’s break-even point. To make the plan work, management had to share all financial information with the employees. A context of choice confirms leadership.
CONCLUDING
THOUGHTS
Beyond these four little acts of leadership a broader profile emerges of effective leaders. Effective leaders model leadership-they set examples of the behaviors they seek in others, consistent in their own words and actions. Effective leaders manage leadershipthey see every conversation with others as an opportunity to exert a little leadership by constantly engaging in the little acts of leadership while monitoring relationships. As a consequence of the above, leaders mentor leadership; that is, they exhibit a personal interest in the leader behaviors of others, teaching leadership as they practice it, encouraging from the heart, and fostering collaboration by giving power away. A little leadership has what followers want and what leaders can do. Moreover, it can be learned. No less important, it is exactly the amount and kind of leadership that most organizations need. For those who want to stand atop the dugout, dance with elephants, fly with buffaloes, soar with eagles, or perform other mystical and heroic acts of large leadership, our little leadership may seem all too managerial, too modest, and too mundane. To those who have such lofty aspirations and are blessed
with the position and persona to realize them, and a heartfelt “thank we say “hooray” you”-there are issues and organizations aplenty that need your vision and your valor. For the vast majority of us who are not so blessed, but are no less burdened, who find ourselves without position, portfolio, or per-
sonal charisma in groups whose cause we care about, a little leadership may be just the right thing. To order reprints, call 800-644-2464 (ref. number 8932). For photocopy permission, see page 2.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY For the supporting materials, see “Sports of the Times,” New York Times, July 1, 1996; Karl E. Weick, “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,” American Psychologist, Vol. 39 (1984), No. 1, pp. 40-49; John I’. Kotter, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” Hurvard Business Review, March-April 1995, pp. 5967; Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard (eds.), The Leader of the Future (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 1996); J.M. Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978); Noel Tichy and Ram Charan, “Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence: An Interview with
Jack Welch,” in J.J.Gabarro, Managing Peopleand Organizations (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1992); Max DePree, Leadership Is an Art (New York: Doubleday 1989); John Huey, “Take Me To Your Leadership Books,” Fortune, July 25,1994, p. 239; and Michael E. McGill and John W. Slocum, Jr., The Smarter Organization (New York: John Wiley, 1994). The examples of little leadership acts were drawn from Theodore B. Kinni, America‘s Best: Industry Week’sGuide to WorId Class Manufacturing Plants (New York John Wiley, 1966) and David Bollier, Aiming Higher (New York: AMACOM, 1996).
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