Inspiring Leaders

Ronald J. Burke, Cary Cooper, Ronald J. Burke, Cary Cooper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134229420
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

We exist in an era of great change and widespread uncertainty in which course-determining decisions lie with organizational leaders; in this continually shifting climate we require their courage to take action. Billions of dollars are spent annually on developing leaders, yet despite these efforts, most organizations report a shortage of leaders - a leadership gap - and estimates of leadership failures approach fifty per cent.

Authored by some of the best names in the subject area, this book addresses this issue and provides readers with an innovative approach to learning leadership skills, merging theory with practice to enable a better understanding of this complex and significant subject. It emphasizes a balance of skills, the critical role of feedback in learning and development, and innovative thoughts on developing women leaders.

Taking an international perspective, this outstanding text will be an invaluable resource for those studying leadership, organizational behaviour and human resource management as well as those on specialist masters and MBA courses, and will be especially useful for those undertaking the difficult task of leading within organizations.

Chapter 1

Inspiring leaders

An introduction^*

Ronald J. Burke

The practice of leadership has existed for thousands of years and research efforts have been undertaken to better understand leadership in organizations for well over 50 years (Bass, 1990). Leaders and leadership matter. Effective leaders are associated with successful work teams, high morale, and peak levels of performance; ineffective leaders are associated with dissatisfaction, low commitment, and failing performance (Avolio and Bass, 2002; Bass, 1998, 1999; Collins, 2001a, 2001b; Day, Zaccaro and Halpin, 2004).

There have been thousands of published articles and books dealing with leadership in organizations over the past 40 years. Winum (2003) reports that a recent literature search on google.com using the key word leadership yielded 9,450,000 references; leadership development produced 2,876,000 references. Amazon.com lists 12,538 books on the topic of leadership. ABInform and PsychLit list over 5,200 published articles on leadership since 1968. Yet, Bennis and Nanus (1997) write that ‘leadership is the most studied and least understood concept of any in the social sciences’ (p. 4) and that ‘never have so many labored so long to say so little’ (p. 20).

Fulmer (1997) notes that management training and education is now a huge business with corporations spending $45 billion per year. About $12 billion is spent on executive education. The average company spends $2 million annually with over 1,000 executives at each firm receiving training. And leadership development is costly. Fulmer estimates the cost to develop such programmes runs from $100,000 to $250,000 and from $50,000 to $150,000 per session to deliver them. The leadership industry is big business.

Despite the considerable investment of both time and effort by researchers and practitioners most organizations appear to be badly led. Ulrich, Zenger, and Smallwood (1999), based on other published work, note that only 54 per cent of companies surveyed believed they had the leadership they needed to respond to change and only 8 per cent of executives rated their firm’s leadership as excellent. Another survey of 312 respondents rated the most important people issue facing their companies; leadership was most important with over 70 per cent rating it as ‘extremely important’. Companies with more leadership and depth were also found to be more profitable in a study reported by McKinsey. The gap between required and available leadership has widened, due in part to restructuring, downsizing, and mergers that may have reduced the number of leadership opportunities available.

This introductory chapter sets the stage for the rest of the collection. It first indicates why there is increased interest in leadership today. In plain and simple terms, leaders are critical to the success of organizations and societies in general, and there is currently a shortage of qualified and effective leaders. Second, the chapter provides a brief review of leaderships concepts and models that are currently commanding research interest and attention. Third, it summarizes initiatives shown to be useful in developing leaders and leadership, if well implemented.

Several factors have come together to increase interest and urgency in better understanding and development of leadership. These include the following:

greater competitive pressures facing organizations today calling for greater leadership skills at all levels (Palus and Horth, 2003);

business has become more complex; leaders need more skills to deal with increasingly challenging problems (Mumford et al., 2000);

the increasing globalization and internationalization of business increases the demands for leaders to be able to work across distances, cultures, and countries (Dalton et al., 2002; Gregersen, Morrison, and Black, 1998; Kets de Vries and Florent-Treacy, 1999; Leslie et al., 2002);

there is a need for new leadership approaches for both traditional and new industries. Most current views on leadership are more appropriate to the Industrial Age than the twenty-first century knowledge era (Nevins and Stumpf, 1999);

there will be a shortage of leaders as those approaching retirement leave and fewer leadership entrants are available to replace those that leave;

there will also be a leadership shortage if business activity grows only moderately over the next ten years;

a large number of leaders are failing; more leaders are now being terminated for failing to achieve objectives (Hogan, 1999);

there is increasing accountability being placed on leaders and the performance bar has been raised leading to both voluntary and involuntary departures;

leaders are now more likely to change organizations given the decline in loyalty;

recruiters are more aggressively encouraging leaders to change jobs;

though billions of dollars are spent annually in leadership development programmes, there is still a shortage of effective leaders (Conger, 1992);

organizations are doing a poor job of developing leaders internally (Csoka, 1997);

most organizations have little leadership bench strength (Fulmer and Conger, 2004);

leaders hired from outside an organization have a high rate of failure;

few firms are prepared for the war for executive talent (Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, 2001);

the rate of change will continue unabated;

traditional approaches to leadership development such as MBA programmes, management training courses in universities, and public seminars have failed to deliver (Bennis and O’Toole, 2005; Mintzberg, 2004).

The Center for Creative Leadership and CEO Magazine collaborated on a study to explore what CEOs thought about leadership (Center for Creative Leadership, 2002). Seven hundred and fifty-six CEOs responded to a 20-question survey. They report that 79 per cent of CEOs saw leadership development as either ‘the most’ important or ‘one of the top five’ factors in achieving competitive advantage; 90 per cent were actively involved with leadership development practices in their organizations with 54 per cent indicating that they were primarily responsible for leadership development. CEOs saw people management skills (inspiring others, communicating expectations) and personal characteristics (adaptability, flexibility) as central to leadership success. A majority (61 per cent) identified leadership succession as their top concern. They also found a gap between the goals and wants CEOs indicated for leadership development and their current practices.

We have also come to know more about the development of leaders (Conger and Benjamin, 1999; Day, 2001; McCauley and VanVelsor, 2004). There is an emerging consensus that leadership cannot be effectively taught in MBA programmes, the main source of managerial talent, or in a one week training session (Conger, 1992; Schriesheim, 2003). As Mintzberg writes ‘The MBA is a 1908 degree based on a 1950s strategy’ (Mintzberg, 2004, p. 2). Leaders are best developed within organizations by organizations, and some organizations are doing this very well (see Tichy, 1997, 2002 for examples).

Although there are tens of thousands of articles and books on leadership, less than 5 per cent of this work focuses on executive leadership (Zaccaro, 2001). There has also been a primary focus on the interpersonal aspects of leadership, the ways that leaders can influence their followers. Sadly, there only little attention has been given to applied problems or policy issues.

Hernez-Broome and Hughes (2004) note three emerging themes in leadership development. First, leadership development is increasingly being undertaken in ongoing managerial and business work incorporating training, mentoring, coaching, action learning and developmental job assignments, real-world action and knowledge being the goal. They see this as providing opportunities for individuals to learn from their work rather than taking them away from their work to learn (Hernez-Broome and Hughes, 2004, p. 27). Best practice leadership development organizations are adopting a systemic rather than simple programme or event approach linking leadership development with HRM initiatives and business strategy (Aldridge et al., 2003). Second, more emphasis is being placed on the identification of leadership competencies in the development of leaders (Barrett and Beeson, 2002; Fulmer and Conger, 2004). It is important to note that these competencies must fit the organization’s strategy and business model. Third, increasing attention is being paid to the psychological and physical well-being of leaders with a particular emphasis being given to the integration of work and personal life. Organizational leaders work long hours (Brett and Stroh, 2003) and face multiple and often conflicting demands.

Hernez-Broome and Hughes (2004) suggest several other trends likely to play a significant role in the practice of and development of leadership in the future. These include: the belief that leadership competencies will still be relevant but will change in response to changes in the global competitive market, a greater emphasis on the development of global/international leaders, changes brought about by the technological revolution in access to information and modes of communication, increasing interest in the character and integrity of leaders (Bass and Steidlmeier, 1999; Collins, 2001a; Sankar, 2003), a need to demonstrate that leadership development impacts the bottom line, and incorporating new perspectives on leadership and leadership development (Day, 2001; McCauley and Van Velsor, 2004; Vicere, 2002).

We believe that there will be a shortage of effective leaders in the next 20 years, that many people now in leadership roles are not faring well with estimates that at least half of these individuals are falling short, that traditional OB and management texts devoting one or two chapters to the topic are not particularly helpful, but that the field has developed considerable understanding of leadership development events and processes in organizations (Antonakis, Cianciolo, and Sternberg, 2004; Charan, Drotter, and Noel, 2001; George, 2003; Lipman-Blumen, 1996; Rosen and Brown, 1996; Useem, 2001; Zacarro, 2001).

We believe that four conclusions are warranted based on this huge volume of work. First, we know a lot about effective leadership (Chemers, 1997; Conger and Kanungo, 1998; Drath, 2001; House and Aditya, 1997; Kouzes and Posner, 2002; Vicere and Fulmer, 1998; Zaccaro, 2001; Zaccaro and Klimoski, 2001). Second, leadership, as traditionally defined and measured, typically accounts for only moderate to low criterion variance in leadership outcomes suggesting a need for fresh thinking. Third, there is a large gap between leadership research findings and practice (Zaccaro and Horn, 2003). Fourth, there is evidence that a considerable number of leaders are falling short, estimated at between 50 and 75 per cent (Hogan and Hogan, 2002), and most organizations have little leadership bench strength.

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?

Locke (1991) defines leadership ‘as the process of inducing others to take action toward a common goal’ (p. 2). Leadership is relational (i.e. involves followers), is a process (leader does something), and induces others to act.

Conger (1992) defines leaders as ‘individuals who establish direction for a working group of individuals, who gain commitment from these groups members to this direction, and who then motivate these members to achieve the direction’s outcomes’ (p. 18).

According to Avolio (1999) leadership does not and should not directly impact performance directly but rather indirectly. That is, leadership affects the processes that directly or indirectly lead to performance. Most leadership influence in organizations is indirect; many of these effects are two-way or system-wide, when one considers executive leadership.

How do leaders impact the performance of their organizations? They do so through their immediate subordinates, whose influence spreads throughout the firm. The personality of the manager affects employee satisfaction, which in turn affects firm performance (Harter, Schmidt, and Hayes, 2002). The literature on top management...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Inspiring leaders: an introduction
• Part I Emerging Models of Leadership
• Part II Qualities of Effective and Successful Leaders
• Part III Leading Teams and Organizations
• Part IV Flawed Leaders
• Part V Developing Leaders and Leadership
• Index