Introduction
The topic of leadership is controversial. There are those who argue that leadership is greatly overvalued: that the success of organisations derives at least as much from serendipity as from strategy, vision or leadership. They argue that attempts to identify the characteristics of great leaders have proven to be inconsequential or contradictory and that generaliseable lessons about leadership are elusive. We believe that these arguments may have some validity but that they do not represent the overwhelming weight of research evidence; evidence that has become more convincing since the first edition of this volume.
Philosophers, historians, novelists and journalists have always been interested in what makes a great (and a failed) leader: what are their unique characteristics and strengths; allowable weakness and peculiar foibles; and what makes them fall from grace, get forgotten or get lionised for all time? Do special circumstances (crises) throw up certain types of leaders who are only suitable in that situation? Certainly, the study of leaders, organisations, countries and empires seem to need frequent updates as yesterday’s heroes become today’s controversies and tomorrow’s embarrassments.
World history is littered with examples of leaders in a time of crisis who became a poor leader in a time of stability and vice versa. The history of organisations provides examples of business leaders who are victims of the Peter principle (promoted until their level of incompetence is reached). Thus, is succession planning for leaders really viable, given that circumstances change so often? Key to all these dilemmas is one of the oldest questions of all: are leaders born (with some genetic disposition) or are they made (by chance, learning or circumstance)?
After generations of research effort and observation, there is a lot we know about leadership. There is evidence to answer a great many questions such as what is leadership?, does leadership matter?, how are leaders chosen?, who is likely to become a leader?, why do leaders fail?, how do leaders build effective teams? and the like. This chapter will describe several attempts to study leadership over time and suggest an emerging story on the basis of which we can begin to understand leadership differently. It will also include a section on followers and followership: a theme that has come into sharper focus since the first edition of this volume.
Disciplinary Perspectives on Leadership
Leadership has always been studied through the lens of different approaches or disciplines. Each brings its own approaches. The historian will approach leadership somewhat differently from the psychologist or management scholar. They seek out and interpret the data differently, focus on different causes and offer different explanations. Even within a single discipline, there are dramatic differences. This is not to assert the virtues of one over the others. Rather it is to point out the complexity of leadership and the different ways of making sense of it.
Consider the multiple ways in which psychologists from various sub-disciplines write and think about leadership. These approaches fall broadly into three categories concerning how leaders emerge, who they are and what they do.
- 1.How leaders emerge
- (a)The biographical approach. Neo-psychoanalysts have written about famous leaders like Luther and Gandhi. There have also been fine essays on famous despots who often intrigue readers the most. Psychobiography is a psychological analysis of the conscious and unconscious forces that shape an individual life. Most leaders are complex figures. They often have phenomenal drive and persistence. They overcome adversity and rejection. The biographical approach is often focused on deceased leaders and it can offer new and insightful perspectives on their motives and drives. This is not to be confused with the autobiographical approach where leaders seek to influence how they will be appreciated and remembered: to determine their own place in history before others do it for them.
- (b)The educational or developmental approach. What creates a leader? What educational experiences, both formal and informal, shaped them? How, when and why did leaders develop their beliefs, skills, knowledge, motivation and drive? This also speaks to the question of training and developing leaders of the future. This approach is about the development of leaders and so frequently focuses on the talented or high-potential group. It addresses the question of what is trainable? Can people be taught to be good or better leaders, and if so, how? It seeks to define both the minimal and optimal preconditions for good leadership on which developmental activities can work to transform potential into fully realised leadership capability.
- (c)The environmental approach. We shape our environment and afterwards it shapes us, as Winston Churchill once said of the British Parliament. Leaders frequently send out witting and unwitting signals about how they want to be perceived by the decisions they implement about the design and function of the buildings they inhabit. Organisational cultures are frequently typified by such signals as the location of the CEO’s office, the differences in office size and furniture found there, the ease or difficulty of gaining access to the executive suite and the like. Even the layout of the furniture influences behaviour in the office and conversations conducted across desks tend to be more formal than those in more comfortable settings. Leaders create and modify physical environments with psychological and cultural consequences, creating physical analogues of their leadership style and approach.
- 2.Who leaders are
- (a)The personality approach. This is perhaps the best known approach. Whilst some writers include ability and values under this heading, the majority focus on personality traits. They aim to discover these traits in highly successful leaders that explain their success. The best trait studies look at longitudinal data so that one can separate cause from correlation, but more typically, these studies are correlational and can merely infer causality. This approach has seen a significant revival since the 1980s due to the development of the so-called Five Factor model of personality which has now shown highly significant correlations with both leadership emergence and effectiveness, as we shall see in subsequent chapters.
- (b)The clinical approach. Psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have taken an interest in the abnormal, disordered side of leaders which sits alongside their skill and determination and frequently accounts for their drive. Many are known to have both acute and chronic disorders, which they often exploit for their own ends. The psychopath, the narcissist, the manic depressive leader are far from rare. By one definition of abnormal (i.e. the statistical definition), all leaders are abnormal since they are exceptional. The question for the clinical approach is how their problems helped and hindered them both in the journey to the top and their experience once there.
- (c)The evolutionary approach. It has been suggested that leaders tend to be taller, more handsome and fitter than the average person of their age and stage in life. Evolutionary psychologists looking at other animals and our own primitive past have noticed that leaders have always tended to be fit and strong; bright and ‘wily’; feared by adversaries; and admired by followers. Some physical anthropologists have noted the shape of successful leaders. Whilst we can all think of short, tubby, bald exceptions to the rule, it is also apparent from our elected politicians and from the CEO’s of top companies that they are often taller and more attractive than the average person of their age. In US presidential elections in the television age, for example, the taller candidate has usually won and the idea of a ‘commanding presence’ persists.
- 3.What leaders do
- (a)The cognitive approach. Cognition is about thinking and, therefore, involves perception, information processing, understanding, knowledge and sometimes creativity. One essential feature of leadership is decision-making. Cognitive psychologists are interested in all aspects of decision-making from decision-making under uncertainty to decision-making in groups. How do leaders typically make decisions: to hire or fire, buy or sell, advance or retreat? Do they consult others or make decisions alone; do they agonise or act impulsively? What sort of data do they seek before they decide? Perhaps most importantly, do leaders make better decisions than their followers and has high-quality decision making contributed to their emergence as leaders?
- (b)The ideological approach. Sometimes called the moral approach, it looks at the influence that leaders have been able to wield predominantly through the power of their preaching and message. In history, some of the most enduring and powerful leaders are those who have crusaded with simple but attractive moral goals. Many have not sought leadership itself but had it thrust upon them and the question is how they did it. One of the best examples in the twentieth century is of Martin Luther King...