03 Mar, 2009

By Grady McGonnagall

How do you become an outstanding leader? Anyone looking for an answer to this question from the vast body of writing on leadership will be as frustrated as the cartoon character Dilbert, who asked his pointy-headed boss: “How do you know which management techniques work best? Logically, doesn’t the existence of thousands of management books show no one knows what works best?” The boss replied: “The trick is knowing which one to read.”

Is there one best book to read? Six years ago I decided to find out for myself. I took a sabbatical from my consulting and read as much on leadership as I could. I was surprised at what I found: consistent with Dilbert’s suspicion, there is no one best way to lead. To be sure, my review showed that most writers thought they did know what works best. The problem, as Dilbert understood, is they don’t agree. But I did find agreement of a kind--clusters of opinion advocating a particular way of thinking about leadership effectiveness. Virtually all the writing on leadership fits into one of the four following categories of advice, each of which has something useful to offer. These categories roughly mirror the history of thinking about leadership.

• Embody the Right Personal Qualities. This is where leadership theory began, with the “Great Man” theory of leadership. More recent writings suggest that most leaders are made, not born. The value of this perspective is that it calls attention to the impact of a leader’s personal strengths and weaknesses and the importance of developing those personal qualities.

• Do the Right Things. When scholars could not agree on the right “traits,” they turned their attention to what leaders do rather than the kind of person they are. The value of this perspective is that it encourages identification of those practices which on average work better than others.

• Adjust Your Style to the Situation. It later became apparent that the effectiveness of an approach to leadership can depend on the situation. The usefulness of this cluster is that it provides suggestions on where it could make sense for a leader to adjust his/her approach to be more fully responsive to the particular situation if possible.

• Adjust the Situation to Your Style. Some of the more recent writing turns the previous approach on its head and suggests that the key is for leaders to first get clear on their style, and the underlying purpose it expresses, and then find situations that build on their strengths and their values.

Each of these perspectives makes a contribution Yet each for the most part ignores the contribution of the other clusters. People writing in each cluster also often disagree with the particular strategies offered by others within their own category! So each has something to offer, but no one of them contains the whole truth.

What does this suggest about how can a leader learn to be the most effective? I believe the solution is to assume that there is some wisdom in each of these four perspectives, but that the truth for each individual lies in figuring out what works for them. Leaders will be most effective if they develop a style that is unique to themselves, one that weaves their particular set of strengths and limits into a whole that they can embody with authenticity. This means not trying to copy others, or to adopt some textbook “style.”

For some years I felt alone in holding this view. But the world of both scholarship and practice is catching up. Bill George, who came to teach at the Harvard Business School after being CEO of Medtronic, has found “authenticity” to be the key to effective leadership. He writes “No one can be authentic by trying to be like someone else” (True North, 2007). And Jack Welsh’s successor at GE, Jeff Immelt, has said “There‘s no one I admire or love more than Jack Welch, but I’ve watched so many people try to copy him. It doesn’t work.”

The truth of this perspective is borne out by the example of outstanding leaders. Often their behavior is paradoxical, embodying practices that shouldn’t work according to the conventional wisdom, but that somehow works for them. Take Ted Kennedy. Whatever you think of his politics, he’s widely regarded as one of the most effective members of the U.S. Senate. He also has a reputation for delegating tasks to more than one subordinate, setting up a competition to see which produces the best results. This defies the conventional wisdom about creating teamwork and harmony. But it works for him. Should you copy it? Probably not. Or take Steve Jobs. He publicly humiliates even trusted employees. Not what you’ll find recommended in the literature. Would he be more effective if he stopped doing that? Maybe, but it may also be a critical element in his overall style, one which includes the ability to “make the task of designing a power supply feel like a mission from God” (Wired, “Evil Genius,” p.139).

How can you find our own distinctive, authentic style? Here’s the 8-step approach that we offer in our seminars, which draws upon what we believe is the core wisdom of each of the four clusters:

1. Learn from your successes. Choose several times when you were at your very best as a leader. Look for common patterns in how you approached the situation, recognizing that you probably did different things at each of four phases:

-How did you get drawn in?

-How did you get it rolling?

-How did you keep it rolling?

-How did you bring it to completion?

2. Learn from Your Disappointing Experiences. Choose several times when you didn’t realize your hopes as a leader. Are there common patterns? Particular situations or challenges that you find it difficult to handle? Things you ignored? Are you vulnerable at any particular stage of the leadership cycle?

3. Leverage Your Strengths. Deepen your self-understanding by asking yourself: “What are my distinctive strengths?” It is often helpful to use a personal style instrument to explore these questions. Many leaders have found the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to be useful. In our seminars we use Temperament, a less well known but powerful tool that correlates with the MBTI and has the advantage of making only 4 rather than 16 distinctions in type. From the foundation of this understanding the patterns in your stories often make new sense.

4.Manage your Limits. It’s equally important to ask: “What are my limits, the things I don’t do well or don’t like to do?” It’s not important that you be an outstanding performer on every dimension, but you can often manage your limits in ways that support your strengths by delegating creatively or redefining expectations of your leadership. It is also critical to identify and address potential Fatal Flaws, areas where you could compromise your leadership through loss of credibility, either at your inability to meet a core expectation or because of behavior that is inconsistent with what you espouse. This leads us to the 5th step.

5. Manage Your Shadow. We all do things that are inconsistent with our values and aspirations, not because we are hypocritical, but because we have patterns that we either aren’t aware of or have difficulty controlling. These may be patterns related to your personality, which you would have in common with others of similar type, but could also have to do with things unique to you. What are the elements of your shadow? Unless you recognize and manage your shadow, take it out of the dark and expose it to the light of day, it will manage you. Many otherwise enormously talented leaders have failed to do this. Think of former President Richard Nixon, or more recently the now former Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York.

6. Assess your flexibility. Adjusting your style can be advantageous. But not everyone can be all things to all people without appearing phony. You can determine your flexibility by reviewing the expectations of people with different styles, and then setting realistic aspirations, ones that keep you in the “growth zone” but out of the “phony zone.”

7. Clarify Your Purpose. Being aligned with your purpose unleashes enormous energy, enabling you to bring your “Best Self” to your leadership. Your success stories often contain footprints of your sense of purpose. Making it explicit will help you keep it in mind as you make critical choice about where and how to lead.

8. Understand Your Sweet Spot. You will bring the greatest energy to your leadership and be most effective in situations that satisfy two conditions: they allow you to pursue your purpose and 2) they enable you to leverage your strengths while not making you unduly vulnerable to your limits. This means being proactive about choosing (and creating) the conditions that work best for you.

In following these steps, leaders would do well to look neither to the literature nor the example of inspiring leaders for the blueprint for their own leadership style. Rather, I encourage them to follow the lead of the main character in Marilyn Robinson’s novel Gilead, who in taking stock of his life reflected: “I know more than I know, and must learn it from myself.”

The example of Phil.

Phil came to us and said “something is wrong with me. I need to get fixed.” He had been fired from his last three jobs and was currently on probation. We helped Phil recall and examine his success stories. He found a consistent pattern: he had a remarkable talent for coming into a situation that wasn’t working, figuring out what was wrong, and setting it right. He was a “mess-cleaner-upper,” There was also a pattern to his failures, which resulted directly from his successes. Typically he would get rewarded for cleaning up a mess by being made the ongoing manager of whatever function that he had rescued. But this sapped Phil’s motivation. He got charged up in the face of challenges, but was bored when things were going smoothly. So what did he do when bored? Create a mess, which led to getting fired. When Phil learned what his distinctive talent was, he saw that he needed to communicate this to his bosses so that they knew how to use him. With this new self-understanding, he went on to become one of the most valued managers in his corporation.

References Bill George with Peter Sims (2007), True North: Discover your Authentic Leadership, (New York: John Wiley & Sons) Leander Kahney, “Evil Genius,” Wired (April, 2008, pp. 136-143)

An abbreviated version of this article was published in July by "American Executive." And another shortened version is to be published in March in "Leadership Excellence."

Grady McGonagill is Principal of McGonagill Associates, where for 25 years he has led a practice devoted to leadership development. He offers public workshops and coaching based on the approach in this article (www.yourleadershipstyle.com) and works with other coaches and consultants to achieve mastery in their craft (www.reflectivepractioner.com. He has a doctorate from Harvard University and an MA from Stanford. Grady is a contributor to the "Fifth Discipline Fieldbook," edited by Peter Senge et al. (New York: Doubleday, 1994) and the author of a chapter in "Executive Coaching", edited by C. Fitzgerald and J. Berger (San Francisco: Davies Black Publishing, 2002).