Understanding leadership

Leaders may come and go, but they remain at the heart of successful business growth and change. Leadership, however, means different things to different firms and for managing partners, who frequently have the experience of fee earning rather than management, effective leadership can be an elusive goal. Tony Allen, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, argues that leadership represents a whole spectrum of options.

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it” – Dwight D Eisenhower. A great quote, but leadership is such a complex issue that there is no single descriptor that can provide the definitive characterisation of all leaders. At a time when there is much questioning of leadership values – one of the key issues stemming from the “fallout” surrounding the Enron debacle – it is essential that leaders examine their own role within their organisation and be as objective as possible about their contribution to its current and future success.

Rules of the game

Every organisation has its own “rules of the game” and one of the fundamental questions that leaders must ask themselves is: In this organisation, would we rather be comfortable and fail, than uncomfortable and succeed? This is a key challenge and one that requires leaders to develop themselves by analysing what they have done that has not worked and accept the responsibility.

They must also resolve difficult issues, many of which will be people related – ironically, it is often these “soft” issues that are the hardest to deal with.

A fundamental element of leadership analysis is to answer the basic question: What sort of leader do we trust?

Does the leader demonstrate robust procedures in how they manage the firm?
Do they have strong financial procedures in place?
Do they have effective means of monitoring quality?
Do they have an open management style in terms of disseminating information?
Are they open to new ideas and initiatives that will help the firm grow?
Are they open to new opportunities in the marketplace?
Do they care about their clients and the people in the firm?
Do they support their people’s development at all levels?

This approach to assessing a leader is, in the main, objective and measurable, but the role of a leader is such that it is often enacted in a subjective context.

This does not mean that it is a role that cannot be analysed. I would argue that it is essential that a good leader is the subject not just of analysis by his or her fellow partners or employees (they will all do this anyway), but more importantly, a leader should undertake self-analysis to learn how to act most effectively to lead the firm.

Self-analysis is not the easiest of matters, but there are a number of models that can be used in a benchmarking process to help understand weaknesses and strengths.

Adaptive or innovative leadership?1

I have learnt, through working with leaders of many successful businesses, that each has their own particular style, but within this great diversity of talent, there are two clear patterns of change behaviour that apply to successful leaders – adaptive or innovative.

Adaptive leaders are good at improving things, taking existing systems or practices and evolving them to become better. They are creative in terms of bringing in new ideas that can be readily implemented in the company’s existing framework.

The innovative style of leadership is characterised by those who can work across organisational barriers and often bring in ideas and approaches that are novel. They are quite prepared to break the mould of current ways of thinking, and often set out to do so. They are rule breakers and shake things up in otherwise “comfortable” organisations.

Entrepreneurs tend to be more innovative in style, but by recognising that their business requires more adaptive leadership as it matures, they are able to compensate for their natural approach by building teams that provide the adaptive leadership style and skills that the business needs. They recruit senior personnel who are naturally predisposed to implementing business processes, and retrofit systems they should have had at the start.

Are the two models distinct and, therefore, can a leader be only one or the other? At the most fundamental level, yes. One’s leadership style is learned early in life and some would argue that it is genetically inherited. Leaders who take their personal development seriously, however, will understand their strengths and weaknesses, and act to compensate for them. Thus, an adaptive leader will introduce into his or her team innovative people who bring in different ideas and approaches, while a more innovative leader will introduce people who are focused and have practical skills in terms of implementing and finishing projects, traits that the innovator frequently lacks.

The ability to take responsibility for one’s development by being self-analytical, understanding weaknesses and compensating for these is a sign of good leadership.

The leadership model

To help individuals with self-analysis, there is a model that has stood the test of time and allows individuals to assess themselves against four character groups. It has its roots in many traditions, but has been popularised by a number of Jungian psychologists (Toni Wolff, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, for example). This identifies four leadership styles: King/Queen, Warrior, Magician and Lover (see below).

The four character groups of leadership:

Lover: This type of leader is joyful, merges easily with others and possesses a sense of beauty and ascetics. This leader is also relationship oriented, connected to others, alive, enthusiastic and in the moment, passionate about life, enjoys romantic love, music, art, and loves easily and often.

Magician: Represents clear thinking, transformation, insight and understanding. This leader knows how things work, reflects, watches and thinks about life deeply, gets an objective perspective and collects data, understands purpose, trusts his or her own thinking process, knows what needs to happen to make things better, can see “into” things, people and events, sees patterns and knows solutions to problems.

Warrior: This leader acts decisively and with courage. He or she is also energetic and ready for action, focused on goals and objectives, enduring, persevering and consistent, able to sacrifice comfort for the completion of a task, loyal to a greater good, patient, one-pointed and diligent as well as courageous.

King/Queen: This type of leader is nurturing, calm and generative. He or she defines limits, provides structure and is inclusive, orders chaos in order for it to be channelled creatively, has the capacity to see the potential and best in others, delights in new ideas, projects and opportunities, cares for others deeply and genuinely, and has a transpersonal vision of a better world.

What is important is that today’s leaders need to be able to draw on the characteristics of each style, as situations demand, to be fully effective.

Individual leaders will, no doubt, identify with different characteristics from each of the four different styles, and although the King/Queen model is accepted as embodying the most desirable of all the other styles – and adding wisdom for good measure – the fact is that leaders need to utilise elements from them all. The most effective leaders switch styles as required, not in a mechanistic fashion as if working from a checklist of situations, but seamlessly adjusting their style to get the best results.

Is that all that’s required? Well, not really, the models are useful in helping individual leaders analyse their own styles and recognise prime characteristics they already possess or should aspire to adopt. However, because leadership is so closely associated with particular contexts and personalities, diversity of approach is a reality.

Leadership has evolved in the last decade, more rapidly than ever before. Positional power and authority are no longer its key elements, and vision, commitment, communication, action and humour are the characteristics displayed by today’s successful leaders. Power is still important, but it is no longer in the form of the accumulation of resources or information to make things happen. Instead, power involves forging alliances and creating a co-operative agenda.

Vision remains the trademark of effective leadership, the element that creates opportunity. Effective leaders continually share their vision and involve others in nurturing and developing it. Ultimately, the vision no longer belongs to the leader, but becomes the collective future of the organisation.

At this point, the leader can play a crucial role in delivering the collective vision by demonstrating and sharing his or her passion. I have good management teams with high-energy levels, strong commitment and good focus but they do not reach the ultimate success of others. Why? Because the truly outstanding companies have someone at the helm with real passion. This is the type of leader whose passion enables them to tackle the difficult issues successfully – it takes them the one step further than anyone else.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat” – Theodore Roosevelt.

Reference:

1. Ideas developed by Dr Michael Kirton, who created the Kirton Adaption Innovation Inventory (KAI) - www.kaicentre.com

Tony Allan is a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He can be contacted at: tony.allen@uk.pwcglobal.com.