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‘Followers want comfort and stability, and solutions from their leaders. But that’s babysitting. Real leaders ask hard questions and knock people out of their comfort zones. Then they manage the resulting distress.’ They believe the call for vision and inspiration is counter-productive and encourages dependency from employees.

There is a difference between the type of leadership needed to solve a routine technical problem and the type of leadership needed to enable complex organizational change. Leaders of change should concentrate on scanning the environment, and drawing people’s attention to the complex adaptive challenges that the organization needs to address, such as culture changes, or changes in core processes. This means not solving the problems for people, but giving the work back to them. It also means not protecting people from bad news and difficulty, but allowing them to feel the distress of things not working well. These ideas are quite a long way from the concept of transformational leadership mentioned above, which indicates that successful leaders are charismatic, visionary and inspirational.

Jean Lipman-Blumen: leaders need to make connections rather than build one vision

Jean Lipman-Blumen (2002) says that vision is no longer the answer. She encourages leaders to search for meaning and make connections, rather than build one vision. She notes that there is a growing sense that old forms of leadership are untenable in an increasingly global environment. She says that the sea change in the conditions of leadership imposed by the new global environment requires new ways of thinking and working that confront and deal constructively with both interdependence (overlapping visions, common problems) and diversity (distinctive character of individuals, groups and organizations).

Lipman-Blumen talks about connective leaders (see box) who perceive connections among diverse people, ideas and institutions even when the parties themselves do not. In the new ‘connective era’, she says that leaders will need to reach out and collaborate even with old adversaries. Mikhail Gorbachev is a good example of this in the political arena. Nelson Mandela is another.

Again, this approach is different from the suggestion that leaders need to develop and communicate clear vision in an inspiring way. Jean Lipman-Blumen encourages leaders to help others to make good connections, and to develop a sense of common purpose across boundaries, thus building commitment across a wide domain.

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SIX IMPORTANT STRENGTHS FOR CONNECTIVE LEADERS

• Ethical political savvy. A combination of political know-how with strong ethics. Adroit and transparent use of others and themselves to achieve goals.

• Authenticity and accountability. Authenticity is achieved by dedicating yourself to the purpose of the group. Accountability is achieved by being willing to have every choice scrutinized.

• A politics of commonalities. Searching for commonalities and common ground, and building communities.

• Thinking long term, acting short term. Coaching and encouraging successors, and building for a long-term future despite the current demands of the day to day.

• Leadership through expectation. Scrupulously avoiding micro-managing. Setting high expectations and trusting people.

• A quest for meaning. Calling supporters to change the world for the better.

Source: Lipman-Blumen (2002)

Leadership for the 21st century: less vision, more connection?

The world is changing. Organizations are more dispersed and less hierarchical. More information is more freely available. People want more from their jobs than they used to. Does this change the role of the leader of change?

As we write this book, the world’s economy is in turmoil, with a particular focus on the difficulties of the Eurozone. It seems that many of the old certainties are dissolving, and it’s almost impossible for leaders to lead through offering a clear, authoritative vision. The increasingly globalized economy, access to immediate, 24-hour news and information and the rise of social media all work to create more independence of mind of individuals, increased inter-connectivity between interest groups and less reliance on traditional forms of leadership. Are people’s needs for strong leadership starting to shift? Perhaps clear, visionary, authoritative leadership is no longer working.

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When we look inside organizations, the territory is also changing. John Kotter (1996) draws our attention to changes in organizational structures, systems and cultures (see Table 4.3). What does this mean for leading change? We think this means a shift from expectations of one visionary leader to the need for increased connectivity and overlapping agendas between different groups.

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Table 4.3 20th-century organizations and 21st-century organizations

Source: adapted from Kotter (1996)

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STOP AND THINK!

Q 4.1 Name your top five contemporary leaders and say why you chose each one. Reflect on how important visionary leadership is to you.

Q 4.2 What are the most significant changes that have happened in the world since your childhood? Who was responsible for leading these? Did visionary leadership play a key role?

Q 4.3 Draw up a table identifying the pros and cons of:

• visionary leadership; • adaptive leadership; • connective leadership.

Q 4.4 Re-read Kotter’s (1996) comparison of 20th- and 21st-century organizational structures, systems and cultures. Then fill in your own ideas about leadership of change.

ROLES THAT LEADERS PLAY

There are various views about the role a leader should play in the change process (see Table 4.1, page 133):

• The machine metaphor implies that the leader sits at the top of the organization, setting goals and driving them through to completion.

• The political system metaphor implies that the leader needs to become the figurehead of a powerful coalition which attracts followers by communicating a compelling and attractive vision, and through negotiation and bargaining.

• The organism metaphor says the leader’s primary role is that of coach, counsellor and consultant.

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The flux and transformation metaphor says the leader is a facilitator of emergent change.

How does the leader of a change process ensure that all the necessary roles are carried out? Should the leader try to perform all these roles personally, or select a specific role for him- or herself and distribute supporting roles among his or her colleagues?

Senge: dispersed leadership

Senge (Senge et al, 1999) has some fairly challenging ideas about this. He says that successful leadership of change does not have to come from the top of an organization. It comes from within the organization. He remarks that senior executives do not have as much power to change things as they would like to think.

He asks why we are struggling so much with changing our organizations, and he attacks our dependence on the ‘hero leader’. He claims it results in a vicious circle. The circle begins with a crisis, which leads to the search for a new CEO in whom all hopes are invested. The new CEO acts proactively and aggressively, and makes some dramatic short-term improvements such as cutting costs and improving productivity. Everyone then falls in line to please the new CEO, who does not suffer fools gladly. Employees comply rather than work hard to challenge the status quo, and a new crisis inevitably occurs. This vicious circle does not result in new thinking, organizational learning or renewal, or even growth, and in turn feeds our desire to find new hero leaders. See Figure 4.1.

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Figure 4.1 The search for a hero-CEO Source: Senge et al (1999)

Senge offers some stark truths about organization change, which counteract the reliance on top- level vision set out by Bennis and Kotter:

• little significant change can occur if it is driven from the top; • CEO programmes rolled out from the top are a great way to foster cynicism and distract

everyone from real efforts to change; • top management buy-in is a poor substitute for genuine commitment and learning capabilities at

all levels in an organization.

You can see Senge’s point. How could one or two brave people at the top of an organization really be responsible for envisaging and tackling the enormous range of challenges that present themselves when fundamental change is attempted? He claims that we need to think about developing communities of interdependent leaders across organizations. Different types of leaders have different types of role. He identifies three important, interconnected types of leader: local line leaders, executive leaders and network leaders.

Local line leaders

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These are the front-line managers who design the products and services and make the core processes work. Without the commitment of these people, no significant change will happen. These people are usually very focused on their own teams and customers. They rely on network leaders to link them with other parts of the organization, and on executive leaders to create the right infrastructure for good ideas to emerge and take root.

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Executive leaders

These are management board members. Senge does not believe that all change starts here. Rather, he states that these leaders are responsible for three key things: designing the right innovation environment and the right infrastructure for assessment and reward, teaching and mentoring local line leaders, and serving as role models to demonstrate their commitment to values and purpose.

Network leaders

Senge makes the point that the really significant organizational challenges occur at the interfaces between project groups, functions and teams. Network leaders are people who work at these interfaces. They are guides, advisers, active helpers and accessors (helping groups of people to get resource from elsewhere), working in partnership with line leaders. They often have the insight to help local line leaders to move forward and make changes happen across the organization.

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The interconnections are hard to achieve in reality. We have observed the following obstacles to achieving smooth interconnections between the different roles:

• Executive leaders are busy, hard-to-get-hold-of people who can become quite disconnected from their local line leaders.

• Executive leaders and local line leaders rarely meet face-to-face and communicate by e-mail, if at all.

• Network leaders, such as internal consultants or process facilitators, are often diverted from their leadership roles by requests either to perform expert tasks or to implement HR-led initiatives.

• Network leaders may be busy and effective, but are usually undervalued as leaders of change. They often have to battle to get recognized as important players in the organization.

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Senge’s model recognizes the need for all three types of leader, and the need for connectivity between different parts of the organization if change is desired.

O’Neill: four key roles for successful change

Mary Beth O’Neill (2000) agrees with Senge’s idea of communities of leaders, and identifies four specific leadership roles necessary for successful and sustained change efforts in organizations. She uses Daryl Conner’s work on family therapy as her model for the change process, and identifies the important roles as sponsor, implementer, advocate and agent. See Table 4.4.

Table 4.4 Roles in a change process

Role Description Hint

Sponsor Has the authority to make the change happen. Has control of resources.

Needs to have a clear vision for the change. Identify goals and measurable outcomes.

Sustaining sponsor

Sponsors change in own area, although top-level responsibility lies further up the hierarchy.

Must be careful not to transmit cynicism.

Implementer Implements the change. Reports to sponsor. Responsible for giving live feedback to the sponsor on change progress.

Needs to listen, enquire and clarify questions with the sponsor at the start of an initiative.

Change agent Facilitator of change. Helps sponsor and implementers stay aligned. Keeps sponsor on board. No direct authority over implementers.

Acts as data gatherer, educator, adviser, meeting facilitator, coach.

Advocate Has an idea. Needs a sponsor to make it happen. Usually highly motivated.

Must make idea appealing to sponsor.

Source: adapted from O’Neill (2000)

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Sponsor

The sponsor has the authority to make the change happen. He or she legitimizes and sanctions the change, and has line authority over the people who will implement the change and control of resources – such as time, money and people. There are also sustaining sponsors who are responsible for sponsoring change in their own area.

Good sponsors have a clear vision for the change. They identify goals and measurable outcomes for the initiative. Sustaining sponsors must be careful not to telegraph cynicism about the change to the team of implementers.

Implementer

Implementers are the people who must actually implement the change. They have direct line responsibilities to the sponsor. Their job is to provide the sponsor with live feedback from the change initiative. They can save the sponsor from tunnel vision, or from being surprised by obstacles that those closest to the change sometimes notice first.

Implementers are most effective when they listen, inquire and clarify their questions and concerns with the sponsor at the beginning of an initiative. This means they can commit to an effort rather than falsely complying early on and sabotaging later.

Change agent

A change agent is the facilitator of the change. He or she helps the sponsor and the implementers stay aligned with each other. The effectiveness of this role depends on the sponsor not abandoning the change agent to the implementers. The sponsor must not ‘drop the ball’. When this happens the change agent can over-function, making the system ineffective and unbalanced, and the change temporary.

The change agent acts as data gatherer, educator, adviser, meeting facilitator and coach. Most often he or she has no direct line authority over the implementers, and is therefore in a naturally occurring triangle among sponsor–implementer–agent.

Advocate

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An advocate has an idea about how a change can happen but needs a sponsor for his or her idea. All change needs to be sponsored.

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Advocates are often passionate and highly motivated to make the change happen. They must remember the key factor, which is to get a sponsor. Without this, advocates become frustrated and demoralized. Shrewd advocates promote ideas by showing their compatibility with issues near and dear to sponsors’ change projects and goals.

We have included Mary Beth O’Neill’s definitions of these roles because they provide a clear framework for those approaching organizational change, and illustrate the range of leadership roles necessary for change to occur. Our experience is that people at all levels in organizations find this framework useful for kicking off and sustaining change, and for judging how well the community of leaders is supporting the change process. This model seems to provide the necessary amount of clarity in today’s organizations, where hierarchy is unclear and jobs and projects overlap. There is often a need for a simple but flexible way of defining who does what in any process of change.

STOP AND THINK!

Q 4.5 Use Mary Beth O’Neill’s four roles to analyse a change process in your organization. Who performed which role? How well were the roles performed? What contribution did the performance of these roles make to the level of success of the changes?

LEADERSHIP STYLES, QUALITIES AND SKILLS

Much has been written about leadership styles, qualities and skills. We have included two different ways of looking at this area to illustrate two complementary ‘lenses’. The first comes from Goleman (2000) and the second from Cameron and Green (2008).

We have chosen the work of Goleman because our clients tend to find it illuminating and useful as a first stage ‘ready-reckoner’ regarding their leadership style. Goleman identifies a set of six ‘relationship-oriented’ styles for the leader to choose from in any situation – as if choosing from a set of golf clubs. Leaders we have worked with find this very useful, particularly when faced with new people challenges, either one-to-one or in a group context (see boxed examples). This set of six styles is underpinned by Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence, which sets out the underlying competencies associated with successful leadership. This acts as a convenient checklist for those assessing their skills.

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