How Managers have Learnt to Lead

Citation

Sheard, G. (2009), "How Managers have Learnt to Lead", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 28 No. 7, pp. 647-649. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710910972742

Despite the prolific literature and detailed studies on leadership, we still have little agreement on the characteristics of the great leader. This confusion is, in part, because our image of great leaders tends to be of great historical leaders. However, the modern day manager has relatively little in common with these historical figures. Where historical leaders might have been driven by a will to conquer, today's leaders face constraints and complexities that require them to display both strength and sensitivity. A modern day manager must guide discussion to resolution and also have the good sense and grace not to unduly burden the process with an over large ego. When we come to reflect on what it is that the modern day manager actually has to do, it becomes apparent that it is not at all clear how they learn to do it. How do managers learn to lead?

When I ask myself “how do managers learn to lead?” I realise it is a deceptively simple question. Very few books examine leadership development and although there may be other books specifically focused on how managers learn to lead, over a 20‐year career studying and writing about leadership I must confess that I personally have not come across one. As such Steve Kempster's book How Managers have Learnt to Lead addresses a fundamental issue for managers, how to assimilate and distil formal educational training and on the job experience into the wisdom needed to guide leadership action in a way appropriate to context.

For me the essence of what professional academics do is to identify an aspect of a subject that has perhaps not previously received the attention it deserves, and then draw together the literature on that subject. The objective in drawing together the literature is to enable some linkage or pattern to emerge that in turn can help to provide insight into what was previously impenetrable. If this definition of academic work is accepted, then Steve Kempster's book is a twofold success. First, the question that underpins the book “How do managers learn to lead?” is refreshing in that it does identify an aspect of leadership that is relatively under‐researched. Second, the book draws on a wide range of sources, providing real insight in the process.

While Steve Kempster comprehensively reviews the extant literature on leadership development, he also uses 40 interviews that enable him to draw out comparisons between managers in the public and private sector, women and men managers and employed and self‐employed managers. Taken together, the literature and interviews provide the basis for a contextual explanation of the fundamental processes by which managers learn to lead. Having read How Managers have Learnt to Lead I have also had some time to reflect on what I have read. Speaking as someone who is a practitioner first and an academic second, what remains with me is that How Managers have Learnt to Lead succeeds in being an academic book that is accessible to practitioners.

That is not to say that the book is easy for the practitioner to read, this is not the “light reading” associated with the popular management literature. Despite the observation that How Managers have Learnt to Lead will take effort to read on the part of the practitioner, it does manage what very few other books do: it makes substantive academic ideas and concepts accessible to the practitioner. In so doing the book offers the potential to really change the way a practicing manager views their world and interprets their experience, offering the very real possibility that the practitioner will then be able to interpret events differently and in so doing, over time go on to become better leaders.

I will not attempt to paraphrase the entire book in this review, but it is perhaps helpful to identify the six intra‐ and interpersonal influences that How Managers have Learnt to Lead identifies as guiding managers as they learn to lead:

1. 1.

   observational learning;

2. 2.

   enactments;

3. 3.

   situational learning;

4. 4.

   identity;

5. 5.

   self‐efficacy; and

6. 6.

   salience.

Observational learning is what happens when you observe different people in different leadership roles. How can you create opportunities to engage with a variety of leaders? Enactment is associated with the leadership roles you have actually performed. How varied where these roles in terms of activity or contest? Can you create the opportunity to lead a new team or an existing team in a new context? Situational learning is associated with a rising awareness of the leadership practice around you. Can you identify how this practice is performed? Identity is associated with how you describe yourself to others. Can you imagine others identifying with you as a capable leader? What form of leader identity do you aspire to have? Self‐efficacy is concerned with personal judgements about how well one can execute a course of action to deal with prospective situations. Self‐efficacy judgements influence the activities you believe yourself to be capable of leading, but how do you judge whether you are good at leading? Salience is associated with the importance of leadership to you. Why is it important? When you watch a group or team working though a problem do you see those involved in terms of the leadership roles they occupy?

It would be naïve to pretend that How Managers have Learnt to Lead answers all of the questions raised above. The book does however draw out the six intra‐ and interpersonal influences associated with learning to lead in a meaningful way. Identification helps the reader to see their experiences in terms of these influences. In so doing experience is categorised and therefore its implication for leadership practice more easily conceptualised. It is this process of categorisation, conceptualisation and reflection that is what facilitates the transformation of experience into learning.

When I was approached and asked to review this book, I was both sceptical and hopeful. I was sceptical that this book could make a difference and at the same time hopeful that it would. Despite my optimism I had to ask, with so many books on leadership already available, is there really a need for another?

In How Managers have Learnt to Lead, Steve Kempster has understood that when people understand the linkage between leadership capability and their own actions, this invariably leads to a heightened sense of self responsibility. In so doing How Managers have Learnt to Lead captures the essence of what it means to learn to be a better leader. How Managers have Learnt to Lead does not just clarify what you should do when taking leadership action. How Managers have Learnt to Lead makes explicitly clear the development demanded of you if you are to become a better leader. I firmly believe that the approach to leadership learning presented in How Managers have Learnt to Lead can help you to assimilate and distil formal educational training and on the job experience into the wisdom needed to guide leadership action in a way appropriate to context. That is why I am sure that not only is there a need for How Managers have Learnt to Lead, but it is also long overdue. I highly recommend this book.