The Drama of Leadership

Citation

Murdoch, A. (1998), "The Drama of Leadership", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 17 No. 2, pp. 153-153. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmd.1998.17.2.153.1

In the wake of decades of the orthodoxy which asserted that behaviour is largely the outcome of early experience and development, psychologists are now reasserting the significance of genetic, inherent traits. In line with this trend, it is once again becoming respectable to assert that leaders are born and not made. Taffinder gives emphatic support to this view: “I have no truck with organisations which claim that everyone in them is a leader. The vast majority of staff and managers do not lead; call them leaders if you like, but don’t expect them to lead. They won’t. They can’t”.

The reassertion about “born leaders” is paralleled by a widespread view that in society generally, and most definitely in business, we are suffering from a widespread dearth of effective leadership. One response to these views and concerns is the publication of more texts, including those under review, providing fresh analyses of leadership in business.

Although the Taffinder and Pitcher volumes are very worthwhile additions to the leadership library, they are poles apart in approach and analysis. The New Leaders is based on interviews with a series of contemporary business leaders, interspersed with some theory and musings on organisation in the global business environment. It gives the impression of being assembled relatively quickly, if competently. The Drama of Leadership is so clearly the heavyweight of the two texts. This book is based on Professor Pitcher’s PhD thesis, and is the result of eight years of research. The methodology used is significant. The test is loosely organised around a description of the rise and fall of a financial services multinational wherein the character and approach of successive leaders is described as crucial. The author also used very extensive statistical research as well as interviews and reading material. The result is something of a tour de force, as well as a very original contribution to the leadership book list. In approaching her research, Pitcher began to experience considerable dissatisfaction with existing management literature. It did not seem to equate with her own experiences of management and, in general, she felt that there were “no real people” in most management literature. From here, the author struggled to harmonise management/leadership behavioural theory with her own experiences and what she was able to observe. This journey led to the central theory of the book, taking a lead from the world of art ‐ namely that leaders can be categorised into three classical types: the artist leader, the craftsman leader and the technocrat leader.

Pitcher’s artist leader is perhaps closest to the public perception of leadership. He or she is non‐conformist and imaginative, inclined to invest heavily in intuition, risk‐taking and entrepreneurial, often charismatic (though not always), and relates well to other people. On the darker side, the artist leader often suffers from cyclothymia, a mild form of manic depression. The craftsman leader lacks the visionary quality of the artist. He or she essentially lives in the present, and with their qualities of experience, wisdom and practicality, as well as excellent team‐playing qualities, they provide the ideal counterpoint to the virtuoso performance of the artist. It is the craftsman leader who glues the organisation together. To Pitcher, while artist and craftsman leaders are natural partners, their enemy, and the enemy of successful business organisation, is the technocrat leader. She defines the technocrat as “someone who emphasises the technical conceptions of a problem to the detriment of their social and human consequences”. The technocrats have dedicated themselves to eradicating passion from management. They are concerned with rationality, control, micro‐analysis. They are cerebral and uncompromising, and they tend to despise the artist and the craftsman. They tend, eventually, to be ineffective, or disastrous, because of a failing defined by Pitcher in Chapter 13. Pitcher refers to research work conducted by the neurologist Dr Antonio Damasto who asserts that while emotions can cloud judgement, the absence of emotion can cloud judgement too. The technocrat leader depends almost totally on “rationality”, and, as the necessary balancing input of passion is absent, his leadership performance is fatally flawed.

Pitcher devotes several chapters to the interplay of her leadership types in her financial services company, through to its demise at the hands of technocrat leadership. She then goes on to compare her theories with Zaleznik, Bennis and other gurus, and to muse at length on the interplay of the various versions of leader in modern corporations.

I had some initial difficulty in relating Pitcher’s tripartite leadership types to the more familiar dichotomy of leader/manager, and I suspect that many of her craftsman leaders are traditional managers. Pitcher, however, tends to see the traditional division as between artist and technocrat, and believes we have tended to ignore the key importance of the craftsman leader. She dislikes the scientific management tradition, but believes that this tradition, unfortunately, continues to flourish, to the detriment of effective business performance.

This is a broad, generous book with many behavioural insights into the operation of business organisation. Perhaps Pitcher’s number one message is to try to spot the would‐be technocrat leader (difficult to do, as she explains) and prevent them reaching the top ‐ they make a good servant, but a bad master.

In comparison with Pitcher’s volume, I was eventually rather disappointed with The New Leaders. The author starts off with a clarion cry that we are in a new age requiring a new type of leader, and that, in general, the world is short of the leadership it requires (a point supported by Pitcher). However, this powerful line is not followed through the book, and the reader is left with a vague sense of drift ‐ what was this book really intended to be about?

Nonetheless, Taffinder’s text should not be ignored. It is crisp, with plenty of telling observations. The core of the book is an analysis of Taffinder’s nominated key leadership behaviours, which are:

1. 1.

   imposing context;

2. 2.

   taking risk;

3. 3.

   unpredictability;

4. 4.

   conviction; and

5. 5.

   making things happen.

Through his interviews, Taffinder provides useful insights into the behaviour and thought processes of a gallery of contemporary business leaders. In my view, however, the strongest part of the book is the chapter on the development of business leaders, which is spot on.

Leadership development apart, The New Leaders might be most useful to readers who are already in leadership positions, helping them to focus and sharpen their performance. Pitcher’s book should be read by everyone wishing to deepen their understanding of leadership and behaviour in organisations. This is a provocative book, likely to encourage many readers to question and review their understanding of business organisation.