Great groups and leaders

Citation

Powell, S. and Bennis, W. (1999), "Great groups and leaders", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.1999.02220cab.001

Great groups and leaders

Great groups and leaders

Sarah Powell Freelance journalist writing for MCB UP

Warren Bennis Distinguished Professor of Business, Finance and Business Economics, Marshall School of Business, and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

Keywords: Leadership, Management styles, Vision, Trust, Teams

SP

In recent years you've suggested a shift away from charismatic individual leaders towards "great groups", with the emphasis on creative collaboration, co-leadership and relationships. Given changing working patterns, are these team methods of working not complicated by trends such as outsourcing and self-development which, paradoxically, seem to indicate a shift towards individual rather than group working?

WB

A good question. There does seem to be a kind of a paradox between entrepreneurial, individual-centred, personal accountability and the team concept - but I don't think they're actually in conflict at all.

I think that what is going to happen, if you'll excuse the expression, is the "Hollywood Model" - this means groups of individuals coming together to work on particular tasks from diverse areas of the corporation, or indeed any kind of organization. They will intensively gather to work on a project ... imagine doing a movie - that's a kind of a modern metaphor of the reality I'm talking about. After the project is over, and you see this already happening in consulting firms and in many large organizations right now, the group will dissolve, and then regroup to come together again.

But being in a group in no way precludes a high degree of individual autonomy. As a matter of fact, in the "great groups" I have studied - and this may sound paradoxical - the "greater" the group, the more freedom individuals have to make their unique contribution to the group's endeavour. So I really don't think that there is going to be any particular problem, given flexibility and entrepreneurship that focuses on the individual. It's a paradox but I don't see it as a contradiction.

SP

Moving on to the debate surrounding nature versus nurture in leadership, how have your views developed as regards the degree to which nature perhaps endows intuitive leadership qualities, and whether leadership can be taught or is learned experientially?

WB

My views have not changed substantially. There is more and more interesting information coming out surrounding the genetic aspects of human development and developmental stages of life. We're still learning a lot from the neurosciences, and from psychology, and we're now learning about evolutionary biology, so we do know that there is a genetic factor and some "wiring" involved, especially in the areas of drive, motivation and desire.

I do believe that the drive factor, the motivation factor, the desire, are based in the "wiring" and, assuming one has these, then the competences that I talk about are not inborn traits but behaviours which can be learned. For example, when I talk about very effective leaders, I talk about a thing called perspective, or having a wide-angled vision of the world. I am not just talking about vision - I prefer the word perspective because I think that it includes looking ahead and anticipating. It is having this wide-angled perspective that is increasingly the key factor in leadership and I do think that can be learned.

I also believe that learning how to communicate - which is so very significant - can be learned. The same goes for the area of emotional intelligence, on which I place a great deal of emphasis. I have actually participated in coaching sessions where people increase their capacity for empathy, their people skills and their self-awareness. So I believe that most of the things I talk about in leadership, aside from drive, are basically competences that all of us are capable of learning if we have the drive and motivation and the necessary IQ in ourselves.

SP

You've emphasized relationships and the need for leaders to forge relationships to motivate teams? Does this represent a social development in working?

WB

This has a lot to do with balance and self and other conditions at work. There has been a colossal increase in the number of people of the type dubbed "knowledge worker" by Peter Drucker 25 years ago - and you only have to look at places like Silicon Valley, or Cambridge in the UK. But there is such a shortage of very talented people, especially in the area of technology, IT, and in various high levels of expertise. Talented people are at a premium. The unemployment rate in Silicon Valley, for example, is less than 1.9 per cent, so the very talented people really must be treated like volunteers because they can leave, they can find something else somewhere better that will provide more opportunities for them to deploy their particular genius at work.

A relationship with these people is incredibly important because it is a different kind of relationship than you have had in the past. These are people who really don't need to be driven or to be pushed - the basic thing is they want a place to work where they can deploy their talents. Therefore I think how they are dealt with, how they are treated is profoundly different. In fact, the leaders of many of these groups have to abandon their own egos to nurture the talents of the people working for them, who in many cases know far more than they do.

As we see more and more people of this ilk coming into the workforce, I think it is going to necessitate a change in how these relationships are forged and formed, and how we develop loyalty within that framework. That is one of the main problems. Overnight, a whole group could leave to work for another company so the question is: how do you "bind" people to a particular workplace?

SP

In general leadership terms - are we also talking about forging closer relationships with people in terms of generating trust, motivating, making people feel more involved?

WB

I think that the trust issue is especially important right now. Here is a real paradox, and I think it is one experienced everywhere ... There is an extraordinary turnover of people - call it downsizing, call it rightsizing, whatever euphemism you want: since 1985, 25 per cent of the US workforce has been dumped. That doesn't mean they have been put out of work but it does mean there is a tremendous churn factor. I would estimate that in American society right now about 20 per cent of the people are in transition at any given moment in time. The social contract of work has been dramatically altered.

This is not an especially new idea, but no longer can one depend on a job for life: it is now estimated that we each have about eight different kinds of career title in our lifetime. As the world keeps changing, so the whole social contract of work is changing in an extraordinary way.

So the trust factor is crucial. In terms of leadership there are four major things that leaders do. One is to provide direction and meaning, the second is to generate trust, the third is to create just a general sense of hope and optimism and a sense of investment in the future. The fourth is to act and get results - to actually execute - not just to make a decision but to take the decision. So I think right now the trust factor at work is the social glue that keeps an organization intact and effective.

SP

Returning to the theme of vision and perspective, how does change itself affect views of the future?

WB

As market forces increase, globalization and technology make the world of business an extraordinarily competitive place. In one of my articles I quoted Bill Gates saying, "I always feel only two years away from failure" ... You realize that successful people are also running scared because of these almost seismic, tectonic shifts in the business landscape.

If we've seen anything in the last 15 years, we've seen the triumph of market forces over political forces. Because we're living in a world of invention and change, overnight an invention can change the whole shape of the world. Just compare the amount of time it took for the automobile to be adapted and adopted and used as a form of communication and travel, with the development and use of, say, the Internet. In the past it took years and years for such a dramatic impact. So vision is even more important than it ever was before.

SP

You have said that the competences you have outlined are recognized by leaders you have spoken to in many countries, including in Europe; but what of differing leadership styles? Do they not impact on leadership?

WB

Yes - I really have thought a lot about this ... When I talked about leadership competences in England a couple of months ago, I was struck by how much resonance and - unless the classic English audience was being ultra polite -- the seemingly considerable agreement there was as to what leaders are and their significance. That said, I think there are stylistic differences which are profound, and in some cases and in some cultures more than in others ...

For example, let's take the issue of trust. I talk a great deal about candour and this is seen very differently in, let's say, South East Asia, Asia in general and Singapore. Communicating the idea of encouraging dissent is much more difficult in that part of the world than, say, it is the USA, or the UK, or in Holland. So there obviously are differences which have to do with stylistic things, aesthetic things, and also deeply ingrained cultural things.

Another example - let's take the whole issue of diversity. I was recently in Latin America - at a company in Mexico. There was not a single woman on the corporate board. Any major company in the USA now has at least one woman on the board. In Latin America there are virtually none at this level.

Another good example - one that is particularly interesting when you think about Europe and America - is the difference between leaders that I have known and studied. Most of these are from NorthAmerica although some have been from Europe, Asia and South America. Focusing primarily on North American leaders, I have noted a high degree of optimism. Some months ago I was giving a conference presentation in Europe, and one of the Belgians in the audience said, "You know we do not share your view, your optimistic view. We have a cultural legacy in Europe of pessimism". Although I think this is changing in Europe, yes, there are very important cultural differences. But basically in terms of what leaders do, I think they are very similar.

SP

If we could return to the theme of groups. There has been a lot of talk in the press in the UK of the particular adaptability of women to team work - apparently this is being increasingly seen in group and team work in universities. If this is the case, does this mean the trend towards great groups will lead to even greater job opportunities for women?

WB

This is another one of those nature/nurture things - about ways in which women leaders may be different from men. I think there are some men who have learned how to be nurturing and supportive and empathic, and there are some women who can be macho. You get people in the Margaret Thatcher kind of model ... women who get to be like men. There are more and more women coming into higher paid job positions. My guess is that by the year 2005 at least some of the chief financial officers of major corporations will be women. Women now make up 40 per cent of students in American business schools, and perhaps the same proportion in European business schools, and they will have that greater pull.

To my mind, women also have more social skills, and I don't mean that in a trivial way - I'm talking about women being more supportive, more empathic and more understanding. They are more in touch with feelings. I hate making these generalizations but I do believe on average this is true. And I do feel women will be able to have not only those skills of leadership which I think are more easily learned than emotional intelligence - but also the emotional intelligence which I reckon more women have than men. So yes, I predict that women will thrive in this new environment ... and long may it continue.

SP

I gather you are now writing a play and that this is something you have always wanted to do?

WB

Yes. A little earlier you asked me about different ways of leading today and I was thinking about the play. It's about British Victorian history. I've been working on this for about four years - it gets more and more complicated! I started off being very interested in two cardinals - Newman and Manning: both born around the same time, both unbelievably interesting men. They had parallel careers that later converged and, like two trains, clashed with each other. I thought this would be a fascinating play about power and leadership.

More recently I've become interested in Gladstone and Disraeli. It was said that when you had dinner with Mr Gladstone you felt he was the most provocative, the most brilliant, wittiest, most intelligent conversationalist you had ever met, and when you had dinner with Disraeli you thought you were the most interesting, the most brilliant, the wittiest, the most intelligent person in the world. Leaders today are, or should be, more like Disraeli than Gladstone.

SP

Finally, what are your views of the challenges of the moment and the future for our leaders?

WB

I'm writing a paper right now for the millennium. I'm calling it "The age of vulnerability" because, even with all the hopes, promises, dreams, breakthroughs and remarkable advances we're all experiencing, we are all of us still at a time of great vulnerability. I'm talking now about nation states. Right now, for example, we have 25 border disputes involving 40 countries and we risk rogue countries setting off all sorts of weapons of mass destruction.

We live at a time when, overnight, corporations can find themselves sidelined by a new innovation or invention. So, with all the excitement, we are still living at an extraordinarily vulnerable time. What this means for leaders of the future is that there will be enormous demands on them in terms of having perspective, of being able to understand diversity in a way that they have never understood it before, of being able to deal with people working many more years of their lives. It is a time of great opportunity, yet lurking there at the back of my mind, there is the conviction that there is a lot of vulnerability.