Developing versatile leadership

MIT Sloan Management Review

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 19-26

  Kaplan, Robert E ^a   Kaiser, Robert B ^a  

^a Kaplan DeVries Inc   (United States)

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EID: 20444469655     PISSN: 7653697     EISSN: 1782155X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. The concept that overused strengths can become weaknesses is not entirely absent from the field of leadership assessment, though it is rarely reflected in the design of standard tools. When considered, it tends to be treated as an afterthought rather than integral to the design of the measure. For instance, some instruments provide prescriptions for leadership development by comparing ratings of "how often" the manager does a particular thing to an "ideal amount" that is estimated using a statistical formula. Using other instruments, respondents rate how often the manager engages in a number of specific behaviors, indicating whether the manager should do more, less or the same amount of each of several sets of behaviors - not each specific behavior. See, for example, J.B. Leslie and J.W. Fleenor, "Feedback to Managers: A Review and Comparison of Multi-Rater Instruments for Management Development" (Greensboro, North Carolina: Center for Creative Leadership, 1998).
2. Research on derailment has shown that the strengths that propel managers up the corporate ladder can become liabilities. See W.M. McCall and M.M. Lombardo, "Off the Track: Why and How Successful Executives Get Derailed" (Greensboro, North Carolina: Center for Creative Leadership, 1983);
3. and M.M. Lombardo and C. McCauley, "The Dynamics of Management Derailment" (Greensboro, North Carolina: Center for Creative Leadership, 1988).
4. The dualism inherent in life and leadership has long been observed. In the 6th century B.C., Pythagoras assembled a much studied table of opposites. (See, for example, K.S. Guthrie, ed., "The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library," Grand Rapids, Michigan: Phanes Press, 1987). The contemporary field of leadership has seen many two-sided models. Consider, for example, Blake and Mouton's "managerial grid" with its two axes, i.e., concern for production and concern for people;
5. R.R. Blake and U.S. Mouton, "The Managerial Grid" (San Francisco: Gulf Professional Publishing Co., 1994). Or Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y;
6. D. McGregor and W.G. Bennis, "The Human Side of Enterprise: 25th Anniversary Printing" (New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 1985). Or Robert Quinn's competing managerial values, results and relationships, stability and change;
7. R.E. Quinn, "Beyond Rational Management: Mastering the Paradoxes and Competing Demands of High Performance" (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991).
8. For a comprehensive review of the many variations on this theme, see B.M. Bass, "Bass and Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications," 3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1990), 415-543.
9. Leslie and Fleenor, "Feedback to Managers."
10. F. Shipper, "Mastery and Frequency of Managerial Behaviors Relative to Sub-Unit Effectiveness," Human Relations 44, no. 4 (1991): 371-388;
11. and F. Shipper and C.S. White, "Mastery, Frequency and Interaction of Managerial Behaviors Relative to Subunit Effectiveness," Human Relations 52, no. 1 (1999): 49-66.
12. Aristotle, "Vol. XIX. Nicomachean Ethics," translated by H. Rackham (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1926).
13. The data summarized here is presented in greater detail in R.E. Kaplan and R.B. Kaiser, "Rethinking a Classic Distinction in Leadership: Implications for the Assessment and Development of Executives," Consulting Psychology Journal: Research and Practice 55, no. 1 (2003): 15-25;
14. and R.B. Kaiser and R.E. Kaplan, "Leadership Versatility Index: User's Guide" (Greensboro, North Carolina: Kaplan DeVries Inc., 2002).
15. Prior studies of this basic distinction, by whatever name, have shown either a negligible or, most often, a sizable positive correlation between the assertive, task-oriented side and the participative, people-oriented side of leadership. We suspect the reason is that, to date, researchers have not directly measured overdoing. See Bass, "Handbook of Leadership" (chap. 24), for a narrative review. For a quantitative review of more than 200 primary studies that examined the correlations between these two dimensions of leader behavior, refer to
16. R.F. Piccolo, T.A. Judge and R. Ilies, "The Ohio State Studies: Consideration and Initiating Structure Revisited" (presentation at the 17th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Orlando, Florida, April 11-13, 2003). Both reviews concluded that a strong and positive relationship exists between the two, and both acknowledge that this is inconsistent with how the two dimensions are conceptualized.
17. We fully recognize that so-called "contingency theorists" have considered the idea of versatility since the 1960s. These theorists argued that the most effective leadership behavior depended on circumstantial factors. "Situational leadership theory" has been the most popular of these models, most recently articulated in P. Hersey, K.H. Blanchard and D.E. Johnson, "Management of Organizational Behavior," 8th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000). During that same period, Victor Vroom presented a decision-making tree to help managers determine how much to involve others in a decision on the basis of situational factors like the importance of decision quality, acceptance, speed and so on; see
18. V.H. Vroom and P.W. Yetton, "Leadership and Decision-Making" (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1973). A contingency theory relevant to the strategic/operational distinction has not yet been put forth, suggesting that social scientists are more interested in the how of leadership than the what.
19. The three nonversatile patterns - lopsided toward forceful, lopsided toward enabling, and disengaged - correspond to the three basic leadership styles identified in Kurt Lewin's seminal research from the 1930s - authoritarian, democratic and laissez-faire; see K. Lewin, R. Lippitt and R.K. White, "Patterns of Aggressive Behavior in Experimentally Created Social Climates," Journal of Social Psychology 10 (1939): 271-301. These patterns also correspond to the three counterproductive interpersonal orientations that Karen Homey, the psychoanalytic theorist, formulated. What she called "moving against others" corresponds roughly to forceful, "moving toward others" to enabling and "moving away from others" to disengaged; see
20. K. Horney, "Our Inner Conflicts: A Constructive Theory of Neurosis" (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).
21. For a recent description of the changes in perspective and values required when advancing upward in the management hierarchy, see R. Charan, S. Drotter and J. Noel, "The Leadership Pipeline: How To Build the Leadership-Powered Company" (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).
22. R.E. Kaplan and R.B. Kaiser, "The Turbulence Within: How Sensitivities Throw Off Performance in Executives," in "Leading in Turbulent Times," eds. R.J. Burke and C.L. Cooper (Oxford: Blackwell, in press).
23. Overly simplistic woridviews also account for lopsided leadership. Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y, for instance, are relevant to imbalance on the forceful/enabling duality. Theory X managers, who believe that people are motivated to do just enough to get by and are basically lazy, tend to be too forceful and do not enable enough. Believing that people are basically motivated to work hard and will do so if given the right conditions, Theory Y managers are inclined to be too enabling and not forceful enough. We suspect that versatile leaders see the grain of truth in both positions. See McGregor and Bennis, "The Human Side of Enterprise."
24. R.E. Kaplan, "Internalizing Strengths: An Overlooked Way of Overcoming Weaknesses in Managers" (Greensboro, North Carolina: Center for Creative Leadership, 1999);
25. and R.E. Kaplan, "Know Your Strengths," Harvard Business Review 80 (March 2002): 20-21.
26. S.J. Blatt, "The Destructiveness of Perfectionism: Implications for the Treatment of Depression," American Psychologist 50, no. 12 (1995): 1003-1020.
27. Kaplan and Kaiser, "Rethinking a Classic Distinction in Leadership."
28. Kaplan, "Know Your Strengths," and
29. Kaplan, "Internalizing Strengths."