MEETING THE
LEADERSHIP
CHALLENGE
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR
UNDERSTANDING WHAT LEADERSHIP
ACTUALLY IS
by Dominik Heil
& Paul Hughes
G
r
reat leaders see their
organisations differently
to everyone else. One
of the most significant challenges
in organisations today is creating
a cadre of leaders who have that
truly insightful understanding.
Leaders, who can spot
opportunities where others see
problems, see connections,
where others see gaps and see
the possible when others see the
impossible. Here we lay the
foundations for that development
process, starting with the most
fundamental question: what is
leadership?
WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?
Developing great leaders
happens best when there is a
rich understanding of what
leadership actually is.
This begins with going beyond
what most leadership
development programmes focus
on, namely trying to develop
certain characteristics in
individuals as a way of improving
how they will lead.
This emphasis on developing
people’s personal characteristics
alone is flawed: a little like
putting the cart before the horse.
There is a more robust approach
to be taken.
UNDERSTANDING
THE CHALLENGE
First we need to help leaders
understand the nature of the
unique contextual challenges
“Success in developing
good leaders is
enhanced when there is
understanding of what
leadership is.”
they face before we can begin
to look at what characteristics,
skills and abilities they require
to meet this challenge. The
predominant aim of, but also
the greatest challenge to,
leadership development comes
from systematically laying
the groundwork for meeting
the leadership challenge.
Only by facing up to how
leadership will actually
contribute to how well the
organisation as a unique
socially dynamic environment
performs through the people
within it, can a legitimate
appreciation of the actual
leadership challenge be made.
“Leadership is about
enhancing the source
of performance of
organisations and the
people within them.”
Once we know the source of an
organisation’s, and its people’s,
performance we can start to
meaningfully ascertain what it means to
influence the sources of performance.
Consequently we also find out whether
there are personality traits that are
required in order to succeed in the
endeavour.
It may well be that leaders in a
given context may require
certain personality traits. But we
can only know this from first
getting a firm grip on the nature
of the challenge of leadership
rather than attributing this to
the mystical >>
MEETING THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
realm of ‘special leadership
qualities’. These are typically
claimed to be hard to
articulate and some are
inexplicably just ‘born with it’.
Meaning others, less
‘fortunate’, rarely, if ever,
possess.
Therefore instead of this ‘natural
born leaders’ approach, sound
understanding of leadership
must start with properly
considering and appreciating the
entities that are being led;
namely organisations
themselves.
This is not how most of
the popular approaches
that occupy the
leadership development
space have come about.
Disciplines such as psychology,
complexity theory, systems
thinking, neurobiology and even
micro economics have provided
the leadership development
space with solutions that have
worked within the subject
matters of each discipline. But
these have often been applied,
regardless of whether the subject
matter is in any way similar to
organisations and the people
who work in them.
A well-grounded approach to
leadership development must
start with understanding how it
is that organisations and the
people working within them are
able to perform as they do, in
various circumstances and
then to explore how this ability
of organisations and
individuals within them can be
further enabled and enhanced
by those tasked to lead.
THREE KEY QUESTIONS
What enables organisations
“To be in an organisation has a much more profound
effect on us than handling a tool.”
and those who work within them
to perform raises three logical
and fundamental questions.
These need answered
systematically before any
approach to leadership and
leadership development can be
constructed:
•
What in the first instance,
actually is, an organisation?
•
•
What is a person?
What is the relationship
between people and
organisations that so
profoundly influences each
other’s performance?
“Commonly we
understand organisations
as tools to achieve a
certain outcome but this
tells us very little about
the actual experience of
being in an organisation.”
THE NATURE OF
ORGANISATIONS
therefore an organisation has a
profound effect on us. Being in
an organisation changes us. It
can alter our mood, dull or open
up our thinking. It can alter our
mannerisms, influence how we
behave. It can shape how we
relate to each other and, crucially
it can also fundamentally
influence the outlook we have on
our future.
Organisations are an altogether
more powerful entity than we
often realise.
The question about the very
nature of an organisation is a
philosophical question and
within philosophy it falls into
the domain of metaphysics
and ontology.
One might argue that
organisational management is
very practical and should not
concern itself with philosophy
much. But in fact taking a
philosophical perspective is
highly relevant. >>
Organisations have more
influence on us than we always
like to admit. We are social
creatures by nature
Cranfield School of Management is ranked as a top Business School
in the 2015 Financial Times Executive Education Rankings.
MEETING THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
music, architecture and religions.
THE NATURE OF
PEOPLE
With a philosophical perspective
comes an awareness of what
can and can’t be influenced,
allowing a strength to emerge
from a more grounded stoical
perspective. This awareness of
what you can and can’t alter
helps provide the basis for
developing sustainable
resilience. As well as allowing
insights into where your
strengths, leverage and fields of
influence are.
THE NATURE OF ENGAGING
WITH AN ORGANISATION
If we look into the field of
ontology we can find, beyond
physical objects, plants, animals
and human beings a fourth type
of entity which resonates with
how organisations, as described
above, have the effect of
changing our mood, thinking and
outlook.
These entities are called ‘works’,
and the word is used here in the
same sense as one talks about a
‘work of art’.
The critical characteristic of
“works” is that they set up a
world. “World” is used here in
the same sense as when one
talks about the “corporate
world”, the “world of academia”,
two people “being worlds apart”
or “two worlds coming together”.
As an approximation we might
also refer to world as a culture,
a context, a paradigm, a taken
for granted common
understanding or simply ‘the
way things are around here’.
Besides organisations, some
other examples of works are art,
When we engage with them we
are transported into unique
reality. When we are in an
organisation we are always in its
‘world’ and consequently this
‘world’ always has a profound
effect on us. Why?
Humans have evolved to be
shaped by as well as shaping
the ‘world’ which they inhabit. So
by understanding the reality of our
‘world’ we establish a core part of
having influence and power within
it.
“Organisations have
similar profound effect on
us and our productivity
when we are within them.”
The challenge of leadership
development therefore can only
be met within a highly
thoughtful, and at the same
time rigorously applied,
examination of how we as
human beings always think and
act based on our implicit (and
almost entirely taken for
granted) understanding of ‘how
things are around here’.
Only once we systematically
and carefully re-engineer this
understanding can we adapt
ourselves to the reality we may
have hitherto overlooked. Then
can begin the truly powerful
step of opening up and
realising new avenues for
performance and creativity.
So by extending what everyone
around here takes for granted,
leadership more purposefully
begins to meet its challenge.
WHY CRANFIELD SCHOOL
OF MANAGEMENT?
Dr Dominik Heil is a Visiting
Tutor at Cranfield School of
Management. He is
currently pioneering a
methodology
to display the organisational
world or culture fundamental
to people’s work performance.
He has extensive consulting
experience, is a well published
academic and passionate
about exploring the
fundamental assumptions of
current management practice
in his teaching and academic
research in a way that makes a
tangible difference to
organisations’ performance.
On the Leadership Advantage
programme we will help
delegates expand their
horizons by bringing in the
latest thinking and research
backed by Cranfield’s
academic rigour.
The Praxis Centre at
Cranfield has been offering
highly innovative and
groundbreaking management
and leadership programmes
for over two decades.
Cranfield School of Management is ranked as a top Business School
in the 2015 Financial Times Executive Education Rankings.