Interview: Dr Donna Ladkin
Leadership Thinking
Steve Macaulay
Hello, I am Steve Macaulay. Today we are going to
interview the author of a book on leadership, it is called
Rethinking Leadership: A New Look at Old Leadership
Questions. Now the author is Donna Ladkin.
Now Donna, sounds a big topic, what got you thinking
about this and putting pen to paper?
Donna Ladkin
I am actually a philosopher by background; a
philosopher who works in a management school. One
of the things that I have noticed is that a lot of the
theories about leadership that we work with are
informed by psychological or sociological models.
And I started to think well, I wonder if philosophy has
something to say about this topic that has been studied
for all these years? So I started to apply some
philosophical thinking to the concept of leadership and
really saw where that took me. So that was the
impetus for the book.
I think another part of that too is that although a lot of
psychologists and sociologists have written about
leadership we still have questions about what is
leadership. I was just reading in the newspaper over
the weekend another columnist saying people have
been trying to define leadership for hundreds of years
and yet we still don’t seem to have nailed it; does this
mean it doesn’t exist?
So I wanted to see if perhaps coming at it from a
philosophical angle, it could start to help us think
differently about it and therefore give us a different way
into both thinking and practising leadership.
Steve Macaulay
Now, having done that, you set out a whole series of
questions and then proceed to attempt to answer
those. What do you believe out of that are the key
questions?
Donna Ladkin
Well, that is an interesting question in itself. I think the
main thing is to be attentive to the questions that we
are asking ourselves. So for instance, we still ask
what is leadership, but I argue in the book well maybe
we ought to be thinking about what is leadership for,
because if you ask the question what is leadership, you
come up with a kind of abstract sort of definition or
Donna Ladkin
concept. Whereas if you think what is leadership for,
then that starts to get you thinking about purpose and
that starts to make you think that in different contexts
there are different purposes; and that makes you think
well, therefore, one of the things that if I am going to
lead in a particular context, then I need to think what is
the purpose I am trying to aim at here.
So I think there are lots of questions that the book does
ask, but I think the main point is that we have to pay
attention to the questions we ask themselves, because
then they will give us different ways of looking at a
situation or a concept like leadership and then a
different way of enacting it perhaps.
Steve Macaulay
A lot of people don’t ask questions; they give answers,
if you like and behind it are some assumptions. I
wonder if there are some things that we could look at –
and I know they come out in your book – about
charisma, about leading change, about the need for a
vision and so on. What are some of the things that
came out from this thought?
Donna Ladkin
For instance, leadership is often thought to be very
central in terms of change and we think leaders
organise change. And one of the ways that leaders do
that is by having a vision as to where they want to go.
One of the questions that comes up from the books is
well, what does it mean to lead change? And if we
look at a situation, for instance, like Hurricane Katrina
or the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina where actually we
had a situation where change needed to happen;
people were dying and nothing was being done about
it.
We see that really in that sort of situation, rather than
actually having a vision – so lots of time organisational
change and vision are coupled very closely – but in
that situation what a leader really needed to do was to
be able to see what was happening then and there.
They needed a perspective to be able to piece together
all the different facets of that catastrophe and then
come up with some kind of reasonable plan or way
forward.
So it wasn’t so much looking into the future; we often
think leadership is a very future oriented activity, or
leading is a very future oriented activity, whereas,
really being able to see what is happening here and
now and being able to make sense of that in a way that
can bring people together or it can facilitate the kinds
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Donna Ladkin
of dialogue or exchange of communication that needs
to be happening between people is absolutely key.
So it kind of turns on its head by asking different
questions – by asking what is needed here, it turns on
its head ideas for instance of leaders being all about
vision when they are trying to instigate change, that
sort of thing.
Steve Macaulay
I would like to pursue this a bit more and look at what
this means on the ground; we have looked at
Hurricane Katrina on the ground, if you like. About
leaders in organisation – what are the implications of
some of what you have been thinking about?
Donna Ladkin
Well I think there are some very big implications in fact
for some of the assumptions that we often hold about
what leading is about.
One of the things that leading becomes about is not so
much about giving answers, but about asking
questions about what is going on. If I recall an
experience of working with a non profit organisation
that I have been working with, a leader – a key leader
– in that organisation was very troubled because he felt
that the problems he was dealing with were too big.
He felt like he didn’t have the answers himself; how
could he be the leader of a team without having the
answers? He was very much tied to the idea of
leading as being the one that people came to for the
way forward. And we started to look at, well, perhaps
if he started asking more questions; seeing the
situation from other people’s point of view. Seeing
what he was trying to do not so much as giving the
answers, but in finding ways in which the answers in
his team could arise because actually different people
had different expertise.
And that is another key thing that has come out; we
often think that successful leading is all about being the
person in the front. Well sometimes in order for
leadership to happen, the person who is taking the
leading role paradoxically needs to step back because
if they don’t have the knowledge or the experience or
the perspective at that point to lead the team forward,
then actually maybe somebody else in the team does.
So very paradoxically, sometimes being a good leader
actually means taking a step back; letting someone
else who has got more expertise or different vision
come forward. So those sorts of things we see often; I
was talking with people in military environments who
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Donna Ladkin
although there is a very strict line of command, actually
also do realise in certain situations they need to let
other people who have the expertise come in and step
into that leader role from time to time.
Steve Macaulay
So, as you know, we are very much concerned with
leadership development here, what are the key things
about the lessons you have learnt that we can apply?
Donna Ladkin
I think one of the things is when people come on
leadership development programmes they often think
they are going to go away with a toolkit of things or if
that a leader needs to be charismatic, they think oh,
well we can learn how to be charismatic. Well, I think
one of the things that comes out of my research is that
there is not a particular toolkit for being a good leader
because being an effective leader is very much a
function of a particular context that a person finds
himself in.
And so rather than having what I call min
competencies, what a leader needs is more meta
competencies. Competencies of perception to
actually really perceive what this context is and what
needs to happen in this particular context. They need
to understand the way a system works in an
organisation; the kind of systemic nature of the way the
organisation or community that they are in so that they
know where they might get the most leverage for
effecting change. It may not always be from trying to
do it in a top down kind of way. It is really about
understanding who are the key people in your
organisation who hold power – both informal power as
well as formal power – and how you can influence
those people and it is very rarely done from top down
initiatives. It is often done in a much more integrated,
holistic way.
So it is about honing those of skills of perception,
understanding and most importantly asking good
questions.
Steve Macaulay
So if you were to leave us with a key message from all
the research that you have done, all these pages that
you have written, what would be?
Donna Ladkin
I think it would come down to leadership is very much
about finding the right question in a particular instance
that will unlock the knowledge and the expertise that is
often within a system to lead it to the next place that it
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Donna Ladkin
needs to go.
Steve Macaulay
That is very perceptive; thank you very much.
Donna Ladkin
Thank you, Steve.
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