Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
I was delivering a talk on leadership and was asked what single action might have the biggest impact on improving leadership. “Surgically remove the egos from your leaders” was my immediate and flippant response. In hindsight, that would be my considered response too.
Many of the famous books on leadership written over the last 40 years focus on leaders who have single-handedly transformed organizations. They often contain words of wisdom, pithy quotes, and maxims from “the great men” that have inspired and transformed the people in the organizations. These great men, and they usually are men, have been parachuted in to save a failing organization. Indeed, they don’t even need parachutes; they have their superhero capes. All this makes for great reading and appeals to those of us who want to single-handedly bring change and transformation. It gives us hope and inspiration that we too can make that difference.
Many of the leaders we coach have a genuine desire to create a workplace that is better, successful, and, at the same time, has humanity at its core. Inevitably, people who have the courage to step up and try to make that difference will have an ego that supports them in their endeavors.
At one level that is fine; the original definition of the ego was just about a sense of personal identity. If we have a strong sense of our identity and feel a calling toward leadership, then of course we want that identity and character to spread out across the organization.
The ego has got a bad name over the years, and we often now equate it with an excess of self-worth and self-importance, often stepping over the boundary from confidence into arrogance. And that is the danger that happens with some leaders.
In this chapter, we address four key paradigms that, when shifted, have the potential to open up organizational success through the better utilization of all the skills and resources available to it. We look at ways to speed up paradigm change, through personal development and organizational change, and particularly by addressing unconscious bias, which takes care of the ego problems too.
Professor Archie Brown tells some cautionary tales in his book The Myth of the Strong Leader,1 focused on the world of political leaders. It’s a fascinating book, spanning democracies and authoritarian regimes and exploring leadership in many contexts. The lessons to be learned and the parallels to the world of organizations are many and varied.
Brown explores the quality of “strength” and why it seems such a common property we want to ascribe to our leaders. There are many qualities that political leaders need above and beyond the ability to look strong, yet it’s the one we focus on. This focus on strength is another of the problems with the paradigm of the hero leader. Another important assumption coming from this notion, which needs to be challenged, is that this is the only model of leadership that can be successful. The danger of that is aspiring leaders attempt to shift away from their natural leadership preferences, driven by their own beliefs and values, and try, unsuccessfully, to emulate the superhero model. This, and related paradigms, are stifling organizations and preventing a glorious diversity of leadership that has the capacity to support organizations to survive and thrive in the VUCA World.
The four most notably out-of-date paradigms are:
- 1.The “hero leader” paradigm
- 2.The “male over female leader” paradigm
- 3.The “monoculture over diversity in leadership” paradigm
- 4.The “older over younger leader” paradigm
Combined, this is an exclusive model, or paradigm, of leadership.
Older men, from the same background, keep leadership to themselves and even feel heroic for doing so. They may see themselves as virtuous: like Atlas, taking the burden of the whole world on his back, protecting others from needing to carry the same burden—an obvious display of “strength.” Or it may be that they have been seduced by the attention, the power, the place in society that the role of a leader bestows. The exclusivity paradigm may not be intentional, but it’s not in the best interests of individuals, organizations, or societies.
The evidence for shifting away from this paradigm has been around for a while. It was challenged in 2004, in the Elsevier2 Leadership Quarterly journal, which noted inverse correlation between performance and CEO charisma. “Never believe your own PR” is a famous maxim in marketing circles, yet this seems to be what happens. And it has knock-on effects. The effectiveness of their behaviors or the example they give to future generations are not valid considerations, even though they may mentor others.
The hero leader paradigm creates (typically) men who command in ways most often linked to crisis and conflict. They believe in hierarchy, have people perform routine tasks, and reject input from inferiors. These behaviors exclude others and cut the organization off from up-to-date thinking and the potential for better solutions. These leaders rely on the power of their personality, and feel rewarded by the size of their pay packet.
It’s easy to see how this ego- and power-driven mindset, focused in the hands of a single person, led to many of the major corporate scandals of the 20th century, with overextension being a primary cause. Let’s be clear here. We’re not advocating getting rid of heroes—those people who, through effort, sacrifice, and commitment to others, perform amazing deeds. We’re talking about replacing the paradigm of the hero illusion. People think that, by virtue of their position, they somehow magnetically attract heroic traits.
The charismatic hero leader paradigm currently prevails, yet it has a cost. For companies, it creates lost opportunities in terms of return on assets, estimated at over $655 billion in 2014.3 In 2004, a report evaluated the links between “CEO charisma, compensation, and performance”4 and found that while there was no correlation between charisma and performance, there was a significant correlation between a CEO’s perceived charisma and their compensation package. Having charismatic men at the head of organizations costs more, has no performance impact, and keeps other talented people out.
The paradigm needed in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world of leadership is abundant, inclusive, and engaging leadership.
Encourage Leadership Development in Women
One way to fill the gap is to welcome more talented women leaders. In March 2015, the UK newspaper The Guardian5 reported that there were more men called John at the top of FTSE 100 companies than the total number of women at the top. Twenty-three percent of boards included women, and yet the goal was to have 25 percent representation.
In the United States, the organization 20/20 Women on Boards6 reported that in 2015, “17.9% of corporate directors were women” (82.1 percent men); in Europe, all male boards had fallen to 5.4 percent from 21 percent in 2011.7 A 2011 UK Parliament report quoted a European research that showed that “strong stock market growth among European companies is most likely to occur where there is a higher proportion of women in senior management teams”8 and that “companies with more women on their boards were found to outperform their rivals with a 42% higher return in sales, 66% higher return on invested capital and 53% higher return on equity.”9 Ways need to be found to develop younger people and find leadership opportunities for them.
Diverse gender board leadership organizations outperform their male-only board rivals. “In the US, S&P 500 companies with diverse boards outperformed rivals by 1.91%. In the UK FTSE 350 the gap was 0.53% and for the Indian CNX 200, 0.85%,”10 estimated at $567 billion, $14 billion, and $74 billion, respectively.
Encourage Leadership Development for People from Diverse Cultures
More diversity in terms of cultural leadership can also fill the gap. The UK National Health Service, available to every UK citizen and one of the world’s largest employers, has over 1.3 million staff.
Just as public service employees should reflect the diversity of the population, its leadership should reflect that variety too. It’s good for public health: diverse commissioning ensures everyone’s health needs are addressed. However, according to a 2014 report,11 “The likelihood of white staff in London being senior or very senior managers is three times higher than it is for black and minority ethnic staff.”
Following are the organizational benefits of diversity:
- •The Grant Thornton report,12 based on listed companies in India, the United Kingdom, and United States, showed that companies with diverse executive boards outperform peers run by all-male boards.
- •“Diversity in the workplace is profitable.”13 “Organizations which excel at leveraging diversity … will experience better financial performance in the long run than organizations which are not effective in managing diversity.”
Encourage Leadership Development in Younger People
There’s also a generational gap between older people holding power affecting young peoples’ career paths. In 2010, the average age of an FTSE 350 board director was 58. In 2013, it was reported that “the average age of directors (68), average board tenure (8.7 years), and mandatory retirement age (72 to 75) have all risen.”14 A 2018 report by the UK’s Chartered Management Institute15 (CMI) develops its “work ready” thinking about the needs of young people entering the workplace.
In the UK, employers have long challenged the education that young people receive before they join the workplace, and the CMI has now identified so-called soft skills and the development of leadership behaviors, as part of the solution.
As a response to tragedy, the #NeverAgain movement has risen to challenge U.S. gun control laws, led by students. At the time of writing, it has had commercial impacts (with companies from airlines banks and car hire companies removing partnership arrangements with the US NRA organization) and social impacts, with legislation being discussed at state and national level. Yet the dominant paradigm (i.e., older people) has challenged the right of these people to be validated, claiming their age as a barrier to their right to leadership. The students immediately impacted by the gun tragedy that led to the movement have also been portrayed as “victims” and therefore, by implication, are less able to be “objective” about this highly emotive subject.
Inter-generational leadership matters in the workplace because today’s organizational structures reduce traditional career paths. Young people can’t climb the career ladders that previous generations expected. They may not be expecting those traditional career routes, but the ladders may not even be available to them. People say that “millennials” (the generation born just before, or maturing in, the 2000s) want more from their job than just an income.
Their social values are more evident, as is an expectation of involvement or consultation. Today’s younger people are certainly more socially networked than connected to institutions.16 As career paths become flatter and competition gets tougher, more people opt out of the journey altogether, which is a waste of talent. The career paths young people take matters because of the opportunity costs lost to organizations, not only in the churn of recruiting talented people, but also in the lost leadership and development opportunities that refresh organizations. Developing and retaining leaders within organizations is a reliable and cost-effective route to better leadership.17 Meeting younger peoples’ development needs is an investment in the organization’s strategic future.
Change at Individual and Collective Levels
The CMI report18 cites five skills and behaviors that employers want from 21st-century first-time managers:
- •“Taking responsibility (60%)
- •People management skills (55%)
- •(Being) Honest and ethical (55%)
- •Problem solving and critical analysis (52%)
- •Collaboration and team working (48%)”
Leadership development is not solely about the development of the individual; nor is it just about team development. It’s not enough to expect educational institutions, or in-house leadership programs, to develop people in this way. The wider environment also needs to shift.
For these investments to be successful, paradigm shifts at the collective (departmental or organizational) levels need to happen too. For example:
- •Increase young peoples’ involvement by rewarding them for their contribution, not their longevity.
- •Provide leadership opportunities that stretch them.
- •Move away from hierarchical organizations to networked organizations.
This approach is based, first, on the work of Ken Wilber and his “Whole Systems” model.19
The willingness to change needs to come from individuals and the wider culture: individual understanding of the behavioral shifts needed and a corporate structure aligned with the leadership need (see Chapter 1). The paradigm shift is needed in four ways; two at an individual level and two at a collective level:
- •Individually: Internally shifting attitudes toward the abundant, inclusive leadership paradigm. Then, for individuals to demonstrate a behavioral shift that reflects a shift of attitude; where leaders model inclusive, high-performance behaviors.
- •Collectively: Shifting group attitudes away from business as usual and toward a willingness to practice diverse thinking; then to make structural shifts in the organization that demonstrate the willingness to transform the environment.
UK-based business leader John Timpson wrote about his idea of “Upside Down Management,”20 putting the success of his own (family-run, UK) business down to one factor: “It’s the people who serve our customers who run the business and everyone including me are just there to help.”
In today’s knowledge economy, it’s a reality that power is held at every level in the organization. This can have both positive and negative impacts. Think of the disgruntled employee who serves their revenge cold through saboteur behavior. While risk-avoidance methods are one part of the solution, enabling people to feel valued, equipped, and resourceful also pays dividends.
If the shift at an internal, attitudinal level is to make the effort to remove the ego and reduce the feeling of threat from those who are different from ourselves, the individual external action or behavior is to develop others. Timpson wrote a book to his son21 on how to get through the minefield of running a successful business, reflecting another trait of the abundant leader: investing time and effort into developing others. This may mean nominating people who are best for a project; surrounding older leaders with younger, better educated people; and showing that leaders who do develop others are recognized and rewarded for dropping their egos.
Developing others is a key behavior in the Schroder high-performing behaviors in a VUCA World. It includes the behavior of giving feedback to stimulate better performance, coaching people, and ensuring they have access to training and development. This, in turn, creates greater consistency and more sustained excellence.
Leader Rotation
Another approach is to rotate leadership roles. The British academic and author Professor Mary Beard OBE wrote22 about how her own Cambridge faculty rotates its chair every 2 years. At Plan International, a child-centered community development organization, people are promoted from country to regional director but revert after 3 to 4 years. This approach distributes wider experience of leadership among the group. Again, it challenges the dominant paradigm and has implications for how people are rewarded for their contribution.
New Structures at the Collective Level
De-layering and moving away from a strongly hierarchical structure is a paradigm shift. It is attempted in some institutions, yet often rejected by the people it’s intended to set free from hierarchies. Yet, networked organizations are common in entrepreneurial organizations.
Buzzwords like “Agile” and “Scrum” reflect a simple, 21st-century truth: a job is just a job. A job, or role, is a collection of movable tasks that can be distributed around the team and play to peoples’ differing skills, strengths, and relevant experiences. This construct has a greater need for leadership behaviors. People with a strong sense of responsibility are ready to be accountable, underpinned by values. But this isn’t “leadership” displayed by a single person. Which is why we use the term “abundant” leadership.
It’s very different from the traditional heroic leadership model. And the good news is that no cape is required. Indeed, no uniform, stripes on the shoulder, or other symbols of status or authority are needed in this new paradigm. We have the opportunity to release ourselves from outdated paradigms by diversifying and expanding leadership: holding managers and leaders to account against measurable competences and behaviors.
Abundant and inclusive leadership is a collective action or a series of actions. In the Wilber model, a collective, internal shift will define new models that value the enabling role of individual leaders and that enable a sense of group pride.
Address Unconscious Bias
For individuals and the collective, there is a key barrier to accepting new paradigms, whatever they are. It’s the internal conscious and unconscious biases. We’ve already mentioned the power of the ego, when it’s left unsupervised. It leads to a focus on the “me,” not the “we.”
Unconscious biases are sometimes also blind spots. We don’t know what we don’t know. It takes someone from outside to point out the problem. I literally have a blind spot in my car. Because of my height and the location of the driver’s side mirror, there’s a point at which if a car is overtaking my car, at one point in their maneuver, I can’t see them. I’m glad I know this.
When I plan to overtake a vehicle, I deliberately move my head to visually check that blind spot. It could be a lifesaver. The most typical blind spot in the diversity, inclusion, and belonging agenda is not acknowledging one’s own, or the organization’s, bias against a group, or groups—not seeing or being willing to see (perhaps because of ego) the impacts.
This might be in teamwork, recruitment, promotion, or project allocation processes. When we make assumptions about a person, our bias creeps in. The impacts it can have on the excluded individuals or groups include people feeling alienation or excluded. If they feel less able to be “themselves” (belonging), it becomes an emotional strain trying to fit in at work. Performance at work and relationships—at work and at home—suffer.
In the workshops we run, we use practical methods to address our individual and collective biases—starting with self-awareness of our own biases, then experiencing what it feels like to make the effort to consciously shift toward more positive and inclusive behaviors, then to explore the quick wins and the strategic changes needed back in the collective world to ensure that the structural environment is ready to accept a positive change.
Our goal is for the participants to feel “FAB,” to
- •Fit in, and then feel
- •Acceptance, to acknowledge our biases and bring in
- •Belongingness, so that people feel they fit in—It’s a virtuous circle.
This takes conscious effort, personally and collectively. We invite participants to share the small steps they can make immediately and to take away ideas to develop with colleagues back in the workplace. The assumptions we make, about ourselves or others, are one form of unconscious bias.
In the workplace, it shows up in the “Comps and Bens” departments (compensation and benefits), where rewards and recognition schemes are based on the assumptions made by these specialist teams. I’m not saying their decisions are right or wrong. The challenge is to shift away from a global assumption that what motivates one individual motivates everyone.
In team settings, what motivates an individual leader may not motivate his or her team members. Individual shifts in assumptions, attitudes, and behavior alone are not enough. Inclusive leadership as a paradigm shift needs concerted effort and attitudinal and behavior change at the collective levels too, across teams, departments, and organization-wide activities, such as recruitment.
- •Professional firms such as Deloitte have trialed hiding the name of applicants’ universities to reduce bias. They’ve developed an algorithm “to consider ‘contextual’ information alongside academic results.”23
- •The BBC24 introduced “name blind” recruitment to reduce unconscious bias against minority ethnic applicants.
At the heart of these paradigm shifts are new ways of understanding what drives autonomy and intrinsic motivation. It’s a myth that one cape-clad hero can save the day. It’s time to throw off the cape—it’s no longer required. It’s also time to throw off the underpinning beliefs, assumptions, blind spots, and unconscious biases.
The good news is that inclusive, abundant leadership works for everyone in the system. It delivers more for organizations at boardroom level and adds value across the organization, without overloading any one part of the system.
Worksheet: Stimulus Questions
In this chapter we address four key paradigms that, when shifted, have the potential to open up organizational success through the better utilization of all the skills and resources available to it.
- •The “hero leader” paradigm
- •The “male over female leader” paradigm
- •The “monoculture over diversity in leadership” paradigm
- •The “older over younger leader” paradigm
We also look at the blind spots, unconscious biases, assumptions, and ego-driven structures that hold back more abundant, successful leadership. We make a distinction between what individuals can do and what needs to change in the structure of the organization. If you recognize these traits, ask yourself (and others) the relevant questions below. Decide first whether you’re asking these questions of yourself or an individual or as a team, department, or organization (collective):
Assumptions
- •Personal Assumptions: What assumptions am I making about any given situation?
- •Collective Assumptions: What assumptions do we make?
- •When you catch yourself saying “should/shouldn’t” or “must/mustn’t,” write it down. Learn to notice your bias and raise your awareness.
- •Accepting and forgiving our own biases makes it easier to accept and forgive others.
Blind Spots
- •Ask a colleague outside your team what “blind spots” they notice in your team. “What aren’t we seeing?”
- •The same for your organization: ask customers or others who know (and care about) what you do, what it is that the organization doesn’t see, recognize, or value about itself?
- •And what does the team/department/organization allow to continue that isn’t good for its reputation, business, or development?
Structural Change
Assuming wider inclusion of abundant leadership from younger people, women, people of diverse cultures, or older people is possible, and there are no financial barriers or other resource constraints:
- •What structural change would bring this about?
- •What’s the easiest change to make (quick win)?
- •What’s a change that’s going to need collective, sustained support?
Notes
1.A. Brown. 2015. The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age (London, UK: The Bodley Head).
2.H.L. Tosi, V.F. Misangyi, A. Fanellid, D.A. Waldmane, and F.J. Yammarino. 2004. “CEO Charisma, Compensation, and Firm Performance,” Leadership Quarterly 15, no. 3, pp. 405–420.
3.F. Lagerberg. 2015. The Value of Diversity (Report) (Chicago, IL: Grant Thornton).
4.H.L. Tosi, V.F. Misangyi, A. Fanellid, D.A. Waldmane, and F.J. Yammarino. 2004. “CEO Charisma, Compensation, and Firm Performance,” Leadership Quarterly, Op. Cit.
5.J. Rankin. March 6, 2015. “Fewer women leading FTSE firms than men called John.” https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/06/johns-davids-and-ians-outnumber-female-chief-executives-in-ftse-100, (accessed April 6, 2016).
6.J. Kollewe. April 27, 2016. “Women Occupy less than a Quarter of UK Board Positions.” https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/27/women-uk-board-positions-gender-equality-europe, (accessed March 16, 2018).
7.G. Desvaux, S. Devillard-Hoellinger, and P. Baumgarten. 2007. Women Matter: Gender Diversity, A Corporate Performance Driver (New York, NY: McKinsey & Company).
8.L. Joy, N.M. Carter, H.M. Wagener, and S. Narayanan. 2007. “The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards,” Catalyst.
9.F. Lagerberg. 2015. The Value of Diversity (Report), op.cit.
10.R. Kline. 2014. The “Snowy White Peaks” of the NHS: A Survey of Discrimination in Governance and Leadership and the Potential Impact on Patient Care in London and England (London, UK: Middlesex University Research Repository).
11.F. Lagerberg. 2015. The Value of Diversity (Report), op.cit.
12.U.S. Glass Ceiling Commission. 1995. Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation’s Human Capital: A Fact-finding Report of the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/116
13.M. Cloyd. September 9, 2013. “Taking a Fresh Look at Board Composition,” PricewaterhouseCoopers, Harvard Law School Forum. https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2013/09/09/taking-a-fresh-look-at-board-composition/, (accessed May 16, 2018).
14.Chartered Management Institute. February 2018. 21st Century Leaders: Building Employability through Higher Education (Report) (London, UK: CMI).
15.See e.g., R. Shah. September 25, 2014. “Have You Got Millennial Workforce Expectations All Wrong?” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/rawnshah/2014/09/25/have-you-got-millennial-workforce-expectations-wrong/2/#6b443a016d3e, (accessed May 16, 2018).
16.S.S. Adams. April 5, 2012. “Why Promoting from Within Usually Beats Hiring from Outside,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/04/05/why-promoting-from-within-usually-beats-hiring-from-outside/#3b6686893fb2, (accessed May 2, 2016).
17.Chartered Management Institute. February 2018. 21st Century Leaders: Building Employability through Higher Education (Report) (London, UK: CMI), op.cit.
18.K. Wilber. 2007. A Brief History of Everything, 2nd ed (Boulder, CO: Shambhala).
19.J. Timpson. 2010. Upside Down Management (London, UK: Wiley & Sons).
20.J. Timpson. 2000. Dear James (London, UK: Caspian).
21.M. Beard. July 22, 2016. “Follow My Leader,” https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/97783.Mary_Beard/blog?page=11, (accessed July 24, 2016).
22.S. Coughlan. September 29, 2015. “Firm ‘Hides’ University when Recruits Apply,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-34384668, (accessed May 2, 2016).
23.J. Parkinson and M. Smith-Walters. October 26, 2015. Who, What, Why: What is Name-blind Recruitment? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34636464, (accessed May 2, 2016).