Warren Bennis once remarked that his early training at Fort Benning, Georgia, in Officer Candidate School, followed a couple years later by command of an Infantry Company on the battlefield in Europe, constituted his greatest learning experience. From June 1952 through June 1985 my service as an Army officer provided almost continuous opportunities to observe, practice, and learn about leadership.
In December 1953, returning to Japan at the end of the Korean War, I took command of my first unit. It was an Amphibious Tractor Company of 200 soldiers equipped with 53 armored vehicles designed to carry assault troops from ship to shore. Later I had opportunities to delve into leadership research while on the faculty of the Army War College and as Commandant of Cadets at West Point. So the leap from the military to the civilian halls of the Center for Creative Leadership as its president and CEO in July 1985 was really not as dramatic as one might imagine. At that time CCL had a full-time staff of about 120. I had just previously commanded an Army Corps with a total active and reserve complement of about 120,000. It soon became apparent that complex organizations, regardless of size of budgets or staff, demand the same kind of energy from the leader.
Challenge
Leading in an academic environment, be it West Point, CCL, the Army War College, or Penn State, is extraordinarily challenging. (In my mind the only position with demands similar to those of college dean or department chair is that of school-system superintendent.) My last ten years’ experience has confirmed for me something that I sensed as an undergraduate and then increasingly understood as I served as an instructor and assistant professor (teaching mapping, physical geography, and astronautics), directed the student research program at the Army War College, and finally took part in efforts to “educate” educators: We have no viable model for leading in organizations comprised primarily of intellectuals; no one has articulated what the balance of structure and latitude in such institutions should be. Academic and other high-information environments are probably nearer to true leadership situations than are the more studied positions within traditionally structured entities. The challenge of leading in structures that are somewhat fluid, where competence and credentials compete for status with hierarchical position and where outcomes evade prompt measurement, is a fertile ground for future research.
Leading soldiers in battle is in general a less demanding task than leading a group of faculty members through a curriculum change—if you assume that the soldiers are well trained, that their perception of the central task is clear, and that the leader has gained their trust. If so, a leader’s request for even superhuman effort will be respected. If the parameters of the situation are unclear, the soldiers will look to the leader for advice on how to bring a clearer focus. This is not to say that leading in combat is simple, or that nuances of personality and context are absent in that special environment. Leader mistakes do get people killed. Yet, relatively speaking, a well-trained military leader among well-trained men has a better chance of success than a department chair.
The valid assessment of outcomes, however, depends in greater part than I had imagined in earlier years on the operable definition of “success.” Many of our organizational problems—the treachery of stifling climates, the inadequacy of our personal development techniques, and the Byzantine systems for assessing productivity in particular—derive from our inability to agree on what an individual or an organizational group must do to be successful. (I’ll have more to say on this below.)
Defining Leadership
A couple decades ago it seemed to me that neat and universal definitions of leadership and management would really help the practice of both. Now I am quite sure that would not be the case. Seeking the perfect definition of those terms is just not worth the effort. However, clarification of terminology might allow discussions of leadership to become more productive. The leader-versus-manager dialogue in particular provides more heat than light. The two processes are entwined and interdependent. We probably need a new word describing the creative, humane use of influence and authority to focus group energy on the tasks at hand. If trust is a key ingredient in a leader being a leader, which it is; and if competence in making essential decisions is an element in trust-building, which it is; and if many decisions involve resource allocations quite independent of their motivational impact, which they do; then leadership and management are fortuitously or hopelessly melded.
The military has held some small advantage in this discussion, although increasingly the leadership semantics in the military world are those of the academic and corporate worlds as well. It is probably true that leadership is more highly prized in the military than elsewhere. The disadvantage of the military environment as a catalyst for good leadership is that the necessity for traditional control of tactical units in battle—something that is both alive yet obsolete in the face of need for initiative at all levels on the modern battle-field—can justify untimely use of authoritarian styles. The “too much management and not enough leadership” school is often naive about what makes an organization tick in peace or in war.
Strength and Weakness
When I studied leaders and leadership as an undergraduate at West Point, the stories were mostly of success. Yet each battle had a loser as well as a winner, and the American Civil War clearly exposed character flaws of key leaders as major factors in the tactical equation. But for some reason I still had the notion that the word leader did not quite fit with the words strength and weakness—weakness in particular. It was more than an absence of strength that increasingly captured my attention; it was the presence of some downright bad habits. It now seems so simple: Great leaders have never been totally great, and one may succeed even with significant imperfections! Many historical notables floundered in Churchillian ways when young but somehow neutralized their weaknesses later in life. In the cases of Churchill, MacArthur, and both Roosevelts, their weaknesses were simply overwhelmed by the enormous strength of other parts of their character. Napoleon’s self-delusion and unconstrained ego (exacerbated by physical ailments), trivial in context for two decades prior, finally caught up with him at Waterloo. Napoleon in 1815 was a classic case of lack of self-awareness. When I was younger, I was among the many who believed, consciously or subconsciously, that introspection had little merit. It might have been normal for Plato or Goethe or even Adlai Stevenson, but it had nothing to offer us leaders. In fact, it might set the stage for idle contemplation when the moment called for action. Nero might have been thinking too deeply when Rome was in trouble. However, all of that aside, there is no doubt that self-awareness is crucial for leadership development. Still, introspection seems counterintuitive for most people who move to the top of hierarchical organizations. Tolstoy had it about right: “Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change himself.” I hope we are making progress toward the respectability of self-awareness as essential to the process of adult growth.
The Typology of Leaders
Exploring the literature on the behavioral aspects of leadership—in contrast with the historical or political literature that considers leadership mostly in terms of outcomes—I of course encountered discussions on whether there are essential traits or common behaviors that all leaders share, on the necessity and ability of leaders to adjust to different situations, and on the categorizations of psychological types. I have found it useful to be able to generalize about certain predilections of personality, informative to measure skills and aptitudes, and often revealing to employ instruments that identify leader behaviors from multiple viewpoints.
When I became president of CCL I was enrolled in two of its most famous leadership-development programs, as are all new members of the teaching and senior research staff. One of the instruments that at first appeared to me odd, if not frivolous, was the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory. It highlights different approaches to problem solving, comparing at ends of the scale the “adaptive” style with the “innovative” style. (Kirton could have used more neutral descriptors. He and I disagree on that—an item for discussion at some other time.) I scored a couple standard deviations toward the “innovative” end of the scale—as every red-blooded American wants to these days. In the analysis of styles, there was a fascinating comparison between the perceptions of people at one end of the scale about those at the other (“wrong!”) end. (Much of the work in compiling actual views of people scoring in outlying regions of the scale was done at CCL by Stan Gryskiewicz and his colleagues.) Immediately I saw the source of an earlier difficulty in communicating with one four-star general when I was a three-star general. I viewed him as a rigid bureaucrat. He saw me as a loose cannon. Had I, even better we, had an awareness of the likely outcomes of the contrasts in this aspect of our personalities, we might have ameliorated the mutual discomfort. I should have noted earlier in my life that Clausewitz and other military commentators such as Major General Hugh Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven saw merit in categorizing leader personalities. They acknowledged the limitations that nature imposes on our makeup, while recognizing that life experience can add or detract significantly from what genetics and chance have conspired to create. There is no doubt that analysis of leader personality has utilitarian value. Knowledge of the existence and capacities of reliable psychometric instruments has been a valuable part of my expanded horizon over the past fifteen years. My schooling is more complete on the behavioral than the cognitive side. I am, however, quite convinced that measuring that powerful but elusive factor we call intelligence requires more than the traditional measures of IQ. It demands measures of other facets that we have come to explore recently as “tacit knowledge” and “emotional intelligence.” There is an intriguing correlation between measurable intelligence and promotion to higher levels in the corporate and military worlds. I reject the contention that high intelligence is ever by itself an impediment to leader effectiveness, other things being equal. (Those “other things” are emotional stability, physical fitness, technical competence, and the like.) I remain thankful that during the most difficult times in military operations I was accompanied by some very bright people.
The Universality of Effective Leadership Behaviors
Years ago I gave little thought to whether “good leadership” differed among cultures or organizations. Then I became very comfortable with two themes with which I am no longer enamored. The first is that every different culture and personality requires a unique brand of leadership. The second is that there are innumerable significant cultural factors to be considered when leading. My universe of observations is limited. I have watched groups of a few individuals and units with many thousands. Some were Korean and Vietnamese soldiers under stress. Some were civilian leaders at their workplace in several parts of the world. Certainly local customs and deeply ingrained cultures make a difference, but a few fundamental things remain. Leaders, even in authoritarian cultures, need to establish trust. Trust seems universally to require demonstrated competence in the essential decision-making aspects of the activity. Clarity of vision, expressed in locally meaningful terminology, is also a universal component of productive leadership. The third behavior that is essential is a posture of integrity and depth of commitment. This is sometimes portrayed by setting the example or sharing danger or “being a heat shield.” One of the major problems of the Vietnamese Army, which was comprised of many brave soldiers as well as some poor leaders, was that there was no policy of personnel rotation between front and rear. The same leaders who were out in the jungle when I was first there in 1963 were still there—if alive—when I returned in 1972. This was also, by the way, the major policy defect of our own military during that era: We attempted to share the load and equitably divide exposure to combat. As a result, we had continuous personnel turbulence in units to the extent that it inhibited the establishment of trust so essential to cohesion. The real miracle was that most units operated effectively in spite of the one-year rotation policy. This example is replicated in some organizations: job rotation for developmental purposes being overdone in a misguided attempt to be “fair” to all concerned. In the long run, “all concerned” suffer because the organization is optimizing for equity and neglects steps to ensure productivity and even viability. This conceptual mistake is similar to the lesson I have never really learned: There comes a time to fire or replace an individual for severe incompetence. Waiting and coaching and hoping for improvement may be generous of heart but is often dysfunctional.
The long-suffering and somewhat jaded soldiers in Vietnamese infantry units in 1973 were either reasonably aggressive and energetic or routinely apathetic and ineffective, very much like they were in 1963. The difference each time was in local leadership. Effective leaders in that Vietnamese Army showed the same behaviors as did effective leaders in ours: a discernible commitment beyond themselves that engendered commitment from below; a competence in daily tactical tasks that led to routine trust; and, even if aloof, a willingness to lead by example. Although this universality might be because leadership within militaries around the globe has certain commonalities, I attribute it primarily to the evolution of a cluster of leader behaviors that have proved effective over time. After watching military leaders at work for thirty-seven years, and then being closely associated with leadership in the civilian sector for more than a decade, I have no doubt that effective techniques in these different sectors are more alike than different. Good leaders in our Army look very much like good leaders elsewhere.
Genetics
There is something un-American about acknowledging bloodlines. The very idea that some were “born to the purple” always appalled me. It still does, although a powerful acknowledgment from my past two decades is the prominent role of genetics in performing leadership roles. Birth circumstances and the environment of the first six or eight years so incontrovertibly mold the framework of our being that those of us dedicated to leadership development and training need be very modest. Maybe I can pass off responsibility for some of my failures to modify the behavior patterns of some people who have worked for me. In the 1950s I was quite sure that I could greatly influence the attitudes, behaviors, and maybe even the deepest part of an individual’s being. I, and others, thought leaders could be created from most any clay by example and coaching and sheer logic. That was naive but not totally unproductive. We helped a lot of people grow and expand to the limits of their innate capacity. The Army still does that about as well as any institution. People rarely fully exploit their natural abilities. The fact that natural abilities are different in some dimensions is not debatable. Still, it is individual aptitude and passion that counts. Within all different groups of humans there are born leaders. They require very little practical experience to get up to speed. When they get to be CEOs or generals or bishops they somehow recall vividly how it is on the plant floor or in the infantry platoon or at the pulpit. Their powerful sorting mechanisms permit them to uncover the core issues. For them, formal education was merely a time for reflection and triggering of latent interests. (VMI did little for George Marshall, West Point little for Douglas MacArthur, and Harvard little for Teddy Roosevelt.) There are within groups of whatever background or ethnicity high numbers of those whose natural talents are sufficient to permit developing into all but the most charismatic and brilliant of leaders—the hundreds within organizations that get the work done each day, not infrequently inspiring others in the process. Yet it is difficult for a collection of solid but average citizens to craft an institutional vision. Those who believe that leadership is not required in the visioning process have not spent enough time in leaderless group exercises or in “egalitarian” academic environments.
The New Paradigm
My efforts in both military and civilian settings to let the vision of the organization seep up from the bottom have failed. In fact, I believe that certain leadership functions simply cannot be done efficiently—if at all—in large group processes. Parts of the academic and business worlds are searching for a “new paradigm of leadership.” Nobody seems to have defined this in operational terms. The case can be made that new paradigm is code for a leaderless organization that prizes laissez-faire and optimizes individualism to the detriment of the team. The time may come when humanity has evolved to the point where a basic structure and principal focus is irrelevant, but we have not yet arrived. Humans want to be a part of some larger coalescence of individuals joined by common values. I take issue with the fashionable thesis that future employment will be transitory. My guess is that people will seek a work environment that provides both respect for their individualism and a sense of their being a part of a reliably comfortable structure. So to provide that, and to best ensure long-term productivity, most companies will offer long-term employment, albeit in new forms. That said, the resounding good news is that autocratic, rigid bureaucracies are increasingly suspect. Commitment, and not control, is the concept flooding into the darkest corners of organizational tradition as the only insurance for sustained productivity.
Failure to Utilize Relevant Research
Had I not been fortunate enough to join the Center for Creative Leadership (It is better to be lucky than smart!), I would most likely be among the larger crowd who remain unaware of the solid work accomplished in the area of leadership research since the late 1940s. (I will be forever indebted to David DeVries and Kenneth Clark for their coaching as I transitioned into the behavioral science world of CCL.)
Unfortunately, much good work sits on dusty shelves or emerges only in discussions at conferences of the Academy of Management or the American Psychological Association. This unawareness may be lessened by the impact of such periodicals as the Leadership Quarterly, and in such nontechnical publications as Issues & Observations published by the Center for Creative Leadership, along with some excellent reports from the Conference Board. Yet the story is still not escaping from the halls of academia. Here is a short list of my favorite findings from recent research:
• Both transactional and transformational leadership styles are relevant; “transformational” is the real key; and the practice of both can be improved through focused training or education;
• Genetics influence leadership style, and personality often overrides the situation or the capabilities of followers in determining a leader’s behavior;
• Self-awareness is essential for efficient adult growth and development;
• Organizational climate can be analyzed and appropriately manipulated to enhance productivity;
• The expectations of other people, particularly significant other people, can greatly affect our behavior; and
• Trust is essential to sustained leader effectiveness, and its generation can be enhanced or destroyed by specific leader behaviors and by managerial competencies.
With this research in mind, here is my list of leader characteristics that contribute to trust of a leader by followers: competent in critical skills; fair and rational; committed to organizational values; willing to share risks; keeps promises; trusting of others; open and direct; predictable and consistent; discrete with sensitive information; and responsive to feedback. The list has been refined through discussions with participants in training programs at CCL, by personal observation, and by discourse over the years with some of my military colleagues who have spent a lot of time thinking about these things. In any case, although we are underutilizing available solid research, there is much greater cross-fertilization between theoreticians and practitioners now than twenty years ago. Global competition in the marketplace has been the prime catalyst.
The Criterion Issue
Most research on leader effectiveness is flawed. The problem is the lingering ambiguity of the criterion for leadership success. My experience in organizations military, governmental, academic, and corporate is that the best leaders are not always the individuals promoted to positions of high responsibility. This is not news. Many of the best colonels I saw in the military were not promoted to general, although many of those promoted to general were among the best of the colonels. All of us have stories of how the second- or third-best candidate for promotion got the job. Surely the person making the promotion decision did not say, “I think I’ll bypass the most productive, promising manager and promote somebody who is not as good.” I have never known anybody who thought that way, even when cronyism was factored in. So the crux of the matter is the criterion problem. The whole mess is made worse when we consider that most studies of managerial success are based on the premise that the top people who are being studied as examples are in fact the best leaders or at least the best managers. The most accurate judges of the leader—in the leadership role—are the people who are led by him or her. Trustworthiness, integrity, compassion, and commitment are seen unadorned only from the vantage point of the follower. The chairman of the board or the commander in chief or the plant manager might know best who is accomplishing the immediate results in the most impressive manner. But superiors rarely have access to the full picture. Their views are notably skewed toward highly visible outcomes, with “means” usually taking a back seat to “ends.” Our focus on high-profile, short-term results combined with performance-appraisal systems whose inputs reside exclusively in the hands of the boss will inevitably lead to the promotion of significant numbers of nonleaders to top positions.
I first experimented with subordinates giving me written, anonymous feedback in 1968. I had just completed a tour as commander of the Cavalry Squadron of the 82d Airborne Division. I composed a simple ten-question list about what I thought were important behaviors and gave my troop commanders and key staff a Likert scale of choices. This was done after I had written the efficiency reports and been given the farewell dinner. In the automobile driving away from Fort Bragg, as I moved on to another base, I read the fifteen anonymous questionnaires and learned a little something—most importantly that the upward feedback process is doable, even in a traditionally conservative setting.
Ethics
Cheating in schools and colleges has increased dramatically in the last fifteen years. In some circles, shoplifting has become an after-school amusement. Crime has shaken our world. A healthy societal skepticism typifying America has degenerated too commonly into a paralyzing national cynicism. Yet much unethical behavior in organizations that ultimately corrodes the entire social fabric stems from two preventable sources. The first is that many senior leaders do not set the example by their personal behavior. They do not “walk their talk”—a phrase that I find unappealing but utilitarian. By these misbehaviors they construct a rationalization for everyone else to cut corners. Stories of the disconnect between credos and actions fill the pages of both popular and academic publications.
The second may be even more far-reaching as a stimulus for unethical behavior: an inadequacy of managerial expertise that creates ethical dilemmas for the workforce. It can be observed in military, commercial, academic, and community service organizations. At its core it is inattention to the reality that systems for measuring individual and organizational productivity drive behavior. In its worst form it is gross incompetence exemplified by unawareness on the part of senior leaders of the impact of their policies and procedures on the various levels of the organization. In the less flagrant form of inadequacy it is an unreasonable demand for quarterly profits or spectacular innovations that carelessly twists and bends the scruples of subordinate managers. Someone has remarked about “sinful structures created by well-intentioned but inadequate leaders.” Most of the unethical behavior that I have seen in organizations was born of managerial stupidity. Although dishonest behavior cannot be excused, the perpetrator of the larger crime of gross managerial neglect remains too often unidentified and unpunished.
The Magic of Organizational Climate
My friend and best coach, Colonel Mike Malone (recently departed from this world a whole lot earlier than he should have), first started talking to me about looking at climates from a systematic viewpoint in the late 1970s. I was then commanding an armored division of about 17,000 soldiers in Germany. (They were a hard-working crew, spending long hours in the field away from their families and the comforts of a dry bunk. Their dedication and competence helped bring the Cold War to a proper end.) Anyone who has watched organizations recognizes that some combination of stimuli from the immediate environment makes work either a joy or a burden or something in between. Then and now I have no hesitation in picking the ultimate winner in a contest between a brilliant leader and a stultifying climate.
In working on a study of the professional climate of the U.S. Army at the end of the Vietnam War, Mike and I and some other researchers had focused on leader behaviors directly, without much heed for the particulars of the organizational climates. That made sense for that study but did not make sense for deeper analysis of differences between highly effective and mediocre units. With some academic help and some research done much earlier by the Army Research Institute and Rensis Likert and a few other folks, we came to grips with the realities of organizational climates. A lot of us worked on it in an Army Corps and the results were good. All of the measurable operational rates were improved—from aircraft accident rates to target hits. The installation on which the corps headquarters was located was designated “best managed” among its peers in the continental United States. There were some laudatory reviews in military periodicals, a story in Newsweek, and a couple lines in A Passion for Excellence (by Tom Peters and Nancy Austin; Random House, 1985). A consulting organization studied the climate and found it notably above average. Some Army schools used that study as an example of deliberate change in a large system. Later on we reviewed what had been done over a period of several years and deduced a few principles—ten to be exact.† They essentially defined the actions of a “transformational” excursion. Extracted mostly from military experience, their recognized relevance to the corporate world argues strongly that the essentials of productive leadership of complex organizations are transferable between public and private sectors.
Climates must be measured before they can be dissected and improved or transformed. Any organization larger than ten people that does not routinely employ climate-assessment techniques is missing the boat. Skills of assessing and interpreting climate data can be taught but usually are not. Neither the assessment of people nor of organizations is included in most executive-development programs or business school curricula. Just as I am sure of the need to systematically take the pulse of an organization’s climate, I am also sure that an “empowering” environment is essential for sustained productivity. Rather amazingly, but not surprisingly upon reflection, some individuals in the chain of management or command do not want to be empowered. They do not want to make choices routinely on larger issues. Learned, conditioned avoidance of responsibility in hierarchical organizations is an unfortunate reality. It is also a reality in many nonhierarchical organizations! The one unending pull within organizations, measurable within climates, is between discipline and creativity. The constructive amelioration of this inherent stress is the primary role of senior leaders.
When less chronologically gifted than today, I thought I was smart enough to create the climate that would satisfy all interested parties. I learned I could not, just as I could not help everybody become a good leader. So the message here is that certain organizational challenges are lingering and require constant, visible attention—like crabgrass. It is easier to respond spectacularly to crises than to sustain excellence and support teamwork over the long haul. There is at times the urge to give up and resort to legal and autocratic techniques that are conveniently available. But leaders need faith in themselves and in their belief that things can get better through keeping to the higher road. A kind of altruistic self-confidence may be the single best gift. Is that, by the way, inherited or just assimilated in early childhood? Or all of the above?
† Our first principle was to “get in touch with what is really going on in the organization.” That remains my initial point of discussion in any exchange with senior executives concerned about coping with change and miscellaneous company malaise. Other principles included the need to clarify goals, standards, and priorities and assess their compatibility with espoused organizational values; the need for leaders to set the example in representing organizational values; and the need for systems for analyzing, reporting, and rewarding individual and team effectiveness. Mike and I were also very high on eliminating unproductive competition and on assuming good intent when something goes amiss—searching for systemic flaws instead of hunting for individual culprits. And we talked of the creative use of organizational “climate” as a key tool of top leaders.