Versatility is just that: having some capability on both sides of an opposing set. The Latin root of the word versatility means “to turn around.” A versatile manager can turn around or pivot in either direction—toward forceful leadership or toward enabling leadership. If you are sitting in a swivel chair and forceful is at one end of the room and enabling at the other, what is your range of movement? If you can turn in both directions, you are versatile.
An early version of the word was versable, and it meant “changeable, inconstant, fickle.” Sometimes, people mistakenly view versatility as inconsistency; however, manifested appropriately, in response to the demands of the job, it is an indisputable asset. As one executive I worked with put it, “I don’t think it’s inconsistent to empower and to give strong direction.” It may seem inconsistent to turn over power some of the time and take over at other times, but that is what it takes to lead effectively.
The following description of a general manager, from the point of view of a subordinate, provides a prime example of versatility.
He tries to foster harmony and to build a team. But on the other hand he’s got confidence in his judgment and will make the tough call. And he can prioritize things. He’ll come back to you with the priorities as he sees them, but he is more than willing to hear you and understand what you’re saying and factor that into his decisions. He has just about the right amount of everything going for him I think. It’s refreshing.
This general manager did his part but was open to the input of others. He was obviously capable but also built up the capability of his team.
Versatility consists of the ability not only to produce a variety of behaviors but also to read situations to determine which behavior is required. This is Donald Schon’s (1983) definition of the consummate practitioner in any field. The measure of an engineer or architect or social worker or manager is not so much the body of knowledge and the set of skills that he or she has acquired, on the job or in school, but the ability to call upon those resources in the right way at the right time. The ultimate practitioner, thinking in action as Schon described it, does not lift a skill or bit of knowledge willy-nilly from his or her kit bag but adapts it to precisely fit the situation.
Versatility is a requirement of the managerial job. It has been well documented how varied the job of the manager is (Kotter, 1982; McCall, Morrison, & Hannan, 1978; Mintzberg, 1973). On a typical day the staccato rhythm of the job can have the manager jumping every few minutes from one thing to another, and each of those things can require very different kinds of responses. On any given day the manager might: (a) have to bring all due intensity to bear on a product-development team that has fallen behind schedule on an innovation that the division’s product leadership in the marketplace depends on; (b) counsel a talented young female manager who is unaccountably (to the manager) reluctant to speak up in staff meetings; (c) settle out of court a suit made by a small competitor but not so richly that it encourages other competitors to sue; and (d) charge out a long-term direct report who, despite being effective in the job for several years, is no longer able to keep up with the much bigger unit that has grown up under him.
Here is a snapshot, given to us by one of his peers, of an executive who might seem inconsistent but who was, in fact, effectively responding to the disparate demands of the job.
This is a person I was impressed with. Two-thirds of the people thought he was the sweetest guy in the world and one-third thought he was the meanest guy around. When he needed to be a mean SOB he could be. But you didn’t have his whole organization seeing him that way. He was dealing with circumstances.
The challenge of displaying seemingly antithetical behavior was captured well by the following question posed by a division manager: “Can you trust and also go in with the knife when you have to?” Juxtaposing tough action and empowerment and trust, he made the assertion that “you’ve got to have both because neither by itself will work in our environment.”
Ecclesiastes (chapter 3, verses 1-8 in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible) reads:
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: … a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; … a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; … a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; … a time to love, and a time to hate.
These are the opposite situations with which we are confronted. Whether, in our lives or in our institutional existence, we are equal to all these tasks and in what measure is another matter. But to the extent that widely discrepant demands are placed on managers, they are better off if they have a capacity, one way or another, to respond effectively to those demands.
A basketball player can be very good just shooting with the right hand. The truly accomplished player, however, learns to shoot with either hand. That way the big player close to the basket can go either way as play demands. At the highest levels, ambidextrousness makes the difference between good players and great players.
The demands inherent in managerial jobs require managers to exhibit a range of different, and at times seemingly contradictory, behaviors. But no manager has it all. Nor is it realistic to expect the large majority of managers to be able to meet all the various types of requirements equally well. But, as we will examine in depth below, it certainly helps not to be handicapped or to have a greatly restricted repertoire.
I want to emphasize here that versatility is not homogenization. Because management development is often a matter of moderating extremes, it is not surprising that versatility is sometimes interpreted as bland or nondescript. People jump to the conclusion that development will result in the sort of moderation that will rob leaders of their edge. One executive expressed his concern this way:
The flaw in 360-degree feedback is the idea of the renaissance man—that you can do everything. My view is that you need to leverage unique strengths, rather than ask people to pull back from their strengths and suddenly get bland. I’d rather have somebody bipolar than bland, in the middle.
Other senior managers I know have raised similar concerns—about themselves or their peers being, in their words, “homogenized,” “normalized,” “neutered.” The concern expressed is that if distinctly forceful types were to “develop,” especially in response to feedback from other people in the company, they might bow to social pressure and conform to prevailing norms, thereby losing their distinctive power and leadership ability.
Rather than bland or homogeneous, versatility means increased range and flexibility. To increase the versatility of a markedly forceful or enabling manager is not to deprive that person of the capacity to be extremely forceful or enabling but to add a greater capacity to do the opposite of what he or she already does well.
The manager doesn’t lose the strength he or she has; it remains available when the need arises. A strong, centrist, dominant leader doesn’t give up the capacity to take over; it is just done more selectively. An outspoken manager is no less capable of speaking out if he or she learns to listen better or ceases to be so compelled on principle to voice objections if a sacred principle is apparently violated. To develop greater capability on the other side of the midpoint of a continuum is not to average out capability on the two sides into a bland, shapeless, homogenized skill set. Versatility isn’t forever hugging the middle of the continuum. In fact, it is the flexibility to roam more freely along the continuum, potentially from one end to the other. It is the reduction of constraints, and this should appeal to goal-oriented, can-do leaders.
Context is important because it is the set of circumstances or the particular challenge facing the executive that determines what leadership capability is called for. Different types of organizations or different stages of an organization’s development may dictate which approach to leadership is predominantly needed. Turnaround situations, for example, put a premium on forceful leadership because various tough actions are required to kick-start the reversal in the organization’s fortunes. Likewise, different subordinates require different approaches. Consistent with Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard’s (1988) theory of situational leadership, inexperienced, dependent, or less motivated people need more direction and guidance, and experienced self-starters respond better to an enabling approach. The qualification here is that managers will not vary their approach if they are so highly identified with one type of leadership that they rule out the other.