What is the goal of management development? The obvious answer is: to make managers more effective. But how do we define effectiveness? Everyone—managers and students of management alike—has an opinion, some more informed than others. There is no one way to define leadership effectiveness, but I have found it helpful to think about it broadly as versatility. The objective of management development, then, is to help equip managers to handle a wider variety of situations.
To get beyond this general definition I will explore what versatility means in terms of two approaches to leadership that I have found to be prevalent in my work with executives: forceful and enabling.
I am not the first to observe these two approaches. In fact, there is a long-running controversy about which is better. In one camp are people who hold that being enabling, or empowering, is the way to go. Gaining strength since World War II (and expressed in such terms as participative leadership and Theory Y), this idea of leadership came into great favor in the last ten years as organizations mounted a collective effort to improve quality, innovate, and stay competitive. In the other camp are people who, partly in reaction to the empowerment movement, hold that strong individual leadership is critical, especially when fundamental change is needed.
Which approach is better? Which do we want an individual leader to take, especially the senior leader? The answer, perhaps obvious, is that it is a mistake to choose. Allowing for the fact that any individual will tend to favor or specialize in one or the other, both approaches are required of the senior leader. In the face of the varied and ever-changing demands on managers, especially senior managers, versatility is the name of the game.
Let me emphasize: Versatility is a range of diverse capabilities, not a nondescript, shapeless blend.
Total versatility may not be attainable, at least by most managers. Even if it were attainable, we do not know for certain whether total versatility is synonymous with ultimate effectiveness. Managers who favor one approach over the other may be more effective in certain conditions. My work with executives has convinced me, however, that managers who emphasize one to the point of sacrificing the other put themselves and their organizations at risk.
Managers face a number of obstacles in the pursuit of greater versatility. The root of the word versatility means “to turn around” or “to pivot.” What limits a person’s range of movement, managerially speaking, is the same thing that stands in his or her way of becoming more versatile. And it is not just lack of skills. It is also attitude. Managers who depend too much on one approach to leadership must overcome negative feelings about the other approach. In extreme cases, a manager can have an aversion to the other. The word aversion, with the same root as versatility, means literally to “turn away from.”
Although the distinction between forceful and enabling leadership is not new, it can, if looked at in the proper way and in the proper context, be surprisingly useful. In this report I will discuss the way the idea actually plays out in senior managers. In doing so, I will inquire into the emotional basis for executive leadership and how emotions are engaged when executives try to develop, or even think about developing.