Connected Leadership: Fad or Useful Framework?
Craig Chappelow
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
—The Who
There is a Dilbert cartoon I love. The characters are all at a meeting, and the pointy-haired boss says, “I have an idea.” Dilbert thinks, “Is this a real thing or just another management fad that will linger like the smell of a dead woodchuck under the front porch?” The boss says, “Let's do a CHANGE Newsletter.” The thought bubble over Dilbert's head reads, “Woodchuck.”
When I was first introduced to the concept of connected leadership, my reaction was to think, “Woodchuck.” It's not that I thought the concept wasn't valid. It made sense to me that leaders and all group members share a collective capacity for leadership. I was particularly intrigued by the concept of analyzing the space between individuals and what connects them together. My real concern was whether it had legs. What is it about connected leadership that differentiates it from previous attempts to emphasize the relationship between leader and follower? I mean, haven't we been there before? “New” management and leadership movements have been creating a buzz in the human resource field as far back as when it was still called personnel. And like connected leadership, many of them focus on the relationship between leader and followers. As early as the 1950s, Douglas McGregor was defining the need for a participatory relationship between manager and employee with Theory X and Theory Y. Then came managing by objectives, Peter Drucker's concept of doing the work through negotiation of goals. Matrix management was all the rage at one point, leading some organizations to rearrange the reporting relationships so people answered to many different managers, depending on the task at hand.
“New” management movements have been creating a buzz in the human resource field as far back as when it was still called personnel.