Conclusion
This research shows that the most effective leaders appreciate and employ both the forceful and the enabling approaches to leadership. They understand how these two styles complement each other. And their open-mindedness allows them to lead with versatility, recognizing that they have a choice on how to respond most appropriately to the leadership challenge at hand. This flexibility gives them an edge over leaders who rely on one approach and neglect the other.
Robert B. Kaiser is director of research and development at Kaplan DeVries Inc., a Greensboro firm that provides leadership consulting to executives and executive teams. He holds an M.S. degree from Illinois State University.
A Measure of Versatility
The critical variable in the view of leadership described in this article is versatility, which we derived from the forceful and enabling scores. This measure, which we call the versatility index, considers jointly the extent to which an executive uses forceful leadership and enabling leadership. It reflects how close a leader is to making optimal use of both the forceful and the enabling approaches, the point represented by a score of “does the right amount” on each style.
For example, in the upper-left-hand quadrant of the figure is a plot for an executive who scored in the “does too much” region on forceful and in the “does too little” region on enabling. The geometric distance this leader is from being perfectly versatile—that is, from a score of the “right amount” on forceful and a score of the “right amount” on enabling—can be derived from the Pythagorean theorem and computed as c2 = a2 + b2, where a = (forceful score - right amount), b = (enabling score - right amount), and c = distance from optimal versatility.
To compute the versatility index, we calculated the ratio of each executive's observed distance from optimal versatility to the maximum possible distance from optimal versatility and then subtracted this value from 100 percent. Therefore, versatility indices range from 0 percent to 100 percent, with 100 percent representing optimal use of both forceful and enabling leadership. Lower scores on the versatility index indicate a greater degree of lopsidedness.
Robert E. Kaplan is an honorary senior fellow of CCL and founder and co-president of Kaplan DeVries Inc. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Yale University.
To learn more about this research and the measure of forceful and enabling leadership, contact coauthor Robert B. Kaiser at [email protected]