The default management style in society is command-and-control. It suffuses us from childhood, in the home, at school, and in camps and other activities.
At the same time, many people find themselves uncomfortable with that leadership method and struggle for something different. Interestingly, that gets so little support there isn’t even an accepted name for the approach they are trying. Some call it soft leadership, or compassionate leadership, or empathetic leadership, or servant leadership.
Kim B. Clark, the former dean of the Harvard Business School, now a management professor at the BYU Marriott School of Business, offers a solution – and guidelines on that different approach – in a new book written with his son Jonathan Clark, a professor of management at The University of Texas at San Antonio, and his daughter Erin Clark, managing director in human capital consulting at Deloitte.
They set out two models for leaders: You can seek Power Over others or Leading Through others. Power Over comes with a paradox. “We have a tendency to default to its ways of thinking, behaving and organizing, even as it serves to limit our capacity to make things better,” they write in Leading Through. The approach leads to dissatisfaction and distrust in organizations, as employees feel they lack autonomy and in crunch periods (or even not-so-crunch moments) watch their bosses reducing costs at the expense of people, purpose and genuine gains in productivity. It wastes human talent and organizational potential, stifling creativity, ingenuity and innovation. Yet, it’s what we typically embrace.
The aim of Leading Through is to activate the power of our humanity to create thriving organizations. It involves clarity of vision and intent for deeper meaning, which the authors consider the soul of leadership. It harnesses the power within people, engaging them and helping them to thrive – the heart of leadership. It also drives action, learning and change, boosting creativity, ingenuity and innovation, which the authors call the mind of leadership. “In Leading Through, power works primarily in and through people and groups, not as a controlling influence over them,” the authors state.
The foundation is a moral dimension, taking people, the authors declare, from darkness to light. Humans have a need for meaning, purpose and connection that transcends the material facts of daily life. The goal for leaders, at the core, is to do good. They must help people experience increased personal growth and meaning in their work and lives. With that, purpose will be realized more effectively and productivity strengthened. “In contrast, organizational darkness comes from actions that damage people, destroy value and weaken the organization,” they write.
They point to Hubert Joly, who took over as chief executive officer of Best Buy in 2012 when employee morale was at rock bottom and turnover was high. At the root of his celebrated turnaround, Mr. Joly has written, was a belief that “work can be part of our search for meaning and our fulfillment as human beings. If we each shift the way we consider the nature of work, from a burden to an opportunity, then we can start transforming business.”
That meant connecting an individual’s personal search for meaning to their work at Best Buy and the organization’s purpose. “What’s your dream?” Jason Luciano, manager of a Best Buy store in Massachusetts, asked each employee, connecting deeply with them by trying to help realize their dream at work. It epitomizes the heart dimension of the Leading Through approach.
If it seems overly personal, the authors stress that is the point. “The soul, heart and mind of leadership are always personal. Leadership is fundamentally human … human beings are both the primary objective and the means by which the work of leadership is accomplished.”
Their third dimension, the mind of leadership, is about careful thinking, analysis, setting priorities and direction, solving problems and making decisions. The leader must initiate, mobilize and empower. People must have the motivation, resources, expertise and autonomy to make progress on the organizational vision.
This happens through teams. The authors call it modularity – components, in this case teams, that work well as a whole but can be designed, developed and improved independently, like the elements in your smartphone. Properly done, the teams can be vehicles for the vital combination of freedom and unity – freedom of empowered individuals to act but within the parameters that the organizational strategy and purpose require.
The idea is to decentralize decision-making and resources in teams that rely on principles and guidelines rather than rigid rules and extensive operating procedures to guide their behaviour. A system of accountability must accompany this, pushing responsibility for improvement and innovation to the front lines of the organization.
Leaders must make objectives, standards, strategy and context clear so that individuals and teams can understand how the actions they contemplate fit with the organizational direction but also other teams. “Making this information visible is also an effort to make the moral context of the organization visible. This is most clearly seen in standards, but the moral context should shine brightly in objectives, strategy and context too,” they write.
It seems complicated. But that’s because command-and-control is so dominant its operating routines are laced throughout our organizations. An alternative approach needs more than a new name. It requires rethinking organizations, if its promise is to be attained.
Cannonballs
- Although remote work is seen as hindering the development of bonds between teammates, new research suggests the opposite. Seeing colleagues in their home surroundings, perhaps even with a toddler interrupting, provides more non-work information about each other, in an authentic rather than intentionally staged manner, tends to be more vivid and encourages investing energy in the relationship.
- Ottawa-based customer service consultant Shaun Belding says there are three reasons customers become ungrateful: The value you offer has decreased; customers don’t understand what you do and must be educated on your effort and processes; or customers believe you don’t care.
- Leadership coach Yue Zhao and consultant Aakash Gupta argue effective annual planning requires top-down clarity and a bottom-up reality check. When your team feeds in their ideas from the bottom up they urge you to call out risks and assumptions clearly, which pushes the leadership to acknowledge potential gaps in their strategy.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.