What's the Future
of the Authority Figure In Leadership?
Leadership involves the effective management of
tensions characteristic of all organizations. Are such tensions exacerbated by
today's need for increasing speed and
agility required repeatedly to achieve transient strategic
advantage in a world of impatient investors, restive employees, and demanding
customers? Do they require leaders who have fewer answers, more questions, and
a bias for testing and quick action? Are investors, employees, and customers
willing to trade yesterday's authority figures for a new kind of leader, one
with fewer answers? Those were the questions implied by this month's column.
The predominance of responses suggested that the answers to the questions are
"yes, yes, and maybe."
Adam Hartung commented that "As technology has
increased the speed of market shifts, organizations have been unable to keep
pace… in no small part due to the reliance on hierarchy and the dominant
position given very highly compensated CEOs." Jackie Le Fevre put it this
way: "Short answer to the question—increasingly difficult balancing act?
Yes-in part at least due to scale and speed of information flow through social
media…"
Respondents described what increasingly will be
required of leaders. Kapil Kumar Sopory said that "Leadership these days
has become a complex art… people with bias for listening, testing and fast
reacting will generally succeed."
Aim, in describing his experience, added: "One
common characteristic I encountered … is that (the) vast majority of the
leaders were morally stable and people who aspire (to a) high degree of
integrity in how they solve the unknown by being honest with all the
stakeholders." Several suggested that a heavy dose of authenticity in
leadership is what is needed to manage the tension. Michael Leahy commented
that "…we are challenged to sort out short term position … and personal
self serving ambition versus more genuine leadership…When we are traveling in white
water we have to be very aware and responsive but we always have to keep our
integrity, values, and goals." Clark Phippen assured us that leadership is
up to the task, saying that "true leaders can easily address the
challenges you describe without the 'academic' complexity you and John Kotter
suggest."
How investors, employees, and customers will react
in a business world populated by leaders with these characteristics is another
matter. Gerald Nanninga's comment suggests that it may not be an issue. As he
put it, "Leaders have never had all the answers. It's about time we admit
that." Jeff Schur, citing CEO Bob McDonald of Procter & Gamble and the
company's shift to more emphasis on digital media as an example, commented that
"it is possible to allow experimentation… trial and error … without the
CEO looking foolish because he or she does not know the answers and is no
longer expected to in the ephemeral state of entropy we live in, called
Digital."
We're left with impression that changes in
leadership required for success in the fast-moving information economy will be
achieved with limited discomfort. And yet we are confronted daily with
criticism of leaders who don't have all the answers. It's as if we—as
investors, employees, and customers—long for the good old days of the
conventional authority figure. Is there still a need for that kind of
leadership? What is the future of the authority figure in leadership? What do
you think?
Source :- Harward Business School