 René Van Someren
Can excellent leadership be imitated?
Posted September 29, 2016
“When John studied management
at university, he found it very difficult to grow an appreciation for Henry Mintzberg’s work. This
had nothing to do with Mintzberg himself,
nor with his work. Instead, Johns’
feelings were brought about by the, in his opinion, irrational worship of
Mintzberg by John’s professors. To John, it seemed that this worship was primarily
based on a distorted view of Mintzberg’s doctoral thesis The
Nature of Managerial Work (Mintzberg, 1973).
In that thesis, Mintzberg had
reported how five managers in virtually equal professional positions, located
within a certain geographical area, social and cultural environment behaved
during one week.
John found his professors’
veneration of Mintzberg irrational and unwarranted, since those professors
concluded that studying that thesis was essential to learning about management.
John strongly disagreed with
his professors and argued that this particular research of Mintzberg had low external validity,
and that, without knowing the purpose or outcomes of the observed managers’
behaviour, the educational or scientific value of Mintzberg’s report to the
field of management, was low.
John’s professors brushed aside
John’s criticism, referring to the high number of citations of
Mintzberg’s work, which they took as validation of their veneration by the
academic community as a whole.
John felt that his professors
meant well. He believed that, to most of his professors, leadership was little
more than an academic
concept, which they could not relate to the real world, even though they seemed
blissfully unaware of this inability.”
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In this article, I neither intend to go into questioning who
was right in this matter, nor into questioning whether John’s professors may
have been blinded by author-level
metrics that affected their judgement of a researcher’s work. Instead, I
aim to touch upon the questions:
- To what extent does observing managers teach one about
management?
- To what extent can one become an excellent manager, by
observing and imitating excellent managers?
Literature and other (social) media seem to suggest that,
generally speaking, there is a much stronger ambition to become (acknowledged
as) a leader than to become a manager. Since the questions mentioned apply to management
as well as to leadership, next, those words will be used alternately.
Some believe firmly that one can become a great leader from
looking at the focus, characteristics or skills applied by individuals who are
acknowledged as excellent leaders, and subsequently trying to imitate those
leaders, based on those aspects.
One major flaw that many of those observers demonstrate is
completely detaching the pertaining leader’s focus, characteristics
or skills from the specific situation, challenges and circumstances that
those leaders were facing at the time.
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Excellent leadership is not ‘what excellent leaders do’
--
Still, in literature and elsewhere, we are confronted with a
persistent tendency to propound, as by definition, that leadership excellence
spontaneously arises from applying specific skills (e.g. inspire),
from demonstrating certain characteristics (e.g. authenticity),
or from a certain focus (e.g. an
organisation’s culture).
Doing so with total disregard for context, circumstance and
specific demands, suggests that all leadership challenges are standard, alike
and invariable and that distinct solutions and approaches are universally
applicable.
Some may be disappointed to learn that this is not true:
leadership challenges can be diverse, on occasion extremely complex and
complicated, on other occasions amazingly easy and straightforward, and
anything in between.
--
Specific skills, characteristics or focus do not make excellent leaders.
Appropriate skills, characteristics and focus, relative to actual context,
circumstance and specific demands, do.
--
- Different challenges require different approaches;
- Different approaches require different knowledge, skills
and personalities (attitudes), which in turn are often incorporated in
different individuals;
- Consequently, different types of leadership challenges
often require different leaders.
Excellent leaders are not just those, who possess and apply
the right aptitudes and attitudes at the right time, but also those, who know
and acknowledge their own limitations and concede leadership responsibilities
to someone with more fitting aptitudes and attitudes when specific challenges,
context or circumstance so demands.
--
Leadership development based on reduction of
leadership to a set of characteristics or skills, or to a certain focus is
underdeveloped leadership.
--
Even though the pertaining characteristics, skills and focus
may lead to success in addressing certain challenges, under certain conditions
within a certain context, in other cases they will be less appropriate, or even
lead to complete failure.
One can learn quite a lot from observing others, provided
that one understands those observations. As such, one can learn from observing failures
as well as from observing achievements.
Understanding observations can only come about when those
observations are correctly placed in the full context of the observed
behaviour.
Even with such understanding, excellence requires the
appropriate attitude and aptitude (skills, competencies) that suit the specific
demands and circumstances at hand.
This attitude and aptitude cannot possibly come about by merely
observing and imitating others.
René Van Someren’s personal website is: www.rene.vansomeren.org
René Van Someren's blog
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