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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

The technology life cycle, first described by this author in May of 1996 and later discovered (ahem) independently by Gartner as the “technology adoption curve,” has three stages: Hype, disillusionment, and application.

Management trends follow a similar trajectory: Technique, panacea, yesterday’s fad. Which just goes to show that technologists have more sense than management theorists. Technologists finish by finding the useful balance point; management theorists start at the useful balance point and lose it.

Take the notion of “servant leadership.” Introduced by Robert Greenleaf back in 1970 in his book, Servant as Leader, it offered a useful and distinct perspective on how leaders should view their role. Rediscovered by Ken Blanchard and Phil Hodges last year in their book Servant Leader, the concept is rapidly approaching the peak of the panacea phase, a sure sign it’s about to be discarded as last year’s fad.

It’s too bad, too. If you ignore Blanchard and Hodges’ theological spin, there’s value in the idea that leaders are supposed to help, support and develop those they lead.

It isn’t, however, the answer to good leadership. There is no “the” answer. Everything is situational: Sometimes leaders should be servants, providing resources and removing obstacles, just as sometimes they should be posterior-kickers, inspiring visionaries, or politicians adept at herding cats.

The question goes even deeper than the form-follows-function issue of matching style to circumstance. It gets to the heart of why someone chooses to become a leader in the first place.

Some people become leaders because they want to be leaders, which is to say they want power. Everything else is pretext. These are the people most likely to end up in leadership roles, for the simple reason that those who aim at a target are more likely to hit it than those who don’t.

Then there are those described by Greenleaf: They start with the desire to serve, and expand their circle of servitude, as it were. They’re wonderful people, with deep integrity, who tend to get shot at a lot by those who want power for its own sake. The best servant leaders shed their naivete early in their careers, so as to avoid becoming former servant leaders.

A third type of leader — the visionary leader — is, to my way of thinking, the most deserving of the title. These are the people who become leaders because they’re trying to accomplish something. They see a future different from the present, inspire others to see the same possibility, and have the courage, energy, and ability to see both broad strokes and great detail to drive the hard, complex work of making that future a reality. They deserve to be called leaders because others are following them to a destination.

They also deserve to be called dangerous, because a future that’s different from the present is an unknown. That means the risk of unintended consequences. It’s one reason visionary leadership requires courage. It’s also the reason visionary leaders better be good thinkers and better listeners: Most unintended consequences can be avoided through the not-so-simple act of thinking things through. Vision is the focal point for deep thought and hard work and not, as too many self-styled visionaries assert, a substitute for them.

Power-driven leadership, servant leadership and visionary leadership aren’t mutually exclusive alternatives. They’re different dimensions of the character of anyone in a leadership role. To be an effective leader, you need a healthy dose of all three, and others besides.

If you don’t, to some extent, see yourself as the servant of those you lead, they’ll find themselves having to overcome you to achieve the tasks you set out for them. Servant leaders take care of those they lead, help them grow, and clear obstacles out of their paths. Even if you don’t think this is an ethical necessity it’s a good idea if you want those you lead to be as effective as possible.

If you don’t have something important you’re trying to achieve — a vision, for want of a better term — then you’re in the ludicrous position of having no answer when those who follow you ask the question, “Where are we going?” It’s hard, not to mention irritating, to follow someone to nowhere in particular.

And if you don’t, at some level, want authority, that also leads to problems — in particular, to an unwillingness to exert it.

Which is to say that if you don’t want the job, chances are you won’t do it very well.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

It’s okay to lead.

I mean it. Go ahead. It’s okay.

I’ve run into a number of otherwise capable, knowledgeable, smart, visionary strategic thinkers in this business who would be fine IT executives save for one minor deficit: Somewhere along the line, they learned the opposite: That leading people isn’t okay.

Ignore all the fancy words you’ve read over the years about what it means to be a leader. In the end, there’s just one measure of leadership: Whether anyone is following. If they are, you’re leading. Otherwise, you’re doing something else.

These managers know what should happen, but aren’t willing to insist that it happen. They’re willing to be right, but aren’t willing to exhibit the behavior necessary to turn their rightness into a business change. Ask them why and you get a variety of answers, most of which boil down to one of just two major themes.

The first is a lack of courage. Some managers worry that if they take the actions necessary to make sure the changes they envision turn into reality, some people won’t like them; the ideas might prove to have unanticipated consequences; or the program is politically risky, and if it doesn’t work out well, the likely outcome is to be shown the door.

These aren’t small things, and I don’t want to pretend they are. While deciding on inaction because someone might not like you or your alternative has a certain cravenness to it, wise leaders do avoid alienating those they lead unnecessarily. And they take the risks of unanticipated consequences or personal unemployment into account in their decision-making. They don’t avoid a decision because of fear, but do make wise decisions that take all foreseeable consequences into account.

Which is to say, wise leaders are willing to be bold, and to make unpopular decisions. They aren’t however, willing to be Don Quixote, fighting unwinnable battles because the nobility of the effort alone makes them worthwhile.

Other managers aren’t so much afraid to lead as they are concerned that doing so is, at some fundamental level, immoral. By not allowing people to say no, you’re forcing them to do something they don’t want to under duress. And that’s a wrong thing to do.

Which is to say that somewhere along the line, the most basic attribute of leadership — the exercise of authority — got a bad name.

It’s hard to say exactly how this happened. One possibility is that it’s because too many leaders abused their authority for too many years, mistaking authoritarian decision-making for the proper use of authority. Some management theorists, missing the point, concluded the problem was the exercise of authority itself rather than overuse of the least useful way to make decisions.

Another possibility is that it’s the result of conflating public and private sector governance. Empowerment is, after all, an assumption in American society.

In the United States, we reject the whole notion of royalty, insisting that governments are only legitimate with the consent of the governed. That’s public governance. Citizens are naturally empowered; we delegate authority to our government to prevent collisions among those naturally empowered citizens. We aren’t supposed to consider elected officials to be better than we are. We’re supposed to consider them public servants, not aristocrats.

So maybe business managers worry that if they exert their authority they’re somehow being un-American, acting like they think they’re better than anyone else.

Or maybe we should blame Scott Adams for making too many managers worry if they’re turning into a pointy-haired boss.

The etiologies of public and corporate governance are opposites. Citizens delegate authority to their government; business owners delegate authority to their employees. The difference is just one reason among many that the whole notion of “running government like a business” is dangerous (and quite different from the entirely sensible notion of running government in a businesslike way).

The delegation of authority and responsibility is quite different from the abdication of authority and the disenfranchisement of leadership. Sadly, many managers bought into this strange notion that any use of authority makes them bad people, and worse, arrogant people who must think they’re part of the business aristocracy and therefore morally inferior to others with a more egalitarian mindset.

If you’re one of them, stop worrying. You’re allowed to make decisions. Heck, making sure important decisions get made is part of the job description, as is making sure they’re acted on.

Not everyone will like them; not everyone will automatically accept them unless you insist on it. Stop worrying about that.

It’s okay to lead.

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