If you’ve ever been to a management seminar, you probably heard a great deal about goals and goal-setting. It is certainly true that goal-setting is a crucial activity in any leadership role. If you don’t know where you want to go, you’re likely to wind up somewhere else. Goals serve several different functions for individuals and groups.
A goal is a desired future state. Human beings are, under healthy conditions, naturally goal-oriented, which means that every time a healthy person achieves a goal, he or she normally looks around for a new goal or a new challenge. The first and most general function of goals is to orient behavior in a particular direction. In a group, goals provide legitimacy and group spirit to the extent that all members agree upon and collaborate on the same goals. By orienting behavior in a particular direction, goals provide motivation, since people are more likely to work on targets they can see or imagine. For motivational purposes, leaders should try to make sure that the goals they set are neither too high nor too low – they should be challenging but within reach. Finally, goals serve as measuring rods for performance. They help us determine how well we’re doing or how much progress we’ve made in a given amount of time. In general, purposelessness is one of the hardest things for people to endure, and purpose in life is mostly a matter of setting and achieving goals.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Natural-born Leaders?
Are leaders made or born or both or neither? Are some people destined for leadership while others are destined for followership and still others doomed to watch from the sidelines? Our ideas about these questions have changed over the years.
The study of leadership behavior really got rolling around World War I when psychologists hired by the military set out to discover ways to measure leadership ability so potential military leaders could be singled out and developed. Unfortunately, try as they might, the psychologists could never prove much about the traits they thought leaders should possess. They figured leaders should be intelligent, but then they discovered that real geniuses have trouble in leadership roles because followers can’t understand them. They figured a strong sense of initiative would be useful, but then they discovered that too much initiative resulted in a tendency to do things alone and leave followers behind to fend for themselves.
To make a long and frustrating story short, the attempt to study leadership by studying individual character traits was eventually abandoned. The more recent and more practical approach is to study the functions or roles of leadership – such as motivating, communicating, making decisions, organizing tasks, and setting standards. Some people are good at some leadership roles but not others, so the best leader for any particular job depends on the situation, the task at hand, the way the group is organized, the kinds of followers involved, and the nature of the surrounding environment.
Talents are inborn, but skills have to be learned and developed. A successful senator may be a lousy corporation president and vice versa. A born leader in one situation may turn to be a born loser in another.
The study of leadership behavior really got rolling around World War I when psychologists hired by the military set out to discover ways to measure leadership ability so potential military leaders could be singled out and developed. Unfortunately, try as they might, the psychologists could never prove much about the traits they thought leaders should possess. They figured leaders should be intelligent, but then they discovered that real geniuses have trouble in leadership roles because followers can’t understand them. They figured a strong sense of initiative would be useful, but then they discovered that too much initiative resulted in a tendency to do things alone and leave followers behind to fend for themselves.
To make a long and frustrating story short, the attempt to study leadership by studying individual character traits was eventually abandoned. The more recent and more practical approach is to study the functions or roles of leadership – such as motivating, communicating, making decisions, organizing tasks, and setting standards. Some people are good at some leadership roles but not others, so the best leader for any particular job depends on the situation, the task at hand, the way the group is organized, the kinds of followers involved, and the nature of the surrounding environment.
Talents are inborn, but skills have to be learned and developed. A successful senator may be a lousy corporation president and vice versa. A born leader in one situation may turn to be a born loser in another.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Democracy in Egypt
Yesterday a bottom-up movement for democracy in Egypt claimed victory over the regime of Hosni Mubarak, who came to power immediately after the assassination of Anwar Sadat and never relinquished the state of martial law under which he ruled for 30 years. Thus one of the world’s oldest civilizations is now poised to enter the circle of modern democracy. Let’s hope Egyptians can create a democratic government as effectively as they toppled Mubarak.
As sudden and surprising as this event seems, it is really part of a protracted revolution that has been sweeping the globe for more than two centuries. After two or three centuries of intellectual ferment, the American Revolution and the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century really got the democratic ball rolling. Since then dozens of nations have moved from aristocratic and dictatorial regimes to democratic forms of governance.
The connection between this large-scale historical trend and the practice of collaborative leadership is manifest. The word “leadership” itself did not exist in our language until the era of the democratic revolutions. It emerged because we needed a new word and a new language to describe a new thing in the world: a system of governance that required, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “the consent of the governed.”
Modern democracies can only exist in a modern world where most people are reasonably well educated, reasonably well informed, and willing to act freely up to the point where their freedom interferes with the freedom of others. All real leadership is inherently democratic, since leaders and followers work together for shared goals. If the goals of the so-called leader conflict with the goals of so-called followers, then the process is really about naked power and dictatorship, not leadership. If that process goes on too long, so-called followers will become revolutionaries and so-called leaders will become ex-dictators just like Hosni Mubarak.
We can consider collaborative leadership to be hyperdemocratic because it doubles down on the concept of shared goals and collaborative behavior. Collaborative leadership generally takes a long time to develop because it depends so heavily on established relationships, which must precede any attempt to achieve specific goals. But when those relationships take root, collaborative leadership can work its magic very quickly, as we witnessed in the case of Egypt and Mr. Mubarak. Egyptians formed bonds of empathy with each other as they struggled for years under bonds of oppression. But when the opportunity to overthrow the oppressor emerged, they were able to organize and claim victory in just a few weeks.
As sudden and surprising as this event seems, it is really part of a protracted revolution that has been sweeping the globe for more than two centuries. After two or three centuries of intellectual ferment, the American Revolution and the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century really got the democratic ball rolling. Since then dozens of nations have moved from aristocratic and dictatorial regimes to democratic forms of governance.
The connection between this large-scale historical trend and the practice of collaborative leadership is manifest. The word “leadership” itself did not exist in our language until the era of the democratic revolutions. It emerged because we needed a new word and a new language to describe a new thing in the world: a system of governance that required, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “the consent of the governed.”
Modern democracies can only exist in a modern world where most people are reasonably well educated, reasonably well informed, and willing to act freely up to the point where their freedom interferes with the freedom of others. All real leadership is inherently democratic, since leaders and followers work together for shared goals. If the goals of the so-called leader conflict with the goals of so-called followers, then the process is really about naked power and dictatorship, not leadership. If that process goes on too long, so-called followers will become revolutionaries and so-called leaders will become ex-dictators just like Hosni Mubarak.
We can consider collaborative leadership to be hyperdemocratic because it doubles down on the concept of shared goals and collaborative behavior. Collaborative leadership generally takes a long time to develop because it depends so heavily on established relationships, which must precede any attempt to achieve specific goals. But when those relationships take root, collaborative leadership can work its magic very quickly, as we witnessed in the case of Egypt and Mr. Mubarak. Egyptians formed bonds of empathy with each other as they struggled for years under bonds of oppression. But when the opportunity to overthrow the oppressor emerged, they were able to organize and claim victory in just a few weeks.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
John Hancock's John Hancock
Leadership generally begins by attracting attention. This week we celebrate the birthday of a man whose flair for calling attention to himself is immortalized on our Declaration of Independence. John Hancock, who drew the first signature on the Declaration so big, he said, that the King of England could read it without his glasses, is our subject this week. Ever since then, people often refer to any signature on any document as their "John Hancock."
John Hancock’s father died when John was just a boy, and he was adopted by his uncle, the wealthiest merchant in Boston. After graduating from Harvard and taking over his uncle’s business, Hancock began using his influence for political purposes. In 1768, the crew of a Hancock ship locked the British customs official in the ship’s hold and unloaded the cargo without paying duties. From that point, the British considered Hancock a dangerous man and American patriots considered him a leader.
In the 1770s, he worked with Sam Adams for American independence, and on the night of Paul Revere’s famous ride the British were hoping to find and arrest John Hancock first and foremost. He served as president of the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1777 and as the first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The only job he really wanted but didn’t get was commander of the revolutionary armies. That job, of course, went to an even greater leader – George Washington.
John Hancock’s father died when John was just a boy, and he was adopted by his uncle, the wealthiest merchant in Boston. After graduating from Harvard and taking over his uncle’s business, Hancock began using his influence for political purposes. In 1768, the crew of a Hancock ship locked the British customs official in the ship’s hold and unloaded the cargo without paying duties. From that point, the British considered Hancock a dangerous man and American patriots considered him a leader.
In the 1770s, he worked with Sam Adams for American independence, and on the night of Paul Revere’s famous ride the British were hoping to find and arrest John Hancock first and foremost. He served as president of the Continental Congress from 1775 to 1777 and as the first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The only job he really wanted but didn’t get was commander of the revolutionary armies. That job, of course, went to an even greater leader – George Washington.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)