Two Heads Are Better Than One

Two heads, they say, are better than one, and that’s often true in leadership situations. For one thing, the public pressure of leadership often calls for a loyal colleague or assistant to take care of vital behind the scenes work. For another, the temperamental qualities make for inspirational leadership often conflict with the temperamental qualities that make for effective organization, and the two functions are often best handled by two separate people. Finally, the pressures of task achievement in any group often conflict with the need to maintain good relationships within the group. Very few leaders are good at both.

Every group or organization, from a neighborhood scout troop to a multinational corporation, exists in order to achieve certain goals. At the same time, every group has to maintain workable relationships among its members. In a social club where relationships are most important, a hard-driving leader would be out of place. In a dire emergency when survival is at stake, group members are often willing to submit to hard-driving authoritarian leadership and forget about relationships for the time being. But in between those extremes, where most of the world’s work is done, tasks and relationships are both important and both need attention from leaders. Unfortunately, very few people are outstanding at both task leadership and human relationships. Thus we often find different people specializing in different roles under different conditions. Every now and then exceptional leaders emerge who can handle both the public and private, the inspirational and organizational, and the task and relationship problems of leadership. But we shouldn’t rely on them, for they are rare. In many cases, two heads are better than one.