The Organisational Leadership Model

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COMPONENTS OF THE NEW MODEL

These are the main ingredients:

Considering who leadership belongs to

Who 'owns' leadership? What is the 'vehicle' that carries leadership? Conventional thinking assumes the answer is the individual leader (whatever the level, job role and title). Without dismissing the importance of individual leadership, here's a new way of thinking about this question:

Leadership is a property of an organisation. It is one of its defining characteristics. Leadership lies at the heart of an organisation's governance. People recognise organisations and experience their brand as a result of the way they are led. This makes leadership one of an organisation's prime assets.

Leadership is also the property of the organisation. It is the rightful and necessary business of the particular organisation. Leadership is a key corporate resource that calls for serious stewardship. It cannot be left to individual leaders, developers and trainers to decide for themselves the leadership needs of their organisation.

Establishing a new aim

The quest to improve organisational leadership reaches beyond the familiar focus of leadership in the organisation, to embrace:

leadership of, by and for the organisation

This holistic approach is subtly different from the traditional, individual-focused aim of leader development. The new model:

Ultimately organisational leadership is manifested through individuals. Within the organisational leadership model these people provide personal leadership in a way that is mindful of the organisation's needs. The development of such leaders draws upon what is currently happening in and to the organisation. The organisation therefore needs to provide developers with the necessary:

context, concerns and content

But, even where this happens, this is still only a sophisticated version of management development. There is an additional strand to organisational leadership. It includes taking action to improve, redefine and re-engineer the context itself. Such improvement action targets non-people factors that affect the quality and practice of leadership in the organisation. This is organisation development, and it can work alongside - and be hard-wired into the design of - individual leader development activities.

The new model has several dimensions: some face externally and some internally. So organisational leadership entails:

Given these multiple dimensions and benefits, it is important not to make individuals' personal development the starting point and the centre of attention.

Instead, what is needed is an approach that is contingent on the organisation. By this we mean a format for improving leadership that draws heavily on what is happening inside and outside the organisation at that time.

Giving and receiving leadership

In the same way that leadership ability is sometimes developed free of context, its application by leaders may also be left undefined and unplanned. It is assumed that, once developed, leaders will choose how to focus their leadership - i.e. where to lead. Little advance thought is usually given to the various groups who might be on the receiving end of leadership, how they might benefit, and how they might be involved in, and contribute to, the overall leadership process and its success for the organisation.

But leadership is not exercised in a vacuum. There are other parties to the process, including internal and external customers, and not forgetting followers. People, and even things, are involved in giving or receiving leadership, or both. Who and what are these?

We know that employees receive leadership from their managers (or are supposed to). But, as Figure 1 shows, the organisation too receives leadership from managers appropriate to its goals, and this helps it grasp opportunities and overcome its problems.

In turn, the 'internal organisation' is enabled to give leadership to the business. The business can then focus outwardly on its markets and customers. And the company or institution can give leadership to its sector and to all its stakeholders.

Figure 1

Challenging assumptions

If we are to think afresh about leadership and how best to improve it, we need to be clear about three common assumptions. We can do this by:

• Separating leadership from leaders

Nowadays it is generally accepted that leadership is not about elites, position and authority. Leadership is not the sole preserve of top management. Leadership can be an aspect of people's jobs anywhere in the organisation, whatever their job. While not claiming that everyone can be or wants to be a leader, this basic proposition is attractive and empowering.

(Note, however, that there are practical issues and consequences. How and when does the organisation want leadership displayed? Who should receive priority access to development experiences and training?)

• Separating leadership from people

This way of thinking still leaves the focus of leadership on the individual. So our redefinition of organisational leadership needs to go one step further. It is concerned with the activity of leadership more than with its personification. To adapt a quotation: organisational leadership 'votes for the painting more than for the artist'.

To take the artistic metaphor a step further, leadership is to a stage play what leader development programmes are to drama school. It is the whole performance that we most value. This depends on having good relationships between the individual actors as well as with the audience, good props, good front-of-house and back-of-house support, and - crucially - a compelling script or plot. A strong leader pursuing the wrong plot can wreak havoc.

While individual leaders are an invaluable resource, this mental separation allows us to value the organisation's leadership as a separate strategic asset. This is possible because organisational leadership:

- transcends the tenure of particular leaders
- takes account of what leadership is being used for
- binds the talent of individual leaders together

• Separating leadership from development

This is not saying that leaders (and leadership) can't or won't be developed. But this separation allows us to entertain the possibility of other improvement options. Development then becomes just one option in the wider improvement mix. This is what we look at next.

Speaking the language of 'improvement'

It is important to get the language right at the outset. A different language facilitates a different mindset. 'Different words create different worlds", as Wittgenstein put it.

The implications of shifting from 'development' to 'improvement' is fundamental to the concept of organisational leadership.

If we talk about 'development' we instinctively think of individuals. Since the focus of this model and audit is primarily the organisation, we need to talk about 'improvement'. This linguistic trick opens the door to a wider variety of interventions and a wider range of targets for them.

Whilst development is one part of an improvement strategy, there are other avenues to go down. For example, you can improve an organisation's leadership by:

These activities would often not qualify as 'development'. The remit of HR Development departments usually spans training, education, appraisal and succession issues. Responsibility for recruitment, reward and termination falls outside this definition. So if we focus all improvement efforts on 'development', we may overlook other relevant HR activity, and we may exclude other HR specialists from improvement discussions and action.

There is a saying that prevention is better than cure. Development programmes are analogous to cure without having first identified, halted and treated the ills that infest the organisation's culture, policies and practices. Improvement, on the other hand, deals with both prevention and cure. Improvement of the organisation's 'systems' (in the widest meaning of that term) is a more upstream activity than development.

Minding the gap

An organisation's ailments are frequently found in the gaps. These are gaps between people, gaps between functions and departments, and the gaps between levels in the hierarchy (but only rarely the gaps in any one individual's competence). These gaps are not identified by training needs analysis. The gaps are rarely caused by people; they are usually the result of flaws in the wider organisation system. The biggest scope for improvement lies in these system gaps rather than in the gaps in individuals' competence.

The logic behind this view is that when developers consider who they should be trying to help, instead of assuming that performance problems and learning needs reside in individuals, they should first search for these other kinds of gap. Talking about improvement rather than development makes it easier to think about plugging organisational gaps.

If the gaps become holes, things fall down them. Communication, relationships, trust and dialogue can all fall victim to them. But gaps are opportunities too. Gaps are interfaces, points of connection. Gaps are where individuals and functions come together in co-operation. Gaps are opportunities for synergy and for building social capital.

So while individuals' leadership skills are one component in organisation performance, the process of improvement should neither begin nor end there. The source of sustainable improvement lies upstream. The spring of leadership is located in the organisation.

This first requires establishing organisation issues of strategic significance. These help flesh out the picture of the leadership 'gap'. It is then possible to decide on appropriate improvement action that will close the gap.

Gap analysis focuses on:

Taking a systems perspective

Approaching leadership from an organisational perspective treats leadership as a component of a system. Conceptual models that depict how the components of an organisation fit together and interact include leadership as one of the key variables.

The popular EFQM Excellence Model (from the European Foundation for Quality Management) is one such example. Another is the Burke-Litwin model, where elements include policies and practices, culture and climate, structure and so on, as well as leadership. Crucially, such models include the organisation's environment as a key ingredient in the system. The relationship with external stakeholders is therefore a vital part of the overall system. The term systemic leadership has been coined to summerise this systems-based approach to leadership and its improvement.

All these components need managing - not least in relation to each other. So, paradoxical as it may sound, leadership has to be managed. And it needs to be managed as part of a system.

Thinking in terms of improvement allows us to plan, undertake, evaluate and revise action (often known as 'plan, do, check, act') taken directly on organisation variables without the risk of these being swamped by thoughts about individuals' (in)ability.

These variables include the policies, culture, etc. that have an influence on the practice of leadership. The system itself thus becomes one of the possible targets for development and improvement. In other words, the discipline of organisation development joins forces with management development.

Identifying the client

If the sponsor of development activity (i.e. who is paying for it) is an individual him/herself, then he or she is the developer's client. Thus the individual in such cases is the legitimate target for developers' activity. Individual-centred development is fine if, say, the people are not in employment or want to improve their marketability irrespective of who they work for.

But most leadership development is sponsored by organisations. Its prime purpose is to benefit the organisation, not to increase the marketability of individuals. Even if the motivation is to improve the individual's performance to benefit the organisation, this will only be realised in practice if there is organisational input to the planning, design, conduct and support of the development process.

The chief problem arises when the organisation is the sponsor, but is willing to settle for individual-centred development. Even worse is where there is no awareness or openness to the possibility of the organisation doing some work on itself. Organisations too have their own shortcomings and development needs.

Placing limits on delegation

It is common for senior line management in organisations to delegate to developers the design of leadership programmes and to provide little strategic input themselves. They willingly give developers (internal or external) access to the organisation's people, but they often don't give them equally open access to the organisation's agenda.

Ideally, developers should know the organisation's direction, long-term plans, goals, business strategies, problems and opportunities. Otherwise, development will take place at arm's length from the organisation's realities and will concentrate on individuals' characteristics, qualities and capabilities.

Developers are often pigeon-holed by senior line management. As a consequence they may not be expected to ask searching questions about the organisation. Their own self-image, expertise and interests may stop them requesting such information. Even if they had the information, many would not understand it or know what to do with it.

The upshot is that both parties may be comfortable with the strong ring-fencing that frequently surrounds development activity. Yet this isolation is unhealthy and not a sustainable arrangement if development activity is expected to make a more direct contribution to the business.

For external providers isolation is obviously a structural problem. But in-company developers can find themselves treated in the same way. Many even see themselves in this semi-detached position and are content with the arrangement.

On top of this, organisations that contract out development do so without realising the risk they are taking by widening the gap between organisation problem and developer's solution.

Blending supply and demand

Most leadership development activity can be thought of as a supply-side strategy. It assumes that all will be well with the organisation if there is a sufficient supply of talented individuals. But this strategy is one-sided and neglects the demand side.

Some people interpret the demand side as equating to nothing more than the call for places on development programmes. But that is a narrow indicator. What we mean here is what the organisation's requirements are for leadership. The new model balances supply and demand action.

    © William Tate, Prometheus Consulting, 2003

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