The Interviewer: |
How can the job of improving leadership itself be improved? |
William Tate: |
It's become popular to focus on developing individual leaders' skills, sometimes in a context, but often generically, like a branch of personal development. It may help those people a bit, but it rarely makes a serious difference to how well the organisation is led. |
Int.
|
Why don't those individual benefits carry through to the organisation?
|
WT |
The development 'pipe' isn't designed using the right material, so the pipe leaks 'waste' - learning not applied, leadership effort not co-ordinated, the organisation's own leadership needs not articulated, talent misdirected, systemic problems unaddressed, and so on. |
Int.
|
How can you strengthen this leadership development 'pipe' - as you call it?
|
WT |
I advise companies not to begin there. Development can certainly be improved, but it's actually the wrong place to start. If we are to construct better leadership in organisations, we need a different kind of foundation. We need a mindset that treats leadership as one of the organisation's prime assets. Like any other resource, this means leadership has to be managed as a key ingredient in the system. |
Int.
|
'Managing' leadership sounds like an oxymoron!
|
WT |
I know. It requires a systems way of thinking about leadership. This means focusing on the end of how leadership is practised - what leaders do do, not what they can do. The question becomes: What promotes, sustains, encourages and inhibits leadership right across the business? There are many ways of improving leadership. |
Int.
|
Such as?
|
WT |
You can recruit better or different kinds of leaders, reward the best and retire the worst, rejuvenate the leadership culture, hang onto talent, allocate it to key roles, remove obstacles in the path of leadership. There's a lot the organisation can do besides individual development programmes. |
Int.
|
So it's about HR getting its act together about leadership?
|
WT |
Yes, all this helps, but there are even more fundamental issues. The organisation has to ask itself what it wants leadership for? That is too important a question to delegate to individual managers or to trainers and developers. Learning to do things right is not enough; leaders need to do the right things. That doesn't just happen by itself. It takes a wider dialogue. |
Int.
|
Is it about the culture, then?
|
WT |
The leadership culture. And values and power. The leaders may have too much power or too little. 'Power over' may dominate instead of 'power with'. The leadership culture may not be serving the needs of the business. Some stakeholders may be missing out. There may be too few checks and balances, or too many. These issues need to be looked at. |
Int.
|
Is HR involved in this too?
|
WT |
Why not? The whole of HR should be acting in a joined-up way to improve leadership practice. Ensuring that the right kind of leadership talent gets promoted. Making sure tired leaders get moved on. Stopping the waste of talent. Improving the leadership culture. Removing obstacles to leadership. Making the hierarchy work better. Asking 'how will the business's need for leadership be different tomorrow?' Challenging the leadership norms. And building collective leadership competence to manage change. |
Int.
|
How does this affect development?
|
WT |
Development ceases to be an arm's-length activity. It gets a different mandate from the organisation. And it is held to account in a different way. |
Int.
|
How does The Organisational Leadership Audit help with this?
|
WT |
It enables an organisation to think and plan its way though these issues, using a set of diagnostic questionnaires. These can be used privately, but the best way is in workshops, fostering dialogue, building consensus and galvanising support for change. |
