On Leaderdship
There is no subject in the business or political-science realm that has genera
ted more literary output than that elusive thing called Leadership. Do a search in Amazon on the word “leadership”, and you’ll get more than 60,000 titles devoted to the subject from ludicrous “how to” manuals (style “How to Build The Leader Within You”) to political biographies sharing personal insights on this question, style Rudy Giuliani’s “Leadership”.
I have under my belt 20 years of reading books on the subject, and relating them to my personal CEO experience as well as to the observation of countless people I’ve met and interacted with. Based on that, I can now give you my bottom line conclusion: all the books I’ve read on the subject were a waste of valuable reading time !
All except one.
The one true gem of a book that has inspired me and has exhibited what I consider to be the best and most unique approach to the subject is a small, unassuming book titled “The Drama of Leadership” by Patricia Pitcher written in 1997. Patricia Pitcher is the head of the Doctoral Program of Canada’s oldest and largest business school – the Montreal Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales. I believe I’ve read, and re-read her book more than five times over the years.
What makes Pitcher’s book so compelling is the fact that she approaches the subject from an empirical way of analyzing a specific organization she’s worked with over many years, and distilling the different leadership styles she encountered (she identifies three, whom she terms Artists, Craftsmen and Technocrats). What is amazing about her analysis is her insightful penetration not just to the different behaviors of these different leadership types, but also to an analysis of their “inner worlds”: their emotional, temperamental and cognitive make up. What emerges is a wonderfully deep and rich analysis not just of how the different leaders behave the way they do, but more importantly – why. In the course of this analysis, Pitcher throws to the bin the “conventional wisdom” thinking that anyone can be a leader. She makes no excuses for stating clearly that while there are different types of leaders, all are born with, and acquire their leadership traits early in their life. She also makes no qualms about which in her mind are the “right” kind of leaders (read the book to find out).
But that is not all. After this wonderful analysis, Pitcher goes on to unfold what I believe is the climax of her book. An analysis of how these different types of leaders interact with one another. As I mentioned, her analysis follows a financial services organization she worked with for the better part of 15 years. She describes the unfolding drama of how the interaction between these types of leaders helped shape, grow and subsequently destroy this organization (Hence the title of the book). Truly a masterpiece analysis written like a great novel.
What impacted me in a powerful way was Pitcher’s depth of understanding of human nature that underlies a person’s behavior as a leader. More importantly, her analysis of the interaction between different types of leaders resonated profoundly with my personal and professional life experience, that in any human organization, what is more important than individual traits and behaviors, are the interactions between the different individuals. To me, building an organization and seeing it work through this drama of interaction, is a mystery that has no “canned” or “right way” case-study, solution or prescription. Rather each is a truly unique and almost fragile story, with the true leader being the one that manages to capture all of this individual and collective complexity and uniqueness while somehow making it work.
