Sunday, April 19, 2009

The leadership sandwich

This is a 'thinking aloud' kind of post. Usually, I find it difficult to do 'thinking aloud' kind of activities. My reasons (rationalizations!) for this revolve around my personality type (INTJ or 'Dominant Introverted Intuition' - in MBTI/'type dynamics' terms). Of late, I have been reading some books written by Alan Watts and I came across the the following "It is surely a kind of spiritual pride to refrain from 'thinking out loud', and to be unwilling to let a thesis appear in print until you are prepared to champion it to the death. Philosophy, like science, is a social function, for a man cannot think rightly alone, and a philosopher must publish his thought as much to learn from criticism as to contribute to the sum of wisdom." Inspired by this, I have decided to write this post.

The trigger for this post came from some of the conversations that I have been having with my son (the same guy who was the main character in my earlier post called 'Research and a three-year-old' - though he is now seven years old!). During the last academic year, he got his first taste of 'being a leader' - when he was made the 'leader' of his group/class on certain occasions/ for certain events and he has been sharing his experiences as a 'leader' - both good and bad -with me. These discussions about the 'leadership experiences' of a seven-year-old, made me remember a curious thing that I had noticed about the roles and designations - especially in IT/ITES organizations.

In these organizations, often there is a level called 'Team Leader' that appears - just above that of a Team Member - but below that of a 'Team Manager' or 'Project Manager'. Beginning with the Team Manager/Project Manager level, there are multiple levels of 'Managers'. But after these 'managerial levels', 'Leaders' (e.g. Business Leaders) again make an appearance. So we have a curious situation - we have managers 'sandwiched' by leaders. Hence the 'leadership sandwich' which forms the title of this post.

Now let me come back to the 'thinking aloud' part. I was wondering why this 'leadership sandwich' occurs. Why do we have levels/roles with the term 'Leader' in the title on both the sides of the levels/roles with the term 'Manager' in the title? Since too much have already been written about the 'Leaders Vs. Managers debate', I have no intention to get too deep into that tricky territory. But these kind of 'sandwich' situations interest me immensely - because I feel that some phenomenon similar to that of the 'U-curve' (which I have often written about and which is very close to the basic theme of this blog) might be operating here. In such cases something starts in one state - moves to the opposite state - and then comes back to the original state at a higher plane (creating a 'U' - shaped pattern). So I was wondering if 'Leadership' also follows such a 'U' - shaped pattern!

May be we can get a clue to the (leadership sandwich) puzzle if we compare the role of a Team Leader with that of a Team Manager. Typically, a Team Leader does not have formal authority (e.g. to hire, fire, evaluate and reward staff). So a Team Leader is forced to influence (get the work done) without formal authority. Team Managers (and the multiple levels of Managers above them) do have formal authority. Of course, the 'Leaders' who are at higher levels as compared to these 'Managers' also have formal authority - much more than what these 'Managers' have. But may be these senior 'Leaders' are supposed to influence (get the work done) without exercising their formal authority, though they do have a lot of formal authority. May be they are supposed to do the influencing in 'better/higher ways' (e.g. by creating an inspiring vision, by building a high performance culture etc.). So if we can say that "Team Leaders influence without formal authority because they don't have any formal authority and Business Leaders influence without formal authority because they choose not to exercise their formal authority" - then we have the description of a phenomenon that follows the U-curve - that too perfectly!

Now, let us come back to the second part of what Alan Watts said - the part which says that 'a man cannot think rightly alone and that he should publish his thought to to learn from criticism'. I have done the publishing! Over to you for your criticism!!

6 comments:

  1. since you invited criticism, here's one: is it a case of finding a pattern where none exists.

    still,'thinking aloud', many things in life catch our attention and invite our awe initially (e.g. the phenomenon of love). then we become 'mature' and having gained some experience (or cynicism), our belief in such concepts changes/dilutes...we find ourselves in the thick of life 'managing' things. and then, suddenly, some people overcome years of conditioning to rediscover jettisoned concepts like love (and leadership!)
    we can call it the 'U' curve or coming full circle, but i guess the journey is necessary

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the comment.

    I am not sure if you are disputing the ‘existence of the pattern’ or just the term that I had used to describe the pattern. I am of the opinion that it is often difficult to determine whether a ‘pattern really exists’ and even more difficult to determine what (if anything) that pattern means. It has been argued that reality itself is a social construct - ‘existence or non-existence of patterns’ included!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think the reason why we have the U is simple ... a leader is supposed to lead you from getting from where you are [point A] to another point B. This is true of a team leader or project leader [complete Project A by such & such date], or a business leader [generate Rs.X cr of revenue for FW2009-10].
    Managers on the other hand have to manage the team before you start the journey, during the journey, and after the termination [natural or unnatural] of the journey while the business leaders are deciphering the next journey to undertake.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I typically hate commenting, but i thought i would give it a go for this blog. Been reading your stuff for awhile.

    ReplyDelete