Polarities of leadership

To me, leadership is primarily about achieving the optimal balance between the various polarities in organizational life.

You are a leader if you can find the right balance between polarities like

1. Being confident & making a vulnerable connection
2. Providing hope & being realistic
3. Driving change & maintaining stability
4. Shaping the organization culture (and the definition of 'good' in the organization) & adjusting to the organization culture
5. Taking too much risk & taking too little risk
6. Focusing on the long term & responding to immediate challenges
7. Taking charge & letting others take charge
8. Maintaining a broad perspective & developing micro-awareness
9. Being consistent & being  flexible
10. Organization building & creative destruction
11. Acting based on who you are as an organization & acting based on what the environment demands
12. Holding on & moving on

The ‘right balance’ is highly context specific. It is also a dynamic balance/equilibrium as opposed to a static one(In a state of static equilibrium there is balance, but no change or movement - that exists in the case of dynamic equilibrium.  For example, a chair has static equilibrium while a bicycle in motion has dynamic equilibrium). Again, the equilibrium point is an evolving one - based on the evolution of the leader, followers and the organization.

All in all, it is quite a moving target & that is why it is so difficult to ‘train in’ leadership. While useful inputs/helpful experiences/coaching can be provided, leadership capability emerges in a non-linear fashion in the being of a person based on years of struggle with the polarities mentioned above! Of course, all the organizational issues are not ‘polarities’ and  one of the necessary conditions for leadership to emerge is the ability to differentiate between ‘a polarity to be managed’ & ‘a problem to be solved’!!

So, what do you think? If the 'work of leadership' is conceptualized mainly as 'achieving dynamic balance between polarities in organizational life', what does it mean for (a) leaders, (b) for team members (c) for organizations & (d) leadership development?

Note:  Since we have defined the work of leadership in terms of  'achieving optimal balance between polarities in organizational life', it would be interesting look at this 'optimal balance' in more detail. It is not about 'compromise' between the two poles (like a consistent score of 3 in a 1 to 5 scale-with 1 representing one pole and 5 representing the other). It is more about being a '1', '2', '3', '4' or '5'  based on the situation. Strangely, it also involves  transcending the scale by (as Pirsig says) catching the bull (polarity) by both its horns (poles) & even singing the bull to sleep. It is not about being 'timid' and avoiding strong decisions/behavior. It is about the ability to display a wide spectrum of responses and the courage to choose the appropriate response based on the situation. The courage also involves the willingness to explain why a particular choice was made in a particular situation - so that the behavioral flexibility won't become confusing to the team (i.e. variation in responses has to be accompanied by consistency at the level of underlying principles of choosing particular responses in a particular situations & these principles have to be communicated to the team - otherwise this flexibility will come across as inconsistency). Yes, this also involves taking feedback/admitting one's mistakes and revising one's mental map when required. Deep understanding & trust about the leader (i.e. understanding 'who he is' in terms of the principles governing his actions) - developed over a period of time - will obviate the need to explain everything every time! It is said that 'sometimes, who you are speaks so loudly that people can't hear what you are saying'!

Developing this kind  of behavioral range, that too across the many polarities in organizational life, takes a lot of development (psychological/spiritual growth) on the part of the leader. Please note that displaying a wide range of behaviors can put a lot of pressure on the leader's psyche as it involves  'holding multiple sets of diametrically opposite ideas in the mind at the same time' and constantly adjusting the balance/(as it is about dynamic balance as opposed to static balance). Yes, this development/growth (like all psychological growth) can be taxing as it demands regularly stretching one's boundaries. No -this does not mean that there is no room for the natural self/style of the leader, as it is about expanding the self as opposed to developing towards some (standard) 'ideal self'. Yes - it usually takes significant amount of time. But, we need to keep in mind that this development is a matter of degree & that different people learn at different speeds. So, investing in increasing one' ability to 'derive learning/growth from experience' becomes critical - especially for young leaders!!

Followership behaviors of leaders

A few years ago, while I was working with one of my previous employers, I got an opportunity to attend a 'global HR leadership team meeting' of that company. This meeting brought together senior HR leaders of the company from various countries and from the corporate office. Though the main purpose of my participation in the meeting was to lead a working session (on an initiative that I was managing at that time), it also gave me a great opportunity to observe the HR leaders of the company for three days.

What struck me the most was the 'followership behaviors' of some of these leaders (i.e. their behavior pattern when they are interacting with leaders who are even more senior than them). In quite a few cases this was very different from their behavior in those situations where they were the senior most person present. The supreme confidence and aggressiveness that were often present in their behavior in the latter case were completely absent when they were in the presence of leaders who are more senior than them. Initially, this difference caused some amount of 'dissonance' in my mind. But it helped me to develop a more realistic/balanced understanding of these people as individuals and also of their degree of power/influence/importance in the organization. This proved to be very helpful in working more effectively with these leaders later.

I do wonder how much difference is there between the 'leadership' and 'followership' behaviors of most people. May be we can say that the difference is there in the case of most people (this is a common phenomena among primates !) and that the difference becomes more 'noticeable' in the case of people who are in leadership positions in organizations (or at least that people who have seen these leaders in action in both the 'leadership' and 'followership' roles tend to notice quite a bit of difference). Of course, this difference is a matter of degree and in the case of some of the leaders there won't be a significant difference in the behavior. It might also be that the difference would be more in the case of more hierarchical organizations (and in the case of more 'authoritarian leaders').

An even more interesting question is whether it is 'OK' to have a difference between one's 'leadership behavior pattern' and 'followership behavior pattern'. I feel that some amount of difference is 'normal' - in the statistical sense of the term (i.e. fitting into a normal distribution). I do feel that a very high degree of difference (resembling 'split personality') is not desirable - especially when the difference in behavior is used to manipulate one's subordinates and/or superiors.


All of us are leaders and followers. It can be argued that 'leadership' and 'followership' are present in all of us and that one of them ('leadership' or 'followership') becomes 'active' in a particular situation. This leads to some interesting questions. To what extent is 'leadership' and 'followership' a choice of the individual concerned? Is this always a conscious choice? To what extent does the situation influence this choice? If we treat leadership as an 'emergent phenomenon' can one do anything to improve one's chances of 'emerging' as a leader?

Any answers/thoughts/comments?