Stumble It!
I previously wrote about transformational leadership on 6th February this year. However, two things I read recently made me reflect again on leadership style.
One was an article, “Transactional to Transformational Leadership” by Bernard M. Bass. Bass contrasted “transactional” leaders, who relied on contingent reward (do the job or don’t get paid at its most crude) and management by exception, with “transformational” leaders. Bass believed that transformational leaders achieved great results through charisma, showing individualised consideration to staff, and stimulating those staff intellectually. I have no beef with the latter two as good things for a leader to do, but I do mistrust charisma (which Bass believed could be learnt).
The second thing I read was an article about Mike Wake wasting millions and his dubious involvement with and promotion of women employees in his organisation Novas. I had the pleasure of working for Novas many years ago, and for myself and others who knew the organisation, the main surprise is that the allegations mentioned in the article took so long to come out. Mike was not a charismatic leader in the conventional understanding of the term, and Bass recognises that quiet but visionary people with a lot of determination are charismatic. Mike did intellectually stimulate and show individual consideration to employees, but as this included promoting women he had relationships with, it was a parody of the ethical transformational leader. Over a period of less than twenty years Mike Wake led his organisation from nothing to a large organisation and now, possibly, back to nothing again.
The picture at the head of this article displays the very picture of the leader that worries me. The leader is at the centre, communication is to spokes of the wheel, and the followers are not connected. Maybe this works well if the leader is a great and selfless one (met lots of those) but even then it neglects emergent potential from employees.
Bass himself recognised the potential problems of transformational leadership that is selfish or antisocial (“The Two Faces of Charismatic Leadership”, Leaders Magazine).
If there is a remedy to this, it lies in more distributed leadership. The UK government has invested much money in leadership training and development, and its big money for consultancy firms. The case of Mike Wake suggests that unless this concentrates on leaders giving away power and pushing responsibility downwards, then the Novas scenario is all too likely. My own view is that if we replace “charisma” with the redistribution of leadership throughout an organisation, then we may get better ethics and longer term success.
