Leadership and Decision Making
We associate leadership in business and politics with making good decisions. When someone is appointed or elected to a high-level position, we effectively empower them to make decisions for us, and we naturally expect them to make the right decisions. We want them to make decisions that serve our interests and those of our organization, state or country.
This focus on decision making, however, produces a very narrow concept of leadership, resulting from our emphasis on being at the head of a group. In reality, decisions are only made by executives or managers. Leadership is an occasional act, like creativity, not a role and is based on informal influence. Only management is a position of authority over people.
Why leadership is not a role
A great example of leadership conceived strictly as informal influence is that of Martin Luther King. When his protests led the United States Supreme Court to declare bus segregation unconstitutional, his actions led a public organization to act over which he had no formal authority. We also talk about market leadership or leading teams in sports leagues. There is also leading by example and promoting new products to your boss, which might be called bottom-up or thought leadership. None of these instances implies being in charge of those who follow, formally or informally. These are examples of pure influence, not decision making, which requires formal authority.
The key point here is that a general description of leadership, covering all the various instances mentioned above, should be restricted to the notion of “showing the way.” This ranges from simply setting an example to aggressively challenging the status quo. Al Gore, for example, is having a leadership impact on people all over the world, none of whom report to him. The impact of his influence has nothing to do with him making decisions for a group.
Why it is important to reject the narrow view
By associating leadership with decision making, we restrict this crucial concept to people who have formal authority over others. This takes power away from everyone else. The truth is that everyone can lead by promoting a better way of doing things, even on small local issues like how best to serve a customer. You can lead your boss by advocating a better way to process some data or by setting an example for your colleagues by behaving with more integrity than they do.
Why do we accept the narrow view?
Not only do we associate leadership with being in a position of power over us, but we have a psychological tendency to see leaders as father figures. This is natural enough to be comforting to do, but it amounts to an abdication on our part. Furthermore, this view is very outdated, counterproductive, and dangerous in our knowledge-driven age. Today, the power to lead is transforming into the power to generate and promote new ideas. Business has become a war of ideas and less of a contest of personalities. This is especially true in high-tech industries where executives now advocate what they call “evidence-based” decision making. This is a direct call for leadership based on solid insights rather than rousing speeches based on mere opinion. We are beginning to prefer content to style, hence the slogan “content is king”. To compete effectively, we need everyone to think and show leadership. Furthermore, to fully engage organizational talent, we urgently need to get rid of outdated concepts and theories.
What is management?
Managers occupy formal roles in organizations. They are charged with the responsibility of getting things done in the most profitable way possible through people and other resources. They are like investors, but they are also catalysts, coaches, facilitators and nurturers of people. The old-fashioned idea that managers mechanically control must be abandoned. Managers make decisions, like any other investor, to get the best return on investment from all the resources at their disposal.
Of course, managers can also lead on occasion. The key point is that they cannot monopolize leadership for the simple reason that no one has a monopoly on good ideas. In conclusion, whenever executives make decisions, they are wearing a managerial hat, not acting like a leader.