This book is an active guide to leadership rather than a stock of knowledge. It has a simple message: if you wish to contribute to leadership … … discover the most significant challenges facing your organisation, decide what needs to be done, and do something that leads to a useful outcome. If asked to think of times when we were proud of ourselves, most of us can give examples of when we took the lead. These stories may come from work, or family life or outside work activities, but they all tend to be about times when we did something useful in difficult or testing situations.
A Manager’s Guide to Leadership Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page i Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page ii A Manager’s Guide to Leadership An action learning approach SECOND EDITION Mike Pedler, John Burgoyne, Tom Boydell London Boston Burr Ridge, IL Dubuque, IA Madison, WI New York San Francisco St. Louis Bangkok Bogotá Caracas Kuala Lumpur Lisbon Madrid Mexico City Milan Montreal New Delhi Santiago Seoul Singapore Sydney Taipei Toronto Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page iii Published by: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Shoppenhangers Road, Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, SL6 2QL Telephone: 44 (0) 1628 502500 Fax: 44 (0) 1628 770224 Website: www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2010 Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell. All rights reserved. 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A Manager’s Guide to Leadership Second Edition ISBN 13: 978-0-07-712884-5 ISBN 10: 0-07-712884-2 Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page iv Acknowledgements vii Preface: how to use this book ix Part 1: The Challenges, Context and Characteristics of Leadership 1 Chapter 1 Leadership: what is it and are you part of it? 3 Chapter 2 The challenges of leadership 13 Chapter 3 The context of leadership 85 Chapter 4 The characteristics of leadership 97 Part 2: 7 Leadership Practices 111 Chapter 5 Practice 1: Leading yourself 115 Chapter 6 Practice 2: Being on purpose 133 Chapter 7 Practice 3: Power 158 Chapter 8 Practice 4: Risk 186 Chapter 9 Practice 5: Challenging questions 209 Chapter 10 Practice 6: Facilitation 232 Chapter 11 Practice 7: Networking 254 Part 3: Developing Leadership 283 Chapter 12 Developing leadership in individuals and organisations 285 Index 313 Contents Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page v Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page vi There are many people who have contributed to this book. Thanks to all of these, including our reviewers, who freely gave of their ideas, helped us to get stories straight and gave permission to use them. Two people merit special mention for their contributions to this extensively revised second edition: ■ Phil Radcliff for his championing of the importance of context in leadership. ■ Tony Roycroft for his pioneering work with the 7 leadership practices. Acknowledgements Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page vii Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page viii This book is an active guide to leadership rather than a stock of knowledge. It has a simple message: if you wish to contribute to leadership … … discover the most significant challenges facing your organisation, decide what needs to be done, and do something that leads to a useful outcome. If asked to think of times when we were proud of ourselves, most of us can give examples of when we took the lead. These stories may come from work, or family life or outside work activities, but they all tend to be about times when we did something useful in difficult or testing situations. Leadership is a doing thing; a performance art. It is not defined by any set of personal qualities or competencies, but by what we actually do when faced with a challenge. Challenges come from life and work, from the wider world and from our own questions about ourselves. Leadership is what we do when we acknowledge and respond to these challenges. Why is leadership so important now? If your organisation has only one leader, then it is almost certainly short of leadership. Gerard Egan Leadership is likely to be playing a more important part in your life now because it has become a matter of pressing importance for organisations, communities and societies. Good leadership overlaps with, but is different from, good management. Management efficiency and effectiveness have long been the hallmarks of organisational success; but this is no longer enough. Something else is needed. Preface: how to use this book Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page ix Whether you work in a hospital or a large company, in a school or a local business, you have probably noticed this new concern with leadership. Your boss is talking about it, the government says how important it is, the newspapers deplore the lack of it – and you may even be the receiving end of initiatives to improve it. What people are saying is that: ■ Organisations are massively challenged by change and need more leadership. ■ Good managers are always important, but it is the ability to lead in the conditions of uncertainty, confusion and risk that makes the vital difference. ■ In the past leadership has been seen as the preserve of the few; today leadership is needed “at all levels" and “on every part of the pitch”. Most organisations and communities are short on this sort of widely distributed leadership. Leadership development programmes have been established, but tend to focus on the next set of top people. The talents and potentials of the great majority of people remain neglected. Taking part in leadership Leadership is … the collective capacity to create something useful. Peter Senge The talents of the many are ignored because of a strongly entrenched view that leadership is the preserve of the few. The potential for leadership is widely distributed among people. Organisations and communities are full of talented individuals, but they do not always work well together. The challenges we face demand the concerted efforts of everyone in the situation. Enabling talented people to work better together is a critical leadership task in itself. To achieve the collective capacity to create useful things, we need a different image of leadership: one that emphasises the individual as connected to others in a collective effort. The unit of analysis for leadership is not the heroic individual, nor the undifferentiated community: it is the connected individual creating a better world in good company. x A Manager’s Guide to Leadership Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page x [...]... it is important to work out what might work for you and your colleagues, and what might be sustained Leadership and learning are closely connected Following new paths leads to exploration, discovery and learning In the learning organisation, leadership can be defined as learning on behalf of the organisation Is Challenge 2: creating a learning organisation a challenge for you and your colleagues? If... grow weary, that vital working and learning energy can get lost Learning organisations make conscious efforts to retain this energy: A learning company is an organisation that facilitates the learning of all its members and consciously transforms itself and its context (Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell, 1997, p 3) Today there are huge pressures on leadership to deliver demanding performance goals, to deal... find materials that will help you move towards it This is not a book to be read respectfully from front to back, but a guide to action So use it to pick and choose, pick and mix, and to take from it whatever you want and can apply Pedler01v3_01 20/04/10 14:40 Page 9 Leadership: what is it and are you part of it? Making MAJOR CHANGE Developing DIRECTION AND STRATEGY 9 Creating a LEARNING ORGANISATION... ways Here are four stories, all responses to the question “How is your business a learning organisation?”: In this company we have declared that we are going to be a learning organisation Not only this but that we are going to be a world class learning organisation! We have a learning table” at lunchtimes – where you can have a free lunch but you have to talk about learning in some way to the other... respond to challenges It is thus a performance art; measured by what we do in this situation, here and now, and not what we are or what we know I The Context domain means that leadership is always situated: always done here, in a specific location, with particular people In this way, acts of leadership are always local and what works here and now, may not work in another place and time It follows that there... Theory and Rhetoric of the Learning Society, which takes some of those ideas further A specifically relational view of leadership is Sue Gilly’s (1997) A Different View of Organizational Learning, which can be found at http://home.flash.net/~jteague/Sue/orglearn.html For a more academic and critical treatment try: Wang and Ahmed’s “Organizational Learning: a critical review”, The Learning Organization... Chapter 2 and Chapter 9, and generally act as a guiding philosophy for this take on leadership How to use this book This book aims to be a useful and friendly guide to leadership It encourages you to take action and to learn from that experience to develop yourself, your colleagues and your organisation The self-development and action learning philosophy of the book is apparent in the diagnostic activities... this approach has become clearer Action learning encourages us to resolve our own problems, by cautioning against reliance on experts or saviours and stressing the importance of allies, colleagues and friends Leadership means moving towards difficult and challenging situations, and not avoiding them, even when we have no clear idea of how to proceed Without action there is no leadership, and, without learning, ... activities and tools which carry the message: “here is a challenge – appraise it, act on it and learn from it” All the chapters in this book are designed as provocations and calls to action and learning, and not as comprehensive or exhaustive treatments of these major themes of twenty-first century organisational life Whole books and even literatures are available on each of these themes and it is not... intention to replace or rival these offerings Such encyclopaedic treatments rarely act as spurs to action Our purpose is to encourage action as a means of generating learning in those leadership situations of uncertainty and confusion where no ready-made solution is to hand In such situations it is action that creates the information, and learning that enables the next intelligent step Each of these chapters . most important leadership challenges, together with an action learning process to help you to address any challenge. xii A Manager’s Guide to Leadership Pedler00v3_00. A Manager’s Guide to Leadership Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page i Pedler00v3_00 21/04/10 09:39 Page ii A Manager’s Guide to Leadership An action