In this episode, podcast host, Matt Richter is joined by Nigel Paine, organizational learning and leadership expert. Together, they spend the whole episode exploring that nebulous and vague concept of leadership. They fail to definitively lock in a definition for leadership— thus demonstrating one of the inherent challenges organizations face when leveraging LD programs. But, more importantly, they look at what we can do, when we effectively develop leaders within organizational contexts. 

Leaders are all about managing… managing the context. No one style, approach, model, theory, or consultant prescription will work in all scenarios… of at all. So, what is one to do? Focus on flexibly adapting and managing that aforementioned context. Recognize that that there are so many different perspectives— the leaders, the followers, other players, etc. And then find ways to accept and leverage those different perspectives.

In other words, leadership is utterly founded on adaptation and change. It is about systems thinking. To paraphrase Keith Grint, leadership is all about working to solve those wicked problems we face.

Nigel answers the question about how we can predict or forecast whether someone will be a good leader. 

Which then leads to a discussion of how we conceive of leadership in our culture and how we describe leadership success.

Below are some references and notes from the show:

We referenced both Barbara Kellerman and Jeffrey Pfeffer:

Kellerman, B. (2012). The End of Leadership. New York: Harper Collins. 

Kellerman, B. (2015). Hard Times: Leadership in America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 

Pfeffer, J. (2015). Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time. New York, Harper Business. 

Matt mentioned some of the Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus management comparisons reference: 

Young, M., & Dulewicz, V. (2007). Similarities and Differences between Leadership and Management: High-Performance Competencies in the British Royal Navy. British Journal of Management, 19(1), 17-32. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00534.x

And the book from them is LEADERS: Strategies for Taking Charge.

Nigel mentioned John Kotter. Here are two references that sum up his work nicely.

Kotter, J.P. (2001) What Leaders Really Do. Harvard Business Review. December 2001.

Adapted from A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs From Management (pp. 3–8), by J. P. Kotter, 1990, New York, NY: Free Press. 

General Electric’s Crotonville Leadership Institute was actually opened in 1956, not in 1947, as Nigel stated. 

We referred to Keith Grint and his article:

Grint, K. (2005). Problems, problems, problems: The social construction of ‘leadership.’ Human Relations. 58 (11), 1467-1494.

The originators of wicked and tame problems: Rittel and Webber.

Rittel, H.W.J. and Webber, M.M.. (1973) Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences. 4, pp. 155-169.

Peter Senge and The Fifth Discipline. You can find the book anywhere books are sold.

Winston Churchill. There are a ton of biographies about Churchill. Matt’s favorite’s are the William Manchester volumes. 

Neville Chamberlain reference: Self, R. (2013, September 30). Was Neville Chamberlain Really a Weak and Terrible Leader? Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24300094.

Tina Kiefer— and others—  on the drawing a Leader exercise: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/health/women-leadership-workplace.html?smid=url-share 

Joseph Devlin: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joseph-t-devlin_learningstyles-brainmyth-activity-7113156889688854528-RFWZ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop