I have been in the military for nearly two decades and have followed many leaders throughout my career. To this day, I contemplate about memorable supervisors in an effort to gain a fundamental understanding of why they did some of the things they did. I remember them for different reasons and even try to emulate the qualities I most admired from each one. Amongst the great ones, I also remember the bad, the indifferent, and those who often times made me wonder how they even got to influential leadership positions in the first place. I have worked for the anecdotal natural born leaders, others who appeared well trained and some who were simply the by-product their superior’s power and influence.
Leadership traits were of high interest throughout the 20th century, and their studies resulted in “great man” theories that focused on identifying characteristics and qualities possessed by great leaders (Northouse, 2016). Scholars suggested that social, political and military leaders all had similar innate traits that only “great” people were born with. Throughout the years, characteristics such as intelligence, confidence, motivation and sociability have been linked to leadership effectiveness. Indeed, I have come across the charismatic supervisor who effortlessly outshines others, and excels at most things as if it all simply comes “naturally” to them. They certainly appear to be born, natural leaders who people gravitate to as if they had no other choice.
On the other hand, I have also had supervisors whose leadership skills were sharpened by experience, education and coaching from mentors who deliberately focused on their development as military leaders. Albeit effective, leadership did not seem to come natural to them; instead, they had a polished approach that often times seemed scripted but was effective nonetheless. In contrast to the “great man” theories that suggest leaders are born, the skills approach to leadership focuses on capabilities that can be learned and developed. More recently, Mumford and colleagues developed a skill-based model of leadership using the results of a study founded by the U.S. Army and the Department of Defense. They concluded that capabilities can be developed through education and experience, and that problem-solving skills, social judgement skills, and knowledge can account for effective leadership performance (Northouse, 2016). Leadership is therefore, or perhaps, something that many people can do and not an opportunity only reserved for the gifted few.
Often times, my most memorable supervisors integrated traits such as intelligence and confidence with acquired skills such as knowledge and problem-solving. However, I also worked for ineffective “leaders” who had neither traits nor skill but held a key position assigned by someone with greater influence and power to make it happen. I once heard the term “legacy child”, which referred to someone whose father was a high-ranking officer in the military. As such, he had been vectored or “chosen” for jobs that would likely catapult him up the military chain of command even if he lacked the skills or abilities to lead high-performing teams. I now realize that instead of skills, some people can learn and exhibit the right behaviors to come across as an effective leader in front of others.
The behavioral approach to leadership focuses on the actions of the leader, on what they do and how they act (Northouse, 2016). There are five basic styles: 1) country-club management, 2) team management, 3) middle-of-the-road management, 4) impoverished management, and 5) authority-compliance management. Furthermore, there is another concept under this theory that encompasses all five styles. Opportunism, according to Northouse (2016), refers to someone “who uses a combination of the five basic styles for the purpose of personal advancement (pg 77).” It is likely that some legacy children and others in the military may see, learn and exhibit behaviors to gain personal advancement. Consequently, they are chosen for jobs they do not deserve and placed into positions for which they are ill prepared.
Decades of experience have taught me that we must learn as much from the bad leaders as we do from the good. Through the study of leadership, I have fortunately gained a better understanding of how and why my most memorable supervisors acted the way they did to effectively lead and manage their teams. Like other things, leadership is something people may be naturally good at, but that doesn’t negate the fact that we must also be intentional in honing the skills and abilities we need to become better, more effective leaders.
References
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.
Antonio,
I enjoyed your blog post regarding born, made, or poorly chosen leaders. I was able to relate to many of the points that you wrote about. While, not in the military, I have been exposed to both good and bad leaders throughout my career. I think we all learn and grow from great leaders. We try to mimic their actions so that we can improve our leadership skills. The one area of your post that had me thinking was what I have learned from weak leaders.
If I think back over my career and think about the leaders in my opinion that have been poor, one thing stands out, they don’t respect their teams, and they try too hard to be a people pleaser. Being a leader over a group of people is hard work. When you have a leader that is trying to please everyone, typically, the team fails and defeats for the leader. It is easy to fall into the people-pleaser trap. Two key takeaways that I read about for leaders who are also people-pleasers were the inability to make decisions when needed and lack of making them with confidence, and handle problem employees like a boss versus being their friend (Kislik, 2019).
As I think of these weak leaders, I have encountered and the two takeaways, what I learned in our lessons about the skills-approach models comes to mind. The Three Skills Model outlined by Katz (1995) describes the necessary skills of a leader defined in three categories: Technical, Human, and Conceptual (PSU, L4, 2019). As people enter the workforce, most are hired for their technical abilities. As they work for a company and learn more, they start to hone their people skills. Lastly, as people are promoted to higher positions, they start visualizing how they came to make the company grow, or their conceptual skills are improved. So, do people-pleasers somehow fail in the second phase of this model? I believe the argument could be fought either way. A people pleaser can be too empathic, whereas a leader with no people skills is also not a good leader. The vital step in becoming a great leader of people is understanding the need to have a relationship with your team but also knowing when you need to be a boss and how to wear both hats effectively.
Thank you for your service, as well as providing a thought-provoking post on how I need to make sure my people skills are on point when working on my future leadership skills.
Reference:
Kislik, L. (2019, April 24). How to make sure you’re leading when you’re a people-pleaser. Retrieved October 06, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizkislik/2019/04/23/how-to-make-sure-youre-leading-when-youre-a-people-pleaser/#6e1a6992fb28
Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). PSYCH 485 Lesson 02: skills approach. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008237/modules/items/27074636
Hello Tony,
Your blog resonated with me for the obvious reason that we are both in the military and I have had a very similar experience in my career regarding memorable leaders for both positive and negative reasons. I never recognized the true potential of quality leadership until I witnessed a commander who pushed our squadron to excel beyond what I thought was possible. Although I had tried to emulate his and other inspirational leadership styles before, I never quite found success when leading my teams. I realize now this is because I was not seeing the larger picture with regards to leadership and all of its intricacies. As noted by Northouse (2016), the leadership process is “far more sophisticated and complex than the often-simplistic view” (p. 1).
In your post you talked about the behavioral approach to leadership and the concept presented in Blake and Mouton’s Leadership Grid model regarding opportunism. As mentioned by both you and Northouse (2016), “an opportunistic leader will adapt and shift his or her leadership behavior to gain personal advantage, putting self-interest ahead of other priorities” (p. 77). I think this could be expanded on by applying the psychodynamic approach to leadership regarding reactive narcissists. These are leaders that are “fixated on issues of power, status, prestige, and superiority” (Northouse, 2016, p. 305). As we can see the two descriptions of opportunistic leaders and reactive narcissistic leaders seem to parallel. The psychodynamic theory expands on reactive narcissists as being driven by the need to rectify perceived childhood inequities, usually as a result of excessive, deficient, or inconsistent stimulation (Northouse, 2016). Therefore, the psychodynamic approach may help to provide an explanation for the underlying motivation regarding leaders whose primary style is best described as opportunistic. This may also help to explain what you’ve observed in the leaders you described as legacy-children. As you and I both know, service in the military encompasses personal sacrifices, especially when it comes to service commitments that keep us from our family. As you can imagine that commitment is greater for high ranking military leaders, which could have a detrimental effect on their children’s upbringing, creating underlying and unconscious motivations for them as adults. This psychodynamic perspective may have further implications on the leadership styles of legacy-children.
Blake and Mouton’s Leadership Grid model gave indications that people will have a dominate style and a back-up style (Northouse, 2016, p. 78). The backup style is what these leaders leverage when their primary method does not work for them and their stress and pressure is thereby increased (Northouse, 2016). I would imagine this would be the case for those leaders you had observed who utilized an opportunistic leadership style to achieve placement in positions for which they were not well prepared. The psychodynamic approach to leadership may help provide some insight as to why this occurs. The psychoanalytical perspective gives light to the idea of regression and how individuals under stress will revert back to previously learned behaviors during earlier stages of development (Lokko & Stern, 2015). We can see this in social defense mechanisms, when as a result of improperly managed organizational anxieties, “people may act out and engage in regressive social defenses to transform and neutralize strong tensions” (Northouse, 2016, p. 303). Therefore, when these leaders are put in positions to which their primary leadership behavior is counter-productive or ill suited, the increase in stress will drive them to revert to a back-up leadership style which may reflect regressive behaviors and give indications of their underlying motivations.
The behavioral approach is designed to enlighten leaders by helping them to understand the major components of their leadership behavior (Northouse, 2016). Clearly the psychodynamic approach can provide a deeper level of insight into the underlying motivations that drive these leadership behaviors, increasing our understanding of the behavioral approach. This is just one example of how the process of leadership is far more complex than any single approach might offer. As you alluded to in your post, we need to be intentional in our efforts to be effective leaders if we are to be successful. Therefore, if I want to be a successful and effective leader, I must do more than just emulate inspirational leaders; I’ll need a deeper and holistic understanding of why those leaders are successful.
References:
Northouse, P.G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice (7th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Lokko, H. N., & Stern, T. A. (2015, May 14). Regression: Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Management. The Primary Care Companion for CNS Disorders, 17(3). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4578899/