No one leader can be all things to all people.
We’ve come to expect a lot of our leaders. Top executives, the thinking goes, should have the intellectual capacity to make sense of unfathomably complex issues, the imaginative powers to paint a vision of the future that generates everyone’s enthusiasm, the operational know-how to translate strategy into concrete plans, and the interpersonal skills to foster commitment to undertakings that could cost people’s jobs should they fail.
We’ve worked with hundreds of people who have struggled under the weight of the myth of the complete leader. Over the past six years, our work at the MIT Leadership Center has included studying leadership in many organizations and teaching the topic to senior executives, middle managers, and MBA students.
2. Involve others in your sensemaking. Say what you think you are seeing, and check with people who have different perspectives from yours. When John Reed was CEO of Citibank, the company found itself in a real estate crisis. At the time, common wisdom said that Citibank would need to take a $2 billion write-off, but Reed wasn’t sure. He wanted a better understanding of the situation, so to map the problem, he met with federal regulators as well as his managers, the board, potential investors, economists, and real estate experts.
2. Encourage others to voice their opinions. What do they care about? How do they interpret what’s going on? Why? Effective relating does not mean avoiding interpersonal conflict altogether. Argyris and Schon found that “maintaining a smooth surface” of conviviality and apparent agreement is one of the most common defensive routines that limits team effectiveness. Balancing inquiring and advocating is ultimately about showing respect, challenging opinions, asking tough questions, and taking a stand.
Visioning involves creating compelling images of the future. While sensemaking charts a map of what is, visioning produces a map of what could be and, more important, what a leader wants the future to be. It consists of far more than pinning a vision statement to the wall. Indeed, a shared vision is not a static thing—it’s an ongoing process. Like sensemaking, visioning is dynamic and collaborative, a process of articulating what the members of an organization want to create together.
3. Expect that not all people will share your passion. Be prepared to explain why people should care about your vision and what can be achieved through it. If people don’t get it, don’t just turn up the volume. Try to construct a shared vision. They used metaphors and clear imagery to convey the various paths in language that was easy to understand. One negative scenario, for instance, was dubbed “Ostrich”: A nonrepresentative white government sticks its head in the sand, trying to avoid a negotiated settlement with the black majority.
To realize a new vision, people usually can’t keep doing the same things they’ve been doing. They need to conceive, design, and put into practice new ways of interacting and organizing. Some of the most famous examples of large-scale organizational innovation come from the automotive industry: Henry Ford’s conception of the assembly-line factory and Toyota’s famed integrated production system.
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