Warren Bennis.
Warren Bennis has gone a long way in influencing the development of the way in which managers and leaders are viewed. His career in this instance has taken him across the fields of academics, consulting, writing, and administration.
He defines leaders in his book, On Becoming a Leader as
‘an innovator. He does things other people haven’t done or don’t do. He does things in advance of other people. He makes new things and makes old things new’
He went further in the same book in page 44 and differentiated between leaders and managers as
‘the differences between those who master the context and those who surrender to it’
‘Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing’ He also said, at length I may say in page 45 that:
In the book, Leaders: Strategies for taking charge he likened leadership to a skill which must be learnt. This assertion went against the earlier thinking that leaders were the John Wayne type, butch and macho like individuals. It brought to the fore, the idea that ordinary and everyday people like you and I could be imbued with the mystical ability to lead and inspire the desire to be led. The book was acclaimed by the Financial Times as one of the 50 business books of all time. In it he interviewed 90 ‘leaders’ in America, from diverse walks of life, but who could and have been thought to have been successful in their own ways. These were people he saw as having shown mastery over present confusion.
He found out that they had more differentiating characteristics than they had similarities. He ‘interviewed them by talking to them at length about their experiences, and from that he was able to delve into their psyche and come up with various deductions as to what made them what they were. This study was able to come up with 4 common characteristics. These were designated:
In doing this, he defined the role of a leader in a managerial sense, a somewhat contrasting view to his earlier assertion of the differences that exist between a leader and manager. This went to show in his opinion that leaders could be developed as well as being born.
His recent work, Geeks and Geezers looks at the way in which individuals are produced by the period in which they grew up or developed in, and the crucible moments in their lives. These events are life changing or transforming tests that people pass through, acting some rite of passage whereby if they learn from it, and grow in such experience they will become leaders. In the absence of creating leaders, it will motivate others to action.
In the book, On becoming a leader, he had said:
‘Most of us are shaped more by negative experiences than by positive ones. A thousand things happen in a week to each of us, but most of us remember the few lapses rather than our triumphs, because we don’t reflect’.
In looking at the assertion that people are formed by the periods in which they grow up,
In Geeks and geezers, he noted the misconception that people were laboring under, that leaders were born, there being some sort of genetic link in the make up of a leader. That you either have the ability to be a leader or you don’t. This is wrong. Being a leader, can be likened to a skill that can be learnt and developed.
He also went further and showed the difference between leaders and managers. He said that leaders do the right things, while managers do things right. Managers focus on the how-to, the bottom line and the short term. However, leaders build cultures, environments that compel self esteem.
In his work, "The Secrets of Great Groups" Leader to Leader, Bennis noted that behind every great leader there must exist a great group, making for a very effective partnership, which group is made up of a unique construct of strong, though eccentric individuals. The leaders of these groups share four common behavioral traits which are:
In studying these groups, and looking at the way in which they were working, he saw that he might have been wrong in concentrating on the role of the individual leader.
In his opinion, leadership is increasingly, a shared task, a result of co-operation, more of a partnership as opposed to leadership. This means that in his opinion, in the future, organizations will be more or less like federations, collections of semi-autonomous groups with power spread round rather than centralized.
Bibliography
In View, the journal for senior leaders in the NHS, Issue 3, September 2004
The Handy Guide to the Gurus of management, Charles Handy, BBC English, Episode 4
The Leadership Traits of the Geeks and the Geezers, Kristin Clarke, August 2003
Bennis, Warren "The Secrets of Great Groups" Leader to Leader. 3 (Winter 1997): 29-33.
Bennis, Warren "The Leadership Advantage" Leader to Leader. 12 (Spring 1999): 18-23
