Leadership is being examined in all its facets these days. An entire issue of the Harvard Business Review was devoted to it last month. Books galore explore the many sides of this phenomenon central to any organization, embodied in people who are, as John Kotter has said, able to produce "extremely useful change."
Recently this discussion has centered around the ability of a leader to discourage subordinates who always say "yes" to her opinions, regardless of their value, by surrounding herself with those who are able to speak out. Lynn Offerman, writing in the HBR, suggests to the CEO that "one simple test of whether you're getting the feedback you need is to count how many employees challenge you at your next meeting."
If leadership is all about fostering useful change, it is a hard, complex task requiring an almost messianic set of beliefs and the ability to communicate them in convincing ways. For a classic example of this, read Robert Caro's prize-winning biography of builder Robert Moses who transformed the cityscape of New York City. Having achieved what we often call "buy in" to a set of ideas on a broad scale, why should we expect a leader to be able to address the downside of buy in, which some have come to regard as "groupthink," the creation of a dynamic in which members of a team only reinforce the leader's judgement, biases, and ego. This is especially true if groupthink may in some ways be a means to a worthy end. In Moses' case, he would brook no contrary ideas in amassing the power needed to fight bureaucracy and red tape while he built parks and bridges that were the envy of the world as well as elevated highways that blighted neighborhoods for generations. He was a master of groupthink. Perhaps he had to be.
Remedies have been suggested. Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries suggests the importance of a leader's creating a foil for his ideas, possibly by insuring the development of an "organizational fool," as in the wise fool in King Lear. Andrea Jung, CEO of Avon Products, says that her children provide this kind of feedback for her. Saj-Nicole Joni, in an article in the upcoming issue of HBR, suggests the need for a third opinion offered by someone either psychologically or organizationally shielded from the CEO. It is a role that Jack Welch is striving to play in his post-CEO life.
Fighting groupthink is probably just as worthy an endeavor as attaining buy in. But what are the risks in fighting groupthink for the leader and his subordinates? What's the likelihood that it can delay or destroy an important and useful change effort? What are the risks for the subordinate in dealing with a leader not always able to separate judgements regarding the quality of contrary ideas from those concerning personality traits of the person advancing them? (For example, is one reason why MBAs are sometimes regarded as arrogant the fact that they practice their training and present useful contrary views?) What do your personal experiences tell you about these questions? What has worked for you? What hasn't worked? Why? What do you think?
Sources referenced in this article are:
John P. Kotter, A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management (New York: The Free Press, 1990)
Lynn R. Offerman, "When Followers Become Toxic," Harvard Business Review, January, 2004, pp. 54-60.
Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, "Putting Leaders on the Couch: A Conversation with Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries," Harvard Business Review, January, 2004, pp. 64-71.
Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1974)
"Leading by Feel," Harvard Business Review, January, 2004, pp. 27-37.
Saj-Nicole Joni, "The Geography of Trust," Harvard Business Review, March, 2004 (forthcoming) and The Third Opinion: How Successful Leaders Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results (New York: Portfolio/Penguin Putnam, 2003).