Defining Leadership

Defining Leadership

by Irving H. Buchen

A majority of human resource directors surveyed recently confessed they would be hard pressed to agree on what leadership is -- although they agree that leadership training and recruiting is one of their top priorities. The task of assessing leadership -- and defining it -- is difficult for many reasons, but HR is uniquely positioned to minister to its definition and development.

Suppose an M.B.A. executive-degree program or widely known international leadership institute described the exact type of leader its students should become - and then successfully transformed them to that profile. Would that entice you to sign up?

While it's likely such a prospect would be couched in attorney-reviewed language to avoid lawsuits, it nevertheless appeals to a need that is not only deep-seated but is documented. The Global Leadership Forecast (2008/09) by Development Dimensions International surveyed 12,208 business executives and 1,493 human resource professionals across 76 countries. What did it find? Predictable and unpredictable patterns. Three-quarters (75 percent) of the executives linked their success as leaders to that of their organizations. At the same time, they designated their top priority as improving leadership performance.

But surprisingly, the majority of human resource directors confessed that they would be hard pressed to agree on what leadership is, although they conceded that leadership training and recruiting was one of their top priorities.

The definition of leadership remains elusive and tantalizing. It's like some sacred territory where only angels do not fear to tread. It's a place those who aspire to it and those charged with recruiting it, regard as a no man's land.

The reason the M.B.A. or leadership institute proposal is attractive is that it taps into and satisfies an unmet deep-seated and powerful need. And it does not beat around the bush. While others dance around, flirt, mimic or subliminally suggest an outcome that is promised but never delivered, this program explicitly and overtly offers what students of leadership and working professionals really want - a fixed profile of a leader.

Why is it so difficult to define leadership? Why can't the experts define what they are experts of? What prevents professors from providing each student with his or her own precise, explicit and individual leadership profile? Or failing that, why can't they at least facilitate the process by offering case studies of leadership definition?

There are a number of revealing reasons for the reluctance.

The first is obvious: No one is willing to take the responsibility for making that kind of decision and accepting the consequences of being wrong. Therapists and executive coaches guide; they do not decide.

Second, the standard excuse: It is too complicated and involves too many variables. Besides, it has to be both generic and customizable.

Third, academicians are not only aware of this Pandora's Box, but also contribute to its content with the never-ending research of their doctoral students. Thus, a bewildering list of variables has been assembled: DNA, birth order, birth place, siblings, height, fathers/mothers, mentors, therapists, role models, history, timing, luck, right place at the right time, etc. And, for good measure - and to be safe - all of the above.

Ironically, far from advancing the process, knowing more about leadership seems to have impeded development of a definition. So many qualifiers seem to result in paralysis, rather than analysis.

But, perhaps, the most inhibiting reason is that research has shown that leaders evolve and change over time, with such change sometimes triggered or hastened by particular external events or personal life changes.

In other words, the decision of what kind of leader to be is not made once and for all time. It is a work in progress.

And yet, tigers generally don't change their stripes. An individual's original profile still may persist over time.

So where does this leave HR? We are left with questions: Who shall undertake leadership definition? How can the reluctance of HR be overcome so that leadership development and its definition are aligned more tightly together? How can HR become more knowledgeable and become an integral part of that process.

Clearly, only potential leaders can decide their own fate. It is essentially a do-it-yourself task - but it needs another more objective pair of eyes. It needs to be coached.

Having come out of HR and served as an executive coach for more than two decades, and having listened to and counseled managers and leaders from many different industries and countries at various stages of their leadership journeys, I have come to a number of conclusions.

The first is that HR is uniquely positioned by virtue of its involvement in the trinity of recruitment, retention and evaluation to undertake and to minister to leadership definition and development.

The second is reciprocity - that whatever HR gives in terms of leadership knowledge and insight, it gets back in terms of defining and developing its own capacity for HR leadership.

At a minimum, the difficult task of self-definition needs both guidance and standards, or rather the kinds of standards that HR routinely employs to guide performance and evaluation.

Self-assessment is not a cake walk. It is hard work - like ditch digging - and must descend deeply and unflinchingly to see oneself, warts and all - to profile a character only a mother could love.

It also requires an ambitious time line, starting before birth and remaining permanently open-ended because as noted, all leaders are unfinished; they are constantly in a state of revision and reinvention.

Similarly, the scope of the assessment must be inclusive - not just 180 but 360; not just savvy or smarts but both; intimate, yet almost private; and it has to be big - the big picture, big history and the big future - global norms and paradigms.

Finally, it must also be playful and open to surprise lest the task become too grim or predictable. In short, it is not meant for the faint-hearted or those expecting a quick fix, equally vexing is structuring the process, to build in the guidance standards.

Sequence is indispensable but each stage cannot be fixed or permanently sealed off and regarded as finished. It cannot be a definitive series of progressive and linear sequential stages but a circular system of inquiry. Each set of answers is never left behind, finalized or sealed off from subsequent input but remains available for revision, alignment or reinforcement by what follows.

The net result is that the process is always cumulative and interactive: The voices are many and ongoing, and the effect is more choral than soliloquy.

Finally, the process is anchored at both ends with the same focus. The entire journey starts with participants writing down what kind of leader they want to be; the sealed answer is then given to the coach. It concludes with an answer to the same question at the end or the process. The two are compared - and there are no wrong answers. Both responses constitute the last entry. This do-it-yourself inquiry should take on the completeness of an annual medical check-up replete with a checklist of items and a battery of diagnostic tests. It should be a combination of subjective and objective sources.

Ideally, the compilation of information and history needs to be checked, amplified and corrected by an HR coach who is both thorough and shrewd, adept at keeping such records, developing and enforcing job descriptions, and reviewing overly creative resumes.

Because the self-assessment process offers the potential for an individual to please and to persuade - to overstate or over-claim - it invites the same kind of fakery and creativity that sometimes one finds in some glorious resumes.

Although understandable and in a way commendable, such excesses - such as noting the subject is a born leader exhibiting leadership skills as far back as in nursery school or that he is an extraordinary, selfless team player always giving credit to everyone but himself - need the corrective and diagnostic power of objective tests and input.

Thus, HR also must be responsible for identifying the diagnostics that should be used as part of the self-assessment.

It is HR professional who, not only can lead us through the incredible labyrinth of what is out there, what is appropriate and what is not, but also generally knows what the results mean and above all, how they can be applied, often with decisive revelation.

This example of the power of diagnostic tests may be illustrative.

A few years ago, I came on as an organization's new director of HR and shortly thereafter was called on to address a persistent and counterproductive problem of constant bickering and infighting by the top managers of a key division.

The division head had tried to reason with each manager, had met and engaged them as individuals and as a team, but nothing seemed to work. My recommendation was simple, basic and neutral: Have all of them, including the director, take the Myers Briggs test, both the individual and team versions.

The result? They were all placed in the same quadrant, half in the same spot. The diagnostic defined them - and their difficulties. I then abandoned them to the task of working out how a team of all Indian chiefs should be managed. I subsequently coached two of them, both of whom became vice presidents.

Paralleling the do-it-yourself profile with outside tests can be both corrective and extending; they can put on the brakes but also can be insightful. A new test from ETS - the Personal Potential Index - was designed for graduate-school admissions, but it might be adapted to leadership coaching.

What immediately draws me to the PPI is that it unabashedly tries to address potential. It is also 180, using as many as five or six raters or evaluators. Best of all, the multi-raters are asked to rate and describe six categories which address leadership criteria: knowledge and creativity, communication skills, teamwork, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity. This Index could be filled out by previous supervisors, team leaders and HR evaluators. The evaluation results could then be given to each participant and discussed with the goal of revising or supplementing earlier assessments to better align subjective and objective input.

In pursuing self-assessment of leadership ability, five general areas, at a minimum, must be addressed: what makes an individual tick, how does he learn, what are his values, how does he relate and interact, and how does he operate and make things happen. The details follow:

1. Self-History/Biography:

Who are you? What have you inherited? What is your genetic profile? How long will you live and what is likely to kill you? What has shaped you? What is your life story? What are your essential genetics, psychology and sociology? What is your family upbringing, siblings, friends, religion, birth order, gender and level of education. What was your home environment - where you lived, what you talked about at meals, what your father and mother did, etc.

2. Learning/Smarts:

Did you like school? Favorite subjects? Teachers? What turned you on? Good student or average? Grades? What was your GPA? SAT? GRE? Mental blocks if any? To what? What about writing, speaking, communicating? Art, music, singing? How smart are you? (Take an IQ test now.) How are you smart? (Take Gardner's Multiple Intelligence test).

3. Values/Beliefs/Creed/Goals:

What is important to you? Why? What was said regularly at breakfast? Take the Maslow test. Role of ambition? Military service? Relationship with religion and God? Do you pray? Describe your code of conduct? Write your obituary and legacy.

4. Emotional Intelligence:

How do you relate and interact? Take and interpret Myers Briggs and Strong Personality tests and all Skills One tests. Who typically are your friends and enemies? Why? Do you need approval? Do others follow you? Why? What is your relationship to followers? Take diversity test/survey.

5. Leadership Roles/Intelligence:

What kind of leadership do you admire? Why? Who are your role models? Why them? How do you make things happen? How do you start? Do you build alliances? How do you problem solve? What are your standards of a solution? If you start out at point X, where do you want to be as a result of your leadership? How will you get there and how long will it take? What is your vision? Describe it in 10 words or less.

There remains one final collaborative task - capturing and extracting the essentials from the above and profiling what kind of leader a candidate is likely to be. This distilling process should take the practical and specific form of compiling a leadership resume - listing and featuring the leadership characteristics and behaviors that will be brought to the table. In many ways, it will simulate the answers to questions asked in a typical interview.

Unlike traditional CVs, however, this would be aspirational and designed, in effect, as an application for a future position. It would be an appropriate take-away of the above process for our future leader and an equally welcome leadership profile for the HR leaders' files.

The final entry would be a reproduction of the vision statement crafted earlier but now supplemented and buttressed by the resume of a leader for whom that is now a deliverable - as well as a leadership definition.

[About the Author: Irving H. Buchen, Ph.D., is a member of the doctoral business faculty at Capella University and associate vice president for IMPAC University. An active HR researcher, consultant and author (Partnership HR), his latest book, The Hybrid Leader, will be published by Rowman later this year. He has served as a management consultant, trainer, and executive coach here and abroad for numerous corporations. He secured his doctorate from Johns Hopkins and has been a professor and an academic administrator at Cal State, University of Wisconsin and Penn State.]