Copyright 2010 by Barry Brownstein. All rights reserved. TWO LEADING WITHOUT CONTROLLING The command-and-control model of leadership just won’t work 99 percent of the time. —A. G. Lafl ey To the naive mind that conceives of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions, order and adaptation to the unknown can be achieved more eff ectively by decentralizing decisions. —F. A. Hayek y work environment is toxic; my boss is a control freak.” “M How often I have heard this from my leadership students. About forty percent of those employees surveyed felt their boss had a big ego, reports Robert Kelley in his book The Power of Followership. Few leaders were seen as role models by their employees. It should not surprise us that these sentiments are so common. In many hierar- chical organizations, individuals rise to leadership positions based on time in service. These same individuals are not asked to invest in leadership training or to demonstrate a personal commitment to grow their leadership skills; their emotional willingness to develop their leadership skills is never assessed. Similarly, when organizations go outside to hire a leader, the selection criteria are as dubious. Years of experience, claims of accomplishments, or superfi cial qualities, such as physical appearance LEADING WITHOUT CONTROLLING 35 or the ability to speak glibly or loudly, may be all that is required. Since executives in many organizations cannot clearly articulate their purpose or their values, they hire people into leadership positions having little indication of whether the new hires have the leadership abilities their organizations need. They have the mistaken ideas that leadership is a natural ability and that leaders do not need to study and practice their craft. When you step back and think about it, these false beliefs are ridiculous. Even if an individual is a natural, like those with abilities in sports, music, the arts, or any profession, leaders must study and practice in order to develop their abilities. Imagine a hospital populated by doctors who knew nothing about medicine or who had not opened up a medical journal since graduat- ing. We expect doctors to continually develop their skills. Our hiring practices for leaders are akin to promoting hospital janitors to surgeons solely because they have the years of service in the institution. You may object, thinking this analogy extreme. But is it? Engineer- ing students returning for their MBAs share stories about excellent engineers thrust into leadership positions because of years of service. Often these new leaders are totally lost in their new role as vice- president. After all, if an engineer goes to engineering school to learn her craft, why would she not study leadership skills before assuming a leadership position? The skills and abilities needed for success as an engineer are radically diff erent from those of a vice-president. In his book Crossing the Unknown Sea, David Whyte observes, It is one of the tragedies of many organizations that the people placed in positions of power and leadership may have come from a technical background whose previous successes bear little resemblance to the qualities they now need. They need to be human beings attempting to engage other human beings in a conversation with the future. Without study and practice, the results are frequently disastrous, both for the new leader and those who work under or with him. The new leader may be a decent human being, but he or she is unprepared. You may have observed such a situation. The new leader gets through each day by the seat of his pants—making snap judgments coming from a reactive mindset and relying upon the advice of friends or 36 THE INNER-WORK OF LEADERSHIP family. They adopt ideas about leadership from popular culture. They simply have no training for the job. In the worst cases, leaders wreak havoc for many years. We shudder as we read accounts like that of Fran Hulse. In their essay “Wizards the CEOs,” Birute Regine and Roger Lewin tell the story of Hulse who was at the time VP of Medical Aff airs at Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center. Hulse remembers the time prior to a shift in corporate culture: It was a very uptight culture. People were extremely reserved and cautious about what they were going to say openly. The CEO’s view of management was very controlling—things had to work the way he said they would. Period. What tended to happen was that even senior people felt they couldn’t challenge him and expect to survive. Top management felt they had to be tightly on top of every single thing that happened, and had to okay everything. This created a climate that was anything but open as far as inviting feedback and comment—positive or negative. And negative had a lot of risk attached to it—if you spoke negatively about the wrong thing, you might just shorten your career at this institution. There was a perva- sive sense of oppression, and as a result employees felt constrained and very reluctant to express their ideas and opinions openly. And the medical staff were frustrated. Their patience was wearing thin because the administration was giving lip service to medical staff issues, and doing nothing to address them. Is the experience of Hulse uncommon? Sadly, no. As Kelley observes in a Harvard Business Review essay, subordinates who think for themselves are frequently punished “for exercising judgment.” His research found that managers often feel threatened by employees who demonstrate initiative, honesty, and courage. Yet these eff ective employees, who Kelley calls followers, are essential. Eff ective followers have the same qualities as eff ective leaders; because as Kelley observes, in today’s fl atter organizations, “eff ective leaders and eff ective follow- ers are often the same people playing diff erent parts at diff erent hours of the day.” Andrew, an eff ective and talented leader, was a participant in one of my leadership seminars. He recalled leaving a former employer: LEADING WITHOUT CONTROLLING 37 My relationship with the new president was very much an ego issue. In my opinion, he was the most dysfunctional human being I had known in my life. He was always talking and never listening. He was arrogant and controlling in his leadership style. When I left, the CEO called to ask me why I was leaving; he suggested that we get together and fi nd a way for me to stay with the company. Then my ego got in the way, and I told him that the decision was made and that one day he would fi re his new president because of his lack of leadership and lack of understanding how to build relationships with his subordinates. In situations like Andrew’s new president, the new hire may soon be fi red, or he may leave the job, or he may continue to disrupt the organization, or fi nally, he may get the help he needs. Unfortunately, in many organizations, lessons are not learned—a fallen leader is simply written off as someone who didn’t work out. The organization may change nothing in its search to hire the next candidate. The fallen leader may not have learned much either—he or she may blame the organization they left behind and start the cycle anew somewhere else. Individuals act in relationship to each other. Andrew had the wisdom to see that he had been part of a dysfunctional system; he saw his own ego problem as well. Without examining their beliefs, leaders will expend much time and many resources in a futile attempt to control human energy. While they may complain, some followers are happy to have someone to blame. The organization and everyone in it suff ers numerous, negative, systemic eff ects: Organizational intelligence goes underutilized. Creativity and innovation are stifl ed. Morale suff ers. Good people, like Andrew, are dispirited and, in many cases, leave the organization. For Andrew’s president, Fran Hulse’s CEO, and undoubtedly others in their respective organizations, beliefs about order and control still needed to be questioned. If these beliefs are not explored, it is common to strive toward personal goals, as well as organizational goals, thinking they can only be accomplished through more control. Leaders and followers are seduced by this false belief. Don’t try to convince a controlling, in-the-box leader her eff orts are futile. Like the nineteenth century surgeons mentioned in Chapter 1 for whom 38 THE INNER-WORK OF LEADERSHIP basic hygiene was not part of their model of health, if challenged, controlling leaders redouble their eff orts to defend their beliefs. By habit of mind, many leaders go through each day deciding what is wrong, who to blame, and how to fi x it. For leaders schooled in planning and controlling, it takes enormous discipline not to be caught up in this routine. Their misguided policies, based upon limit- ing beliefs, block the productive use of human energy. Sadly, few spend time to understand their own limiting beliefs about order and control. Leadership development of this type is simply not on the agenda. Yet, it is these beliefs that stand in the way of being eff ective leaders and eff ective followers. As leaders, our inner-work is to humbly look at our misguided beliefs about order and control and be open to a new under- standing. The problems we see in the world and in our work lives are just refl ections of what we do not understand. Modern management practices fail us to the extent that we try to deal with the end results of habitual routines, caused by our beliefs, and not the root cause—the beliefs themselves.