Are Leaders One Size Fits All?
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| Victor H. Vroom, BearingPoint Professor of Management, Yale School of Management | |
Q: Do people tend to overlook the importance of situations in understanding leadership?
I think they do. People are looking for universals. They want the one “best” leadership style. Each pundit has his or her own “10 Principles of Leadership”—truisms about leadership that are not phrased in situational terms. They’re presented as always correct. A few of us have been doing research on contingency or situational theories of leadership, which emphasize the fact that different kinds of organizations, different kinds of challenges, and different kinds of decisions require different leadership styles.
I define leadership as influencing others to work together in the pursuit of a common goal. It is a process, not a property. I once asked an MBA class how many thought that leaders are born, not made. More than 50% of the students in the class raised their hands. They clearly saw it as a trait, part of their personality and based on their DNA. Accordingly, if we had the right measuring tools, we could place everyone on a scale of how much leadership they possess. I refer to this as the “heroic” model of leadership. In contrast, I believe leadership is something that people exercise, enact, or display. Furthermore, it has its roots in values and skills which are learned.
Q: How do leaders learn to function in different situations?
People naturally make some adaptations. If there is a fire, most people become more directive. It’s the same with a time-constrained business decision. But I also think that people can be taught to read more subtle situational cues. I teach them to methodically go through a set of questions to assess what sort of situation they are facing: Do you have the knowledge needed to make this decision? If not, does your team have the knowledge? Do you need the team’s commitment and support to execute the decision? Is there conflict and disagreement among the team? And so on.
Based on existing research on leadership styles, I have developed software that aims to help managers choose the leadership style with the greatest likelihood of success based on the leader’s assessment of eleven situational factors.
As part of my current research, I ask actual or aspiring leaders to read 30 leadership scenarios, each calling for a decision. The leader is asked which of a set of five decision processes, each varying in opportunities for participation of team members, he or she would use in each situation. The 30 cases constitute a method for assessing each manager’s “model” of leadership style. This is accomplished by systematically varying the situational factors in the normative model across the cases in accordance with a multi-factorial experimental design. I now have data on approximately 200,000 managers around the world. This enables me to compare an individual manager with groups ranging from Navy admirals to investment bankers to worldwide ceos, to name just a few. Each manager receives a report showing which factors influence their style, how they compare with the normative model, and how they compare with others that represent potential reference groups for them. Finally, the report concludes with a personalized set of recommendations about what they could do to increase their effectiveness as leaders.
Q: To what degree should leaders be looking to change situations, and to what degree should they be finding the best approach to a situation?
Most leaders emphasize short-range results. That may be appropriate in some situations. If you’re about to lay people off, investing in their development may not be justified. But in other cases, you might want to do the long-term work to change the situation by developing your team. I’ve been working with government and business leaders in Abu Dhabi. They want to develop an economy that isn’t dependent on oil production. They want to develop leaders who foster creativity and dynamism and have the ability to deal with rapid change. If they’re going to create an economy that’s capable of creating new products that will compete with the best in the world, they’re going to have to develop the talent in the labor force. If their priority is to change the business culture, which has been built around people taking orders from the top, they have to make long-term efforts to change the situation.
One of the stories I use to illustrate the importance of development is a sailing story. It is alleged that the moment that I step on my sailboat, I use an autocratic leadership style. I make the decisions and the members of my crew, largely family and close friends, do the work with the sheets and the halyards. With eight-foot waves coming over the bow, I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a great division of labor.
A few years back, my eldest son, Derek, called me from San Francisco asking if he could use the boat to explore the coast of Maine on an upcoming two-week vacation with a group of close friends. I immediately had an anxiety attack. Derek has sailed 4,000 miles on that boat, but it was always with me. All of a sudden, it hit me why I felt uncomfortable turning the boat over to him. Because of my leadership style, he had never brought the boat into a dock. He had never decided when to change sails. He had never been responsible for navigation. Being the captain had always been my job. A consequence of my autocratic approach on the boat was that he had no practice with anything other than taking orders.
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