The Myth of Leadership Strength

culled from:lifehack.org

In recent years, the need for leaders to be “strong” has become more and more of an important if not pre-eminent requirement, in business and society in general, in many books and articles that have been published. But why is this and what does it mean to be a strong leader?

Let’s first start with the second of these questions and make an attempt to define what “strong leadership” is supposed to look like in practical terms.

According to many of the authors on and researchers concerned with leadership behavior, people who are described as being “strong leaders” have the following main characteristics. They:

    are very focused on what matters and even single minded or “pushy”,
    are openly clear about what they want to achieve (usually specifically and in general)
    communicate goals and targets in firm, unequivocal language,
    have high levels of individuality and personal confidence (sometimes to the point of being unusual compared to the average person),
    possess considerable personal decisiveness,
    tend to meet opposition to their ideas and decisions head on
    may collaborate with others but tend to make final decision(s) on their own
    are firm and tough (and even more resilient or resistant to criticism than average)

Of course, this is not a complete set of behaviors but every characteristic described on it occurs with a higher level of frequency than any others.

Given this list, strong leadership would seem to have less room for what might be called “gentle leadership”. When many of the same leadership authors and researchers describe the characteristics of these kinds of more gentle leaders they list the following high frequency characteristics. They:

    Tend to be reflective and open-minded about what is possible
    Listen attentively to many inputs and show considerable emotional intelligence,
    Communicate in many different ways and styles
    Make as many collaborative decisions as they can
    Deal with opposition as a chance to engage in greater collective responsibility
    Often delegate responsibility and decision-making
    Empower people and teams to act as often as they can on their own
    Spend considerable time building alliances and teams to cooperate (inside and outside the organization)

Clearly, both of these lists are naturally somewhat pejorative and extreme and therefore unfairly stereotype the “strong leader” and the “gentle leader” as if they were real (when in practice we know that any one given leader will have a “blend” of characteristics from both lists). However, the extremes do highlight the significant contrast in approach that can be taken (much as Douglas McGregor would have described in his Theory X over Theory Y manager approach 50 years ago), even if it only tends in one direction over the other in a particular leader. This contrasting approach then very much begs the question, why are we seeing more demand for “strong” over “gentle” leadership in today’s world, and especially in the last few years?

Perhaps, more than any other factor people in general want their leaders in every walk of life, where it matters, to do two critical things:

    To reduce uncertainty
    To get them to better/happier places

Given a deep worldwide economic recession in particular since 2007, it is then no great surprise that people have felt less certain about the future and less confident that they can get to better/happier places (and may have actually gone “backwards”). In these circumstances, leaders are then broadly expected (as a generalization of course) to “take charge”, offer clarity about what to do, be fast and decisive and push hard towards their chosen objectives. The so-called “strong leader” is consequently much more attractive (seemingly), and people will more readily suppress their need for other leadership characteristics such as those shown on the gentle list, thus creating a climate in which much more strong leadership can emerge or fill the apparent need.

Unfortunately, the words “seemingly” and “apparent” are the problem in the above analysis and this is what leads to the “myth of leadership strength” referenced in the title of this article. The fact that people may want their leaders to reduce uncertainty and get them to better places may help them to believe that so-called strong behaviors are best in the circumstances. However, particularly when taken to extremes, these behaviors quickly frustrate those same people who are expected to “fall-in” with the strong leaders views and forgo their chance to provide input. Very quickly therefore followers start to crave less demonstrable “strength” and more “gentle” characteristics in the mix. Furthermore, followers tend to come to realize that in the medium to long term, a more gently oriented leadership approach provides better and more sustainable outcomes. We therefore think we want strong leadership at the outset but in practice also want leaders to retain as many of the gentle leadership characteristics as they can. This entails being a kind of strong and confident leader in public places but a gentler more listening centric and collaborative leader behind the scenes. In other words, we want our leaders to be “gently strong” and “strongly gentle”. This is a tough juggling act but one which every leader should try to master.