Bitku Blog

‘I hope you are sceptical about that statement. At best it is a half-truth. For emotions are often confused with spirit.’
‘So you would make a distinction between the two?’
‘In this context, yes. It gives us a four-fold description of human nature as PHYSICAL, MENTAL, EMOTIONAL and SPIRITUAL. We are like aircraft that fly [...]

‘Doubtless there are necessary conditions for joy or happiness if one searched them out, but when it comes to our particular rainbow – transcendent work – we at least have a head start in that we know we need to look at three factors. So shall we begin by exploring what all groups and all [...]

‘Reflecting on our last discussion,’ began the young chief executive, ‘I wonder if inspirational leadership is not so much a property that someone has – a set of charismatic qualities – as the product of interactions between the three factors we mentioned: people, purpose and leader. You see, I am following the idea that all [...]

‘We agreed, I believe, that there can be no such thing as transactional leadership, for merely honouring mutual agreements meets none of the necessary conditions we identified for explaining why the term leader can be used for anyone. Let’s assume it’s a way of talking about old- style management. So we are left not with [...]

The young chief executive and I discussed friendship and marriage as possible examples of personal relations that – at least in their higher forms – come close to having a character of ‘unlimited liability’. Even with marriage or being a parent, however, we found that more often than not there was some limit, some unspoken [...]

‘Yes, I think there is an implicit or “psychological” contract underlying all leadership. Expressed in its simplest form it reads something like this:
If you lead, we will come with you.
or
If you will accompany me, I will lead the way.
‘As I say, this implicit understanding is seldom put into words; it is [...]

‘Yes, and of course barter was eventually replaced – or largely so – by the introduction of money as the principal means of exchange. But barter or its monetary equivalent is merely the commercial expression of that underlying principle of reciprocity, a part of that much bigger web of interchange that links all of us [...]

We began by discussing the three-day-seminar in New York. The young chief executive explained to me what had happened.
‘The speaker outlined in his opening talk the difference between transactional leadership and transformational leadership. He referred to J MacGregor Burns as the author of this landmark in leadership theory, in his article Leadership (1978). You [...]

‘My difficulty with the phrase managing change may sound a bit academic to you,’ I began, ‘but let me share it with you anyway. Managing, as you probably know, comes from the Latin word manus, a hand. The main branch of derivation comes from the Italian word for handling war horses – the fine mastery [...]

‘That’s fairly easy,’ said the young chief executive, ‘in a nutshell it is change. People with the typical managerial characteristics we have just identified could run an organization that doesn’t have to face change. Of course now, with almost no exceptions, all organizations are having to respond to massive, continuing change. There’s a much higher [...]

‘Talking of scientists,’ said the young chief executive, ‘we borrowed their distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions. So if all the necessary conditions we have identified – contingent and generic qualities, professional knowledge and understanding of people, and functional ‘three-circle’ capabilities – are present in a person, will he or she be perceived as a [...]

After the young chief executive had considered the list carefully he asked: ‘The role of strategic leader calls for a higher intellectual capability, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but it’s not exactly “brainy leadership” (as T E Lawrence once called it) that’s needed. More what the ancient Greeks called phronesis, which was translated into Latin as prudentia [...]

‘Leadership in all organizations, institutions or society as a whole exists on different levels,’ I began suggesting. ‘At the first level the leader is responsible for a small team of about 10 people – team leadership. The operational leader is responsible for a significant part of the whole, and has more than one team reporting [...]

‘Decisive, yes, but that means the ability to take decisions at the right time and in the right way. A decision can be visualized as a cake that can be shared in different proportions between those concerned. The leader can have all the cake, make the decision and announce it. Or, at the other end [...]

‘You say that these are necessary functions, not needed all together – every section of the orchestra playing at the same time – but as and when they are required. But I notice you did not say that they are leadership functions in that only the designated leader can perform them.’
‘Some groups – jazz [...]

The Functional Approach focuses, as you know, on the general theory that while all working groups and organizations are unique, each evolving its own distinctive group personality, yet all of them share in common a set of three overlapping and interacting areas of need:
the need to achieve the common task;
the need to be [...]

The young chief executive sat silently for a minute or two as he studied his notes. ‘Necessary conditions,’ he said. ‘So far we have explored the Qualities of Leadership and identified them as being necessary but not in themselves sufficient. Is that going to be true of the second path up the mountain that you [...]

The young chief executive and I agreed that this list of generic qualities was open-ended. How about calmness, or high energy, or resilience, or humour, or compassion? Each true leader revealed these and other qualities, like facets of a revolving diamond.
‘So enthusiasm comes to the top of the list,’ reflected the young chief executive. [...]

‘Let’s take first the Qualities Approach – what you are. You may recall that when the first academic attempts were made to identify the necessary and desirable qualities of leadership it produced considerable confusion: lots of lists of leadership qualities were produced and there was apparently very little agreement between them. We have about 17,000 [...]

The young chief executive began with a question. ‘I have been thinking about your point,’ he said, ‘that there are no short cuts, no easy solutions to becoming an inspiring leader. Are you trying to tell me in a gentle way that it is quite impossible – if you are not a born leader it [...]