Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society
WORDSWORTH
THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION about leadership is, Why is it that one person rather than another is perceived to be – or accepted as – a leader by others?
In the history of the world there have been three main approaches to answering that question. They are not exclusive, however, and so I have represented them here as interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which together make a whole (Figure 6.1).
Figure 6.1 The three approaches.
The Qualities Approach
‘It is a fact that some men possess an inbred superiority which gives them a dominating influence over their contemporaries, and marks them out unmistakably for leadership.’ So an eminent churchman, Dr Hensley Henson, Lord Bishop of Durham, told his audience at the University of St Andrews. ‘This phenomenon is as certain as it is mysterious,’ he continued.
It is apparent in every association of human beings, in every variety of circumstances and on ever plane of culture. In a school among boys, in a college among students, in a factory, shipyard, or a mine among the workmen, as certainly as in the Church and in the Nation, there are those who, with an assured and unquestioned title, take the leading place, and shape the general conduct.
These words were spoken in 1934 – the year, incidentally, that Adolf Hitler became head of state in Germany, taking the title of Führer. The bishop believed, as most people thought then, that leadership was a form of ‘inbred superiority’ – in other words, you are either born with it or not. The born leader would emerge naturally as the leader because he (note the assumption that leaders are men) has innate qualities that give him such an ‘assured and unquestioned title’. Such a leader could presumably lead in any circumstance or situation.
The first list of these ‘innate qualities’ of leadership in the English language appears in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. At that time, the word ‘leadership’ did not exist, though Shakespeare does call some generals ‘men of great leading’. The prime function of a king in those days was to lead his army from in front into battle as epitomized by his role model of kingship, Henry V. So we can take it that his ‘king-becoming graces’ are essentially leadership qualities. They are twelve in number:
The king-becoming graces,
As justice, verity [truthfulness], temperance, stableness,
Bounty [generosity], perseverance, mercy, lowliness [humility],
Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.
Not until 1912 do we find another list comparable to it, this time in prose and pitched at an audience of aspiring young people. An anonymous booklist, priced at sixpence and entitled How to be a Leader of Others, deduces ten qualities from the study of great leaders (a category which, incidentally, in 1912 included the German emperor: ‘A strong-willed and inspiring leader, able to secure the affection and obedience of his subjects’). The qualities offered as a framework for self-cultivation included confidence, ambition, self-reliance, energy, personality, courage, dignity, magnetism, coolness and self-discipline.
Although the reader is exhorted to work hard – really hard – over a long period of time, no advice is given on how this self-help should be managed or undertaken. Nor are there any examples of those who have successfully completed the course. In fact all programmes to build one’s character by a direct assault on a selected set of personal traits is self-defeating.
There is another problem, arising from what has been called the law of indirection. Once you specify a set of the qualities of leadership, there arises in your mind or the minds of others another quality not on the list which also claims attention as being important. Why leave out, for example, resilience, tact, courtesy or a sense of humour? So lists of leadership qualities have tended to get longer and longer as time goes by.
Rather like our use of the word ‘values’ in conversation, the term ‘leadership qualities’ works reasonably well. We sort of know what the other person means by them. Difficulty only arises when we ask the question: ‘What are these qualities?’ In other words, how are we to know which of the various lists is the correct one?
Even a quick comparison shows that the two lists outlined above have only one quality in common – courage. That doesn’t help us very much, as all soldiers – and arguably all humans at certain times in their lives – need courage. So why call it a leadership quality?
Empirical studies by psychologists served to confirm the confusion. For example, a study by Professor Charles Bird of the University of Minnesota in 1940 looked at twenty experimental investigations into leadership and found that only 5 per cent of the traits described appeared in three or more of the lists.
The difficulty, then, is that the lists vary so considerably, even allowing for the fact that the compilers are often using rough synonyms for the same trait. In fact, there is a bewildering number of trait names from which the student of leadership could make up their own portfolio. There are some 17,000 words in the English language that can be used for describing personality or character.
A questionnaire survey of seventy-five top executives, carried out by the American business journal Fortune, listed fifteen executive qualities: judgement, initiative, integrity, foresight, energy, drive, human relations skill, decisiveness, dependability, emotional stability, fairness, ambition, dedic ation, objectivity and cooperation. Nearly a third of the seventy-five said that they thought all these qualities were indispensable. The replies showed that these personal qualities have no generally accepted meaning. For instance, the definitions of ‘dependability’ included 147 different concepts.
The difficulty is lessened if we limit the broad term ‘quality’ – in the sense of a qualification – to the narrower concept of a trait of personality or character. That means consciously setting aside attributes of the mind, such as intelligence, creativity, curiosity and judgement. Also to be left out of the picture is any form of acquired knowledge or skill.
In my thinking about these residual personal traits, I have introduced distinctions between ‘personality’ and ‘character’, two terms that are often lumped together or otherwise confused. Personality denotes the overall emotional impression that a person makes upon you, especially on a first meeting. Character, by contrast, is not immediately apparent. It only reveals itself over time, as you get to know another person – or yourself for that matter – better. Character denotes a person’s moral being, as evidenced in such qualities as honesty, integrity and moral courage. You may have noticed that we never apply the terms ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (in their moral sense) to anybody’s personality. Instead, we use qualifiers such as ‘pleasant’ or ‘unpleasant’, ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’, ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’.
There is a further distinction that needs to be made between, on the one hand, trying to compile a list of the traits of personality and character that leaders actually possess and, on the other, the qualities that they ought to have.
The first of these exercises is doomed to failure. Having written two biographies myself and read countless others, I know full well just how difficult it is to capture personality and character in words. For we are, in Shakespeare’s words, ‘mixed yard’. In reality, any given is a complex mixture of strengths and weaknesses, and great leaders tend to have great strengths and great weaknesses.
Once the generic role of leader has been discovered and mapped, the second exercise – identifying the qualities of personality and character which ‘become’ that role, adding value and substance to it and making it personal – becomes a lot easier.
But how exactly does one do it? This is where art has to supplement science in our understanding of leadership, for there is no scientific way of doing it. A clue lies in this observation by Proust:
The writer, in order to attain generality and, so far as literature can, reality, needs to have seen many churches in order to paint one church, and for the betrayal of a single sentiment, he requires many individuals.
In other words, it is necessary to draw on a wide study and observation of leaders, past and present, and across many fields of human endeavour. Even then any list of leader-becoming qualities will always be tentative and incomplete: I call it indicative. As a result, this means you are entirely free to add to or subtract from it as you please. Here are the qualities that have remained constant in my own mind:
Enthusiasm (Chapter 7)
Integrity (Chapter 8)
Tough and demanding but fair (Chapter 9)
Warmth and humanity (Chapter 10)
Humility (Chapter 11)
The Situational Approach
Why is it that one person in a group is perceived to be and accepted as the leader? According to the Situational Approach, the answer is simple: It all depends on the situation. As some research in 1947 concluded, ‘There are wide variations in the characteristics of individuals who become leaders in similar situations and even great divergence in different situations. The only common factor appeared to be that leaders in a particular field need and tend to possess superior general or technical competence or knowledge in that area’ (italics author’s).
The origins of the Situational Approach go back deep in history to Socrates in Athens in the fifth century BCE. Socrates wrote no books. Our main sources of information about him are Plato’s Dialogues, Xenophon’s Memorabilia and the satirical picture painted by Aristophanes in The Clouds. It is uncertain how far Plato and Xenophon attributed their own opinions to their common master. When it comes to the theme of leadership, it is especially difficult to determine how much goes back to Socrates. Xenophon himself was both a leader and a thinker about leadership. Did he put his own views into the mouth of Socrates? He certainly wrote in the form of Socratic dialogues, with Socrates as one of the speakers. Or, when as a young man he heard Socrates cross-examining various would-be leaders, did he take notes? These questions cannot be answered with any degree of confidence, but at least we know of one core idea in Xenophon, which does go back to Socrates – that leadership is tied to situations and depends largely upon the leader having the appropriate knowledge; we know this because Plato also takes up that theme.
The Parable of the Ship’s Captain
The sailors are quarrelling over the control of the helm. … They do not understand that the genuine navigator can only make himself fit to command a ship by studying the seasons of the year, sky, stars and winds, and all that belongs to his craft; and they have no idea that along with the science of navigation, it is possible for him to gain, by instruction or practice, the skill to keep control of the helm whether some of them like it or not.
Plato, The Republic
The same theme emerges in a dialogue that Xenophon records between Socrates and a newly elected young cavalry commander. (Was it Xenophon himself?) Socrates asked him first why he had sought that office. The young man agreed that it could not have been because he wanted to be first in the cavalry charge, for the mounted archers usually rode ahead of the commander into battle, nor could it have been simply in order to get himself known to everyone – even madmen achieve that. The aspiring commander then accepted Socrates’ suggestion that his aim must be to leave the Athenian cavalry in better condition than when he found it. Xenophon, both a renowned authority on horsemanship and the author of a textbook on commanding cavalry, had no difficulty in explaining what needs to be done to achieve that end. The young commander, for example, must improve the quality of the cavalry mounts; he must school new recruits – both horses and men – in equestrian skills and then teach the troopers their cavalry tactics.
‘And have you considered how to make the men obey you?’ continued Socrates. ‘Because without that, horses and men, however good and gallant, are of no use.’
‘True, but what is the best way of encouraging them to obey, Socrates?’ asked the young man.
‘Well, I suppose you know that under all conditions human beings are most willing to obey those whom they believe to be the best. Thus in sickness they most readily obey the doctor, on board ship the pilot, on a farm the farmer, whom they think to be most skilled in his business.’
‘Yes, certainly,’ said his student.
‘Then it is likely that in horsemanship too, one who clearly knows best what ought to be done will most easily gain the obedience of the others.’
Xenophon captures here a very distinct theme in Socrates’ teaching on leadership. In harmony with the rest of the doctrine of Socrates (for, despite his pose of ignorance, Socrates had ideas of his own), it emphasizes the importance of knowledge in leadership. People will obey willingly only those whom they perceive to be better qualified or more knowledgeable than they are in a particular situation.
Xenophon elsewhere gives us a vivid example of the Situational Approach in action. It relates to the emergence of Clearchus of Sparta as the commander-in-chief of the Ten Thousand after their disastrous defeat on the field of Cunaxa. Although he had ingrained soldiership qualities you would expect in a Spartan, neither in personality nor in character – his persona – could the veteran general be described as an attractive man. Yet he became the man for the hour.
Clearchus took it upon himself to act as spokesman for his fellow generals to the Persian emissaries, but gave no indication to anyone what he was going to say. After sunset he summoned a meeting of the officers, briefly reviewed the options and then told them what they must do. They must head northwards that very night on the first stage of a long march to safety on the shores of the Black Sea, which lay some 800 miles away. As Xenophon records in The Persian Expedition everyone sensed that only Clearchus could lead them out of mortal danger:
On receiving their instructions the generals and captains went away and carried them out; and from then on Clearchus was in command, and they were his subordinates. This was not the result of an election, but because they realised that he was the one man who had the right sort of mind for a commander, while the rest of them were inexperienced.
Spartans such as Clearchus were renowned for using few words. One English word for that kind of terse speech is ‘laconic’, which derives from the Greek name for Sparta. The best kind of authority is quiet authority. For, as Leonardo da Vinci once said, ‘He who knows truly has no need to shout.’
Nor, incidentally, should you draw attention to yourself by any reference to your own leadership. Remember the Chinese proverb: Tigers do not proclaim their tigritude. If others refer to you spontaneously as a leader, or comment on your leadership, it is an accolade – not one to bestow upon yourself. You can say that you write verse or that you attempt to write poetry, but only others can say if you are a poet.
The Functional Approach
Whereas the Qualities Approach draws attention to what you are and the Situational Approach to what you know, the focus of the Functional Approach is upon what you need to do.
As I have already presented the Functional Approach comprehensively in the foregoing chapters, I shall not repeat myself here.
* * * * * * *
Pulling the threads together
By combining all three approaches, a first and very provisional definition of a leader begins to take shape:
A leader is the sort of person with the appropriate qualities and knowledge – which is more than technical or professional – who is able to provide the necessary functions to enable a team to achieve its task and to hold it together as a working unity. And this is done not by the leader alone but by eliciting the contributions and willing cooperation of all involved.
Of course, it is one thing to weave together the three constituent theories of leadership into one general theory, as I have done. But it is quite another exercise for a person to integrate them into their daily practice of leadership without thinking about it. Yet it can and does happen, for our unconscious mind does much of this holistic work for us, a process well captured in the quotation which stands at the head of this chapter.
You do, however, need to be patient. As Xenophon observed long ago, the work of becoming a leader is not done in a day.
In a lecture I once heard him give, Admiral Sir Richard Clayton used the analogy of ‘the ship that found itself’ in a short story by that name written by Rudyard Kipling. ‘This tells of a brand new well-found ship setting out on her maiden voyage. She meets her first storm, and all her separate bits – the beams and stringers and plates and rivets – start chattering and talking to each other. To begin with there is argument about who is the most important and who is doing the most work. But slowly the bits bed in and start to work together; and as they do so, the individual voices disappear, to be replaced by the single strong voice of the ship – the ship that has found itself.’
From time to time we do need to remind ourselves where the ship is heading.
Dag Hammerskjöld, then secretary general of the United Nations, kept a private notebook to help himself stay on course as a leader and thus to fulfil the expectations of the world for his great office. One evening, in the solitude of his apartment in New York, he wrote for his own benefit these words:
Remember that your position does not give you the right to command. It only lays upon you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated.