Dear Colleagues,
I think we would all agree that the titular "leader" or person-in-charge (for brevity's sake, I refer to these people as "authoritors", people in positions of legitimate (French and Raven) authority) is NOT necessarily a "leader" per se nor necessarily the informal leader of the local efforts. John Kotter refers to Big L and small "l" leaders. Many have referred to formal leaders (authoritors) and informal leaders (emergent leaders?).
I draw a distinction between habitual points-of-view (POV) or mindsets. Some people have a habitual follower's-point-of-view (FPV) which we know because they say things like "what do you want me to do, when do you want me to do it, how do you want me to do it?" Some people take a habitual (consistently) bureaucratic-point-of-view (BPV) which we know because they usually say things like "that's not in our operating procedure, we don't do it that way around here, have you filled out the form yet, and that's not my job." In my experience, people with a LPV have REGARDLESS of their titles or position of authority, a habitual mental pattern of being able to 1. SEE what needs to be done, 2. UNDERSTAND all the forces at play, not just their favorite ones, and 3. Have the courage to act to make things better.
So for me, "leader" may or may not refer to an authoritor, that is, an incumbent, person-in-charge, titular leader, Big L leader, or authoritor, whatever you want to call them, may or may NOT be a real "leader." I've met CEO's who had BPVs and FPVs (what does McKinsey say we should do?).
Given all the vagueness in our field (leadership), I would hope by now we could agree that the person holding the title/person-in-charge may or may not be a leader and that to call them "leader" is confusing.
Best Regards,
Jim
James G. Clawson
Johnson & Higgins Professor of Business
The Darden School, University of Virginia
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Hi, George,
You asked why we could not stop viewing leadership from a "person-in-charge" perspective (my phrasing). I was reminded the term "hero worship" and looked it up in the Wikipedia (I know this is not a scholarly behaviour). Accordingly, hero worship is defined as the foolish or excessive adulation for an individual".
Perhaps our community is not immune to this tendencies?
Lichia Saner-Yiu
A scholarly review of researchable theories of managerial leadership reveals that most define it as focusing exclusively on or including as a major component the "person-in-charge" (Graen, 2012a). This is a possible disconnect.
This happens when the "person-in-charge" has no managerial leadership in the business unit. Logically, such cases both have the person and have not the construct of interest.
A way to correct this misconnect would be to reject the use of "person-in-charge" altogether.
One theory has consistently rejected the "person-in-charge" concept (Graen, 2012b). This theory defines managerial leadership as the art of solving "wicked problems", of forming unique strategic alliances (USA) with instrumental people and jointly tackling common problems. Note, this includes nothing about the "person-in-charge".
I propose that we stop using the "person-in-charge" because it has caused a good deal of wasted effort by colleagues. What do you think?
Graen, G.B. (2012a). The new LMX theory: The missing link of interpersonal strategic alliances. In M.G. Rumsey (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Leadership, Oxford University Press, pp 359-375.
Graen, G. B., (2012b). Overview of future research directions for team leadership. In M. Rumsey (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Leadership, London, UK: Oxford University Press, pp 167-183.
George Graen