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Leaders, Leadership & Visionaries – Part 2

He believed in education and training for himself and his troops, saying, “To lead is to teach.” And he trained relentlessly, partly to ensure the entire command was ready for battle, and partly to create a strong team that could work together under any condition. He expected the world around him to change, and he wanted everyone to be prepared for it. He had a saying: “Keep moving, and the enemy cannot hurt you. You dig a foxhole, and you dig your grave.” Many leaders claim they are willing to change, yet, in reality, only in specific directions; they are not open to any kind of change. Yet we are living in times that demand flexibility and openness to change.

We have had experience in both the military and civilian worlds, and have brought the best of our experience in the military environment to bear on our civilian, commercial clients. For example, we teach that the more leaders can put the success of the organization above their personal success, the more likely both are to succeed, and the more loyalty they express down the chain of command, the greater the performance of their people and the greater loyalty that will be expressed upwards.

A leader’s job is to guide the organization to success. This cannot be accomplished alone or without the cooperation of management, employees, and other stakeholders. Thus a leader must be responsible for being the key visionary strategist, for developing the vision and mission, and for guiding the rest of the organization toward success. That’s not to say that the vision should not be developed in conjunction with others. Indeed, our approach is based on the top leadership team, together with some young mavericks, developing the vision. Mavericks are those young people in your organization who are constantly bubbling with ideas, which all too often never reach the ears of the leadership. As we have stated previously, sometimes leaders delegate the strategic planning process to a group of middle managers and analysts. That is a mistake and a way to lose control of their leadership responsibility. Leaders need to participate in the preparation of a strategic plan for it to reflect their vision and for them be completely committed to it. Key stakeholders may also be included in the planning process, if desired. Generally we do not recommend including middle managers unless they are part of a strategic planning group, as they do not have the experience and insights of the leadership or the disruptive, innovative ideas of mavericks. If the organization has a strategic planning group, then we recommend that it participates in the planning process to be able to help with subsequent implementation, but it should not take the lead.

Visionary Strategist

Good leaders are almost always visionary strategists. Indeed, the word “strategist” is derived from στρατηγός (strategos), the Greek word for leadership or generalship. It generally referred to the branch of military science dealing with military command and the planning and conduct of a war. In other words, it is a concept that encompasses large dimensions in space, time, resources, and desires. In transferring the concept to the civilian arena, it incorporates the ideas of large systems, frequently systems of systems that must operate together for the achievement of the vision and mission of the organization or concept. The reason we include the word “concept” in the last sentence is because strategic planning is necessary for concepts, as well as for organizations. Putting a man on the moon within 10 years was a visionary concept that had to be developed into a strategy that cut across many organizations, including the relatively new National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Visionary strategic planning can also be applied to marketing planning, new business development, and R&D planning using the same processes that we use for organizational strategies.

Leadership Styles

There has been a great deal written about leadership styles, which is why we are including a short description here. There are as many leadership styles as there are people. Most are based on the leader’s values and education, and they form a “dominant” style. However, they are not fixed; they can and should change as circumstances and context require. Thus, leaders need to be aware of both their own propensities and what is required in the moment. In 1939, Kurt Lewin conducted a seminal study on leadership styles and identified three types: Authoritarian, Democratic, and Laissez-faire. Daniel Goleman (of emotional intelligence fame) has identified others, including Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative, and Pacesetting[3]. Transformational leadership was identified by James MacGregor Burns in 1978, and Servant Leadership was developed by Robert Greenleaf in 1970.

All these leadership styles have their pros and cons. There is no single correct approach for all circumstances. Rather, the good leader picks from among them as appropriate. In our experience, the most effective styles for getting things done are:

  • Visionary, in which the leader encourages the leadership and management to develop and work toward a shared vision. To us, this is the most effective, and it can be used by mature organizations, as well as new ones to very good effect, to move them in new directions.
  • Democratic, which draws on people’s knowledge and skills, and creates a group commitment to the resulting vision and plan.
  • Authoritarian (which is commonplace in military organizations), in which a single individual has the responsibility and accountability for his decisions.

Our workshop process for strategic planning relies heavily on the first two of these styles. In the example of General Patton, given earlier, it is clear that he had a combination of Visionary and Authoritarian styles.

Our conclusion is that good, effective leadership is critical for the development and implementation of a vision and strategic plan. Good leaders have certain characteristics and leadership styles, and current leaders and aspiring ones can better themselves by understanding what those are and why they are important.


[1] Adapted from Pigeau and McCann, “Re-conceptualizing Command and Control,” Canadian Military Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring, 2002.
[2] This is a general overview from Alan Axelrod, Patton on Leadership, Prentice Hall, 1999.
[3] Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Tenth Anniversary Edition, Abridged, August 6, 2013.

 

Christine MacNulty
Christine MacNultyhttps://applied-futures.com/
CHRISTINE MacNulty has forty years’ experience as a consultant in long-term strategic -planning for concepts as well as organizations, futures studies, foresight, and technology forecasting, technology assessment and related areas, as well as socio-cultural change. For the last twenty years, most of her consultancy has been conducted for the Department of Defense and the Services, NATO ACT, NATO NEC, the British Army’s Force Development & Training Command, and the German BBK. Prior to that her work was in the commercial arena where she had Fortune Global 500 clients. During the last thirty-five years Christine MacNulty has contributed methods and models for understanding social and cultural change through people’s values. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in 1989. She is the coauthor of two books: Industrial Applications of Technology Forecasting, Wiley, 1971 and Strategy with Passion – A Leader’s Guide to Exploiting the Future, August 2016. Her paper: “Method for minimizing the negative consequences of nth order effects in strategic communication actions and inactions” was published in NATO Defence Strategic Communications Journal, p 99, Winter 2015. Two monographs “Truth, Perception & Consequences” (2007) and “Transformation: From the Outside In or the Inside Out” (2008) were published by the Army War College. Perceptions, Values & Motivations in Cyberspace appeared in the IO Journal, 3rd Quarter, 2009, and The Value of Values for IO, SC & Intel was published in the August 2010 edition of the IO Journal.

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11 CONVERSATIONS

  1. Enjoyed your Article. I would say that as a retail Manager that without a doubt I lead my team and develop both the manager and Leader in them all. Both leaders and managers are very important in life. Two sides of one coin. Great leaders will need to have management skills and great managers will need to have leadership skills. One does not diminish the other. I also do what I do because I love it and I am not looking for any rewards except for the success of those I engage in life. Thank for a your sharing your article. I loved Patton but I also believe in a quiet leader that works behind the scenes never hearing the roar of the crowds.

    • Thank you, Larry. Good comments. I have found that people have a propensity to be good leaders OR good managers. Yes, really good ones from both arenas can do both, but the capabilities required are not the same. Leaders tend to have vision and direction – and can inspire people. Managers are more about systems and controlling and keeping the people in the organization within bounds. I still think that the old adage “Leaders lead people, managers manage things” is true. Effective organizations need both. There can be quiet leaders who work behind the scenes, but they are fairly unusual in my experience. Leaders need to lead from the front – not necessarily bombastically, but obviously enough so that they are recognized and acknowledged by their people. As you say about yourself, for many true leaders, success is about the success of their people and organization, or about fun or excitement, not money or aggrandizement.

  2. Very educational article with suggestions worthy of endorsement. I also share the contents of the comments. I just want to add a brief comment based on the experience.
    I totally agree that “ordering” is a word that should be banned in a modern organization (and. personally, I have been a very participatory, present and empowering boss!). However, some considerations must be made, particularly with regard to the context.
    In any organized company there is need of a leader and if the enterprise is daring it takes a tough boss, so much harder because environmental boundary conditions are turbulent. They are therefore the risk and turbulence that create the head “hard”? Almost always yes, but the opposite is also true: the head unnecessarily hard creates unnecessary risk and unnecessary turbulence in the organization in which it operates. In general, I would say that in conditions of great danger or high risk of justified urgency or high turbulence, the head has to be authoritarian. The problem is not between the command and not command, but how to command. As well as, put the alternative between being authoritarian and be a motivator, is not always correct or possible. The second behavior is not substitutive of the first, but only part of the first: if the leader cannot motivate or have employees not willing to be motivated them he must anyway lead to the goals. We are afraid of this conclusion? The turbulence of the system in which we live authorizes us to do it and make it acceptable.

    • Good comments, Aldo. At the end of the day, someone has to make decisions and be responsible for them. For me, since the Leader is the one who is responsible, he/she has to do it, no matter how hard. In my own case, I have always tried to listen and to let others comment or provide advice, but since I am responsible, I have to do what I believe is best. Indecisive Leaders are not Leaders.

  3. That’s a good comment, Chris. Motivation is a key issue for leadership. As you say, people can be motivated to become leaders for many different reasons – power, control, status, desire to be empowering, desire to do good, to value people and their efforts… Many people in leadership positions got there by default – perhaps not even expecting to or wanting to be leaders. That’s why “knowing yourself” – which I take to mean at a deep psychological level – is important.

  4. A major contributor to leadership issues is the the motivation, the reason the person wants to be a leader. For me, I value impact of efforts and the dollar so I lead a different way than someone else who motivated to lead because of the level of control that comes with them leading.

  5. I’ve read this article twice and now see why it’s very difficult to put the seal of satisfaction or seal of approval on a leader. I’ve never seen a MVL award. The requirements are nearly that of a water-walker. I believe leaders have to be willing to change and they need to be ethical, visionary, compassionate, knowledgeable, influential, and all the things you listed in your article. What I hope is that leaders, who are essentially good, have excellent character, rank high on emotional intelligence, and are doing the best they can in their role, are not discouraged at their lack of ability to meet all these qualifications.

    • Thank you, Jane! That’s a good comment. I agree with all the other characteristics you list. It gets to the idea of “knowing yourself,” too. If people really want to do their best, then the more they know about themselves, the more able they know where they need to change.

    • I read our first segment just prior to reading this one. I was in love with the Q&A that really reveal who the leaders are from the inside out.

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