The success of the leader
Author: admin / Category: Uncategorized
Most people would assume that all successful leaders could be characterized as “warriors” since they are all engaged in a highly competitive effort and operate from a strong sense of self-confidence. Their obvious achievements speak for themselves; the respect that others hold for them is reinforcing testimony to their right to that feeling. According to the literature they should have good ego strength and positive self- regard.
The leaders we interviewed were indeed warriors. They warred by building not a pastiche called a conglomerate but solid, integrated, evolutionary organizations. Theirs were multimillion dollar decisions whose outcomes might not be known for years, and they would have to bear the anxiety such uncertainty brings with it. Like most other human beings, from time to time they, too, doubted themselves. For them, that doubt was translated into attack rather than paralysis or retreat. They are extraordinary in the risks they take and the burdens they bear, yet they are ordinary in the psychological costs of that strain.
We asked each of these six leaders if he would be willing to be interviewed and to allow us to interview a half dozen or so colleagues, whom he would name, who had worked with him or were presently working with him and had observed his behavior firsthand. Our intent, we indicated, was to try to understand how a leader exerted an impact on the organization he headed, how he got done what he got done. We were not interested in exposés or justifications or evaluating leadership performance, but rather in understanding and reporting the how. We began the work in 1979. Busy executives were difficult to schedule. We did not finish the last interview until May, 1983.
We realized, of course, that in asking each of our CEOs to name those who had observed his behavior and who might be interviewed, we opened ourselves to certain elements of distortion. No matter. We could count on the overlapping perceptions and the repetition of experiences for some confirmation. We also knew that even when there is internal consistency to the information that comes from different people, one may be getting systematic distortion. But at least one learns about that person as seen through a range of lenses, although there may be a similar distortion in each. We cannot altogether discount that distortion, nor at the same time can we take it to be sufficient reason for rejecting the observations. There may be different later observations that will round out the perceptions, but for the moment these are the most accurate perceptions we have.