How Much of Leadership Is About Control, Delegation, or Theatre?

July 10, 2007 from Harvard Business School – “The flood of writing about leadership continues. It reflects our fascination with what many believe to be the most important influence on organizational performance. In a thought-provoking book published last year, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton suggest that the overriding impact of leadership on performance is a myth, or at least only a half-truth. 30 years ago, in reviewing research on leadership, Pfeffer concluded at that time that actions of leaders most often explain no more than 10 percent of performance..."

180 View (written by Lawrence Young) – As Charles Dickens wrote in 1859 in his acclaimed work ‘The Tale of Two Cities’: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

Perhaps the same can be said nearly 150 years later. Our world today is mired with political, social and economic volatility. The ‘haves’ are a tiny minority amongst the ‘have nots’. The newspapers are awash with story after story telling us ‘regular folk’ that our leaders seem more driven by their personal agendas than their mandates and fiduciary duties as leaders.
We count on our leaders, be they politicians, businesspeople, or those who guide non-profit organizations, to “make things happen”. But alas, there are three types of leaders in this world-those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who say “what happened?”

The issue of leadership has been the subject of intense study since the earliest days of recorded civilization. Modern day research on organizational performance, as evidenced by Jim Collins’ bestseller ‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don't’, have usually suggested that leadership is omnipotent insofar as corporate results are concerned.

However, other studies disagree on the overall affect of leaders on organizational performance. For example in their 2006 book ‘Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management’, authors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton suggest that “the overriding impact of leadership on performance is a myth, or at least only a half-truth. Thirty years ago, in reviewing research on leadership, Pfeffer concluded at that time that actions of leaders most often explain no more than 10 percent of performance. Such things as a company's operating environment, the economy in general, or its long-run success or failure account for more of its current performance.”

Harvard Business School Professor James Heskett invited commentary on this thought-provoking topic that has far-reaching consequences, and this article contains his original article together with 127 comments that he received from readers with various backgrounds and experiences.

In short, the comments indicate that we sorely need leaders that are visionary, creative, courageous, intelligent, persistent, charismatic, and most of all, passionately committed with unfaltering integrity to placing the needs of those they serve ahead of their own personal needs and wants.

History has proven that our greatest leaders shared a common strength and purpose - the ability to envision a radically different future from the condition of life during their lifetime. They were also relentlessly persistent notwithstanding that they understood that they would not see the full results of their efforts during their lifetime. As well, they had the personal courage to confront both internal and external threats, with vision beyond the conventional wisdom of their day. We must therefore look to our past great leaders as role models in order to seek out or become the great leaders of tomorrow.