Managers who direct, monitor and adjust other people’s productivity are not leaders.
This myth began during the Industrial Revolution when workers in factories and on assembly lines were managed by overseers. The seeds of this myth were no doubt also planted during the Agrarian Age when the productivity of serfs and slaves was managed by lords and foremen on farms and plantations.
Perhaps its roots even stretch back to biblical times when, out of self-defense, Moses divided the people of the Exodus into hierarchical groups with a middle person those people could go to for their needs rather than all of them coming directly to Moses.
This is the “Myth of Hierarchical Leadership” – the concept that organizations are best led top down and that leadership and decisions flow primarily in that direction. This Myth has proven to be completely untrue as we’ve moved through the computer, information, global communications and internet revolutions, but many people and organizations still cling to the Myth.
Old Habits are Hard to Break
The Myth is a difficult one to break primarily because it is a self-perpetuating model rooted in power, ego, and control. For people in “management” positions who are all about control and personal ego-stroking, the Myth is very much in their interest to keep alive, despite the fallacy of its application in reality.
Creating and perpetuating the Myth of Hierarchical Leadership in organizations does not create cultures of people who venture to think, act, manage and lead on their own. Just the opposite, the Myth serves no cultural purpose but to artificially over-inflate the egos of the supposed “management” and artificially demean and under-value the competencies and intelligence of the supposed “staff”. A Myth culture conditions people not to think, but to wait for direction from an all-knowing “management” and not make decisions on their own. It does not empower people; it drains power away from people or offers them little control or autonomy in the first place.
The reality is that the majority of people in organizations understand their functions and the processes in and around their functions far better than the “managers” to whom they report. People on the front lines see the action first-hand and are in the best position to decide real-time courses of action. Perhaps most importantly, people want and need to be empowered and autonomous in their decision-making to feel valuable in their jobs, satisfied in their careers and, thus, of most value to their organizations.
Because of the downsizing and attrition that has occurred in many organizations in the last few decades, the reality is that organizations have become so flat that many of them have almost nobody who isn’t a “manager” of their function. Yet, the mythical Hierarchical Leadership management model maintains a flimsy facade that considers employees as “staff” who must wait for “management” to tell them what to do.
The Need for an Evolved Model of Leadership
A resounding and consistent theme in studies of leadership conducted by universities, management consulting firms, corporations, and the military proves that true leadership happens from all directions – bottom-up, outside-in, across divisional and organizational boundaries, as well as top-down. One military leadership model calls it “leading from the edge”, acknowledging that the majority of leadership decisions are made in real-time on the front lines of engagement – “the edge”.
Management at the top of any organization may provide strategy, high-level goals, organizational structure and a framework for decision-making, but mature organizations understand that leadership and real-time decision-making happen best in the field and on the front lines. The majority of leadership decisions and actions happen where people meet the market, customers, partners, collaborators, and competitors.
Mature organizations enable the power and control where it belongs … where the rubber hits the road.
Timely Non-Scientific Study on LinkedIn
Within the popular business networking site, LinkedIn, there is a group that formed called “Developing the Leader within You”. As of this writing, the group contains 2,913 people from all walks of organizational life. In August of 2011, a question was posed to the group by Richard Blakemore, one of the group’s members based in Australia. The question was, “If you could find a synonym for ‘leader’ what would that be?”
Over the next four months, 128 people responded to that question with individual words, phrases and paragraphs describing their views of leadership. We did not find a single word or phrase about “control”, “ego”, “hierarchy” or references to “management and staff” in this discussion.
Quite the contrary, the most popular and consistent concepts you will see within the posts of this group describe leadership qualities of vision, empowerment, humility, servant-hood, advocacy, enablement, stewardship, collaboration and inspiration.
Leadership in Our Time
Leadership in our age requires people who think and act not within antiquated models of hierarchical structure and control. Our time requires people at all levels of organizations to act with attitudes of purpose, visionary direction, enablement, shepherding, stewardship and, perhaps most importantly, humility – a confident knowledge that none of us individually has all the answers and trust that collectively we can always find them.
Organizations that understand and operate by this model of leadership will be those that attract the most talented people and will receive the most from those talents. Empowered people who operate within a culture of supported trust, inspiration and autonomy are people committed to the needs of the organization that provides them with that support. The result is that the people and the organization both operate at peak performance and consistently from their True Self.