Responsible Leadership - Critically analyzing Barack Obama as a responsible leader
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Critically analyse a leader you know well against two leadership models, identifying their form of leadership, their strengths and development needs, the context in which they lead and suggestions on how they might improve their leadership practice. Introduction Today, as in the past , the leadership phenomenon remains an essential part of our everyday lives. In this time of globalisation, rapid technological advancement and increasing probabilities of risk, organisations urgently need leaders that develop others, minimize personal ambition, create social architectures that support their vision and mission and move followers to higher levels of consciousness (Bennis 2006; Nanus 1992; Daft et al. 2010). There are several theoretical approaches to the study of leadership, dating back to 1866 when Thomas Carlyle constructed leadership as heroic, individualist, masculine and normative in orientation and nature (Carlyle 1993). More than 100 years of leadership research have led to several paradigm shifts as to the nature and consequences of successful leadership and fortunately a clearer picture is beginning to emerge about this behavioural science. Early leadership theories aimed to identify what innate qualities best leaders are born with and what behaviours they display. These early theories include Great man theory and Trait theory (Hoffman et al. 2011; Epstein 1994). The next phase of studies included Situational theory and Contingency theory that concentrate on the ability to adapt a leadership style based on the circumstances (Hersey & Blanchard 1969). The studies highlighted more of what great leaders do,rather than what traits they possess (Heath 2013; Donaldson 1999). More recently the shift in focus has been on studying the leader’s followers and the contextual nature of leadership (Bass & Riggio 2010; Bolman & Deal 2014; House et al. 2004). Leadership styles fall under the umbrella of Leadership theories and are modelled on a leader’s behavioural patterns (Hambley et al. 2007/5).The latest leadership studies have begun to focus on transactional, transformational and shared leadership styles. All these leadership behaviours are important because leadership style has been highlighted as one of the most important influencers of organisational culture as well as organisational innovation (Muchtar & Qamariah 2014).
This paper will argue that Posner & Kouzes’ Five practices of exemplary leadership model and James Burns’ Transformational leadership model are the most effective models for leading change in organisations. The paper will further argue that Idealized Influence and Inspirational Motivation have the ability to inspire and motivate and not just get compliance in a change management setting. The evidence will be provided through the author’s experience in a past IT change environment. A day seldom passes without a story appearing on the web or the paper about an effective leader. The stories usually concern world class politicians and statesmen, CEO’s of organisations and military officers. Yet, often the story could be about an ordinary change manager or project manager who exerts influence and shows persistent leadership to organise and lead a team to produce change and get a job done. This paper will analyse Eva Frerichs’ transformational leadership style as a Project manager on a SAP project implementation at ABSA bank in South Africa. The paper will further contrast Eva’s leadership style to that of another change project leader who led the team with a command and control style of leadership. To provide an overview of the context of the leadership and the company, the author reflects on her experience as an Financial FI/CO SAP consultant at ABSA bank. ABSA bank was one of the first South African banks to replace their expensive legacy platforms with newer architecture and packaged software in the form of SAP ERP . The project was to run for seven phases over a period of five years at a total cost of over R350 million. The first phase of the implementation included evaluation of strategic direction, building and refining the business case, designing and developing the enterprise architecture and impact analysis. The project was divided into several modules including Finance, Procurement. Asset management, HR and Strategic Enterprise Management. Each module had a project manager and change manager. Barclays bank has subsequently acquired majority shareholding in ABSA and is now called Barclays Africa Group. Eva Frerichs replaced Wouter Basson as SAP FI/CO Project Lead at ABSA bank due to Wouter’s inability to bring the project in line with the strict deadlines and to stay within the budget parameters. The project was running behind in the Q&A phase and the cost was already eating into the budget of the realization phase. The client was unhappy and so were the consultants and super users. Wouter was a “command and control” style leader and it has been cited: “It is hard to escape this leadership style’s historic influence and dominance”
(Anderson & Anderson 2015). Anderson and Anderson suggest that change leaders need to adopt new repertoires of behavior and engagement because failure in transformational change efforts is known to be undergirded in the shortcomings of “command and control” leadership styles (Anderson & Anderson 2015). The reasons are that command and control limit the amount of engagement and commitment that are necessary to develop in a team and in fact command and control often promote opposition (Alberts & Hayes 2006). Course corrections are often necessary during a change implementation and command and control leadership lessens the chances of being able to make these in a timely manner. Team members are closer to the action and the fine details of a project than project leaders and thus need to participate as full players and not coerced pawns. Team members need to own the change and understand its intent in a cognitive as well as an emotional way so that they can keep contributing and moving in a positive direction. Command and control leadership minimizes attention to team members due to lack of consistent communication and the emotional reactions to change (Anderson & Anderson 2015). Eva Frerichs came on board when the Finance team had reached several road blocks in the development phase and was running over in budget and behind in deliverables. At this stage the finance team was unmotivated, confused and had very little communication from Wouter. At one point the team thought that they would all be fired because no matter how hard they worked, no matter the long hours, the results were not positive nor desirable. Eva was an experienced team leader and change manager from SAP in Germany and was brought in to change the dynamics of the finance team and bring about positive change. Despite Eva’s different culture, age, gender and background, she was soon able to transform the finance team by appealing to the team’s ideals and moral values (Bass & Avolio 1994). Her patterns of behaviour were far different from those of Wouter Basson and at her personal best she was able to: Model the way, Inspire a shared vision, Challenge the process, enable others to act and lastly and very importantly, she could Encourage the heart (Kouzes & Posner 2002). Kouzes and Posner and other leadership researchers and academics suggest that these Five Practices of Exemplary leadership are consistently and positively related to effective leadership, engagement, satisfaction and levels of commitment from followers (Kouzes & Posner 2002; Kouzes & Posner 2014; Oglesby 2011; Nohria et al. 2003). Eva modelled the way by establishing principles concerning the way she liked us to work. She recognised that the prospect of complex change is overwhelming and oftentimes stifling and scary, so she communicated on a daily basis, she set small interim goals and awarded small wins with time off. She was able to put up signposts and reach out via email,
postit notes and whiteboards when some of us were unsure where to go and how to get there. Eva was passionate about making a difference. She worked long hours, but also took time out to share her vision of the future and through her storytelling nature she could create an image of what the organisation could become if we all pulled together. She breathed life into her vision and made the team think about the future and the possibilities they were to create for ABSA. Eva also managed to challenge the process and looked for innovative ways to improve the deliverables. She noticed that team members hated drawing the processes by hand and so she made Visio available for plotting the charts. She took the team’s request for a coffee machine near their work stations seriously and this allowed the team access to coffee and tea without having to queue for ages with the other teams. She understood that team members made mistakes and let each person understand that these were learning opportunities. Eva fostered collaboration and built a spirited team. She actively involved team members in decision making and had respect for people’s opinions. She strived to create an atmosphere of trust, communication and thus made each person feel capable and worthy of power. She also celebrated team member’s accomplishments with small tokens, such as a coaster for their coffee mugs that highlighted a milestone reached, she took the team out for coffee and made members feel like heroes. She encouraged the team’s hearts and the finance team became the most efficient team in the whole organisation, coming back to within budget and delivering outcomes that exceeded the client’s expectations. Leaders exhibiting a transformational shared leadership style motivate staff and appeal to follower’s ideals and moral values. At the crux of transformational leadership lies inspiration, whereby leaders create and follow a vision and set direction in an organisation undergoing change. This vision needs to motivate workers and appeal to followers' ideals and moral values. This approach encourages greater commitment, loyalty, trust, and respect from employees and increase the overall effectiveness of the organization (Bass, 1985). Transformational Leadership such as the leadership displayed by Eva originated in the late 1970’s and stemmed from research done by James M.G. Burns (Burns 2003). Burns's theory focuses on the notion that leaders motivate followers through authenticity and values, they build commitment and they empower followers to achieve goals that they thought were not possible to achieve. Leadership in a project management change environment and especially for IT which is a complex technology, relies heavily on teamwork (Norrie & Walker 2004). Further research goes on to say that the project manager is in fact a social architect
because he/she needs to develop a climate of active participation by involving all stakeholders at all levels of the project and in this context leadership is a process of social influence (Stagnaro & Piotrowski 2013). Bass developed the 4I’s in the 1980’s which stress that leadership has significant social influence using examples of team members modifying the motivation of other team members (Bass & Avolio 1994). Idealized influence is the idea that the leader serves as an ideal role model for followers and that the leader walks the talk and is admired and followed because of this. Inspirational motivation is a leader’s ability to inspire and motivate (Densten 2002). Transformational leaders have charisma,tell stories and make gestures when they talk. This invites team members to follow the leader and be inspired by their enthusiasm and honesty (Bass & Riggio 2006). Eva was an ideal role model for the finance team and walked the talk during her tenure as leader. She was a very likeable personality that smiled often, praised often and exercised individual consideration. She was able to inspire the team because of her charisma,storytelling and intuitive ways (Zaleznik 2004). There were some downsides however as transformational leadership can sometimes lead to taking risks that are out of the scope of the project . For example, the team sometimes steered off course from the procedures as described in the project narrative to accomplish a task quicker. Although the team was lucky and did not experience any failures or major setbacks; Rafferty suggests that by steering off the project grid, the risk taking could have derailed the project on a few occasions(Raftery 2003). In this regard Eva should have been slightly more risk averse and more open to suggestions from the other teams. Eva also had a lot of faith in her team but not all team members were as skilled in SAP as was necessary for the difficulty of some of the tasks. Barki et al and Holland and Light suggest that lack of team member skills is a risk for ERP system projects (Barki et al. 1993; Holland & Light 1999). Eva could have been more attentive to the team’s expertise levels and offered more training for staff that were not completely confident at configuring the finance module. Eva and the team worked very long hours and although the team was compensated for their time, there was a risk of burnout and inefficiency creep. The team was willing to work long hours but leadership needs to be mindful of not overworking their followers as this could negatively impact the project and also the health and well being of team members (Schulte 2014). One last criticism is that Eva was a moderator when it came to the team seeking advice and networking with other teams. Networking by followers is important so that members can
increase their social capital and seek alternative advice and input and build friendships and camaraderie in the workplace (Yager 1999; Dawson et al. 2008; Cross et al. 2004). This could have been encouraged more and facilitated by inviting other teams for coffee or social gatherings. Conclusion One of the most profound examples of transformational leadership was portrayed by Robin Williams where his character, Professor Keating, was able to encourage a group of boys in a strict , elite boy’s school, to think differently and to embrace their individualism. He inspired the boys to “seize the day” and to be passionate about what they do. Their path of self discovery clashed with the rigid ways of the school and Professor Keating lost his job in the end. The lesson from the movie was a resounding display of what a difference one person can make as a teacher, boss, mentor and coach. Eva was very much like Professor Keating and through her vibrant and warm personality, her ability to motivate and inspire and lead the team to change she was indeed an example of a transformational leader that showcases Kouzes and Posner’s Five practices of Exemplary leadership as well as Burn’s and Bass’s Transformational leadership style. She was not perfect by any means but for the author, she made a difference, not only in showing the way to lead and be an important part of a team but also how to encourage the heart. Thank you Eva and Carpe Diem.
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