Leading Quietly - the essence of agile leadership
The decades of the 80’s & the 90’s provided an era wherein the ‘great leader’ theory (oft’ compared to Napoleon) was reborn. Singular heroic types, that it was mooted, were needed to transform business and industry as we knew it from a post-industrial into a new knowledge era. The breakdown of this testosterone fueled army was however felt in the wash up of the Enron/Andersen/Tyco reputational crises from 2001.
A new style of leader was then sculpted with an eye on ethics, values and responsible decision making on behalf of society and business. The Tolstoyan-like model was in fact well described in a book written in 2002 by Joseph L Badaracco Jr ‘leading quietly – an unorthodox guide to doing the right thing’. After a decade or so of this more considered style of leadership, I was recently prompted to revisit this book, mainly in view of the return to the Nineties leadership style of the rampaging Donald Trump.
The two styles can also be compared with the autocratic leader (ideal for times of war – think Churchill) and democratic peace time leader (think perhaps Mandela). So, where is the war? If you don’t have one, start one or invent one such that people can see an urgency for change given that this model only really has a short term agenda – decisions rapidly made to serve pressing needs. The Tolstoyan model however fits very nicely within the new management theories of ‘agile’ leadership being coherently adopted across the commercial spectrum; featuring phased decision-making moving towards emerging business targets with a portfolio based approach to optimise all actions.
So, what are the human qualities required? If we look to the Badaracco model, he emphasises three major characteristics (virtues) of a quiet leader as featuring: restraint, modesty and tenacity. The first two designed to moderate short term activity and responses during active planning phases while committing to longer term outcomes which will be ensured by an unflinching tenacity toward desired results.
Most writers on the ‘great man’ theory are summarily sceptical as to whether the leader involved actually impacted the memorable events or indeed was a victim of them. The Tolstoyan or ‘quiet’ leader clearly remains the dominant preferred scenario in the commercial ranks today as ‘doing the right thing’ continues to be a clear platform for sustainable business; however it will be interesting to see where the Trump twitter-led hysteria leads us as leader profile not seen for decades takes up centre-stage in this social media infused world.
Grahame Flynn MBA CGEIT (ISACA)