"The Principles and Practice of Effective Leadership" by John Zinkin and Chris Bennett

We believe the dichotomy between leaders and managers described in much business literature fails to recognize how the two roles overlap. In the literature on “leadership” and “management”, “leadership” is mainly considered to be the ability of an individual to create a superordinate goal for a group and communicate it in a compelling way to “followers”. “Management” is seen as the organization and control of resources to achieve a particular goal. They are both skills needed by those in charge of running organizations effectively. Leaders make things happen through other people. So do managers. Leaders must be able to define the vision, mission, and values of their organizations and communicate these compellingly to their followers. “Managers” must do the same in their areas of responsibility; itself an act of leadership. Thus, leadership and management belong on the same continuum of skills.

The view that leaders “do the right thing”, whereas managers “do things right” [1] emphasizes that leaders concern themselves with strategy, while managers deal with the resulting tactics and that these are in some way separate. However, feasible strategies are determined by tactical considerations; and appropriate tactics are determined by strategic objectives. Strategy and tactics exist on a continuum; only separated by the time span over which they operate. Their separation is a convenience for analysts and to facilitate the allocation of responsibilities. Consequently, we believe the usual distinction is misleading and that effective leadership inevitably incorporates effective management, and vice-versa.

Our central proposition is that leadership techniques are morally neutral. We recognize that history has more bad people as great leaders than good ones. It is unfortunate but true. The great morally uplifting leaders are so few they probably can be counted on the fingers of two hands. Moreover, they succeeded because their ideas were powerful; their teachings were memes – “ideological viruses” that spread independently of the survival of their hosts, mutating just like biological ones do. For example, Jesus' and Buddha's teachings bear little resemblance to what became of Christianity or Buddhism and Christianity’s internecine warfare over which version was the truth. The same is true of Islam with its Sunni-Shia, Sunni-Ahmadiyya splits and the different murderous interpretations of Sunni thinking reflected in Al-Qaeda, Daesh and Al Shabab.

We explain what effective leadership “is” and that there are techniques that can be learned to make leaders more effective. Like all techniques, they are morally neutral. What matters is how they are applied. This means that what matters for effectiveness is not the same as what matters for moral goodness in leadership. The distinction comes from the objectives and the way in which leaders make their decisions.

We conclude that effective leadership depends on the application of morally neutral techniques, but show that leaders who had morally good objectives created longer lasting legacies. The deployment of leadership techniques for “evil” ends can be effective short term; but longer-term lack of good moral content undermines achievements. That is why the most important chapter in our book is the last one - how to make right-good decisions applying six ethical approaches, while using all the morally neutral techniques we discuss in earlier chapters.

Like Bertrand Russell, we believe effective leadership is a morally neutral activity that can be learned:?

“If there is a science of [leadership] success, it can be studied just as well in the successes of the wicked as in those of the good – indeed better, since the examples of successful sinners are more numerous than those of successful saints. But the science, once established will be just as useful to the saint as to the sinner. For the saint, if he concerns himself with politics, must wish, just as the sinner does, to achieve success”[2] [Emphasis ours]

We hope to demonstrate this in the book which is divided into three parts.

Part 1: Lessons from History

In Part 1 we suggest there are universal but morally neutral techniques for effective leadership. We show that the effectiveness of particular leadership techniques depends on the context in which they are practiced. We argue that correct context identification, and selection of leadership techniques deployed in response, determine the effectiveness of leaders. We reconcile the two apparently contradictory positions of Machiavelli, and illustrate our proposition, by briefly examining the careers of three great historical leaders. We chose leaders from history rather than current leaders because we believe distance from events is important to be able to assess the lasting lessons to be learned from their successes and failures and their remarkable understanding of complexity, intellectual curiosity, and mastery of detail. They were not guilty of oversimplification in the face of complicated circumstances, but were able to adhere to a long-term vision of the kind of society they wanted to create. We chose Elizabeth Tudor, Napoleon and Atatürk.

Chapter 1: Leadership is Morally Neutral makes the case that leadership is morally neutral and contextual; distinguishing between purpose, power and personality, exploring why leaders have followers and comparing different styles of leadership. The chapter revisits Machiavelli’s ideas in ‘The Prince’ and ‘The Discourses on Livy’ to reconcile the apparent contradictions between the two books. We conclude that the apparent disagreement between the two books is the result of differences in context, purpose and result.

Chapter 2: “Elizabeth Tudor” briefly covers the career of a remarkable woman and her success in turning England from an impoverished, divided and second-tier nation in the affairs of Europe into a wealthy, successful and confident nation overcoming the threats posed by France, Spain and Scotland to become a leading European power at the dawn of its global adventure, changing global geopolitics as a result.

Chapter 3: Napoleon Bonaparte briefly covers the career of a Corsican outsider who saved the French Revolution and laid the foundations of modern France out of the ruins of its “Ancien Regime”. Despite his ultimate downfall, caused by excessive ambition and lust for glory, he left a lasting legacy that changed Europe and the US, as a result of his courage, military genius, and ability to establish institutions needed for modern nation states.

Chapter 4: Atatürk briefly covers the career of Mustafa Kemal who played a critical part in the ANZAC defeat at Gallipoli. As Commander in Chief of the Turkish Nationalist forces defending Turkey from dismemberment by the victorious Allies after World War I, he beat them decisively and negotiated a favorable peace. He created a modern Turkish nation out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, turning it into a secular, western-facing country with its own Turkish identity where none had existed before.

Chapter 5: Leadership Lessons from History compares the performances of Elizabeth Tudor, Napoleon and Atatürk to see what can be learned, based on the characteristics of ethical/unethical and effective/ineffective leaders and how they compare with Machiavelli’s definition of effective leadership discussed in Chapter 1. It concludes that the most important factor in being an admired leader is operational effectiveness (competence).

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Part 2 “Leadership is managerial”

In Chapter 6: Managerial Leadership, we explain why leadership cannot be separated from effective management and conclude that leadership is managerial, and best encapsulated in the concept of “Wayfinding We look at the role of leaders in setting strategy and the relationship with tactics, using sailing as a metaphor and what we can learn from Polynesian “Wayfinding”. We then discuss the role of leadership in dealing with the distinct external and internal constraints organizations face.

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Part 3 “Leadership Techniques”

In Part 3, we discuss the techniques “Wayfinders” can learn, to be both effective and ethical.

Chapter 7: Dealing with Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity explores how “Wayfinders” need to recognize that a reactive approach to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA 1.0) affects decision-making and why they need to adopt a proactive approach (VUCA 2.0).

Chapter 8: Reconciling VUCA with the Need for Simplicity explores the role of evolution and neuroscience in the ways people process information, make decisions and communicate; and show how “wayfinders” can harness them to increase their effectiveness, as both leaders and managers, by reconciling dealing with VUCA with the need to keep things simple.

Chapter 9: Combining Two Leadership Models with Managerial Skills explains why leadership effectiveness depends on “wayfinders” reconciling the dominance and prestige models of leadership; and having the appropriate suite of managerial skills to ensure that their imagined futures are translated into reality.

Chapter 10: Communicating Effectively discusses effective communication by: understanding the importance of “Three As” (audience, angle, and attitude); how “Three Rs” (reviewing, recognizing, and rewarding performance) signal behavioural expectations; and how “Four Cs” (clarity, consistency, coherence, and codes of conduct) clarify organizational purpose, values and expected behavior.?

Chapter 11: Ethical and Effective Decision-Making explores the impact of duty-based and consequential ethics on decision-making; and develops a simple and practical framework for making “right-good” decisions by combining virtue ethics, effectiveness, mutuality, predictability, utility, and personalistic ethics to provide a six-stage decision-making process. It shows how the “Five P” performance framework helps to cross-check that ethical considerations are used when deciding strategy.

[1] Pascale, R. (1990). Managing on the edge. (New York: Simon and Schuster).

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[2] Russell, B., (1947), A History of Western Philosophy, (London: George Allen and Unwin), p.531