U.S. President Barack Obama picks up balls of tar while touring the beach on Friday in Port Fourchon, La.
What makes a great Leader?
The following discussion took place May 25
Sasha Nagy: Hi everyone, we will be live with Alex Haslam shortly. This should be an interesting discussion on the nature of leadership and what makes a great leader. This discussion was borne out of CIFAR's Next Big Question series. For more information on this and other "Big Questions," please check out the CIFAR site.
We will begin shortly.
12:53 Alex Haslam: Hi Sasha: Thanks for this. I'm in my hotel room in Quebec City ready to start answering reader's questions. I'm sorry about the false starts too -- a problem of transatlantic synchronization.
12:54 Sasha Nagy: No trouble, Alex, can you briefly explain for our readers what aspect of leadership you wanted to examine in your research.
12:56 Alex Haslam: Writing in 1992, the influential management theorist Peter Drucker observed that "the leaders who work most effectively … never say 'I'. And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function…. There is an identification (very often quite unconsciously) with the task and with the group." Such observations are also echoed in the observations of a great many other writers - all of whom recognize that leadership is much more a 'we thing' than an 'I thing'. Yet if one searches for research that might validate Drucker's insights or, better still, explain why they are correct, the story is very different. For such research is thin on the ground. What we have tried to do in our work, then, is to do justice to observations like those of Drucker by providing an analysis of leadership in which the terms of the theoretical treatment are matched to the nature of the phenomenon. If leadership really is a 'we thing' (and we believe it is) then we need to understand what this means, where it comes from, and how it works. This, however, is a much harder task than it might initially appear.
12:59 Sasha Nagy: To that point, in order to delve into this research is it more worthwhile to study recent political or military leaders, or do you find it better to focus on historical figures...
1:01 Alex Haslam: In our work we try not to restrict ourselves to any one domain, or any one culture, or any one period in time. We believe that leadership is a universal phenomenon and that you are as likely to see it in a street gang or a kindergarten as you are in a cabinet office or a boardroom. Moreover, we believe that the social psychological processes that are are work in these various contexts are essentially the same.
1:06 Sasha Nagy: Alex, you are based out of England, at the University of Exeter, what can you tell us about the recent UK elections in terms of the leadership shown by all three candidates and the eventual winner David Cameron?
1:11 Alex Haslam: That is a very big question. However, the dynamics of the election were fascinating at a number of levels. For us I think two things stood out. First, the Labour party's capacity to garner support had been critically eroded by the failure of successive leaders to connect with followers on a number of levels. Second, the emergence of the coalition centred on the redefinition of the landscape in three-party rather than two-party terms. The creation of this new frame of reference meant that a new leadership structure was necessary, and that the Conservatives couldn't win simply by contrasting themselves with Labour.
1:12 Sasha Nagy: Thanks Alex, I couldn't help asking... I realize it is a topic for a longer discussion, Back to reader questions....
1:12 Comment From Josie dAvernas: Hi Alex. Would you comment please on some of the ways in which the world is changing that make leadership so important at this time in our history.
1:16 Alex Haslam: Hi Josie: I think leadership has been and always will be incredibly important. What is changing today I think are the types of groups that leaders are tasked with leading. Particularly in the political and business sphere these are now global rather than local. Relatedly, as a result of changes in communication (and surveillance) leaders are also accountable to followers in different ways as a result of followers' increased ability to monitor their behaviour. This, I think, can create very challenging dynamics for leaders -- ones that aren't always conducive to good leadership.
1:18 Comment From Magdalena: Can you talk about some of the other characteristics that make great leaders? Also I have read about your work - on the Glass Cliff - and women and work... does this mean that women are always doomed to fail in these pressure situations?
1:24 Alex Haslam: This is a question that people often ask, and I think that trying to answer it often takes people down something of a blind alley. Let's say, for example, that I respond (as many reseachers would) "intelligence". Well, the leadership literature provides plenty of evidence that sometimes followers are influenced by (and want) leaders who are smart, but equally, they sometimes eschew such leaders who are, how shall I put this, less smart. George Bush, for example, was a leader who made much of his anti-intellectualism -- and this served him very well. This of course, leads to the difficulat secondary question of what exactly intelligence is. As the chief curator of Bush's verbal gaffes, Jacob Weisberg, has observed, Bush's verbal skills and intelligence varied dramatically with social context. Thus when talking to others on matters in which there was shared enthusiasm (e.g., baseball, business interests) Bush was strikingly lucid; it was only when discussing issues in which he had little interest (e.g., welfare provision, foreign policy) that his lack of fluency emerged. So, on the basis of such evidence, how might a single assessment quantify and characterize Bush's intelligence? And if we felt confident enough to make it (e.g., on the basis of a test of verbal IQ) on what basis would we expect this measure to predict his capacity to lead? The point I am trying to make here is that leadership qualities in the abstract don't really help us understand the nature of effective leadership.
1:25 Sasha Nagy: Alex, the next point from an unnamed reader really follows up your earlier response to Josie. Interesting to consider something like the Gulf oil spill and the response to it in as a leadership question.
1:25 Comment From Guest: If you want to see how an "I" mentality can have a negative effect on one's ability to lead, you need not look further than BP's response in the Gulf of Mexico. I am currently in the Gulf as a part of the Deepwater Horizon Incident. The leadership that is being demonstrated at the highest levels here is lacking in such a way as to cripple oil spill response efforts in the field. The amount of money being wasted, resources being used embarrassingly inefficiently and the added damaged that is being done to the environment should be proof alone that without good leadership the best of efforts will be wasted.
1:27 Alex Haslam: Dear Guest: I think you are absolutely -- and tragically -- correct. All I can add is that I'm glad they took "British" out of the company's name.
1:27 Comment From Rene R: I am wondering about Obama's rise to presidency and what the factors were that got him into that role? Also, what is now contributing to what seems to be a decline in his popularity...
1:32 Comment From Timothy Trebilcock: Do leaders need to be entrusted with leadership by the group before they can become leaders? Then possibly the group suspends disbelief until success is proven or disproven, though success as a leader is difficult to measure.
1:35 Alex Haslam: Again, Obama is someone whose leadership -- and whose personality and charisma -- we are often invited to comment on. Linking this to Magdalena's earlier question, it is notable that at the time of his election in 2008, for millions of Americans, Obama was a profoundly charismatic figure: someone who powerfully embodied most, if not all, of the characteristics that researchers would identify as predictive of leadership. Yet many people only came to see Obama as charismatic over the course of the election campaign, and many also remained stubbornly resistant to this assessment throughout -- and to this day. For example, in announcing his endorsement of the Democratic candidate, the Republican and former Secretary of State Colin Powell indicated that this decision was based on observations of how Obama had grown over the previous two years in a way that had enabled him to "[capture]the feelings of the young people of America and [reach] out in a more diverse, inclusive way across our society". At the same time, ultra-conservatives like Jerome Corsi dismissed Obama's appeal as a product of deceit and as evidence of a dangerous "cult of personality". Corsi thus maintained that "for all of Mr Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth". Since his election, as you point out Rene, Obama's perceived charisma has also fluctuated quite dramaticaly. So which assessment is right? So if there are multiple stances on this (as there almost always are), which one should be authorized? Or should we simply average across them? Clearly there are problems with either strategy. Moreover, if charisma and character change over time, at which point should we attempt to obtain a valid assessment? The critical point here is that a single decontextualized assessment of a leader's character can never have universal validity for the simple reason that this character is always tied to context. Obama's presidency, then, isn't just about him, it's about us -- and to answer your question Rene we can't focus on him in isolation.
1:38 Alex Haslam: I'm falling a bit behind here -- but the questions are great. Timothy, I think you are right yes. This is because leadership can be defined as the process of influencing followers to contribute enthusistically to group goals, and so it is ultimately followers (and their perceptions and efforts) that dictate the fate of leaders. And unless those followers buy into a given leader's leadership they simply won't follow.
1:39 Comment From Matthew B: There are several countries that have recovered from brutal right-wing regimes to more social democratic governing platforms. It seems somehow that there is a sort of cultural amnesia that takes place.. and sometimes these parties that have a history for brutality get democratically re-elected. Why and how does this happen? Do we as a society really have such a short-term memory, or are there are factors at play that can make sense of this nonsense?
1:42 Alex Haslam: I think memory is part of the issue here -- but note too that collective memories are also manipulated on behalf of a given leadership (e.g., in the media), so that what a group remembers is partly determined for it. Indeed, in this respect one of the crafts of leadership is precisely to manipulate representations of history so that they make a case for your leadership. In this way a group's history can end up looking very different from inside the group than it does from outside.
1:43 Comment From Fraser: In a recent Canadian poll, honesty and decisiveness (as well as intelligence) were listed as the most important attributes to have in a leader. In the political context, what does "honesty" look like??? Any advice to political leaders whom are genuinely trying to be honest, since this attribute needs to be "sold" to the public through various mediums.
1:47 Alex Haslam: Like 'fairness', this is one of the issues that we've looked at quite closely in our own research. Along the lines of some of the above discussion, the point is that perceptions of a leader's 'honesty' are very much grounded in a sense of shared group membership. That is, we tend to perceive that 'our' leaders are honest, but that 'theirs' aren't. However, this also depends very much on the context in which the group is operating and the norms that define shared group membership. For example, certain forms of honesty wouldn't have gone down too well at Enron in the 1990s.
1:48 Comment From Steve B: Following up on your response to Timothy's question, can you comment on the role (positive and negative) that the new social media play in followers buying into a given leader? Is it even possible today for societies or the general public to get an accurate sense of the leadership qualities of a particular candidate?
1:53 Alex Haslam: This ties in with Josie's earlier question. It is clearly the case that part of the new terrain for leadership relates to the way in which leaders both (a) try to use media to get their message out, and (b) in turn can come unstuck by exactly the same technology. Obama's use of twitter, and the microphone that caught Gordon Brown disparaging a Labour voter would be cases in point. The issue that you raise is an important one, that speaks to the notion of 'authentic leadership'. Along the lines of some of the above points, I think that the key to authenticity doesn't lie in access to information alone -- it relies on a capacity for followers to connect in meaningful ways with leaders. This is problem that technology can change, but, on its own, can't solve.
1:54 Comment From Josie dAvernas: Is it also true that increasingly, there are more leaders? That is, the role of leadership is shared across greater numbers of people. If that is true, what does that mean for decision-making - is it more cumbersome, is it more difficult to respond quickly in a crisis?
1:57 Alex Haslam: I think that leadership has always been distributed in the sense that for any group to achieve its goals everyone has to come to the party (and indeed, that it is only when this happens that groups, and their leaders are really successful). What I think has changed is that in the last 30 or so years, our understanding of leadership has been somewhat democratized, so that people are now more aware of their potential to play a leadership role in various types of organization. So whereas once people were sold the story that leadership was the preserve of 'great men', now we recognize that we all have (or can have) a role to play in the leadership process.
1:58 Sasha Nagy: Alex, we have reached the end of our hour. I want to thank you for your time and your efforts in answering reader questions. I am sure that we could go on for much longer. Perhaps you can wrap things up with a closing comment and perhaps let readers know what you will working on next.
Thanks again for your time, and for working to make this discussion happen after our trouble last week. Apologies to the questions we could not get to.
The Next Big question series continues this week, and we will be inviting the winner of the Montreal session from tonight to join us later this week.
2:04 Alex Haslam: It's a shame to finish, as I was just getting into this. I would happily have gone on all afternoon. First, though, I'd like to thank everyone for their great questions. Second, I'd add that if you want to read more I'd be happy to send people copies of relevant papers (we also have a book "The New Psychology of Leadership" coming out in September). Third, I hope that this debate continues beyond the confines of this (fairly restricted) domain.
The issues here are too important simply to leave to leaders.
2:05 Sasha Nagy: Thanks very much Alex. Readers can continue to discuss these ideas in our comments stream attached to this story. We will have to have Alex back at a later date.