Stephen Billing’s Blog

Further to the earlier post on the Ordinariness of Leadership Actions, listening is shown as different from a leader and subordinate perspective, and leadership is revealed as an emergent phenomenon.

In an earlier post, I summarised Alvesson and Sveningsson’s conclusions about the mundaneness of much leadership action.

When the researchers asked managers to specify the practice of leadership, they initially talked of formulating and communicating visions, strategies and overall guidelines but were not able actually to illuminate what they did in relation to these visions and strategies.

What they did instead was they talked about tasks such as listening, chatting and being cheerful as some of the things that were important in leadership. Some suggested they had special skills in this area, or that they favoured a style of being available for informal chats that allowed employees to talk with them (i.e. leaders as listeners). It is difficult to see how these things relate to the rhetoric of leadership as being about grand concepts such as strategies, visions and ‘the big picture’.

Listening and chatting do not really fit in as either leadership (transformation, strategy) nor management (administration, organising), according to the common management / leadership dichotomy. In fact, listening and chatting are not much different from what  "non-leaders" also do in going about their work.

One of the managers in the study referred to listening from the point of view of being the manager, and also being the subordinate. Listening enabled the manager to be receptive to and understand information and ideas from those below, although the manager might not be able to take action on the ideas – but at least the staff would feel listened to – listening would convey caring and respect. So far so orthodox.

Contrast the same manager discussing the experience of being listened to by his own manager. In this situation, much more emphasis was placed on the substantive concerns being expressed by the subordinate, and a strong requirements for action to be taken by the manager – the listener (manager) needed to be influenced by the subordinate. As a subordinate, without the response of action being taken, the experience of having his feelings taken into account was not enough.

The managers saw their listening, chatting and being cheerful not as means to an end, such as gaining more information, but as valuable in and of themselves, because it was the managers doing it. For example, contrast a secretary claiming that a vital part of their work was listening, chatting and being cheerful – it would be seen as a normal, but minor part of their work – not something that would give them a pay rise.

I think the authors make some very interesting observations in this study. Once managers get past the initial rhetoric that they are formulating and communicating vision or strategy, they can’t say how they do this apart from listening and chatting, which really, are things that almost anyone can do. While there is a tendency for the managers to imply they have special skills in this area, the researchers are not so sure. I am also struck by the view of the manager that just listening was enough, but as a subordinate he needed action from his boss to show he’d been listened to. As a subordinate, just being listened to but ignored was not enough. After all, it’s only when you get the response that you know you’ve been listened to – that you understand what your gesture meant.

I, of course, also have a view on this listening and chatting business.

I think the reason that listening and chatting are highlighted as important are because they amount to human interaction. We are all humans, and hence we are all bound up in human interaction. We cannot escape from human interaction. It is from this interaction that there is the potential for novelty, something new to occur in our organisations.

I am inclined to think, like Doug Griffin in his book The Emergence of Leadership that leadership consists of interactions from which leadership emerges, and is recognised by the participants as leadership – it is hence an emergent phenomenon.

As in the situation of John Robinson, the captain of my tennis team in my earlier post, who told me that he was humbled by what I wrote in that post. At the time he was not seeing himself as showing the leadership qualities I referred to, just wanting to start the day off on the right foot. Nevertheless, I recognised these leadership qualities, and the members of the other team at least stopped what they were doing to listen and took him seriously. They did not, for example, ignore him and continue talking amongst themselves. This, I think, was the recognition of his leadership. And once I pointed it out to him, I think that John can also see that what he did amounted to leadership. It’ll be interesting to see how our doubles match together goes next Saturday!

Alvesson’s research shows that leadership consists of mundane acts such as listening, chatting and being cheerful which are imbued with the mystical aura of leadership when undertaken by leaders.

I write this having just finished an interclub tennis fixture between our club and another. John Robinson, our captain for the day, did something at the start of the day that I thought was at the same time quite special and yet also quite ordinary. He and I went to talk to the other captain and team prior to the contest – introducing ourselves, connecting through past matches and opponents, catching up on each team’s progress throughout the competition, discussing who was injured, the weather forecast, all the while eagerly anticipating the competition we were about to engage in. This struck me at the time as being something I have to call an act of leadership, both establishing a good environment for the contest and also establishing himself as the spokesperson for the team. It was skilfully done.

But at the same time, what happened was really very ordinary. It was several people talking and listening to each other. Was it because it was the captains speaking that this seemed an act of leadership?

I am moved to consider the paradox of the ordinariness of this interaction, which I recognised at the same time as understanding it as an act of leadership that I was a witness to.

In a guest post on this very blog, Russell Ness raised the question of whether is such a thing as leadership. Intuitively we take leadership for granted, it seems self-evident that leadership is important – why even question this?

I wonder if you have come across the work of Mats Alvesson, pictured? He is a professor at Lund University in Sweden with lots of research credentials, who has written numerous books and articles, about leadership, culture and research methodology amongst other subjects. His work on qualitative and management research methodology was important in my own doctoral thesis.

In a very interesting 2003 article in the journal Human Relations entitled "Managers Doing Leadership: The Extra-Ordinarization of the Mundane" (subscription required) Mats Alvesson and Stefan Sveningsson interviewed senior and middle managers in a biotechnology company (think highly qualified (PhD level) managers) about what leadership was and what they were doing when they did ‘leadership.’ Using non-directive interviews without a particular leadership model or models in mind, they gathered accounts of leadership that were only partly in line with what the leadership literature would suggest.

Going straight for the finish line, here are their three conclusions. I’ll explore each of them in more detail in my next post.

• A lot of leadership is fairly mundane (e.g. listening) and doesn’t differ much from what other people do, at least as far as behaviours are concerned.
   
• When managers or "leaders" do these mundane things, they become vested with an aura and appear to be significant and mystical when framed as leadership.
   
• The formal position of manager (or captain in the case of my tennis example) is important in terms of this framing, and this raises a problem for the distinction between leader and manager.

It was supposed to rain but turned out to be fine and we had some good close matches in the tennis, followed by post match debriefs and socialising with the other team. Hmmm.

Is there such a thing as leadership? Does your formal position determine whether or not you are doing leadership? Watch this space…

This post continues my thoughts on the main streams of organisation development as identified by French and Bell, and how they have morphed into common practices today. Post 1 in this series is here.

I have done this post because much of the standard thinking about change comes from the field of organisation development.

The first two roots identified in  the previous post were T Groups / Laboratories and Survey Feedback. Here are the next two.

• Action research was a response to the recognition that scientific or positivist methods of research (i.e. objectivity, ability to replicate results, researching from the outside) did not work in researching human organisations. Action research aimed to develop social knowledge about the laws of social change, to provide for greater collaboration between scientists and practitioners and richer data about real world problems.

  It is based on a cycle of planning, data gathering, action and feedback.

  Modern incarnations of this include cooperative enquiry, participative enquiry and appreciative enquiry, where the feedback of the leader or researcher is based on participant observation.
   

• The fourth stem was the work at the Tavistock Institute in London, which was experimenting with group analysis methods used in consulting and organisations.

  This led to the development of socio-technical systems theory (that organisations consist of social and technical systems and interventions should take both into account).

  My own doctoral study has strong ties with this stem, having been conducted in conjunction with the Institute of Group Analysis in London which is related to Tavistock.

  Interventions where the leader or organisation development practitioner provides information based on psychoanalysis of the group, or psychodynamics are based on this stem.

Why is all this important? Well, as a senior manager, it is helpful if you can identify the basis of the proposed solutions that are put to you. All solutions are based on some ideology or other, and understanding this basis helps you to identify the ideology behind the solution that you are being presented with (the ideology will usually be hidden rather than explicit).

The key questions listed above will help you get inside the thinking of those recommending solutions to you. This will help you critique that thinking, and then make appropriate decisions. These decisions you make will be important because they will involve committing your organisation’s money and the time of your staff to them.

You can email me with any questions using this link.

By the way, my copy of French and Bell was generously given to me by Diana Jones – thanks Diana.

Much of the standard thinking about change comes from the field of organisation development. In this post  I consult my copy of French and Bell (the bible of conventional thinking about organisation development), to provide a brief history of four roots of organisation development from the 1950s onwards. Two of these roots are covered in this post, and two in the next post in two days’ time.

But wait, there’s more. This post also gives examples of how these roots have morphed into strands that we now recognise as part of the loose conglomeration of functions that make up the 2009 version of organisation development.

The term organisation development is such a loose term, that it perhaps doesn’t really mean that much now except to its adherents. However, its roots are still visible if you look hard. The four stems (two in this post, two in the next) were identified by French and Bell, I have added the modern day examples of how these roots have morphed.

• T Groups and laboratories – groups of people who learn from their own interactions and the evolving dynamics of the group. This method  began with Kurt Lewin’s method of having observers making notes about interactions among members who reported on what they had seen.

  Nowadays, you can see this approach used in triad role plays with observers, and the increasingly less popular assessment centres.

  T Groups are the foundation of any methods where the leader or organisation development practitioner provides information based on observation of the group’s activities.
   

• Survey feedback – where surveys of large groups are conducted and the results fed back to groups.

  You can see this today in engagement surveys where companies offer large databases of normative data on which to compare your managers. Also, this method has evolved into the method commonly used by consultants of interviewing and then providing feedback on the findings to the group.

  Rensis Likert, who developed the famous 5 point scale was seminal in this stem of organisation development’s roots.

  There are strong links amongst the principal theorists in these two stems.

  In methods derived from this stream of organisation development, the leader or organisation development practitioner provides information based on analysis of data from the survey responses of staff.
   

Identifying the basis of proposed solutions put to you by your HR or organisation development team is useful and will enable you to check out the knowledge of any consultants or internals pitching to you.

Continued in the next post…

You can email me with any questions using this link. 

By the way, my copy of French and Bell was generously given to me by Diana Jones – thanks Diana.

A journal entry reminds me of the messiness of change.

In our accounts of change projects, we often look back and think of the plan, and how we achieved it despite distractions, resistance and problems that arose. But, like being on a building construction site, working on change projects can be messy.

I think in our remembering afterwards, we forget how messy, reactive, anxiety-raising and unplanned a lot of what happens actually is when you are in the thick of it.  Certainly most of what you can read in the literature on change emphasises the planned side of it rather than the messiness.

I was reviewing a journal entry I made in the middle of a large and difficult change project which has since been completed.

"Last night we decided that A would write the accountabilities, I would write the Executive Team paper and B would proof read and wordsmith our drafts.

Today the plan has changed – there’s a meeting at 4.30pm with the General Manager and Deputy Secretary at which they will decide on the naming of the positions and other related questions.

The previous day was also spent preparing material for another meeting with the General Manager. So the project is spending its time preparing these other papers for immediate consumption rather than concentrating on the goal of having the full Executive Team paper ready."

While we ended up meeting the deadline for getting the Executive Team paper done, at the time we were dealing with various stakeholders with differing degrees of anxiety about the project. Handling these anxieties by providing reassurances, early draft versions, additional materials and so on was a large part of the day to day work.

The rhetoric about change does not much acknowledge this messy reality. This reality is that we are feeling our way forward, responding to others as they respond to us. We cannot step outside this messy human relating in the present, the experience of which is shaped by our history of the past and our expectations for the future. I think that our approaches to change in organisations need to recognise this, but many do not.

Six myths about organisational change arise from thinking about change that is not congruent with the experience of actually working in organisations.

An excerpt from this article was published in the Changing Organisations Newsletter ISSN 1174-5576 Num 2: March 2009.

I think we have a problem with the way we think about change. The problem is that our managerialist thinking about organisations and how they change is not congruent with our experience of actually working in organisations.

Myth 1

In the world of managerialism, a scientific gap analysis will allow managers to create a vision detailing how the future will be for all the people in the organisation, measure the gap between that desired future and current reality, and plan how to close that gap.

Reality 1

In the real world the future unfolds as the interweaving of the intentions of many people involved in the organisation. The gap analysis helps to develop a plan. The plan represents the intentions of those involved in the project. Those intentions interplay with the intentions of others in the organisation. It is useful to have a plan, but the plan will change a lot on the way. It does not map out exactly what will happen, and it does not take into account insights and further thinking that will occur in the future. So you have to pay careful attention to the intentions of others and how the interweaving of these intentions is playing out, a reality that is ignored in the gap analysis approach.

Myth 2

In the world of managerialism, change happens in stages (e.g. see this post). People will go through stages such as a grief cycle (e.g. SARAH – Shock, Anger, Resistance, Acceptance, Help) By implication, change happens when managers intend it to happen.

Reality 2

In the real world, change is taking place all the time, whether or not managers will it to. Change occurs in the conversations that take place in the lunch rooms, in the smoking areas, in the corridors and around the water cooler. It does not take place in stages, even if the project is planned in stages. Most project plans ignore what is going on in the lunch rooms, in the smoking areas, in the corridors and around the water cooler.

Myth 3

In the world of managerialism, you capture hearts and minds with inspirational statements on the intranet, workshop sessions with interesting visuals / posters, and well crafted communications.

Reality 3

People have consciousness and choice. Most current change approaches have gone beyond trying to force people to change, instead seeking to persuade people with compelling arguments. But as you no doubt know from experience, compelling arguments do not persuade everybody. For example, you don’t know whether or not people are going to be inspired by your carefully crafted video or email. It is my view that effective change practitioners are able to articulate their views about human consciousness and choice so that they have effective ways of dealing with the variable responses people have to the persuasive messages.

Myth 4

In the world of managerialism, communication happens in cascades.

Reality 4

See Reality 2. Cascades ignore the informal channels of communication.

Myth 5

In the world of managerialism, you use psychology, rewards and sanctions to change behaviour, neutralize resistance and exult champions, early adopters, change agents and other agreeable individuals.

Reality 5

In the real world, this is manipulation. Adults see through and resent these kinds of behavioural tactics that attempt to use behavioural and social sanctions, but concentrate on the formal and ignore the informal social processes that take place in the ’shadows’ – those places where most managers fear to tread.

Myth 6

In the world of managerialism, the present is a point between the past and the future on the timeline that tells us what stages and activities we should be up to now.

Reality 6

In the real world, people take action in the present based on their experience of the past and their expectations for the future. For example, people make decisions about their investments in the present, not knowing what is in the future, but having expectations, for example about what the real estate market or perhaps finance companies will do in the future. We are currently seeing a move of contractors into permanent positions. One job recently attracted 55 candidates – when it was advertised 18 months ago it attracted only two candidates. Contractors are making these decisions based on their expectations for the future – when these expectations for the future are different, for example if they are more optimistic about contracting, then they take different action, they make different decisions in the present.

Past experience is relevant too – most people in organisations have now experienced change initiatives. I was approached by one person recently who told me that his wife had a high powered job in HR in a big organisation. He had showed her the material we had put out – it was being compared with not only his previous experience but also that of his wife.

Conclusion

Most thinking about change does not match up with the lived experience of working in organisations. It privileges formal channels of communication and does not pay enough attention to the ’shadows,’ to the informal communication that takes place in organisations, which is where change initiatives are undermined. No wonder 75% of change initiatives are reputed to fail.