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Introduction

Becoming an Effective Leader

by Harvard Business School Publishing

Harvard Business Press 2005Citation

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Introduction

Congratulations! Youve just been promoted to a leadership position for the first time. Youve celebrated the

good news with family and friends, allowed yourself a moment to take pride in your achievement, and indulged in

visions of wielding your newfound power with wisdom and sagacity. You know that leading a team, department,

or unit is almost certainly going to pose all sorts of new challenges, but you feel confident that youll succeed. Or

perhaps youve served in a leadership role for a while and youve decided to strengthen your skills to meet new

challenges facing your company.

In either case, youll need confidence to excel in your efforts. But youll also need a heavy dose of realisman

accurate understanding of what leaders actually do, how they operate, how they enhance their abilities, and how

they achieve the best results for their companies. The nature of leadership is changing, and too many freshly

minted andmore seasoned leaders are operating from outdated assumptions about what the job entails. As a

result, theyre not getting the best from their people orthemselvesand their companies are paying the price.

Leadership: An Evolving Notion

Theres no getting around it: The nature of leadership has changed. And numerous businesspeople arent

keeping up with the changes. For example, many leaders assumewronglythat merely handing down orders

to subordinates will generate the payoff their company needs to compete. Not true. In this age of flatter

organizational structures and localized decision making, ordering people around doesnt work the way it used to.

Sure, people may comply with your demands, but theyll be going through the motions. Despite their obedient

behavior, they wont be giving you their genuine commitment. Moreover, acting like a dictator only stifles a

workforces ability to think creativelysomething thats essential for todays organizations as they compete.

Rather than fostering fresh ideas, bossing people around only spawns fear and surface-level obedience.

These days, leadership isnt about wielding unilateral power. Rather, its about mobilizing people to face

challenges that require new habits, new values or priorities, or new ways of doing business. Its about getting

things done through other peopleinspiring them to take responsibility and do the work that only they can do.

Its about defining a compelling visionwhile letting others decide how to make that vision real. And its about

putting the right structures and processes in place so that your people can sharpen their skills and excel in their

jobsand perhaps learn to become leaders themselves.

A leader who hands down orders or tries to solve every problem single-handedly and unilaterally isnt really

leading. After all, as one expert put it, solutions dont solve anything unless they live in peoples behavior. And

that means leaders must help others learn how to solve problems and develop solutions.

But along with these evolving ideas of leadership, certain cultural and economic forces are creating conflicting

ideas among workers about what makes an ideal leader. For example, as the pace of change accelerates

relentlessly, many businesspeople remain trapped in a crisis mind-set, which can foster a desire within

employees to look to their leaders to provide all the answers. Moreover, in the United States at least, cultural

traditions glorify those who present a heroic, charismatic front; who give clear answers; and who make things

happen. Witness the many celebrity CEOs featured on the covers of business magazines and journals. And

notice how almost all of these personages are depicted with resolute, all-knowing expressions on their faces and

a determined, take-charge stance.

But whether youre a CEO, manager, or team leader, how can you enable your people to achieve great things if

you provide all the answers instead of encouraging people to figure them out? If you take responsibility instead

of give it? If you tell your employees how to get to the goal instead of defining the end and lettingthem

map outthe means?

Recent events have only muddied the leadership picture even further. Specifically, in the wake of the bursting of

the dot-com bubble, the September 11 terrorist attacks, and a rash of corporate scandals, a cloud of anxiety

has settled over the business arena. People want more from their leaders than ever beforeand their needs

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can sometimes seem mutually exclusive. For example, they want reassurance anddirection, emotional openness

andunshakeable confidence, ownership of their work andsolutions handed to them by someone else.

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