BackExtract | The ‘I’ of Leadership
Leaders can learn new behaviours, and tailor their response to situations they haven't faced before
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Adapting to change
With the will, opportunity, right tools and practice, leaders can be truly versatile and adjust their style to match the needs of the situation," writes Nigel Nicholson in The “I" of Leadership: Strategies for Seeing, Being and Doing.
Nicholson, professor of organizational behaviour at the London Business School, UK, says of course leaders are shaped by their experiences, and depend on their qualities and the situation to make important decisions. But leaders can also adapt to change and learn new behaviours. In the chapter “The Adaptive Leader—Leadership Processes", Nicholson talks about how we are all less flexible than we think, and how we can improve. Edited excerpts:
Effective leadership processes have three levels: acts, tactics and strategies.
Acts: The leader is quick to recognize when some new response is required—this is improvisation. Duke Ellington, a professional improviser in music, was likewise in management; constantly inventive, finding new ways of dealing with the troublesome people that inhabit the world of jazz production, distribution and consumption. Ernest Shackleton, hero of the Antarctic, showed he was willing and able to do anything he required of his men, constantly inventing new diversions and actions to keep people motivated and happy under conditions of extraordinary privation.
Tactics: Tactics are to acts as phrases are to words—they bundle ideas and actions. Leaders are often at their most tactical in meetings—for example, knowing when to interject for maximum effect. One of the most common and powerful tactical forms is what cognitive scientists call “heuristics"—commonly known as rules of thumb. These are operational principles to govern thought and action. Of course, the trick is knowing when to apply them, but you can see how many a smooth operator can appear no more than a slick trickster if that’s all they’ve got. Ellington and Shackleton were tactical masters. Everything they did was nuanced and sequenced to meet a specific goal.
Strategies: Forty years ago, management guru Henry Mintzberg published his groundbreaking analysis of managerial work—an intimate ethnographic observation of what executives actually do, rather than what the textbooks at the time depicted, in which he noted how their daily life was a blizzard of improvised action, dealing with unscheduled meetings and unexpected events. But Mintzberg shrewdly noted that some are able, by shot selection, to shape this blizzard into a coherent, purposeful shape. Others just churn—frustrated and frantic, driven by events. The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead!
Shackleton and Ellington were strategic, in that each had an overarching goal and purpose which all their actions served; which gave direction to their choices. For Ellington it was his grand vision of music, connection and spirituality. For Shackleton it was simpler—his singular goal to save all his men.
The Duke Ellington Method
It was said by one of his band that “everyone loved Duke, he was on everybody’s side." This is a statement to ponder at, not least because of the vicissitudes of running a 16 or so piece jazz orchestra. Of all the difficult people in the world to organize and lead, jazz musicians must come near the top of the list—feckless, drug and alcohol abusers, undisciplined, anti-authority, you name it.
One of his long-standing tenor players—Ben Webster—was distinguished by his magical ability to produce a lush, almost sentimental, subtle and beguiling sound from his horn. However, off the bandstand, he was such a roughhouse that he earned the nickname “Animal." Not a man to get the wrong side of. But Ellington was an impervious charmer—a man of grace, elegance and unruffled good humor. He knew how to turn away wrath, as the Good Book recommends, to the extent that, as legend has it, when Oscar Pettiford, a bass player given to emotional firestorms, started screaming grievances in Duke’s face, the great man simply fell asleep. A superb instance of the right behavior for the moment.
As a motivator, Duke was a great strategist as well as a tactician. One of his most winning techniques was to have numbers especially tailored to showcase the talents of particular instrumentalists. Everyone got their place in the sun—very addictive. Moreover, he had a great contrarian strategy for dealing with the bad boys who showed up late or, worse, under the influence. He would not only feature them, but allow their solo spots to extend beyond the point of creative comfort. It was one such a mammoth solo that Ellington used to turn around the band’s fortunes at its nadir in 1956, when, at the Newport Jazz Festival, Nelson-like he turned a blind eye to frantic instructions to close his set and make way for the “bigger" acts that were supposed to follow. Instead, he launched the band into a 12-bar blues, “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," in which the prolific genius of tenor man Paul Gonsalves turned in an unprecedented 27 choruses of his solo, lifting the crowd to heights of ecstatic appreciation unseen for years at the festival, and reviving the band’ s reputation overnight.
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