Book Review – The Art of Leadership: The Norm for Foresightedness, Effectiveness and Trust by Ulf Lindberg and Christer Hanefalk; Ekerlids Förlag, Stockholm, 2021

I approached this book with some degree of anticipation, given my long experience applying Requisite Organization principles in my consulting work (having had the good fortune of working extensively with Elliott Jaques many years ago) as well as my more recent in-depth academic work focusing on leadership. 

While there is much interesting historical detail in the book, I found it quite patchy in its general coverage of scientific method, management and leadership concepts, and RO theory and practice.  The discussion of the need for a scientific approach and the critical role of measurement, while important, was rambling and overly long.  This could have been much more cogently and succinctly presented.  References to various historical leaders and leadership thinkers as well as to management and psychological concepts and so-called management “gurus” were cherry-picked; there was a glaring lack of reference to any of the scholarly academic research and findings on leadership, and not much on management. Many of the individuals referred to produced largely anecdotal material and writings that, while popular in business circles for their often simplistic analyses and prescriptions, are lacking in scientific rigor.

A scientific approach demands a sequence of observations, then empirical generalizations based on these observations, development of theory to explain the generalizations and enable predictions, generation of hypotheses to test the theory, and then design and execution of empirical studies (experiments and/or qualitative research) to test the hypotheses, generating more observations that provisionally confirm or refute the theory, and so on, in a virtuous circle.  Much of what has been touted as science in management and leadership work (and specifically much of the non-RO material referenced in the book, as well as some of the RO concepts) fails to satisfy scientific method.  Most often, generalizations have been made based on anecdotal observations, often limited, and then these generalizations have been used as a basis for application in practice.  What has been missing is robust theory to explain the generalizations, and associated hypotheses and replicated empirical research and validation that support the theory.  Elliott Jaques did make significant strides in articulating new and insightful empirical generalizations and developing some theory, as well as doing empirical (mostly qualitative) longitudinal research, but much of RO still remains art (like engineering (the art) vs. applied science).

While the coverage of RO concepts was generally accurate, what was presented was mostly a conceptual overview which would be difficult for someone without much deeper experience in the art to put into practice.  This begs the question: who is the audience for this book?  Seasoned RO practitioners will learn nothing new here, and those who are new or have a basic understanding of RO will be hard-pressed to apply the concepts.  There is a lot of nuance in diagnosing issues and then applying RO as a practitioner, and that depth and nuance are missing in the book.  Again, some concepts like time span have been presented in more detail, while many other elements have been either glossed over or are missing in action.

The title of the book is “The Art of Leadership”, despite the overly extended discussion of the importance of science.  This dichotomy between art and science seems to have escaped notice and not been reconciled. And despite the emphasis on science, a scientific approach is completely missing in the discussion of leadership.  There are sections entitled “The need for further research about leadership”,  “Norms and nomenclature in leadership”, and “Science in the field of leadership”, yet these sections all miss the essence of a scientific approach to the issue.

The word leadership is used throughout without rigorously defining what the concept means, thereby assuming we all know and agree on its definition and understand what we’re talking about.  And yet, as Galileo observed in his Dialogues, naming the phenomenon “gravity” does not explain what the phenomenon is (this is known as the “nominal fallacy”).  Similarly, calling those individuals in executive roles in organizations “leaders” (and using the word interchangeably with “manager”, which is not defined in the book, either) doesn’t explain what the phenomenon of interest is.

There is a tendency to attribute leadership to a role, or to a person, rather than understanding that leadership is a social phenomenon (akin to gravity being a physical phenomenon) that we can encounter and explore empirically, through both experiments and qualitative research.  Assuming that leadership is inherent to a role or to a person is a logical leap. I conducted extensive research into the leadership phenomenon, both experimental and qualitative, over a five year period.  It (surprisingly) became evident to me that most work and writing on leadership, both scholarly and popular, is actually about managerial effectiveness, and not about leadership or, in particular, about understanding leadership emergence, i.e., why someone shows up as a leader in the first place.

What my research confirmed is that leaders engage, align and mobilize people by meaningfully challenging, or meaningfully resisting challenges to, a system and status quo, and accumulate and wield non-coercive power in the process.  This non-coercive power is conferred on leaders by those who follow (“from below”).  In contrast, managers have coercive power conferred on them institutionally (“from above”), and are not paid to overthrow the status quo nor to tamper with the system stabilizers that maintain organizational equilibrium.  They are accountable for continuous improvement but, as Elliott Jaques brilliantly articulated, managerial work (and all work, for that matter) is “the exercise of judgment and discretion to arrive at decisions to execute tasks, within parameters” (emphasis added).  In fact, organizations are designed with powerful automatic stabilizers to suppress tampering too much with the system or status quo, i.e., they’re designed to suppress leadership emergence. 

In Jaques’ view, “The managerial role has three critical features. First, and most critical, every manager must be held accountable not only for the work of subordinates but also for adding value to their work. Second, every manager must be held accountable for sustaining a team of subordinates capable of doing this work. Third, every manager must be held accountable for setting direction and getting subordinates to follow willingly, indeed enthusiastically. In brief, every manager is accountable for work and leadership.” (Jaques, 1990, 1996, emphasis added)

The reason good managers may be perceived to be leading is because they acquire personal authority (beyond the positional authority institutionally conferred on them) by demonstrating technical and behavioral competence in their work over time; so they acquire one dimension that characterizes the leadership phenomenon – staff follow willingly.  And to staff in a properly stratified managerial accountability hierarchy who are not operating at their manager’s level of complexity it will appear that the manager is able to restore and stabilize the status quo when moderately disturbed or incrementally adjust it as needed.  But from the perspective of the manager’s manager, and from my perspective as a consultant, the manager is just effectively performing their managerial work, executing in concert with the established system with the anointed authority to do so – it’s not leadership.

Managerial effectiveness is certainly important: if managers are effective in their roles, their staff may respond well and perform as desired without the need to use much coercive positional power, thereby tending to diminish the oversight load on a manager as well as increasing staff commitment and engagement. 

But  managerial effectiveness is not the leadership essence that individuals seem to more fundamentally seek and respond to in many situations.  People perceive the difference between managers and leaders.  My research confirms this.  Managers can also be leaders but, to repeat, organizational systems militate against leadership emergence.

So while the phenomenon is subjectively perceived, it can be objectively defined.  Elliott attributed leadership to the role, and intuitively focused on the dimension of non-coercive power, rather than seeing it as a discrete social phenomenon that could be conceptually defined and empirically studied, and that goes beyond acquiring personal authority in a role.  The authors of this book have assumed they understand the phenomenon without realizing that they, too, have committed the “nominal fallacy” – naming is not explaining.

To conclude: “The Art of Leadership” is an interesting meander through science, history, and several management-related topics, with a competent introduction to RO.  But I would question its ultimate value to RO practitioners.  It doesn’t add a new perspective to what already exists in other books and material, and I think also perpetuates some myths and weak concepts.  Better to reference the original sources and other RO specific materials for guidance and understanding.