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Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face Their Toughest Challenges by Dean Williams
jwsg's review
3.0
In Real Leadership, Dean Williams argues that real leadership is about getting "people to confront reality and change values, habits, practices and priorities in order to deal with the real threat or the real opportunity that people face..[and] facilitates improvements in the human condition." Diagnosis is essential in real leadership - to identify what the real threat or opportunity at hand is, and not be distracted by "false sets of tasks" that skirt around the real issues. This entails being willing to set aside one's personal convictions to learn about the issue at hand - how different stakeholders see the issue, what are their concerns and values, their narrative, and what piece of reality they are unwilling to confront and why. William cites the example of the Vietnam War as an example of misdiagnosis - where the Americans wrongly assumed that that the North Vietnamese were agents of the Chinese and Russians, attempting to spread communism over Southeast Asia; the reality was that the Vietnamese wanted to unify their country under Vietnamese leadership and be free from external control, whether it was the Americans, the Chinese, the French or the Japanese.
Williams categorises leadership challenges into 6 domains. Each domain requires a different approach to leadership but involves the leader examining where people currently are at (what Williams terms "the condition of the people"), what are the barriers hindering them, and what is the promise or aspiration on the other side of the barrier that might encourage people to face up to reality.
(a) the activist challenge entails getting people to face a reality that they are unwilling or unable to confront. This is inherently risky work that requires great courage; it's easy to get killed when delivering the provocative message that there is a real problem at hand that people are ignoring. It requires the leader to be canny in understanding the threat they represent, being strategic in when and how they intervene, finding good partners to support you and "keep you alive".
(b) the development challenge entails helping the group build new capabilities - competencies, practices and processes - to ensure that the group can continue to survive and thrive, as "business as usual" is not going to cut it. Using the example of Singapore, Williams argues that in a development challenge, the leader needs to create a "robust holding environment to keep people from getting distracted", staging the work to give people time to figure out what works, and to give people a stake in developing their capacity.
(c) the transition challenge entails shifting the group to a new set of norms, mindsets and attitudes. Williams argues that this is not the same as change management, as the term "management" implies something that is rational and linear. But dealing with change in human systems is inevitably messy and requires "orchestration" rather than management. This is also different from a development challenge in that the capabilities in a development challenge are lacking and need to be built, but in a transition challenge, the capacities and capabilities already exist; it is the values and mindsets that need to shift. Williams cites IBM's transformation under Lou Gerstner and Japan's transition to a modern democracy as examples of transition challenges. In these circumstances, the leader must provide an orienting purpose, get people to own the transition journey, determine what must be preserved and help people deal with the losses, and embody the ideals of the transition.
(d) the maintenance challenge entails holding things together when the group is under threat - literally getting the group to hang out to fight another day. In these trying circumstances, the leader needs to help the group maintain hope, maintain its sense of mission and core values, attend to the "little big things" - the small gestures, actions and symbols that help to remind people and orient them about why and what they are doing the work for - and "keep the destructive forces at bay".
(e) the creative challenge entails bringing something new into existence that can help the group progress and is of real benefit to the group. This is imaginative and creative work. Exciting work to be sure, but also potentially emotionally draining, frustrating, messy and chaotic. This requires the leader to monitor and manage the mood and energies of the group, to stop the more powerful individuals from dictating the outcomes and allowing the group to discover and create solutions on their own, allowing for some degree of friction and chaos, but not to the extent that people get frustrated and walk away, and giving protected time and space to the group to explore.
(f) the crisis challenge entails helping the group tackle an existential challenge. The leader's role is to manage the volatility of the situation while addressing the underlying issue causing the volatility. The leader needs to create some space to think and formulate a response, to hold steady and avoid exacerbating the situation through rash or ill considered actions, to stop others from rash or ill considered actions, and to explore every alternative rather than go with the seemingly obvious or dominant solution in a time crunch.
Overall, a thought provoking read that is accessibly written. Williams peppers his books with a wide range of anecdotes (everything from Meiji Japan to modern Singapore and East Timor, the suffragette movement to Gandhi and Mandela) that keeps the narrative flowing.
Williams categorises leadership challenges into 6 domains. Each domain requires a different approach to leadership but involves the leader examining where people currently are at (what Williams terms "the condition of the people"), what are the barriers hindering them, and what is the promise or aspiration on the other side of the barrier that might encourage people to face up to reality.
(a) the activist challenge entails getting people to face a reality that they are unwilling or unable to confront. This is inherently risky work that requires great courage; it's easy to get killed when delivering the provocative message that there is a real problem at hand that people are ignoring. It requires the leader to be canny in understanding the threat they represent, being strategic in when and how they intervene, finding good partners to support you and "keep you alive".
(b) the development challenge entails helping the group build new capabilities - competencies, practices and processes - to ensure that the group can continue to survive and thrive, as "business as usual" is not going to cut it. Using the example of Singapore, Williams argues that in a development challenge, the leader needs to create a "robust holding environment to keep people from getting distracted", staging the work to give people time to figure out what works, and to give people a stake in developing their capacity.
(c) the transition challenge entails shifting the group to a new set of norms, mindsets and attitudes. Williams argues that this is not the same as change management, as the term "management" implies something that is rational and linear. But dealing with change in human systems is inevitably messy and requires "orchestration" rather than management. This is also different from a development challenge in that the capabilities in a development challenge are lacking and need to be built, but in a transition challenge, the capacities and capabilities already exist; it is the values and mindsets that need to shift. Williams cites IBM's transformation under Lou Gerstner and Japan's transition to a modern democracy as examples of transition challenges. In these circumstances, the leader must provide an orienting purpose, get people to own the transition journey, determine what must be preserved and help people deal with the losses, and embody the ideals of the transition.
(d) the maintenance challenge entails holding things together when the group is under threat - literally getting the group to hang out to fight another day. In these trying circumstances, the leader needs to help the group maintain hope, maintain its sense of mission and core values, attend to the "little big things" - the small gestures, actions and symbols that help to remind people and orient them about why and what they are doing the work for - and "keep the destructive forces at bay".
(e) the creative challenge entails bringing something new into existence that can help the group progress and is of real benefit to the group. This is imaginative and creative work. Exciting work to be sure, but also potentially emotionally draining, frustrating, messy and chaotic. This requires the leader to monitor and manage the mood and energies of the group, to stop the more powerful individuals from dictating the outcomes and allowing the group to discover and create solutions on their own, allowing for some degree of friction and chaos, but not to the extent that people get frustrated and walk away, and giving protected time and space to the group to explore.
(f) the crisis challenge entails helping the group tackle an existential challenge. The leader's role is to manage the volatility of the situation while addressing the underlying issue causing the volatility. The leader needs to create some space to think and formulate a response, to hold steady and avoid exacerbating the situation through rash or ill considered actions, to stop others from rash or ill considered actions, and to explore every alternative rather than go with the seemingly obvious or dominant solution in a time crunch.
Overall, a thought provoking read that is accessibly written. Williams peppers his books with a wide range of anecdotes (everything from Meiji Japan to modern Singapore and East Timor, the suffragette movement to Gandhi and Mandela) that keeps the narrative flowing.
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