Mastering_Inner_Leadership.pdf

MASTERING INNER

LEADERSHIP

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

MASTERING INNER

LEADERSHIP

Gilbert W. Fairholm Foreword by Herbert R. Tillery

QUORUM BOOKS Westport, Connecticut London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fairholm, Gilbert W. Mastering inner leadership / Gilbert W. Fairholm; foreword by Herbert R. Tillery.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-56720424-4 (alk. paper) 1. Leadership. 2. Middle managers. 3. Corporate culture. 4. Industrial

p. cm.

management. I. Title. HD57.7.F3515 2001 658.4'0924~21 00-051757

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright 0 2001 by Gilbert W. Fairholm

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-051757 ISBN: 1-56720-424-4

First published in 2001

Quorum Books, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.quorumbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

@" The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (239.48-1984).

l 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Herbert R. Tillery

Preface

Introduction: The Place of Inner Leaders in Corporate Leadership

The Place of Inner Leaders in the Corporation / The Nature of Inner Leadership / The Character of the Inner Leader / The CEOs’ Alliances with Their Deputies Are Critical / The End of Hero Leadership

ix

xi

xv

1

Part I. What Is Leadership? 15

Chapter 1. The Unique Nature of Inner Leadership 17

Leadership Is a Social Event/Leader Attitudes /Changing Tasks, Roles, and Values of Inner Leaders /Environmental Conditions within Which Inner Leadership Is Practiced /Challenges for Leaders in the Middle /Summa y

vi

Chapter 2. The Pivotal Role of Inner Leaders in Corporate Operations

Special Skills /Special Competencies

Chapter 3. The Spiritual Dimension of Whole-Souled Inner Leadership

Spirituality and Work / Elements of a Spiritual Leadership Model

Chapter 4. Applying Whole-Souled Inner Leadership

The Nature of Work and the Worker in Today's World / The

Contents

29

39

47

83

Nature of Success /Redefining Leadership as Applied by Number Twos

Chapter 5. Inner Leadership and Spiritual Wholeness 59

Touching the Spiritual Heart in Others /Results of Leaderskip in the Middle / The New Agenda

Part 11. Values, Not System 71

Chapter 6. The Impact of Values on Culture and on Inner Leadership 73

Culture Creation and Management /Elements of Subculture Development

Chapter 7. Culture Change

The Inner Leader's Role in Shaping the Culture

Part 111. Inspiration, Not Motivation

Chapter 8. Inspiring Followers

Defining Inspiration /Applying Inspiration /Developing the Skills to Inspire Others

Part IV. Trust, Not Authority

Chapter 9. Defining Trust in Organizations

Definition of Trust /Elements of the Trust Relationship / The Centrality of Trust / Trust Is a Risk Relationship, but a Necessary One /Trust and Trustworthiness

Chapter 10. Developing Trust

Mastering Trust

93

95

107

109

117

Contents

Chapter 11. Barriers to Shaping Trust Cultures

Factors Limiting Trust

Part V. Personal, Not Positional Power

Chapter 12. Inner Leaders Use Office Politics to Secure Personal and Corporate Goals

The Nature and Character of Operational Power / A Power Use Model: Using Power in the Organization / Using Power in the Organization /Power Use Strategies

Chapter 13. Sources of Power Inner Leaders May Draw On

Control over Rewards /Criticality / Social Organization / A Perception of Legitimacy /Identification with Powerful Others / Expertise / Use of Power /Personal Difference /Centrality / Summary

Chapter 14. Managing the Boss: Power Interventions That Work

Power Tactics toward Leaders /Power Tactics Used with Peers

vii

125

131

133

143

151

Part VI. Capitalizing on the Whole Person, Not Just Needed Skills 165

Chapter 15. Community Building 167

Defining Community /Building Community

Chapter 16. Setting a Higher Moral Standard 177

Elements of Spiritually-Focused Leadership

Chapter 17. Stewardship 185

Leadership as a Servant Relationship /The Leader as Steward / Defining Stewardship /Stewardship and Service /Stewardship Principles /Application

Bibliography

Index

199

209


Acknowledgments

I am indebted to a great many people in my life for the genesis of the ideas and the inspiration that triggered the effort to produce this book. While the result is my responsibility, I owe thanks to a generation of authors of books and articles on leadership and followership and to literally hundreds of practitioners I have worked with and observed whose ideas and insights have found their way into this book. Some of their ideas have become so ingrained in my thinking that they are reflected throughout this book, whether or not they received direct citation. I am indebted to them for their wisdom and recognize their leadership in my life.

Not the least of these exemplary leaders who deserve recognition and a part in anything others find commendable in this book are the members of my family: For me, the best examples of leadership in the middle is in the lives of Barbara, Ann, David, Paul, Corey, Dan, Laurie, Scott, Marcy, Mat- thew, and Shannon and in the potential of Jason, Craig, Michael, Kaitlyn, Sarah, Chad, Emily, Abigail, Rachael, Thomas, Jacob, Connor, Carl, and Jillian. They are and have always been examples of the best of leadership and of all else good. Thank you all.


Foreword

Leadership is most often studied from the perspective of the top officer in a given organization. It is observed and discussed from the framework and position of a CEO, or government equivalent. The tools of leadership are shown from the position of legal, or authoritative, power. Little discussion is made of leadership from within the ranks, leadership without authority. Too often, leadership development and training is designed for the CEO. However, as important as the CEO is, we are all aware of the fact that any organization must have a corps of proficient middle managers who are able to lead from within the ranks. These “in the middle” managers are essential to the success of the organization. They are the implementers, the organiz- ers, and the influencers on the day-to-day operations. They are, in short, the way that organizations get their work accomplished.

It is unfortunate, then, that middle managers are so often overlooked in leadership training, if they are targeted for training at all. It is even more unfortunate that when middle managers do attend training they become like square pegs being pushed into a round hole. The tools that work for the CEO will most likely not work for the middle manager. The power bases are different. Middle managers are potentially the internal strength of an organization, but they need training that is geared toward their situation. They need to learn how to lead from within, which requires an internal, personal shift in style from managing to leading. This is true whether the organization is public or private.

xii Foreword

Recognizing the importance of the middle manager and the lack of good training for its middle managers, the Government of the District of Colum- bia joined together with the George Washington University to create a leadership development program for the District’s middle managers. What emerged from this effort is the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Municipal Management, a partnership of academic, government, philanthropic, and private institutions that wanted to ensure the successful future of the District of Columbia. This Center’s training program, the Program for Excellence in Municipal Management, is focused on building the leadership capacity of the District’s middle managers and is protected from the budget cycles that seem to always bear most heavily in government training dollars.

Unlike many of our training counterparts, the Center focuses on developing management and leadership capacity in those managers who are in-the-middle. It was with great pleasure that I read Dr. Gil Fairholm’s book, Mastering Inner Leadership. His focus on the necessity of developing the middle manager’s mastery of leadership skills and competencies fits in exactly with what the Center is working to accomplish here in Washington, D.C. Of course, we at the Center hope that some of our graduates will take top executive positions, but we know that perhaps our greatest impact on the District’s future is on training those managers who will be most effective making a career out of being in the middle.

Despite the Center’s dedication to developing this in-the-middle talent, it is difficult for us to avoid falling into the trap most other leadership training programs succumb to: teaching leadership as if everyone in the class- room is, or will be, top executive(s) of the organization. The books, training materials, articles, and so on that are the available resource materials are focused on setting the vision, not carrying out the vision or adapting the vision to fit “in-the-middle” cultural circumstances. They focus on strategic planning for the whole organization, not putting pieces of the plan together from within the organization. They focus on qualities, attributes, skills, and behaviors that have emerged from studying “successful” CEOs and corporate presidents, not from studying successful mid-level managers. They focus on techniques and technologies that have given top executives the edge they need to be successful, not the techniques and technologies that help middle managers navigate the organizational maze. They focus on motivational and reward systems that chief executives can alter, but not how middle managers can inspire the workers despite the organizational policies and procedures that may constrain their efforts and, importantly, without control over traditional monetary rewards.

This lack of training resources for the middle managers is exactly why Dr. Fairholm‘s latest contribution to the leadership field, Mastering Inner Leadership, is intriguing to me both personally and professionally. Its focus on the middle manager or, should I say, the ”inner leader” helps clarify the

Foreword xiii

different contexts that shape the work of the executive and the middle leader and from that clarity suggests tools, skills, and competencies that can help the middle leader succeed. Although some leadership concepts are useful to both the top executive and middle-level leaders, there remains a great need and great value in understanding how to operationalize these concepts from the middle of the organization.

Mustering Inner Leadership has a vital dual focus. It suggests that leadership is possible and necessary from within the organization, not just from the top. But it also reminds us that leadership is a deeply personal, values-based activity that requires leaders to look within themselves and draw strength from within. While the Center teaches and trains in management skills and techniques and similar leadership competencies, we also stress to our participants and graduates that successful leaders must develop a self-awareness and self-leadership that permeates everything they do. They must, in essence, be inner leaders.

For far too long, we have been forced to fit executive leadership ideas into a middle leadership context without a reasonable framework and without available resources. There is a need to focus more specifically on the unique leadership concerns, situations, and technologies of the middle manager. Dr. Fairholm has made a tremendous step forward in this emerging area of research and training. Not only is this book an asset to our program here at the Center for Excellence in Municipal Management, it is a must for all ”inner leaders” out there.

Herbert R. Tillery Executive Director The George Washington University Center for Excellence in Municipal Management


Preface xix

Trust, Not Authority

Trust based on an eventually proven reality, not procedures, control mechanisms, and/or disciplinary systems provides necessary control over coworker performance. In-the-middle leaders often lack the capacity to create and enforce system-wide policies and procedures. They must use personal attributes of character and behavior to induce others to follow them based on their trustworthiness, not their command over the mechanisms of command. Number Two executives use influence based on their personality and capacity, not authority based on position bestowed by the group, to support their compliance patterns.

Personal, Not Position Power

In the middle of the organization deputy leaders cannot command the vast powers of the corporation in the same ways the CEO can. They must rely on their own power, capacities, personality, resources, and expertise to induce others to follow them.

Capitalizing on the Whole Person, Not Just Needed Tasks

Inner leaders function from a base of personal values, from a foundation of whole-souled spirit-their own and their followers’. They measure their performance in terms of their core spiritual values and deal with the ”whole person” of each stakeholder in their interactions. Since they cannot command the unconditional compliance of followers, they create relationships based on intangible ideas and values that connect them to followers at their deepest spiritual levels, while most CEOs deal largely with only the portion of the follower’s capacities they think are directly related to task accomplishment.

While these differences may be somewhat overdrawn when applied to a specific firm or CEO, they represent tensions that face top executives as they deal with their interior-leader counterparts. These differences under- score the need for the new theory and technologies deputy leaders must master as they individually and collectively interact in the middle regions of the corporation. Some CEOs may not even understand their deputies’ context as they set about shaping the firm. But inner leaders daily face these largely personal and intimate challenges as they go about aiding the chief executive to do the group’s work and at the same time try to achieve their own personal and professional agendas. It is hoped that what follows will assist current inner leaders in all organizations and groups-whether in the business world or in government, private, educational, military, or non- profit sectors-be more personally and professional successful.

Preface

Life is personal. Work life is also personal. Each of us comes to work to get our values, vision, goals, and outcomes met, not just (often, not even) those of our corporation. We join groups so that we can use the capacity of the group to meet our goals more wholly. Leadership is no different; we lead or accept another’s leadership because we think in so doing we stand a better chance of achieving our inner, personal purposes, not our employers’. All life is a complex competition between the individual and the group in which individuals help realize the group’s goals so that they can also realize their own. This book is about leading from within the organization, not necessarily from the top box in the organization chart. It is about inner leadership: the art of leading without being the CEO.

“Inner leadership” has a double definition. It describes the kind of leadership that takes place in the interior (the core) of the organization or group, not just at the top. It reflects the obvious fact that leadership is practiced by many people besides the CEO. Indeed, most leadership in the group is practiced by people who occupy positions throughout the organization-from frontline workers to the wide number of middle managers and subordinate executives that permeate the group.

Inner leadership also deals with the vital impact of the unique core values and standards that guide each individual leader and each stakeholder follower. These values constitute the goals sought and the measures of suc-

xvi Preface

cess both leader and led use to order their behavior and that of their coworkers, however formal and informal and frequent or random the relationship. Just as leaders’ inner voices guide their actions and dictate their response to external stimuli, so do their core values dictate follower actions. The in-the-middle leader’s intimate, personal, and unique values provide the goals sought, the measures of performance-theirs and others-and their essential self-definition. The leadership task is to induce stakeholders to accept their (the leader’s) core values as their own guides and to do so while honoring follower individuality.

Neither of these two definitions of leadership are routinely discussed in textbooks, classrooms, or boardrooms, the focus rather being on the ”objective” actions of the person formally in charge of the group. Nonetheless, quantitatively and perhaps qualitatively, more leadership is exercised by lower-level leaders than by figurehead top leaders (CEOs). When reference is made to the work of inner leaders in our reference texts, it is most often presumed that CEOs and subordinate leaders use the same theory and techniques. This assumption may be faulty. Inner leaders occupy a unique culture, foster dissimilar goals, use some distinct leadership technologies, and apply others differently than do CEOs. These unique perspectives, goals, and ways to lead are the subject of what follows.

IN-THE-MIDDLE LEADERSHIP

There is usually only one formal leader in each work group. The conventional wisdom is that the rest are followers of that chief executive. The operational fact is that in the multiple middle regions of the corporation are both followers and leaders. While they have to and many want to follow the CEO, executives in the middle regions of the corporation are not automatons, blindly conforming to the top leader’s directives. Indeed, many of these Number Two (or Three or Four, etc.) leaders practice leadership as professionally and as frequently as does the CEO. Like their CEOs, leaders in the interior regions of the corporation work hard to get their individual personal and professional goals met through their work. Their objectives are to do the corporation’s work well and to realize their own personal and professional goals. Because of their positions in the middle of the corporate cultural hierarchy, they necessarily practice some leadership technologies differently than the CEO and use some different approaches.

How leaders working in the middle of the corporation can do that more effectively is the focus of this book. The gist is how to be successful as a Number Two and like it. The elements of this discussion revolve around two key characteristics of inner leadership: it takes place in a different cultural surround than that of the CEO, and it is more personal than position based. Success for inner leaders come as they create a subculture within the

Preface xvii

corporate culture that facilitates attainment of their unique personal and professional goals and is consistent with and bolsters their personal values.

The popular image of the CEO as an all-powerful autocrat surrounded by a mob of automatons is untrue in today’s world, if it ever was true. Our corporations have always needed strong leaders who boldly guide their firms through increasingly disconnected realms of business life. Increas- ingly business is discovering that the corporation doesn’t need showy fig- ureheads who behave like royalty and deprecate potentially valuable colleagues who dare to dissent, have better ideas than theirs, or compete with them for the spotlight (Heenan and Bennis, 1999). In reality, most leadership takes place in the middle regions of the firm, not

at the top. The skills, talents, and capacities of the middle-of-the-organization leader-the inner leader-are generally similar to those of the CEO, but are applied in an often vastly different context. That context is characterized by multiple leaders operating in a power situation where everyone has (or can acquire) about the same amount of power and where no one can consistently use formal authority alone as the fulcrum to secure staff obedience.

This in-the-middle culture is tied together by people-Number Two leaders-who have somehow attracted willing volunteers to do what they want done. In-the-middle leaders-inner leaders-often cannot order anyone to do anything. At least, they cannot order about those people who are needed to accept their vision in order to make it real. These other deputies to the CEO-supervisors, subject-matter experts, sometimes even line workers-also have visions, often competing, and frequently can command about the same level of power and influence as the CEO can.

As used here, the phrase inner leader, or Number Two, is a kind of shorthand for any leader, not the chief executive officer of the organization. It refers to any person-regardless of title or position in the organization structure-who induces others to follow him or her by dint of special capacities, personality, expertise, vision, power, or control of tangible and intangible resources. Like middle managers, these in-the-middle leaders exert their leadership over a part of the corporation, not the whole. Like middle managers, they form a vital infrastructure of leadership essential to corporate vitality, even survival. Unlike middle managers, who exercise a legitimate part of the formal authority of the corporation, middle leaders lead because of their personal capacities, whether or not they also carry a formal grant of authority.

Of course many of the interactions of in-the-middle leaders are with their subordinates. The leadership technologies that Number Twos use with subordinates are typically the same as those described in most leadership texts and are the same technologies used by CEOs. Authority is the basis of the power most often used with subordinates. Issuing orders is the typical form of hierarchial communication used in this context, along with reporting and control techniques. They do not work with, nor are they

xviii Preface

readily accepted by, their peers, the key co-inhabitants of the inner leader’s cultural surround. Number Two leaders rely more on personal than authority forms of power and have to inspire their coworkers at emotional and intellectual, even spiritual levels, not merely at physical or economic levels.

Several factors are unique to inner leadership. In-the-middle leaders deal with values, situations, behaviors, and processes unique to the complex of forces characteristic of the middle-level culture. Each represents a significant area of concern for the inner leader. They are summarized in the following discussion in terms contrasting the deputy’s focus to that of the typical CEO. They suggest specific technologies-strategies, tactics, and techniques-inner leaders must master to be successful. This listing also constitutes a substantive outline for much of what follows.

DELIMITING THE UNIQUE CHARACTER OF INNER LEADERSHIP

Leadership in the middle regions of the corporation is different from that practiced at the top of the organizational structure. These distinctions are in the mind-set of Number Two leaders, its theoretical underpinnings, the technologies used, features of the culture in which they operate, and the nature of their use of power.

Values, Not System

Values and culture, not system or procedure, are most important to the success of Number Twos. Their personal values define the core, the essential center of their individuality and their leadership style. Leadership is concerned with creating the common values set that alone can consolidate a cluster of people into a unity. In the middle, leadership takes place in a culture they create and where the inner leader’s values are constantly in competition with those of other inner leader peers, each employee and the CEO and where the task is to make the inner leader ’S values predominate over those of others.

Inspiration, Not Motivation

Inspiration, based on shared or sharable ideas or ideals, not motivation, which is based primarily on economic or social rewards, characterize inner leader-follower relationships. In-the-middle leaders cannot command the range of desirable resources the CEO can command. Therefore, they must rely on their character, values, ideals, and vision and similar intangibles to inspire others to follow them and alter their behavior to match the inner leader’s needs.

xx Preface

VALUES-BASED LEADERSHIP

While some of what inner leaders do is informed by orthodox theory, the unique cultural surround in which they work makes most traditional leadership theory irrelevant. Understanding inner leadership requires that new theory be applied in unique ways. Inner leaders make primary use of leadership theory and technologies based on values, on the emotional, implicit, noncountable, personal, even spiritual side of human relationships. Their values-set becomes crucial in binding inner leaders to their stakeholders. The inner leaders’ values form the basis of the group’s vision, the root of behaviors acceptable to the group, and the basis of their influence with their coworkers.

This kind of leadership obviously differs from that exercised by CEOs. Both the cultural surround within which they work and the theory that informs their practice differ from those of the top corporation leader. Inner leadership theory revolves around the leaders’ use of and response to the unique core values and standards that guide their actions and reactions and those of each individual follower working with them. Core values are ”heart-values.” They define the core essence, the spirit or soul, of the individual. They define the individual as a person and constitute both the goals pursued and the criteria used to define success. They remain relatively consistent over time and varying circumstance. These heart values harmonize the Number Two leaders’ behavior with the heart values of followers. They are integral to both personal and professional success.

Introduction: The Place of Inner Leaders in Corporate

Leadership

While it is true that in each work group there is only one nominal leader and the rest are agents of that leader, it is also true that leadership shifts from person to person in the group. Responsibility for moving the work of the group forward is not-and likely never was-the sole responsibility of the formal leader. In fact, we are now in a time when almost everyone takes a turn leading corporate work groups.

Followers are not automatons. They have their own vision, their own focus for the group’s work effort that is often different from, sometimes even counter to, the official corporate vision. Indeed, top leaders cannot be sure that their deputy leaders will even accept their vision. Pivotally these interior leaders, not the chief executive officers, constitute the heart of corporate leadership. Of many officers in any complex, large-scale organization besides the chief executive officer (CEO), some have the capacity and desire to become a CEO. Many do not. Some may aspire to the apex of the organization chart, but cannot master crucial tasks and fall by the career wayside. Still others, who may have the necessary skills and talent, do not hunger to supplant the CEO; rather, they find satisfaction in support positions, in being the number-two (or -three or -four, etc.) executive. Each kind of person has value and can contribute assets that the CEO cannot afford to ignore or minimize. These seconds-in-command often are critical factors that can make the CEO successful or precipitate his or her demise.

2 Mastering Inner Leadership

The most neglected group in professional literature consists of those se- nior executives who have the capacity and talent for significant leadership but desire to exercise it to attain outcomes more personal than organizational. These middle-echelon executives wish to forge for themselves a powerful and satisfying position as in-the-middle executives and will often work harder to do that than to carry out the CEO’s vision. Many CEOs are making effective partners of these second-level leaders; Singe calls them “thinking partners.” These co-leader ”number twos” are working to make positive change at every level of the corporation (Heenan and Bennis, 1999).

To ignore them is to court professional and corporate disaster. To effectively marshal the talents and capacities of these middle-level

co-leaders may be the formula for success for CEOs in this new century. These co-leaders are redefining leadership as a genuine partnership (Bris- tol, 1999). CO-leadership-an alliance between the CEO and a few second-level leaders in the interior of the organization-is the wave of the future. It is adding a new role to the lexicon of leadership. The business world needs more formal examinations of the role and work patterns of these number-two executives in the business world.

The ideas and approaches in this book are intended to help inner leaders become effective in their leadership by using different techniques and technologies-or using common technologies in unique ways to realize their desires in their work in the interior regions of the corporation. The focus is on helping the many co-leaders in the middle of the organization-called hereafter ”number twos” or “inner leaders”-to be successful. To the extent this goal is realized, a second objective is to apprise CEOs of the strategies and tactics inner leaders use to get their way in the group so those top executives can be effective collaborators in the overall task of corporate leader-

We are living during a time in the history of business when everyone is or soon will take a turn leading. Corporations need to create room for anyone to lead when his or her special expertise or knowledge provides the key to appropriate action. Companies must move beyond traditional concepts of hierarchy (Pinchot and Pinchot, 1994) and find ways to replace hierarchy with indirect methods of leadership that allow greater individual freedom, result in more accurate allocation of resources, and focus on the common good. In- creasingly, this includes making room for their deputies to take leadership when their talents can be most helpful to overall corporate success.

The CEO leaders in our corporations, nonprofits, and government agen- cies have much to learn from the methods of leadership and control used by the leaders of successful nations whose productivity levels and political stability have created the conditions for a relatively high and equitably distributed standard of living (Petrick, Scherer, Brodzinski, Quinn, and Ainina, 1999). The free market seems to be indispensable for creating pro-

ship.

Introduction 3

ductivity and prosperity in national economies. When national leaders establish an effective market system, many other leaders (one may call them ”intmpreneurial”) arise within the society to help satisfy people’s needs (Fairholm, 1991).

In today’s corporate workplace, effective number twos build relationships with their followers that provide ample opportunity to followers to exercise their proclivities to lead. Just as successful nations expand the opportunities for free exercise of citizen capacities, effective inner leaders create cultural systems that encourage independent action by stakeholders within the confines of the shared values and vision. The corporate result, as with nations, is to foster social systems that make full use of each member’s talents while maintaining an overarching context that dictates the accomplishment of mutual goals.

Kelley (1992) suggests that leaders motivate followers by appealing to their objectives and priorities. By fostering self-organizing systems, leaders indirectly motivate and inspire their coworkers to find the most efficient and effective ways in which they can lead the larger community(ies) and the corporation both serve. More than any other part of the group, inner leaders foster staff development that contributes to corporate human capital, the key intangible resource that can leverage competitive advantage in the 21st century (Petrick, Scherer, Brodzinski, Quinn, and Ainina, 1999).

THE PLACE OF INNER LEADERS IN THE CORPORATION

The relationship between leaders and their principal deputies impacts group effectiveness perhaps more than any other aspect of the work situation. These relationships throughout the organization make or break programs and careers. Corporate and personal success require that both types of leaders continually shift roles. Each is a leader at some times and a follower at other times (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). No one individual has the talent and ability to lead in every situation in life. CEOs need to recognize when they should lead and when they should follow. Both inner leaders and their CEOs need to understand and become expert in both followership and leadership.

Effective inner leadership connotes competent, loyal, and energetic support of the CEOs agenda. It implies as well a willingness to disagree with the boss’s programs or actions if the deputy sees them as potentially harmful to the common purpose. Yet, in all the formal training available on leadership, essentially none is available on inner leadership. Perhaps one reason is that our culture lionizes the person at the top and denigrates those in subordinate roles. I know of no graduate school focusing on producing trained, effective interior leaders. As a result, most inner leader’s skills are learned on the job and the focus is on survival, not substantive contribution to personal or corporate improvement and well-being. Indeed, the typical


in-house development training directed to inner leaders focuses on low-level issues of supervision, details of system and procedures, and similar “tools of management,” not on the larger issues of corporate health, survival, and growth.

This is not to imply that top and second-level leadership are the same. In- ner leadership is different. Being an inner leader asks us to sharpen some skills instead of others. The leadership skills learned along the way up the promotion ladder, while valuable and helpful, are not the only ones needed to assure success as an inner leader. Like the CEO, the inner leader must learn the technologies of leadership-including visioning, valuing, and inspiring others. They need also to develop a keen sensitivity to the nuances of the situation. Mary Parker Follett (1942) called it the ”law of the situation,” which places priority on the innate worth of the individual coworker and the common humanity of both leader and follower.

Being an inner leader entails accepting and accommodating the total panoply of skills, knowledge, and abilities coworkers bring to their work as well as the risks inherent in willingly leading from within the group. Ac- ceptance of a role as number two embodies all other corporate actions. It requires open relationships and an attitude of seeking to learn, understand, and know. In their search for truth, inner leaders focus upward toward their leader as well as downward toward their coworker-followers.

Importantly, inner leadership is also practiced laterally-that is, side- ways-to peers and non-direct-line colleagues, customers, advisors, and other experts whether inside the corporation or not. Here perhaps more than in any other relationship in which inner leaders participate, the need for sensitivity, persuasion, and collaboration is acute. These executives are also inner leaders and are motivated by many of the same values and seek similar goals. And, importantly and often, they do not have to cooperate; they will only do so if they perceive such cooperation to facilitate their own goals.

THE NATURE OF INNER LEADERSHIP

By most conventional definitions, number-two leaders are followers of their CEO. Followership in and of itself lacks basic appeal (Brown, 1992). Undeniably, the idea of ”follower” has negative connotations (Miller, 1992) that have been part of our culture for as long as any of us can remember. Most of our parents and teachers emphasized the risk of being a follower and being induced by others to get into trouble. Not only did these persuasions build an internal dislike for the term “follower,” but they also tended to instill distrust of leaders. Nonetheless, a follower role is comfortable to some. Personal preferences play as large a part in the inner leader’s decision to stay in the middle as do prior conditioning and public perceptions.

Introduction 5

When we consider prior conditioning, the balance is in favor of the CEO over inner leadership. On several levels, while we are conditioned to think of followership as a passive activity, experience belies that view. In fact, many followers are compelled by their work and the culture of the corporate interior to be aggressive, demonstrate the courage to assume responsibility, and not be averse to challenging their CEOs. The moral compass of both leaders and followers ought to be pointed to the common purpose (Steller, 1995). Given the complexity of today’s organizations, the road to that goal is often a rocky one. The public perception also favors the up-front CEO over the behind-the-scenes inner leader. A recent nationwide survey indicated that 70 percent of men and 59 percent of women see themselves as leaders. Only 20 percent of men and 36 percent of women describe themselves as followers (“Do you consider yourself a leader or a follower?” 1994).

Kouzes and Posner (1987) see the ideal CEO as honest, competent, forward-looking, and inspiring. At the same time, they describe followers as honest, competent, dependent, and cooperative. The differences, while small, can be significant, as when a follower is fonvard-looking or inspiring in ways that differ from those of his or her leader. Followers can comfortably work behind the scenes to help meet organizational goals without the hero’s recognition. Research also suggests that followers are and can be implementers. The corporation often depends upon the followers not only to maintain the place of the corporation, but to move it forward into the future that the CEO defines in only general terms (Fairholm, 1994a). They are the unsung heroes of the corporate world.

Number twos comfortable with the inner leader role are able to overcome routine and change the official ways of working and even the nature and character of the work they do. These inner leaders get personally involved with the programs of the firm. They become enthusiastic doers of the work of the group. Inner leaders are conscious of what they need to do; they are not passive. They do not need to be directed in all things. They learn in their follower role to be patient, slow to anger, and good-tempered. They learn that they can manipulate their authority and personal power only on these terms. They come to understand that their individual effectiveness depends on their becoming free from pride, vanity, and arrogance.

Of course these characteristics can be helpful to CEOs as well. Unfortu- nately, these qualities are not as important to the top leader as they are to their deputies. CEOs of any personality type can and do succeed as they acquire corporate power. Unfortunately, number twos must inspire, not co- erce compliance.

The Nature of Number Twos’ Follower Role

No matter what our position in life, we all follow someone at least some of the time (Kelley, 1992). Being a follower is part of all social interaction


and contributes to group success. Followership is not blind obedience (Miller, 1992). Most of society’s accomplishments have come about because of people who have been willing to follow leaders.

A football team’s running game is dependent on the offensive linemen, yet many of us don’t think of those players as leaders. Nevertheless, a dis- tinguishing characteristic of a great running back is his ability to follow his blockers as they lead out in the play. Similarly, few CEOs have personally developed the strategic plan for their corporation. Yet, invariably, the main elements of this plan that will guide the corporation and its CEO in the future are the result of the work of anonymous interior executives. These behind-the-scenes leaders can (and do) effectively change the character and purposes of the organization. They impact change directly through their research, report writing, and negotiation skills in initially “selling” their part of the master plan to the boss and, importantly, in subsequent implementation tasks.

Being an effective inner leader does not mean leaving one’s mind at home. It involves thinking, imagination, and courage. Followership requires active participation, including a willingness to offer advice, assis- tance, input, and support-and opposition-when appropriate. Every worker is both a leader and a follower (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). In an era of flat organizations, with many more designated internal leaders than previously common, this message is worth taking to heart-and taking to the office. Inner leaders need to be courageous at all times, but especially at four times in corporate life: when the boss is wrong, when a vacuum is perceived, when the status quo is wrong-headed, and when it is absolutely necessary for them to leave (Brown, 1992).

Productive change in any of these situations happens much more slowly than one may think, and the personal cost to both CEOs and inner leaders can be significant. Both kinds of leaders need to learn more about the attitudes and skills present when someone is following in a thinking, caring, and creative way. By directing their attention to the development of their stakeholders-all followers, subordinates, clients, customers, peer leaders-as leaders in their own right, Number Twos can produce profound and immediate results in their workers’ efforts. Perhaps more than any other single factor, the behavior of inner leaders will help an organization get beyond theory to realize deep, lasting change (Dering, 1998).

Top leadership success is often dependent on the technical expertise of others (Barnett, 1996). The value of the CEO’s subordinating himself- or herself to the expertise of others often goes unrecognized. We all have a preferred role as a leader or as a follower; and as long as situations are stable, we tend to operate within those roles. If the pressure changes, there is a strong tendency for our roles also to change. Both leader and follower roles, therefore, must be emphasized by both CEOs and inner leaders. Other things being equal, the primary criterion for role selection is the individ-

Introduction 7

ual’s view of power and obligations. Power is influence someone exerts upon the decision-making process of another(s), and obligutions are duties (Barnett, 1996).

Leader roles can be classified as authoritarian, laissez-faire, or egalitarian. Authoritarian leaders rely primarily on orders, instructions and policies that may be either rigidly by the book or inconsistent and arbitrary. The permissive leader assumes that subordinates need help and shielding from a hostile world. Egalitarian leaders focus on the achievement of organizational goals utilizing employees as useful parts, even partners, in the work culture (Heenan and Bennis, 1999). Follower roles include the rebel who firmly believes that individual survival and the quest for power are acceptable goals, the ingratiator or organization man, the yes-man, and the objective- and solution-oriented cooperator (Barnett, 1996).

Effective performance as an inner leader partakes of each. Success requires inner leaders to develop the ability to adapt to changing interactions in order to reach their desired objectives. Competent inner leaders recognize these styles and patterns in the stakeholders who interact with them and then alter their relationships with individual members in order to accomplish maximum results (Barnett, 1996).

Inner leaders are observable in the workplace functioning in both arche- typal versions and combinations of each of these roles. Recognizing one’s preferred or required roles lets leaders predict the dynamics of interaction and helps them identify the character of problems that may arise from time to time.

THE CHARACTER OF THE INNER LEADER

Heenan and Bennis (1999) catalogued what for them are some of the stel- lar characteristics of effective seconds-in-command. They define great co-leaders as people in the middle of the organization who have the following characteristics.

Understand Themselves

Inner leaders know that being number two is just as hard as being CEO, maybe harder. They know inner leadership asks them to forego the lime- light. The successful inner leader is someone whose ego is strong enough to watch the credit for his or her work go to someone else. Inner leadership is, in part, anonymous. Number Twos work behind the scenes. They are not stars, but co-stars, sharing their capacities and their accomplishments with both their bosses and their workers as the situation dictates.


Understand Their Bosses

Inner leaders risk subordinating their egos to their CEOs, but they also risk working for a boss who doesn’t want their partnership. Top executives can subvert their deputies in dozens of ways. Some refuse to share intelligence. Some refuse to share meaningful responsibility. A deputy cannot fully succeed without at least the tacit support of the person at the top. Chief executives and their co-leaders have a symbiotic relationship. Their fates are always correlated.

Avoid Major Conflict

Every organization has a distinctive culture, a set of mutual assumptions that governs how it operates. A CEO has the power to modify that culture by fiat, if he or she chooses. Their deputies have no such power. Their influence may eventually become such that they, too, can change the operating culture of the enterprise, but they must first master the extant culture. Insti- tuting anticultural processes or procedures, no matter how much better they may be, can be seen as an insult to tradition, an offense against institutional memory. To attempt to make cultural change without recognizing the unwritten rules of the corporation leads to frustration, bad decision making, and, all too often, the creation of dangerous and unnecessary opposition. Effective inner leaders prepare the culture before they attempt to change it.

Give CEOs What They Want and What They Need

Number twos’ prime obligation is to speak the truth to those in power. They have unique access to the CEOs and must communicate the truth as they know it-even when it hurts. To do so requires real courage, which may or may not be rewarded.

Concentrate on Core Needs

Inner leaders are the people who transform their firms by determining the crucial component(s) of the operation and becoming essential in its operation and critical in its maturation. The crucial component(s) may be productivity, marketing, troubleshooting, innovation, or quality. By assuming a critical area of responsibility and performing admirably, the inner leader assures his or her success. Of course, there is a risk that performing one aspect of the enterprise extraordinarily well may label, or ”typecast,” the number two and constrict upward advancement. More often, it marks him or her as critical assets worthy of greater responsibility.

Introduction 9

Lead Balanced Lives

One of the intrinsic problems of being number two is the pressure-internal and external-to become number one. The CEO role can seem irre- sistible to someone who hasn’t experienced both its pleasures and its shortcomings. The pressure to do anything-become a workaholic, cut cor- ners, manipulate people and things, engineer reality-in pursuit of advancement can cause inner leaders to lose touch. They may overemphasize work to the detriment of their spouses and families, their social lives, avocational pursuits, and the larger aims of their careers. Engagement in office politics and intrigue to secure promotion at any cost can jeopardize their careers and isolate them from the other dimensions of their lives.

Follow as Well as Lead

In relating to the CEO, outstanding inner leaders habitually demonstrate the virtues of loyalty, courage, and trustworthiness. They must practice the skills and attributes of a top leader as well. As a lieutenant, the inner leader models behavior for others in the organization. If the organization takes a wrong or immoral turn, a first-rate deputy does whatever is necessary to try to set it right. If that effort fails, outstanding inner leaders maintain their personal integrity even at the cost of a program, a promotion, or their jobs.

Know When to Stay Put

Not everyone was meant to be CEO. The expectation to occupy the apex of the organization is so ingrained in our culture that many people feel compelled to take promotions for which they are poorly suited emotionally, intellectually, or experientially. Sometimes an individual has all the necessary attributes for the corner office except the desire for the job. Leading a company in a time of accelerating change and under scrutiny from boards and shareholders is a job not everyone wants. There are outstanding people who would rather not risk being a target. Such people may decide to continue in the role of number two.

THE CEOS’ ALLIANCES WITH THEIR DEPUTIES ARE CRITICAL

Many people harbor misconceptions about internal leadership and corporate followership in general. Some of this confusion derives from the limitation of language (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). Most dictionaries define the follower as someone “in service” to another. They define the follower as someone who follows the ideas or opinions of another, or imitates another. These definitions imply a reactive role, not a proactive


one. In fact, this is only part of the role a good number-two executive plays. More accurately, deputies are proactive in accomplishing needed results. This conception also ignores that fact that they are growing, changing, and altering continuously their role vis-a-vis the CEO and the organization both serve.

As a result of this broadly held misconception, only half the issue of leadership is being addressed in most of today’s organizations. Companies go to great lengths to cultivate their top corporate leaders when in truth they require far more good second-level internal leaders to meet their objectives than CEOs. These deputy leaders are the corporate implementers. The corporation depends upon them to move the organization into the future. They are the ones who internalize the boss’s vision and then do something.

A more accurate definition of corporate middle-level followership encompasses ideas that give number twos credit for being able to distinguish both immediate and longer-term issues. It recognizes that they can distinguish between both personal and corporate goals without jeopardizing attainment of either. An operational definition must also recognize that they typically work well with others and share a strong desire to participate in team relationships; that they have the character to work at high levels without a lot of praise, and that they can both set group goals and develop the enthusiasm in others needed to accomplish the vision. Deputies also have a strong desire to lead. They are often governed by an internal locus of control (Rotter, 1980).

Because number twos are not often in the spotlight, it is easy to think of them in generic and homogeneous terms. This is a mistake (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). Inner leaders vary tremendously in education and experience. They often command much organizational power. Of course, it is impossible to classify all internal followers in the same way. No two deputies are the same. Each will function in the group in an individual- istic way. But, as borne out in several studies, followers collectively provide the strength, power, capacity, and knowledge CEOs must have if they and the organization are to achieve their objectives.

For example, a study performed by Lievenson and OConnor (see Buhler, 1993) implied that the CEO type of leadership was not as significant as previously thought when reviewing the performance of 167 U.S. companies. A similar study reviewing mayoral performance in U.S. cities found that the top leader made only a small difference (Buhler, 1993). Other studies have concluded that top leadership actually makes no difference at all! More recent studies stress the importance of the follower and the situation itself. This genre of research has looked at internal followers’ views of work, the composition of the work group itself, and the level of their technical training. They imply that followers are those who can comfortably work behind the scenes to help meet organizational goals without the CEO’s recognition (Fairholm, 1994a).

Introduction 11

Studying the significance of corporate number twos focuses on the importance of both top leadership and inner leadership roles in the healthy organization. This analysis explores the two-way influence process; both leaders and followers influence each other. Good, experienced, competent, professional deputies minimize the need for the concentration of power in the top leadership positions.

THE END OF HERO LEADERSHIP

TOP leadership today is too often seen as an individual happening. For a century we have compared, implicitly and in theory, the leader with the lone hero of literature demolishing obstacles, leaping tall buildings (problems) in a single bound. This attractive, but false, fantasy is not the way real, enduring change takes place. There are simply too many problems to be identified and solved, too many relationships to be maintained. Yet, we cling to the myth of John Wayne or Lone Ranger styles of leadership. Hero leadership implies that great things are accomplished by one larger-than-life individual issuing orders, giving direction, empowering less well equipped coworkers, articulating a compelling vision, leading the way, and changing behavior patterns with elan (Bradford and Cohen, 1984; Bennis, 1999).

The idea of traditional top-down leadership is based on the myth of the triumphant person, but it is a myth. It is dysfunctional in today’s world of complex change, and it will get us into trouble unless we understand that the main force for effective change is not the leader but the vast cast of coworkers in the interior of the group in inventive combination with top leadership. What does this mean in the current leadership context? We must change!

Today’s organizations’ leaders clearly point the way to a new, far more subtle and indirect form of power and influence for effective leadership. The new reality is that intellectual capital-brain power, know-how, and imagination-has supplanted financial capital as the critical success factor. Today’s leaders will have to learn an entirely new set of skills that are not understood, not taught in ow business schools, and therefore rarely practiced.

Our post-bureaucratic organizations require a new kind of alliance between leaders and the led. Today’s organizations are evolving into federa- tions, networks, clusters, cross-functional teams, temporary systems, ad hoc task forces, matrices-almost anything but pyramids with their obsolete top-down leadership. The new top executive encourages healthy dissent, fosters creative followership among his or her number twos within the corporate vision, and values those interior leaders courageous enough to say no.

Often, the only difference between a CEO and an inner (co)leader is that the CEO has better perquisites. More people know the CEO’s name and as-


cribe to him or her more credit for corporate success, but the number-two (or -three or -four, etc.) leaders may have more operational influence on day-to-day activities. The alliances formed by these executives can be partnerships in which the pleasure of working together, indeed, of being together compensates the inner leader for living in the shadow of the more celebrated partner (Heenan and Bennis, Jul. /Aug. 1999).

The tendency today is for the CEO and other top executives to form clusters of close-knit partnerships throughout the firm. In this new organizational format, control doesn’t reside in a single person. Rather, power and responsibility are dispersed, giving the enterprise a whole constellation of almost equal ”costars”-co-leaders with shared values and aspirations, all of whom work together toward common goals (Heenan and Bennis, 1999).

If we can make one generalization about leadership and change, it is this: No change can occur without willing and committed followers. Exemplary leadership and institutional change are impossible without the full inclu- sion, initiatives, and cooperation of the core of deputies supporting the CEO. With complex and difficult problems-for example, dealing with the health-care crisis or cleaning up the environment-many stakeholders must be energized to contribute their special expertise. The truth is that today’s intricate systemic problems require complex and diverse alliances. Decrees, orders, and standard operating procedures will not work any- more.

The main impetus for effective change is the recognition that many leaders in the interior of the organization are and have always been working in innovative association with top leadership. Recognition of this long-standing reality is increasing, and using it to advantage is an inevitable development in the long-term success of any venture. The astute observer can see in the relationships between top and middle executives a movement from the use of power as sheer force to the use of influence and appreciation to energize people to articulate a vision of what is important. It is also a movement to the capacity to generate and sustain trust and to ally with the led.

Leadership is always exercised in relationship to followers. Just as there are no followers without leaders, there can be no leadership without followers (Fairholm, 1991). Followers are always volunteers. They choose to follow another person. No one forces them to do so. Followership comes as group members voluntarily choose to subordinate themselves to a specific person in the group (Litzinger and Schaefer, 1982). The leader’s success is dependent on the readiness of followers to follow (Kelley, 1992). Drucker (1988) says followership comes out of earned trust. In the absence of that earned trust leaders cease to be leaders and have to revert to using management control of their coworkers.

Part of leadership is to build other leaders from the followers within the group. True leaders are concerned with the growth of the variety of interior leaders, experts, and subject-matter experts populating our complex orga-

Introduction 13

nizations. They empower them-their capacities, knowledge, and skills. They enlarge their expectations. When this is done, the leader assumes a follower role as specific individuals take leadership from time to time. Be- ing an effective number two is as important professionally as being an effective CEO. Hollander (1978) suggests that we must consider followership as one functional part of leadership.

Inner leadership is not always merely a stepping stone to the CEO’s chair. For many, the role of follower is a conscious choice. Excellent followers, excellent inner leaders are those who are actively engaged with the CEO and their environment and exhibit independent, critical thinking (Kelley, 1992). Leadership and followership are part of the same process. Both can let incumbents exercise the full range of their talents, engage in meaningful and important work, and mature as self-actualizing human beings. Both CEOs and inner leaders and their respective followers must come to understand and respect followership as a legitimate and valuable part of corporate life. Mid-level and other leaders can only expect followers to be responsive when they are candid about the importance of followership and model that behavior as appropriate (Townsend, with Gebhardt, 1990).


PART I

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?

Contrary to popular opinion, the technology of in-the-middle leaders is not one of unquestioning obedience. To be an effective inner leader does not mean to leave one’s mind at home. It takes skill, thinking, caring, creative imagination, and courage to be successful. But being a number-two leader is more about attitudes of mind than about edicts, orders, SOPS, or specific skills. It treats of the unique core values guiding individual leaders that comprise both their goals and their measures of success. Inner leaders work in a culture they created, foster often goals that differ from the CEOs, use unique technologies, and apply others differently than do CEOs.

Inner leadership makes use of a theory and technologies based on values. The heart of this theory is emotional, even spiritual, since it is based on core values that define the whole person. It deals with ideas such as caring (love), inspiration, influence, personality, stewardship, unity, and a higher moral standard. Both the culture and the theory that underlie action turn on leaders’ responses to their own core values. Core values define one’s core essence, one’s spirit or soul. They define the individual leader as a person and embrace his or her intentions and criteria for success. Core values harmonize leaders’ behaviors with those of their stakeholder colleagues. They are integral to both personal and professional leadership success.


Chapter I

The Unique Nature of Inner Leadership

The new reality is that human capital has supplanted money as the critical factor in business success. Today’s leaders will have to learn new skills not often taught in nor understood by our business schools, but obviously seen often in practice. Effective interior leaders have always exercised these more subtle and indirect forms of influence. Getting others to follow them has always been the challenge of leaders in the middle. Acceptance of a role as a second-level leader asks the individual to focus on these human relationships factors, often to the exclusion of most other technologies. Num- ber twos interact both upward toward the CEO and downward toward their followers and, critically, laterally-toward peers and other stakeholders both inside and outside the corporation.

The past decade has seen a revolution in the understanding of leadership in the interior of the corporation. There are about as many lists of the ”essential” definitional qualities of top leadership as there are writers on the subject. Some frequently cited characteristics include integrity, concern for results, a desire for responsibility, a desire for conformity, formal business training, likability, and appearance (see, for example, Bennis, 1999; Covey, 1998; DePree, 1989; Fairholm, 1995, 1997, 1998; Jacobson, 1995). These qualities may suffice for describing the CEO. They are not sufficient either to describe satisfactorily the person of the inner leader or to define the place of inner leadership as a unique technology essential in the complex, constantly changing modern corporation.


As we begin a new century, intellectual coalescence around other dimensions of the role of the inner leader is growing. These attributes include intimate aspects of the values and ethics, the innate nature, and the spiritual foundation of the in-the-middle leader. Recent researches have begun to isolate critical elements of this ubiquitous social process. Following Fairholm’s (1991,1993,1994,1997,1998) work, we can identify a few central aspects of interior leadership that define its essence as practiced in the inner reaches of the corporation today and, arguably throughout our social history, by the better leaders. First we discuss some contextual factors conditioning a reasoned understanding of inner leadership.

LEADERSHIP IS A SOCIAL EVENT

Leadership in the middle is more an intimate social happening involving a group, followers, and a situation than it is headship of a part of the corporation, which connotes ceremonial, figurehead, and spokesperson ideas (Mintzburg, 1973). It is specific to the group, the particular characteristics of group members, and the situational context within which they both interact. This kind of leadership takes place most directly within this intrinsic matrix of interaction and interdependency. The relationship diad, com- posed of a leader and a follower reiterated for each member of the group, is the chief environment within which the inner leadership process takes place.

The key to this intimate leadership relationship is the follower. Indisput- ably, there can be no leadership without followers (Fairholm, 1991). Fol- lowers are always volunteers. They choose to follow their leader (Litzinger & Schaefer, 1982). Drucker (1988) says followership comes out of earned trust. The leader’s success is dependent on the readiness of followers to follow. The kind of trust that attracts willing followers comes not from position held, but from character applied in multiple interactions among people who know each other well.

Inner leaders are also often followers of another person in the group-whether a superior, a peer, or a subordinate. Part of leadership is to build other leaders within the group and then to follow as specific individuals take leadership from time to time. Being an effective follower is as important professionally to a number-two leader as being an effective leader. Indeed, as Hollander (1978) suggests, we must consider followership to be one functional part of any leadership action.

Interior leadership is also contingent on the cultural situation. Leaders are people whom followers choose to lead in a given situation or for a given project for a given period. Variables in the situation impact leader behavior. These context-environmental factors affect style and often determine effectiveness. Critical situational factors include factors such as the character of subordinates, the structure of the organization, the task performed, cul-

The Unique Nature 19

tural values held, organizational goals, work processes, and formal relationships. They also include the routineness or discretionary nature of the work done. Whatever they may be, the critical factors in the particular situation in which leadership takes place influence the character and quality of leadership exercised (Fiedler and Chamers, 1974). They can also dictate who of all the people in the interior of the group actually leads in any given situation. A proper response to these situational context factors can increase the inner leader’s chances for success. Obviously, culture creation and maintenance also become part of the important technology inner leaders must master.

LEADER ATTITUDES

Number Two leaders value people as individuals. They come to honestly care for their followers-all stakeholders. They embody the values of the group, its ideology, and culture, and they respect and trust their coworkers. They are the outstanding examples of group ideals. They convey the shared values and culture of the group. Inner leaders change followers by who they are and how they present themselves to the group. They engage in a kind of social exchange relationship with followers founded on commonly held values whose purpose is to alter follower behavior, knowledge base, values, and attitudes. The inner leader’s task is to use these cultural values to give the group focus and gain support. Leaders focus followers on the best the organization stands for.

Caring is defined as feelings of concern or interest for another. It is a part of the idea of Consideration, one of the two traits of leadership coming out of post-World War I1 research (the other is initiating structure). Caring behavior is typical of leaders (Fiedler and Chamers, 1974) and involves the number two in giving time and attention to workers and what they do. It lets them listen to colleagues, customers, clients, citizens. Caring also implies respect. One cannot communicate caring and at the same time humiliate an employee, a client, an agency, or program. Caring implies support.

When inner leaders care for and respect their followers, they also trust them. DeVries (1977) says a leader must be willing to risk openness so that others will trust him. Trust implies predictability (Bennis and Nanus, 1985). Greenleaf (1977) says others will only follow leaders who are proven, trusted servants. Fiedler suggests that trust is the basis for the character of leader-member relations, the most important of his three situational factors. McClelland and Burnham (1976) relates leadership to the confidence leaders inspire in followers. Followers must trust the inner leader before they will follow. Fiedler and Chamers (1974) says trust is the key factor in leader-member relations. Trusting relationships are empowering to both the leader and follower. Being trusted is motivating, enervating, exciting.


CHANGING TASKS, ROLES, AND VALUES OF INNER LEADERS

Modern professional leadership came of age in the 20th century. But the twenty-first century is the century of inner leadership! On balance, the 20th-century focus on leadership was a focus on the ”hard sciences” and re- sembled management as much as any thing else. The effort was to force leadership into a controlled, precise, and predictable science-the science of management. The result is that we have concentrated too much on techniques of control and have lost sight of the need to energize, inspire, en- thuse, and excite followers, not just control them. Leadership is not management, and management systems will not substitute for leadership. Inner leaders have always know this.

Inner leadership is fundamentally simple. It is participation in a series of dynamic relationships between people and the art of making these relationships work. Of course, inner leadership has been central to organizational success throughout history. But past theories of leadership that focused on technique cannot supply needed guidance for harried inner leaders (Reuss, 1987). Good inner leaders have always used-and now all leaders are searching for-a different set of ground rules since older, management conceptions are inappropriate, given today’s pressures.

Inner leadership is also defined by certain behaviors that delimit the scope of leadership and define its operational character. These choices differentiate leaders from managers. For example, leaders are power users. Power is the ability to get others to do what the power user wants them to do, even in the face of opposition. Indeed, this definition is reminiscent of that of leadership itself. The results of power use and of leadership are the same. The purpose of each is to get others to behave in desired ways. It is the essential leadership task.

At one level, all interpersonal relationships are power relationships. In- ner leaders are constantly moving from a directive position to a follower one (or vice versa). At times they persuade others to do something they want them to do-to follow orders, to get them something, to laugh at their jokes, or to understand and respect their ideas and values. At other times, they are the one persuaded. Power is a personal, rather than merely a positional, concept. The operative aspect of the inner leadership process is in the personal power relationship existing between one leader and one follower, reiterated in a series of one-to-one relationships throughout the group. Power is central to any interaction with people. It is a cornerstone of both current leadership theory and practice and the essence of leadership behavior as practiced through the ages.

Inner leadership is also vision setting. Inner leaders create a future for the group. They develop and articulate a clear, attractive, compelling mental picture of what life, the agency, and the individuals involved can or should be like. Then they continually communicate that vision, focusing at-


tention and energy on attaining this “good” future state of being. Zaleznick (1977) defined vision as the capacity to see connections, to draw inferences that aren’t obvious, that are unprecedented. The dictionary says vision is immaterial, a mode of seeing or conceiving. The Bible says “where there is no vision, the people perish (Prov. 29:18). Bennis and Nanus (1985) define vision setting as a mental image of a desirable future. Visions synthesize, vocalize, and translate the aspirations of the group.

Leaders are preeminent communicators (Bennis, 1989). They are symbol users, whether with words, songs, logos, heros, a corporate vision, or something else. Leaders communicate meaning. They create a commonwealth of learning (Bennis, 1989). Persuasion implies an interaction between the inner leader and followers by engaging the minds of both. Persuasion as a form of communication is different from informing or ordering. It implies equality, caring, and respect for the ideas and logic of the other person.

These definitional characteristics summarize a growing body of literature and practice that is defining inner leadership. It casts the number-two leader in the role of change master, a different kind of change agent. The object of this change is not to transform the client system. These leaders inspire and preside over a broad-scoped change process that impacts the leader personally as well as the individual stakeholders and their organization culture.

Today’s corporations need to bring about change in their subordinates via individual growth, by psychic-that is, intrinsic-as opposed to only external, material, largely economic or social rewards. Leading in this situation asks the inner leader to be out front with a vision of what the group is and can become. It asks the leader to move the organization’s people from believing to doing to becoming. This is a different role than directing, planning and controlling. Today’s excellent leaders have a positive attitude stemming from belief in self. They are catalysts-defining common goals, seeking the best in workers, preserving worker integrity, igniting creativity-binding stakeholders (Low, 1988) into a community (more than a team) that enlarges the inner leader’s domain.

Inner leadership has always involved a concern for human aspects of group relationships. Leaders strive to protect their dignity and that of stakeholders. Leaders are people with exceptional maturity (Metzger, 1987). Mature inner leaders accept experiences for what they are, trust in their own abilities, and rely on self more than on the society or friends. The nature of some of these changes are already plain. They include a concern for environmental or cultural issues, a stakeholder orientation, technological automation, customer involvement, a concern for the follower as a whole person, cultural diversity, and fostering creativity.

Inner leaders go beyond the traditional definition of business values of efficiency and effectiveness. They concentrate on the “idea” of values. For inner leaders, values are just as important a component of how we measure


our success as the bottom line. Some of the values that inner leaders foster in the group include all of those referenced in this book, but for now the following seem crucial (Purcell, 1998).

Integrity-a composite of the qualities of honesty, character, intelligence, wisdom,

Productiuify- improving value, continuously getting more for less. It is a way of

Stewardship-entrusting resources such as people, capital, technology to all co-

and energy.

thinking, acting, and energizing the organization toward goal accomplishment.

workers.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS WITHIN WHICH INNER LEADERSHIP IS PRACTICED

Prime among the environmental factors moving us toward a new model of inner leadership is the increasingly global nature of the workplace. What we do in our little corner of the world impacts all other parts. Globalization emphases the impact of information technology on both work and personal lives. Information transfer is also central to the interpersonal nature of the leader ’S job. Global information and other issues will dominate leadership in this century. Their outlines are present today. They are now a part of the warp and woof of corporate life. While we cannot predict the future with accuracy, at least the following concerns are likely to occupy the best efforts of inner leaders in the future.

A Stakeholder View of the Leader‘s Role

The stakeholder concept is a relatively new idea in thinking about inner leadership. It is becoming clear that the future will demand broad disburse- ment across our organizations of the qualities, attitudes of mind, and actions of today’s in-the-middle leaders. A stakeholder focus (Low, 1988) requires different skills, knowledge, and abilities of the leader. It effectively redefines leadership in the middle. Inner leaders have intimate contact with a wide variety of constituents in today’s complex and multi-differenti- ated world. The task is to connect with all relevant constituents, the stakeholders, and satisfy their needs. These stakeholders define the scope of the leader’s concern and describe a complex array of interests. Our definition of customer is changing. Our cultural values are changing, and so are their collaborators. The scope of the inner leader’s tasks must also change.

The Information Explosion

Information relevant to the work of leaders in the interior of the corporation is available to them today as it was to only the CEO only a few years


ago. No longer can the number-two leaders manage information in the sense of controlling its dissemination. Followers often are at least as well informed of the facts as the leader. Leading in this environment will focus more on strategic information policy rather than program information. More sharing of information and the responsibility for its creation and dissemination will characterize the corporation and their leaders in future.

Customer activism was the hallmark of the last part of the 20th century. It promises to be a norm in the 21st centuxy Client systems, whether customers, constituency groups, special interests, or the general public, are increasingly demanding a role in inner leadership. They seek an active role in plans and decisions that affect the quality of their life, the kinds of products supplied to them, and the choices opened to them. Leaders in the middle of the organization will have to develop systems of joint, even multiple leadership. These stakeholders will not settle for mere input into the data used in decision making. Increasingly they want to influence decisions directly.

More Whole-Souled Concern for the Follower

The character of stakeholder groups is changing. Highly educated workers are becoming the norm. They are more aware of general conditions in society and of the specific development patterns in their organizations. They are aware of their own potential and desire to realize their needs. They want to use this knowledge in ways that benefit them and their multiple communities of interest-self, family, career, friends, and the development of their capacities and talents. Leading this kind of person requires inner leaders to consider them as whole persons, not just as bundles of skills, knowledge, and abilities. The inner leader’s role is expanding to encompass the total stakeholder who wants and increasingly is able to lead the corporation-or part of it. Leaders will have to share leadership with their stakeholders.

The Multicultural Characteristics of the Workplace

Today’s work force is becoming, and tomorrow’s work force will be, multicultural. Inner leaders must cope with people from diverse, sometimes antagonistic, cultures. They must communicate with people not fully familiar with American language systems, jargon, contexts, or idiom. They must inspire persons whose cultural values are less than clear. They must find psychic rewards for persons whose psychological development patterns are unfamiliar. It is clear that leaders in the middle of this kind of diversity will have to construct a substantively different corporate culture, one that accommodates at least the essential values and expectations of these disparate employees while emphasizing their own. Inner leadership


in this new century will find that culture creation and maintenance are primary roles.

Pressure for Creative Approaches

Future leaders will also operate in a situation of continuous innovation and change. Nonroutine approaches to traditional problems are becoming the norm. Today’s social environment forces organizations to look more closely at their corporate culture and work systems to assess their compatibility for creativity. The inner leader must set the pace for change and innovation by being innovative. Then they must teach stakeholders to follow suit. These needs will place new pressures on the leaders to create the kind of culture and processes, that will enable them to move their group into production, and into the marketplace (Purcell, 1998).

CHALLENGES FOR LEADERS IN THE MIDDLE

These and other factors are shaping the 2lst-century corporation, and this emerging cultural surround is shaping leaders in the heart of the corporation. Leaders-whether at the top or in middle-levels of the corporation-need to become familiar with both these environmental factors and the comprehensive array of personal characteristics and behaviors they will need. We can abstract a few dimensions of this more sensitive, more aware 2lst-century operations leader. While gross characteristics, they help define the essence of this kind of leadership. These general dimensions may help the new leader’s quest to understand this critical set of behaviors, attitudes and capacities. The profile of the emerging inner leader includes at least the following dimensions or capacities.

Difference

Whether described as charismatic, magnetic, powerful personalities or by other similar adjectives, successful leaders are seen as different from other workers. As applied today, charisma is a special magnetic charm or appeal, attractiveness, or a special ability to get compliance from others; this capacity is essential to leadership of a largely volunteer core of stakeholders. People follow charismatic leaders to try to reduce the complexities of life. Effective number-two leaders attract others to them, to their programs, ideas, and ideals.

Taking Risks

Inner leaders operate on the margin. They engage in moving the organization forward into the unknown, which is inherently risky. All leaders risk


failure, inner leaders perhaps more so than their CEO bosses. They risk losing their leadership relationship with their follower core, who are not dependent on them in the formal structural ways they depend on the CEO. The payoff for a successful relationship, however, is follower commitment to the inner leader’s cause. It is manifest in increased energy applied to the task at hand and satisfaction in knowing that followers accept the leader’s goals and expend effort in their attainment.

A Future Focus

Leaders are “horizon thinkers.” Good number twos engage in problem-finding more than problem-solving activities. They prosper in largely nonprogrammed, nonroutine situations. Inner leaders integrate disparate ideas and issues of stakeholders both in and about their part of the organization into understandable longer-range visions and programs. They focus less time on day-to-day problem solving and more on simulation of a future no one has yet experienced.

Community Building

Inner leaders prioritize the task of linking the multiple experts with whom they work into intimate communities of common interest. Effective in-the-middle leaders will need a catholic perspective about their work and their organization’s role in the larger communities of the corporation and the surrounding localities. They construct a vision that will tie leader, followers, customers, and the larger community together in an integrated whole and then work to implement it.

Leader Building

Leadership by command is outdated. Indeed, it never did accurately describe leadership. The need has always been for leaders who use their power to enable others. The modern corporation needs logic guided by intuition. It needs someone to articulate a vision of the future that now exists, if unarticulated, in the minds of followers. Effective inner leaders cultivate a sensitivity to the needs of followers and clients. They have developed skill in bringing people together in organizations to make a difference. They cultivate an ability to search for consensus that will inspire individual effort, not mere decisions to direct them.

Leadership skill is learned on the job (Falvey, 1988). Preparing oneself and others for future leadership is a challenge for all who would aspire to leadership. This task requires a never-ending search for good people. When such people found, inner leaders invest time, attention, and resources to


give these emerging leaders opportunity to develop and practice on the job their leadership talents.

Self-confidence

Self-confidence is a sense of personal identity that includes the ideas of esteem and control. Bass (1981) analyzed 10 studies that verified that the leader’s feeling of self-esteem exceeds that of followers. For inner leaders, self-confidence means being centered, having the ability to sustain balance even in the midst of action. Acentered inner leader is not subject to passing whims or sudden excitements. Centered leaders know where they stand and what they stand for. The centered inner leader has a sense of stability and a confident sense of self.

Warren Bennis (1989) says leaders need to know themselves well. There is no greater teacher about self than responsibility. Inner leaders learn to be aware of their true feelings about working with others. They develop sources of feedback, and, they learn the job of leadership. Successful in-the-middle leaders are risk takers; they concentrate, are curious, persistent, exceptional listeners, and have a bias toward change; they respect the customs of their work communities. These inner leaders are aware of the role of leadership and their individual capacities to lead.

Enthusiasm

Leaders are enthusiastic. They trigger similar feelings in their followers. Enthusiasm is a strong excitement or feeling. Leaders communicate a feeling that the shared goals are possible. They energize followers. They engen- der a sense of comradeship or esprit in followers. They inject passion in the group. Enthusiasm compels followers to action, especially in hard times.

Trustworthiness

Trust is vital to organizational action. It is the grease that allows all parts of the organization and all its individuals to interreact smoothly. Workers must trust their leaders and leaders must rely on the goodwill of workers to do what is needed. In all parts of the corporation, but especially in the middle regions, force, authority, formal structural roles, and sanction systems cannot substitute for basic relationships of mutual trust. Inner leaders build trust relationships on many things; among them are the need to articulate clear goals, sound policies, and a basic respect for others (Fairholm, 1997). Trusting relationships need a culture supportive of these factors.


SUMMARY

Social groups have always had leaders and leaders have always be- haved in about the same ways. They act in a stream of history that has not always been clear and understandable. They are in an arena of multiple forces, many beyond their control or sometimes even beyond their knowledge. Many of the results sought take many years to attain. Leadership in the inner precincts of the corporate hierarchy is like other leadership, but it is conditioned by the special context within which the work is done. This interior corporate context affects in unique ways the leader, the people led, the task performed, the results attained, and the measures of success applied. Inner leaders need to understand their group’s unique subcultural values and those of the larger communities within which they operate and work, to shape both the larger culture and the leader’s subculture.


Chapter 2

The Pivotal Role of Inner Leaders in Corporate

Operations

Leonard Bemstein said, “The hardest instrument to play in a symphony or- chestra is second fiddle.” This is also often true in business’s inner sanc- tums. Only certain types of people can flourish in the culture occupied by inner leaders. Effective performers in the middle of the organization develop unique ways to do their work and to work with others.

Robert E. Kelley (1998) describes a paradigm that enhances inner leader effectiveness. It asks interior leaders to demonstrate skills similar to those exercised by chief executives, but go beyond them. These unique inner-leadership skills and capacities include demonstrating initiative, developing networks, practicing self-management, cultivating perspective, becoming expert in the technologies of followership and leadership, being team players, acquiring organizational savvy, and advertising their accomplishments and capacities.

Warren Bennis (1999) suggests that inner leaders need to understand and practice the power of appreciation. These leaders need to be alert for talent and unafraid of hiring people better than they are. Inner leaders are more often curators than creators. They remind people of what’s important. They generate and sustain trust. They are intimate allies of their bosses.

Effective Number Twos immerse themselves in the details of the programs they lead. They become enthusiastic doers of the work of the group. They are not passive. They pick outstanding leaders to model and follow.


They are skilled at looking beyond the surface reasons to see the basic nature of the situation. Inner leaders are willing to explore their own thoughts and attitudes, compare them with those of their bosses, and alter their behavior as needed. They do not succumb to the temptation to rationalize. They know that being an inner leader is special and that status requires much of them.

SPECIAL SKILLS

These in-the-middle leaders often understand the workings of the corporation enough that they need little or no external supervision. That is, they have high job maturity-they know what to do without being told. They act with intelligence, wit, independence, courage, and a strong sense of ethics-Hersey and Blanchard (1969) call it psychological maturity. They are critical thinkers. Inner leaders minimize complaints. They are key in in- stituting changes in culture and are a retraining influence in encouraging personnel to move away from the more traditional method of thinking on which many have become so dependent.

Good followers are proactive, not passive. The best deputy leaders a CEO can ask for are those who act independently, who think for themselves and act on their thoughts (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). They share the leader’s vision, but are also able to think independently and therefore challenge the leader when necessary (Kelley, 1998). They perform beyond the level of minimal acceptance. Business theory and practice is beginning to recognize the special contributions of inner leaders. They are considered by some a new, untapped resource in organization theory, even though their contribution has always been a part of intraorganizational life.

Among the special capacities inner leaders need to master are the following.

Effective Face-to-face Communications

The inner leadership communications technology is face-to-face. It is personal, intimate. It is many small acts involving the Number Two and each individual follower jointly. This kind of personal interaction in large groups is often advocated. If it is to be effective, however, individual group members must see it as a personal relationship. They must see a melding of their personal values, purposes and methods with each stakeholders. The subculture of mid-level leadership can be thought of as multiple clusters of committed people to a common parent culture and a common vision of needs the follower ameliorates in conducting organizational work. Good followers see each customer or client as unique. It requires the follower to adopt a mind-set that values people. It requires specific behavior that actu- alizes people values.

Pivotal Role in Corporate Operations 31

Counseling and Counciling-with

A chief technology is counseling followers. Counseling is unilateral action taken by the counselor toward the other person in the relationship. It entails frequent association with stakeholders, often at their work sites. It is autocratic in that the counselor dictates to the counselee. It is also common practice for CEOs and their Number Twos.

Inner leaders also sit in council with followers. Whereas counseling is telling, counciling-with is finding out together what is right, proper, needed. The counciling-with relationship puts the follower and follower together in an equal, sharing relationship. Either may propose the agenda, contribute ideas and methods to solve group problems, suggest new or altered program plans, or propose a course of action. Counciling-with is democratic and egalitarian. Number Twos find frequent occasion to learn how to and then sit in council with all of their stakeholders to insure understanding and acceptance of common values, work processes, and goals. Counciling-with behavior is facilitated, supported, and enhanced by simple, common courtesy, or the exercise of respectful behavior toward employees.

Teaching

The days when the leader could order employees to do the work and it got done are over, if this ever was the case. Indeed, most of the leader’s work is in teaching followers what they want them to do, how they want them to behave, and even how they want them to think. These are outcomes of teaching more than of direction and control. Teaching is much more effective in transferring meaning and values than is order-giving.

Teaching is a little-recognized part of the tasks of leadership. In truth, all leaders are in a teaching mode much of the time. It is a way to set standards and to generalize them throughout the corporation. Inner leaders, more than their bosses, set organizational standards; they teach them, live them and inspire others to live them. Almost everything inner leaders do is teaching. Setting goals, establishing standards, delegating work, issuing orders and instructions, disciplining, and even the leader’s demeanor and other routine behavior are all forms of teaching. Each communicates values, standards, preferred method, and much else to followers. These routine leadership activities are intended to inform, instruct, and direct followers in ways that let them internalize the ideas transferred into their work lives.

Willingness to Tell the Truth

The best, most effective inner leaders speak truth to power. More and more in the increasingly complex corporate world, CEOs are dependent on


their interior leader-colleagues for good information, whether they want to hear it or not. An honest Number Two who tells the truth and a CEO who listens to it are an unbeatable combination (Bennis, 1997). The same mutual respect for honesty and truthfulness applies in the inner leader’s communications with his or her stakeholder groups. Effective inner leaders look for good people anywhere in the corporation and then encourage them to speak out, even to disagree. Some of these leaders also wisely build dissent into their decision-making processes.

Willingness to dissent or to allow dissent is an important characteristic of this aspect of inner leadership. Whatever momentary discomfort inner leaders experience as a result of being told from time to time that they are wrong is more than offset by the fact that reflective backtalk increases the inner leader’s ability to make good decisions. There is risk in speaking this way to the boss, whether it is the inner leader speaking to the CEO or a worker to the inner leader. But the price for silence is too costly in the psychic loss resulting from following someone who values loyalty only in the narrowest sense. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the Number Two willing to speak out shows precisely the kind of initiative that top leadership is made of (Bennis, 1997).

Being a Team Player

Team success requires a different set of skills for workers. Key among these skills is an ability to cooperate. It is no longer “every man for himself!’’ If the corporation is to survive and thrive in today’s global economy, the entire organization must become a team (or, more accurately, a cluster of teams), pulling in the same direction. The success of the inner leader is directly proportional to the degree to which he or she stresses teamwork and encourages employees to be team players. In teams, leadership rotates, making the follower a key element in corporate success (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). It is important that group members be able to move back and forth between the roles of follower and leader.

Inner leaders are team players. They assist their CEOs however and whenever they can. They encourage the CEO to share with them the rea- soning behind the decisions that are being made so that they can learn from the experience and apply it to future corporate situations (Wood, 1999). Ef- fective inner-leader team players think about their vision for the corporation in a context of cooperation and sharing. They develop and promulgate new initiatives that might excite coworkers, raise the group’s visibility, increase revenue, or decrease costs. They review the strategic plan, think about how they can take it to the next level. They learn about and become comfortable with the processes the corporation has in place. Inner-leader team players build their own team so that it supplements corporate structures and processes. They seek a model of leadership based upon team-


work, community, and ethical and caring behavior. They seek involvement in decision making to enhance their personal growth, while improving the caring and quality of the organization and its stakeholders (Spears, 1998).

Naive Listening

Practicing effective inner leadership involves striving for active listening and harnessing the power of the organization in a creative fashion so that inner leaders can contribute to understanding and reduce stress in the workplace. This positive force will add value to the total output of the company (Douglas, 1992). Active listening is a process that asks the listener to get inside the speaker and understand his point of view. It is listening for total meaning and involves listening for content and feelings, not just content. It is a kind of naive listening (Fairholm, 1991), where the listener listens as if he or she has never heard the communicated information before.

Mitigating Job Stress

Given the nature of modern society, job stress on employee performance in the work place is increasing. By one estimate, the average cost to the organization is over $73,000 over the working life of each employee due to stress-induced absenteeism and turnover (Douglas, 1992). To mitigate the negative impacts of workplace stress, inner leaders must play a larger role in helping coworkers achieve higher performance levels. Indeed, this is a key role inner leaders play.

The three most frequently cited sources of distress in the business literature are role conflict, role ambiguity, and workload difference. Role conflict occurs when a subordinate receives competing and conflicting expectations from others. Compounding role conflict is a second source of stress called role ambiguity. As business grows more complex, the demands for synergism between CEOs and their Number Twos is imperative. Both CEOs and inner leaders must understand the stress that occurs from role conflict, role ambiguity, and workload variance.

Employees also are often challenged in dealing with role overload and underload. Role overload means having more expectations than one is able to fulfill. Role underload can also be a source of job stress. Solving this involves inner leaders in explaining the assignment and allowing coworkers time for questions. When a coworker agrees to the task, a written memo of understanding can be prepared that includes the details of the assignment and asks for feedback regarding any points needing clarification. Finally, the inner leader must establish a mutually acceptable deadline for comple- tion of the task.

Careful attention to each of the phases noted will help Number Twos avoid the tendency to reassert their authority in a manner that undermines


the performance of their employee (Douglas, 1992). Of course, not all stress is negative. Stress can be either positive or negative. The inner leadership task is to recognize common sources of distress and foster eustress. Active listening based on empathy and trust is a mitigating tool. Using employee empowerment to nurture workers who are capable of taking charge and acting on their own initiative is another stress-relieving technique.

Followership

According to several dictionaries, to follow is to "attend to" someone else, "to go in pursuit of" something or someone, and to accept another as in authority and therefore worthy of obedience and emulation. Followers fix their attention on someone of worth, a model of virtue. Followers are able to overcome routine and change their past ways of working and even the nature and character of the work they do. Followers get personally involved with the programs of their leaders.

As referenced several times, following is a key part of being a Number Two leader. As Number Twos need to learn to follow their leaders, they must teach their volunteer followers also to follow them. Mastery of the attributes of followership first come as inner leaders see their leaders act and then model their behavior after that example. The leader chosen to be the inner leader's model may be a friend, a teacher, or some one of the great present or historical corporate or community leaders. Whom to follow and what principles of action to emphasize determine the course of one's professional life and what kind of a follower he or she eventually becomes.

Acceptance of the follower role embodies all other actions. Being a leader in the middle of the corporation asks incumbents to put away pride and develop the ability to respond willingly to their leaders. Openness should characterize relationships with others, whether leader or follower.

SPECIAL COMPETENCIES

Successful inner leaders acquire positive reputations among their employees because of their earned credibility. They obtain reputations for reli- ability among customers and suppliers by ensuring quality, service, and innovation. They gain reputations for responsibility among community and client constituencies by prudently stewarding organizational, social, and natural assets. Finally, successful inner leaders achieve reputations for accountability among regulatory and competitor interests by complying with regulations and building a level playing field for fair competition (Petrick, Scherer, Brodzinski, Quinn, and Ainina, 1999).

In doing this, inner leaders embody special competencies typical of professionals working in the middle of the corporation. These include competencies in human relations, problem solving, and promoting follower


performance. In each, the inner leader should periodically provide an accounting to their leaders and other stakeholders showing how their stewardship is improving and increasing the corporate assets (Dunn, 2000).

Competence in Human Relations

A primary task in human relationships is in communicating meaning. Conveying meaning is crucial and is the basis of all human contact. Effec- tive Number Two leaders communicate to achieve their goals. They do it by instilling in others their ideas, information, values, attitudes, and approaches to doing work, living life, and becoming competent.

Successful intraorganizational leaders regulate follower actions from a basis of loving concern. Of course, there are other ways to get followers to do what leaders want them to do, but the nature of follower needs will not let a Number Two do otherwise than to help their stakeholders. These leaders take a personal interest in their stakeholders; because they do, people follow them. The inner leader’s task is to make one unit out of the many members in the group. The standard of excellence is to be unified.

Human actions are shaped by the consequences of behavior. That is, a behavior becomes habitual, when behaving in a specified way produces desired results. Inner leaders use this principle of life in inspiring followers to do the work (the leaders’) way, since much of the inner leader ’S work is in direct contact with individuals. Success in day-to-day operation of the corporation’s programs comes through these interactions with followers. The leader’s responsibility is to focus on affecting follower behavior through teaching and inspiration and then leaving to them the responsibility, the authority, and the privilege of acting independently in the job to which they have been assigned as they lead their portion of the organization.

Competence in Problem Solving

The ability to solve problems and be in control of self and the environment is critical to excellence in any task. As inner leaders develop their talents to the point where they can be proficient, they can expect to have their efforts capped by success. In many respects, analytical skill is determined by the leader ’s responses to clues from the work environment. Analysis can aid in finding solutions to problems. It is not as good a tool for deciding in the first instance what problems are most important and need priority attention. Excellence in problem solving is developed as inner leaders become skilled at identifying problems, limiting their scope, and relating facts about the problem situation to preset standards and goals. Skill in dealing with these often-implicit factors in the situation frequently determines the level of their acceptance by their coworkers.


Full knowledge of the program and the methods used to bring about desired results allows inner leaders to teach followers the details of the operation. With this information they can help their stakeholders define and resolve problems and operate the program effectively. In-depth knowledge of program operations also allows Number Two to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in meeting its goals as well as the effectiveness of the individual workers performing required tasks. The effective Number Two leader’s success is in continually teaching followers how to do the work, not just that they should work.

Inner leaders exemplify desired behavior. They also provide followers with case studies in successful work and demonstrate effective work techniques along with their encouragement. Aleadership position does not automatically make a leader an expert. Leaders must develop the needed skills and knowledge by hard work. Position lets leaders act in the office held. Their training lets them act with diligence. Both authority and ability are necessary.

The nature of leadership skill is largely concerned with such things as (1) information gathering preparatory to problem solving, (2) relations with the other organizations and individuals and their leaders, (3) relations within the more intimate world of the organizational group-the people and material available to the leader to use in accomplishing program goals, and (4) knowledge of the technical aspects of the programs and the delivery of services implicit in the leader’s tasks.

Decision making is a ubiquitous part of all life. Competence in the use of methods and techniques of problem solving equips inner leaders to deal with a flood of often contradictory facts about most problem situations. Mid-level leaders, along with the CEO, have the authority to decide for the corporation. Of course, problem solving and decision making are often cooperative processes. But only decisions made while leaders are attuned to the culture of the group can be expected to be fully effective in serving customers, the program, and team members.

Time is the leader’s most critical resource. Planning its use must be done wisely. We must relate the past and present to a viable future. Goal setting is also an important task for inner leaders, involving short-range planning as well as thinking beyond the horizon. Often, their most significant responsibility is to define the group’s long-range or horizon goals, to interpret them, and to validate new goals-all within the corporate CEO’s overall policy. This is an integrating task, one that involves time, space, and context as well as facts and figures.

Inner leaders find it necessary to measure continually the work they do against these longer-range goals they define and as proscribed in the overall policy set by the boss. They are skilled in relating the group’s goals to the larger world of the corporation and industry and to the community in which they live. Leaders must guard against being caught up in decisions


that deal only with symptoms and not with core issues. They cannot let temporary symptoms or a competitive world cloud their judgments or dictate program actions.

Another skill in this connection is competence in setting priorities for action. Inner leaders develop competencies that allow them to decide among competing programs, people, events, or activities-all of which may be ”good.” In setting priorities for action, they marshal resources, ideas, approaches, and methods to see that the group action taken is suitable and purposeful. Priority setting is a decision activity that discriminates between competing uses of available resources. The standards set by the group and their goals need to be known and used to measure the utility value of each possible alternative. They affect time spent on individual activities. But this is the result of decisions: When we stress excellence in some activities or principles, others that may be equally useful must be mini- mized or ignored.

When inner leaders experience a problem, they adopt a positive attitude toward their stewardship responsibilities. They understand that it does not matter how the problem occurred; what does matter is that they work to fix it and ensure that the problem does not occur again. As representatives of the CEO, inner-leader supervisors do all they can to remedy the situation. They avoid fault finding and look first inward for solutions to problems before they seek causes elsewhere. When they do so, they gain the most valuable asset any human being can have-self-appraisal (Wilkinson, 1990).

Competence in Promoting Follower Performance

Competent inner leaders have a style that balances four competing criteria of performance:

Profitability and productivity

Continuity and efficiency

Commitment and morale

Adaptability and innovation

Leadership competence engages inner leaders in a kind of behavioral complexity that is directly linked with continuing competitive advantage (Petrick, Scherer, Brodzinski, Quinn, and Ainina, 1999).

Among the most common functions of mid-level leaders is that of providing the time and materials needed for performing the organization’s assigned mission. The perception of second-level leaders as the behind-the-scene implementers of organizational goals is common. This aspect of the inner leader’s role puts a premium on events (e.g.’ meetings, reports, presentation) completed, the ability to communicate, and the skills


needed to identify the best abilities in followers and to inspire them to exercise those abilities to the fullest.

The more powerful aspect of the function of in-the-middle leaders deals with the creative risk elements in the work done. We might call these tasks spiritual growth tasks. Intracorporate deputies exercise spiritual skill in communicating, understanding human and behavioral mechanisms, and using personal statements in inspiring their followers to excel in their work. This is one of the purposes of personal interviews with followers, which focus on changing and increasing the internal capacity of the people making up the organization and on magnifying the capacity of individuals through their service.

It takes a gift to be regarded as a great Number Two (Heenan and Bennis, 1999). Inner leaders are more concerned with the future than with the past or even the present. They search for opportunities outside formal relationship as well as those inside to build individual follower strength. At a spiritual level, they are concerned with the future development of their coworkers. They become imaginative creators of new possibilities. Inner leaders proceed from symptoms showing deviation from goals to the underlying causes. They search for new opportunities that will enhance the growth potential of the organization, individual followers, and the general membership. They reach to the essential capacity of stakeholders with whom they work and help them develop strength and power by harnessing their spiritual resources. In this way they multiply the power of the organization to produce at excellent levels.

Chapter 3

The Spiritual Dimension of Whole-Souled Inner

Leadership

Successful inner leadership is influencing change in the values, attitudes, abilities, and behaviors of followers (Bass et al., 1987). Leaders transform their people and the group. Transforming leaders try to elevate the needs of the follower to match their own goals and aims. In doing this they pay attention to the individual by understanding and sharing in the realization of followers’ developmental needs. This is more intimate and personal than leading from the top. It is influencing others to change and then trusting them to do their best in the absence of the CEO’s authoritarian controls.

The inner leader’s personal relationships have a great deal of influence on the values followers learn, their ability to come prepared to work every day, and their motivation at work (Levinson, 1997). Inner leaders, more than their CEO bosses, need to deal intimately with their coworkers-all of their stakeholders. Traditional leadership theory does not provide a model for this kind of leader/follower relationship. Nor does it provide a common language for discussion to include intimate and personal ideas of self, spirit, or even philosophy in professional communications.

Recent work has begun to provide this deficit (Fairholm 1997). Modeling leadership as a function of spirit is new, but holds promise for adding a significant perspective to the general understanding of leadership. It holds much promise as a way to describe and predict leader behavior in the middle ranges of the corporation, a place where leaders apply their whole selves to the task of leading others who increasingly expect to have their


whole selves accommodated on the job. Each person brings his or her whole self-not just the few skills the CEO wants to use-to work and to all other critical life endeavors.

As for all people, the in-the-middle leader’s sense of self is defined by the totality of who and what he or she is. Some people call this the spiritual self, the soul, or just being human. The essence of who one thinks one is describes the whole person, not merely components of self like the level of education attained, the profession followed, or the focus of or extent of one’s affiliations. Spirituality defines the emotional, physical, and intellectual self. It includes the way people think and the emotions they feel. It is the source of their overall perception of the world, of truth, beauty, and goodness.

For some people, spirituality has religious overtones; for others it is metaphysical. Regardless of the context, it has to do fundamentally with the inner or private being, one’s “life force’’ whether seen in doctrinaire religious terms or not. One’s spirituality is not limited by the particular religious affiliation, although the values of one’s religion may be a part of that person’s spiritual focus. Many perceive spirituality to include a broader range of experience while they see religion and faith as delimiting the discussion to experiences that arise in traditional eleemosynary institutions or ways of thinking (Vaill, 1989).

Their sense of spirituality separates the human being from all other creatures. One’s spirit is revealed in emotional or intellectual activities or thoughts that transcend normal physical and biological wants or needs. Spirituality also is the quality of being spiritual, of recognizing the intangible, life-affirming force in self and all human beings. It is a state of intimate relationship with the inner self of higher values and morality. It is a recognition of the truth of the inner nature of people. A study by Fairholm (1997) identified several aspects of a definition of spirituality. Spirituality, in order of significance to study respondents, was found to include the following factors.

An Inner Certainty

For many people, spirituality has to do with an inner conviction about a higher, more powerful, and more intelligent force than self. It is an awareness that certain principles or beliefs are intangible and may not rest on physical or logical proofs. Nevertheless, they are trustworthy and valuable. It is a belief that people are or can be guided their actions by a higher power, with which they can develop a relationship. This conception of spirituality has strong religious overtones. It is a personal relationship with God.

While religiously based spirituality is a useful, valuable, and even critical dimension of life for many, the idea of spirituality also describes a more mundane definition of the essence of the person. Many people define spiri-

The Spiritual Dimension 41

tuality as the acceptance of universal values that they believe guide their everyday actions and by which others should judge their actions.

The Essence of Self

People also define spirituality as the essence that separates human beings from all other creatures. It refers to an inner awareness that makes integration of the self and the world possible. Defined in this way, understanding spirituality is critical to understanding organizational life and leadership. Jacobson (1995) confirms this perspective. He concludes that spirituality is important and meaningful to transformational leaders. The secular and spiritual do not have to be separate, and inner leaders do not have to separate their inner self from the role they play. They are integral to one another. This is a holistic view of leadership action, one responsive to both individual needs and objective experience.

The Basis of Comfort, Strength, and Happiness

Many people also define spirituality in personal terms, but in less metaphysical ways. Human beings adopt principles and select qualities and influences that they exhibit in their behavior and interactions with others. For these people, spirituality is the part of them that they use or rely upon for comfort, strength, happiness. It is a source of contentment. Defined this way, spirituality is a crucial aspect of inner leaders’ actions.

The Source of Personal Meaning, Values, Life Purposes

For some people spirituality is any ideology or philosophy that lifts them and gives meaning to their life. It is the side of them searching for meaning, values, ethics, life purposes. It is the ethics they follow, the degree to which they seek to do things for the common good and be a better person. It has to do with what they do for the betterment of all. In this dimension, spirituality is a relationship with something beyond the self that is intangible. It nonetheless provides a critical source of values, meaning, and broad understanding.

For inner leaders, their sense of their own spirituality provides the basis of their vision, values, and interactions with stakeholders. As they deal with their followers on a spiritual as well as a physical (work task) level, they maximize their chances of building a community that will meet their individual and collective needs. Their spirituality is a personal belief system. Successful inner leaders are true to their internal values, ethics and beliefs.


An Emotional Level, a Feeling

Spirituality is also an emotional level, a feeling. It is acting out in thought and deed the experience of the transcendent in human life.

SPIRITUALITY AND WORK

There is now a quest to confront the universal spiritual frontiers of human consciousness (Nourse, 1995). As their work world expands in importance and becomes, for many, the central activity of their life, relating personal spiritual values to work values becomes a central task of inner leaders. They must get in touch with their own spiritual nature. They also must sense the spiritual core of their followers and deal directly with the task of creating an organization-defined as a group of people in voluntary relationship-where the essential spiritual needs of each are considered and insofar as possible made a part of the group experience.

Society has become so sophisticated, so modern, so enmeshed in the trappings of the world that many observers have ignored the fact that whilepeo- ple have been enriched in many ways they have been impoverished in a lot of other, more important ways. The corporation and its leaders cannot afford that perspective as they lead their organizations into the 2lst-century.

Growing numbers of people are coming to talk about spirit and work in ways that are intended to increase personal satisfaction, enlarge levels of personal commitment to corporate goals, and allow stakeholders maximum freedom to function in harmony with their spiritual values. Dealing with followers at the spiritual level is a vital part of leadership in the middle regions of the corporation, whether or not the individual Number Two consciously uses this fact in developing his or her leadership approach. Since the idea of spirit is central to life, it must be central also to any activity like leadership that purports to make the human condition rational.

There is a growing sense that America’s failures are not political or economic, but moral. The cure for what ails America is, in significant measure, spiritual, or at least moral. This neglect of the spiritual side of life and in leadership theory helps explain at least in part the whole range of problems now facing American corporate workers-the persistence of hopelessness, worker anomie, lowered productivity, teen pregnancy, substance abuse-not bad economics or politics or racism (Raspberry, 1995). Efforts aimed at improving people’s lives that don’t have moral and spiritual dimension are a waste of time.

Asense of spirituality is the anchor for most people’s work ethics and social morality (Bennett, 1995). What is most needed today is not more intel- lect, but more soul (Boyce, 1995). The most successful social programs are those that are driven-even if only tacitly-by moral values. Moral standards come out of the deepest traditions of right and wrong resident in culture, out of a sense of spirituality. Spirituality transcends doctrinaire


religion and finds common cause with people of all religious persuasions, even among those who profess no religion. It is everything about the individual that is nonphysical: self-identity, values, memories, sense of humor, and so forth. Spirituality is evident in emotional or intellectual activities or thoughts that transcend normal physical and biological needs. Spirituality is the intangible, life-giving force in self and all people. It is a state of intimate relationship with the inner self of higher values and morality (Vaill, 1989).

Rather than being a necessary distraction from life, business is business precisely because businesspeople bring their whole self, their spiritual self with them to work, not because they leave it at home. They need to recon- nect to the fact that their hearts and minds, not just their bodies, are central in their business relationships. Survival economically and as a species depends on it. For life is about spirit, and humans carry only one spirit that manifests itself in both life and livelihood. It is the vital, energizing force or principle in them, the core of self. It is the fertile, invisible realm that is the wellspring for their creativity, the core of their values, and the source of their morality. To date little of the preceding discussion has entered the general aca-

demic and professional business literature. Notwithstanding, because of the special culture of inner leaders, spirituality has always been an implicit part of their work. Work life has conditioned the corporate world to accept many unethical acts out of a sensitivity to others’ emotions or their need for free expression. Despite this intrinsic reality, leadership theory for a hun- dred years has ignored the core self in developing its models and defining the leader’s tasks and roles. The result is that formal theory and practice are defective. Both leadership theory and practice must develop ways to wel- come the spiritual component into theoretical discussion. No longer can either practitioner or academic demand that leaders deny their spiritual selves at work. Unless we add a spiritual component, the caricature of the leader offered by contemporary leadership theory will become more and more the operational truth. Leadership theory will continue its drift to a narrow elitist theory of productivity for the sake of productivity, which is nothing more than a theory of management.

ELEMENTS OF A SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP MODEL

Spiritual leadership involves multiple ideas, some common in the values-based leadership model, some more commonly seen in metaphysical, religious, or philosophical literature. Leaders deal with a range of factors related to spirituality. Following Fairholm (1997), they can be organized into the pattern shown here:


Elements of Spiritual Leadership

Catego y Elements Community Continuous Improvement Competence A Higher Moral Standard

Servanthood Spirituality

Stewardship Visioning

Ceremony Culture, Oneness, Wholeness Capacity, Corporate Health Balance, Credibility, Trust, Power Positive affirmation, Ethics, Heart, Integrity, Pres- ence, Meaning, Morals Service, Love/Caring Corporate spirit, Emotions, Truth, Sacred, Non-religious spirit Team, Trustee relationships Values, State of Mind

A profile of spiritual leadership can be abstracted from these elements. Such a model addresses what is essentially a new environment, a new culture of leadership, one that demands never-before-tried solutions. This model embodies values, traits, and practices proven effective in various kinds of organizations and with some individual leaders over time. This leadership pattern recognizes the whole person for the first time in modern leadership theory (Fairholm, 1997). It accepts the fact that people come to work armed with all of their human capacities, not just the few skills, knowledge, and abilities needed at a given time by the employing corporation.

Workers today-and perhaps always-come to work armed with and ready to use their total life experience. They have and want to use all of their skills (McGregor, 1960). Leaders cannot conduct spiritual leadership or any other kind of leadership in a vacuum. It is a dynamic process engaging in unique ways these model elements. The eight core ideas of spiritual leadership noted earlier, circumscribe this spirit-centered version of leadership for the 2lst-century. Operationally they are encompassed by a few tasks and processes and focused around one overarching goal. Spiritual leaders engage followers in doing needed work as they define it in terms of the follower’s goals for self-improvement, and engage in community-building tasks and processes enumerated below.

Tasks

Three spiritual leadership tasks are evident: task competence, vision setting, and servanthood.

Task competency is of four kinds: (1) teaching, (2) trustworthiness, (3) inspiration, and (4) knowledge about the technical tasks of the group. Devel- opment and use of these spiritual leadership technologies are a critical part of spirit-based leadership. Spiritual leaders who have high self-confidence


and a conviction of their moral rightness transfer these qualities to followers (Burns, 1978; Maccoby, 1976; Fairholm, 1991,1995).

Vision setting asks inner leaders to create and then share their meanings about, and intent for, the group. The source of this vision is the leader’s individual sense of spirituality. Leaders deal with contentment, capacity, equanimity, detachment, and connectedness. Based on their own sense of spirituality, inner leaders develop vision statements that foster development of cooperation, mutual caring, and dedication to work.

Finally, leaders lead because they choose to provide a service to others. They serve by making available to stakeholders information, time, attention, material and other resources, and the higher corporate purposes that give meaning to the work. The leadership of service asks inner leaders to create and facilitate a culture of self-leadership, a kind of stewardship relationship.

Process

The spiritual leadership process includes building community within the group and engendering a sense of personal spiritual wholeness in both leader and led.

Spiritually focused inner leaders set and live by a higher moral standard and ask others to share that standard. They act in a stewardship role, forming a shared responsibility team (Bradford and Cohen, 1984). Spirit-based leadership embodies the idea of harmony-building from often diverse, sometimes opposing structural, human, system, and program factions. It is an exercise of community building, of making one out of many. It is a task of generalizing deeply held values, beliefs, and principles of action in ways that all stakeholders will find acceptable and energizing. Inner leaders recognizes the simultaneous need they all have both to be free to act in terms of their own reality and to be part of a similarly focused group.

Spiritual leaders are concerned with the whole person, not just the specific skills people have that are useful to the current work. Relationships with followers, therefore, consider what individuals can now do, what they want to do, and what their capacity is to prepare for this more inclusive work. They set the ethical, moral tone for the group. They set the individual and corporate mood. Inner leadership is about sharing intentions that raise the levels of human conduct. These leaders take pains to understand and see that stakeholders also understand the natural and logical consequences of their actions.

Inner leaders understand that their leadership is held in trust for a temporary period. It is not institutionalized in, for example, organization charts or policy manuals. Leaders may propose plans, choices, and programs, but followers have an opportunity to consent before the actions taken are universally accepted. They set the values foundation for the


group and model these values in their actions. Only when the core values serve the best interests of team members is stewardship possible or spiritual leadership present.

Goal

The inner leader’s goal is to seek to liberate the best in people. This task is one of educating the spirit more than training the head or hand. Attaining this goal is a task of changing the person of the follower and not merely resource control. It is a values-change task. It sets up different, challenging expectations for all workers.

Chapter 4

Applying Whole-Souled I n ner Leaders h i p

Leadership in the interior regions of the corporation today is a different place than it was just a decade or so ago. Inner leaders face new challenges that are changing the nature and scope of their work, the level of their responsibility for developing their own careers, and the level of commitment they choose to give to their employers. Applying the principles and technologies of inner leadership as outlined in this book asks Number Two leaders first to understand the changed nature of work and the kind of workers now inhabiting their segment of the corporation and how to lead in these circumstances. It also asks them to reinterpret the idea of success itself.

THE NATURE OF WORK AND THE WORKER IN TODAY’S WORLD

American corporations are rebuilding their infrastructures. New technologies are enabling companies to trim staffs, installing state-of-the-art technologies that make workers more productive. Companies are reinventing their business structures and processes with computerization, through downsizing (rightsizing) and reemphasizing the corporation’s core business focus. This corporate reengineering includes reworking the internal belief systems and unwritten rules that govern business operation. Just a few examples of the changed character of the workplace follow.


The former expectation between workers and the company that hard work and loyalty would assure workers a career is going, if not gone. Outsourcing-the selling of some of a company’s functions to a third party, which then contracts these functions back to that company-is gaining promi- nence as a way to staff work. As recently as the early 1960s, almost half of all workers in the industrialized countries were involved in making or helping to make things (Pritchett, 1994). Pritchett predicted that by the year 2000 no developed country will have more than one-sixth or one-eighth of its workforce in the traditional roles of making and moving goods. An estimated two-thirds of American employees work in the service sector, and knowledge-not things-is becoming their most important product. For the first year ever, in 1991, companies spent more money on computing and communications gear than the combined monies spent on industrial, mining, farm, and construction equipment (Pritchett, 1994). More information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the previous 5,000. The information supply available to workers doubles every 5 years (Pritchett, 1994).

Reorientation of Worker Roles

Of course, organizations gain value from individual employees’ work, but given these changes in the workplace, workers today face new expectations, shifting priorities, and different reporting relationships. Roles are becoming more vaguely defined. Assignments to workers are altered often. Workers can be much more proactive than they once were. They can create their own roles as they take responsibility for figuring out their top priorities and then working in these areas as long as these priorities are consistent with overall corporate missions.

Increasingly, workers will have to behave as if they were in business for themselves. There will be less hierarchy in formal organizations, with smaller work units that are more flexible and agile and adaptable. Workers will need to become comfortable in more self-structured teams and with more power. They will need to think like entrepreneurs-think in terms of the commercial success of their unit and of their personal financial health as well as that of the larger corporation. This will give them more freedom than some workers now prefer, but it gives them the chance to individually shine. It also increases their personal responsibility for their own career success.

For generations the relationship between workers and the corporation has been built around stable employment relationships, with predictable career advancements and steady growth in wages. Workers have assumed a kind of psychological contract with their employers. They have assumed that if they commit to hard work, dedication, and loyalty to the company, in

Applying Whole-Souled Leadership 49

return the company will provide descent pay, long-term employment, and adequate working conditions. This assumed relationship is no longer as certain as it once was. Economic conditions that encouraged a traditional employment system, including stable protected product markets that enabled the corporation to develop long-term employment practices, is un- raveling.

Peter Cappelli (1995) says the current restructuring of corporations has led to a ”new contract” between employers and workers. Now, because of international competition, new technologies, and in many cases a newly deregulated environment, many organizations are being forced to change the way they do business. It means they can no longer make a 30-year in- vestment in workers pay off. The breakdown of these traditional practices began in the mid-1980s and accelerated in the 1990s. The new relationships that are replacing the old contract can be viewed as a kind of deregulation of employment, whereby a firm’s internal labor market gives way to a more casual relationship between employers and employer and the external labor market assumes a more important role. The problem for employees is to apply well the skills they have that are essential to current employers and to acquire other skills that will be needed by their next employer.

The old contract, in effect, guaranteed employees a job as long as they didn’t make any major mistakes. The new one says employees are only guaranteed “employability..” While they are employed by the corporation they will have a chance to acquire skills that will eventually make them em- ployable somewhere-not necessarily in this company. The future role of the employee-employer relationship will be one of decreasing attachment and commitments between the two sides. It has already changed enor- mously. As little as 10 years ago, the majority of employees thought their employers had their interests at heart. Today almost no one feels that way (Fairholm, 1997).

If employees are responsible for their own career development, they are also more responsible for the maturation of their own skills. Yet they must find ways to develop their capacities for future positions while also developing the flexibility required to meet ever-changing current demand. To- day’s corporation executives expect more flexible ways of working from their workers. Duties are being realigned almost constantly. Short-lived assignments are increasingly more common, with their concomitant rapid set-up costs. Contracted-out work is increasing. Spending time on several project teams is becoming common. Working for more than one employer is also increasing. Workers have a lot of coworkers and bosses. Many have new careers. Being able to make changes quickly is valuable, while resist- ing change can ruin a career. Mobility, not murmuring, will make someone a valuable member of the group. Career success belongs to the committed employee, even though the task may be short lived. The modern corpora-


tion needs workers who work from the heart and who recommit quickly when change reshapes their work.

Today’s work requires a different kind of loyalty, not to the corporation itself (that would be hypocritical), but to the job. Strong job commitment is satisfying. It is an antidote for stress, a cure for the pain of change. Commit- ment is a gift people give themselves, not necessarily the boss. Many workers will be temporary or part-time-some because they want it, others because that is all there is available. Nonpermanent workers have grown in number by 57% since 1980. Gone are the traditional 9-to-5 workdays, lifetime jobs, predictable and hierarchial relationships, and even the workplace itself, for some.

Continuing education programs for workers are necessary, as many careers will change and others will disappear. Workers need to prepare for their next career while working in the current one; unless the corporation provides this benefit, good workers will leave. Responsibility, power, and authority are being pushed to lower and lower levels in the firm. Corpora- tions are being measured now more by the work group’s collective results than by individual performance. Corporate energy is being redirected in service of outcomes, not in ancillary tasks. Inner leaders increasingly are examining worker output in terms of the added value they contribute to the corporation-it is contribution that counts, not hours worked. More and more people will be paid for performance-adding value-rather than for tenure, good intentions, or activity level.

Reorientation of the Inner Leaders’ Role

Leading in this kind of work culture asks all leaders to function differently. No longer can traditional incentives-pay, longevity, perquisites-always be offered. CEOs as well as their Number Twos will need to provide a substitute bond that can respond to this worker disconnection. Appealing to the whole person-the core values, spiritual orientation, and ultimate goals-of each stakeholder’ an activity many inner leaders have focused on routinely, may be the answer.

Focusing on these intimate, personal, even spiritual elements in work and workers asks leaders to make a concern for workers’ whole-self needs also a part of their vision for the firm. In doing this, inner leaders go beyond meaning and ethics into the question of hope. A focus on whole-souled spiritual needs lets all stakeholders unite on common ground-at the philosophical (metaphysical), not just the transactional level. As inner leaders make this connection, transitory differences of policy or procedure lose essential meaning. Workers can accept these differences in the assurance that they share common core values and purposes.

The idea of dealing with the whole person and not just a few of a person’s multiple skills is a shift in the inner leader’s mind-set from a view of


corporate life wherein each party competes for his or her own self-interest to a view of the workplace as a vast number of cooperative, interactive relationships with others whereby each party benefits across the range of their individual interests and needs. This is nothing less than a total reinvention of the workplace dynamic, a redefinition of work as not merely an economic site but a prime locus of social life. The character of this transformation is rudimentary at best. Some of the parameters of the change, however, are becoming clear.

In addition, the marketplace is demanding far more these days from the work organization itself. There is a sense of urgency about business today. The emphasis is on action. Customers-all stakeholders-want better-quality products and continuously excellent service. They want unique-to-them products and services. They also want speedy response times. To survive, the corporate inner leader must travel light and cover ground quicker. The drive is to decentralize, to delegate decision-making power. The tendency is to erase boundaries between different parts of the corporation so that work flows seamlessly and swiftly. The implications for inner leaders are enormous.

THE NATURE OF SUCCESS

The changes noted will have-are having-tremendous impact on both workers and leaders. As the work done changes, the measures of success also change. Similarly, as the individual’s understanding of the theory and practice of inner leadership becomes clearer, so does this new definition of leader success. Success, defined as becoming Number One, is the norm and is as dependent on factors outside the individual’s control-luck, the whims of others, and office politics-as much as it is on personal capacity. Accepting the conventional definition of success is to lose any control Number Two leaders may have over their destiny. Effective internal leaders resist allowing the terms of their success to be determined by others or by anything outside themselves.

Nonetheless, the traditional definition of success is a seductive lure. Our society is preoccupied with winning and celebrity, which can become accepted, though ancillary, aspects of the inner leader’s work. Certainly, they have come to be central in the conventional textbook definitions of success. Examination of the way inner leaders define success shows the perceptive observer an alternative way to think about success, one concerned with personal, intimate, not popular goal accomplishment.

Perceptive Number Two leaders define success not just in terms of being famous or anything else that comes only from external others. For them, success is defined within workplace parameters they can influence. Thus, success can be found as inner leaders nurture a personal talent and practice it in a variety of satisfying ways in different venues (Heenan and Bennis,


1999). It can be found in providing a designated service to a stakeholder and/or in a talent-theirs or a follower’s-they help to strengthen or mature. Success is also achieving peace of mind and satisfaction in fulfilling designated responsibilities.

One of the compensations Number Twos enjoy is finding work that they love and doing it well. Often success for leaders in the middle ranges of the corporation lies in finding people or ideals or causes they can believe in and in serving them with all their energies. Often success for in-the-middle leaders is giving their love and their energy to corporate enterprises that improve, not diminish, people’s lives. For them, success is achieved as much in doing the work as in reaping the rewards for its conclusion. In-the-middle executives find ways to appreciate all of their work life, not just the physical rewards of the work they happen to be doing at the moment.

Having fun is another of the measures of a worthwhile and successful enterprise and a worthwhile life. If, in the course of their work, inner leaders become rich and famous and powerful in the workplace, so be it. But even if these kinds of rewards are modest by conventional standards, they have found a way to live well (Heenan and Bennis, Jul/Aug 1999). Indeed, the satisfactions of this kind of success are often powerful enough induce- ments to inspire the inner leader to stay in-the-middle and not seek a top executive role.

REDEFINING LEADERSHIP A S APPLIED BY NUMBER TWOS

As they start the new millennium, business leaders are beginning to recognize that the goals of corporate action have changed from profit alone to profit combined with individual worker growth and development. This fact of contemporary business life is changing corporate America. It may also be a sea change in the life and work of both workers and their leaders. The full dimensions of this sea change are not always clear. The fact of the change, however, is attested to every day as workers are laid off, organizations are downsized, customers are asking for new and radically different products, and workers demand more fulfillment from their work.

Our textbooks tell us that the preeminent goal sought by business leaders throughout history has been profit. Concern for the bottom line has driven, and still drives, much of corporate decision making. Businesses are, after all, economic systems that use money as the primer of collective action as well as the goal of those actions. But increasingly, leaders see that when they also focus on personal and follower growth, the bottom line is enhanced.

Of course, bottom-line thinking facilitates short-term survival and, if balanced with long-term stewardship considerations, ultimately may help corporate growth and longevity. But, though bottom-line profitability may be an appropriate foundation on which to build, it is not and never was the


ruison d’2tre of business. Ideas like service to the community served, producing goods and services of intrinsic value, and improving the quality of life internal and external stakeholders are and always have been strong forces undergirding corporate creation and continuance.

Effective inner leaders go beyond the bottom line by tapping into the purpose and meaning customers and employees-all stakeholders-bring with them to the job and then reconciling and connecting individual purposes and meanings with those of the organization. The literature recognizes now that meaning making is a widely used and fundamental part of human motivation. Many leaders may have operated in the past under the illusion that they can control their professional and career destinies by focusing their attention on the bottom line. The reality is that Number Two leaders routinely go beyond the bottom line, as they direct the firm’s resources to support the vision, purposes, and principles that come from its people (Douglas and Wykowksi, 1992). Some CEOs do this, too.

Perhaps the most significant change in the philosophy of business over the past several years has been the recognition of this other powerful drive to satisfy more of stakeholder needs than merely economic ones. This drive threatens to take equal place with profit as the stimulus of executive action. This drive comes not just from the core of executives at the head of the business hierarchy (or from their bosses, the board of directors), but from the multiple informal leaders both nominal and actual, in the extensive middle ranges of the corporation. It is a drive that Number Two leaders have to become all that they can become. It is a drive for self-development within the confines of the corporate work unit and a drive to aid stakeholders in their similar drives.

As they recognize the power of noneconomic forces in work life and consciously try to direct their contacts with their followers toward mutual growth, in-the-middle leaders increase their own capacity as well as that of individual followers and the work unit itself. This push for individual growth and development runs counter to the body of technique developed over the years by CEOs and solidified in traditional leadership theory and practice. However, simple observation suggests that, while leadership theory suffers exploitation of workers, its practice includes worker development as a key ingredient.

Indeed, there are indications that CEOs cannot be fully responsive to a full-blown staff-development focus. Their tools, methods, and goals continually draw them into making decisions intended to improve the financial performance of the organization, even at the risk of hurting employees through reduced work, layoffs, downsizings, firings, and, perhaps most pervasive, reducing the character of the work to its lowest and least costly but most mundane dimensions. Indeed, they often operate on the organizational imperative that what is good for the organization is good, period (Scott and Hart, 1979).


Number Two leaders-those who lead volunteers who do not always have to obey orders-find their tasks are materially different from their bosses’. Old leadership theory and technologies do not apply. Spiritual values that focus on the whole person-some call this spiritual leadership (Fairholm, 1997)-is the only model that can provide definition and context for harried mid-level leaders in today’s “morphed” corporation. Some personal characteristics of their stakeholders and of inner leaders themselves make it possible for them to function in the business world on the basis of whole-souled spiritual principles.

Overall, successful inner leaders are identified by the qualities of wisdom, morality, and honesty. Without wisdom, they may make wrong, poorly thought-through decisions or honest mistakes. Without morality they will make unprincipled rules. Without honesty, they may show favoritism. Without all three, their leadership will be suspect. With these three characteristics, their preparation is sufficient to attract volunteer followers to their leadership banner.

The failure to find place in leadership cadres for people with these core qualities is the cause of many of the problems characteristic of today’s corporations: politics without principle, knowledge without effort, wealth without work, business without morality, science without humanity, and peace without tranquility. When stakeholders don’t find these qualities in their figurehead leaders they provide them for themselves either in competing subcultural enclaves or cliques or in another corporation. This is especially the case since there is no longer a traditional psychological understanding between workers and the corporation.

The Number Two leader’s first step in this process is acceptance of where and what he or she is now. The beginning of education is the realization and admission of ignorance and a desire for help in learning. Wise leaders learn that they cannot borrow strength from others. To do so is to build weakness. Of course, mid-level leaders receive help from others, but when they rely too much on someone else they risk loss of strength. Rather, the task is to mature their core capacities in ways that let them accomplish the special tasks characteristic of leaders in the middle ranges of the corporation.

Inner leadership asks its incumbent executives to demonstrate the following qualities of character and inculcate them in their followers’ behaviors and actions. This list illustrates attributes leaders demonstrate in their interaction with stakeholders and want them to have. While the following listing is not inclusive, it is typical of the technologies inner leaders routinely apply. Others are discussed in succeeding chapters and throughout this book.

Self-Mastery

Respect for others, not judgment of others and compassion, not intransi- gence, mark the inner leader’s relationships with others. This takes


self-discipline. Much of the present tendency toward incivility, envy, strife, and confusion in society may stem from leaders who have failed to master themselves and who communicate that lack to their stakeholders. Many people, including most CEOs, are governed by feelings of dominance, hate, envy, jealousy, and/or fear or by desire for celebrity and status. Not so with spiritually focused inner leaders.

There is a strict discipline in being an inner leader whose principal tasks are not talk but action, not ideas but work. Individual inner leaders who master their inner self often must begin first at a physical level at the level of appetite and passions. They are integrated personally and professionally. Their conversation is one of the principal indicators of their authentic self. Theoretical conversation reveals their true nature as clearly as a neon sign. Speaking negatively against one’s associates connotes lack of wisdom and prudence and convicts that speaker of incompetence.

The test of successful inner leadership is that of internal wholeness. Those who succumb to the pull of ambition to excel over others will fall short in their preparation and give followers a wrong model to follow. Ma- turity comes as leaders decline opportunities to climb the heights of status and adulation and simply seek to serve and sacrifice for their stakeholders. The task is to seek, not the honors of society, but service in the group, knowing that they can gain the recognition they may desire and need as they lose themselves in the work.

Courage

Perhaps the most difficult problems facing the world are moral in character and spiritual in essence. It takes courage for leaders to let their intrinsic spirit guide them in doing their work and not just past practice or current policy. We can define courage as the quality of mind and spirit that enables someone to meet challenge and even danger, difficulty, or pain with directness and firm action. In the workplace, the inner leader’s courage has several facets: bravery, or the attributes of daring and defiance; heroism, which is illustrated most finely in nobility and self-sacrifice; and fortitude, the quality of patience and perseverance. All of these aspects of courage are needed in leadership in-the-middle. Emerson (1950) aptly defined courage as being equal to the problem before us.

It is sometimes the case that inner leaders reveal their courage to others (and to themselves) when they are faced with an extraordinary situation requiring physical or moral heroism. However, courage is more often shown in quiet determination to do the job assigned or to fulfill a commitment. Hu- man effort to be equal to these intense personal confrontations often requires the highest (and loneliest) levels of moral courage. It asks for the kind of courage that goes beyond momentary physical bravery and extends to an enduring steadfastness, for often the battle is not won in one heroic act, but


by determination and grit over time. Such are battles not fought in public, but in the minds of leaders in a long series of small victories over self.

Fidelity

Honesty in the leader is essential to establishing trust, loyalty, commitment, and cooperation, all necessary to the proper functioning of any leader-follower relationship. It is especially important that inner leaders en- gender trust in their integrity as the basis of all their work contacts. There can be no compromise with honesty and loyalty, with fidelity. By the very nature of their tasks, CEOs often are required to “engineer reality.” This is not always the case with interior leaders. They lack the status and the resources in- cident to the frequent use of tlus kind of manipulation of the corporate communications transfer systems. Their status in their groups is contingent upon the willing trust and loyalty of their followers-characteristics of this relationship that can easily be destroyed when honesty is challenged.

Emotional Openness

Inner leaders cannot command the followership of their stakeholders until they are willing to open themselves to the risks inherent in taking decisions that test their character. Emotional openness is positive; defensive- ness (or the attempts to mask the true self) is negative. The one is soul-lifting, the other debasing. Inner leaders may be tempted at times to justify their current questionable behavior rather than to accept it honestly and then take the necessary steps to bring their lives into harmony with corporate values.

Leaders must resist the tendency to project their attributes and attitudes to one or more of their coworkers. By so projecting, they can safely con- demn the flaw transferred to the follower while keeping their “self” safe from challenge. This kind of projection allows them to reinforce wrong behaviors and is harmful to themselves and to their stakeholders. The task is to learn to recognize this behavior pattern and summon the strength to accept their true character and then do the necessary work to redress its consequences and correct their actions.

Cooperation

Spiritually grounded inner leaders do not compete. They work with others cooperatively. Yet differences can and do occur within their leadership teams and in their relationships with peers, customers, and others. Indeed, contention and vying for power over others is at the heart of much of the stress and tension they sometimes see in their stakeholders. Competition and contention contribute to frustration and sometimes to open conflict.


The result of their efforts to mature their capacities and that of followers to help in doing the work is to create, out of ordinary people, the cooperative person. The goal is to achieve a relationship with all stakeholders that is open, trusting, and conducive to mutual growth and progression.

Cooperation is largely determined by individual internal personality characteristics harnessed through experience and hard work. Only as internal leaders commit totally can they dedicate their whole selves to the work and reap the blessings of cooperation, harmony, peace, and passion in their leadership contacts.

Expertise

Expertise connotes an ability to take action, and action is a foundation of influence. The expert acquires and maintains support as long as others in the subculture he or she heads depend on that expertise (Mechanic, 1962). For example a teacher is respected, obeyed, and deferred to by the community at large because of the feelings community members have that they know things the others do not know yet (McKeachie, 1969).

On one level, inner leaders lead because of their knowledge of and experience in the primary tasks of the group. As they gain needed expertise in the work done, this capacity lets stakeholders forgo some of their personal desires and follow the leader. Knowing their job, however, asks inner leaders to be magnanimous with their followers. Expertise brings with it an obligation of service. The real nature of the leaders’ work is to learn their duty and then use that knowledge in providing needed service to individual stakeholders and bosses as they go about accomplishing their tasks.

Comfort with Complexity

A major change is being wrought in the workplace because of the information technology revolution. It is now possible for any stakeholder to independently receive information about almost any subject at any time it is needed. Inner leaders need to develop competence in living within this complex information environment. From this base, they can work with other people who may know more than they do about the task at hand or the methods or impacts of what they collectively do.

With the advent of new information systems, inner leaders will be required to dedicate more time to the design of special programs to meet the needs of each specific subgroup of stakeholders-bosses, customers, employees, suppliers, and professional group members. These special needs must be identified from the information gathered from corporate information networks and available to any person.

Inner leaders also must be able to function comfortably in this kind of complexity, for success here is the hallmark of leadership in the middle,


where almost everyone has access to information formally reserved for the exclusive use of the CEO. Inner leaders, like their bosses, will have to lift their attention from their internal organizational unit to the larger community and the host of external forces impacting its operation and its future character and functions. Examples of those external forces are listed here:

Expanding outreach programs. Sharing of resources among several units. Coordination of programs among and between organizational subunits. Increased reliance on regional and area-wide and global programs of direct de-

More coordination with professional specialists from higher-level corporate

More centralization of the delivery of services at the region, area, and global lev-

livery of service to customers and other stakeholders.

units, from professional associations, and from the community at large.

els in addition to the local level. More contact with industry and technology groups on matters of common interest to the community at large and to the inner leader’s home corporation. More direct contact with corporate and industry-wide leaders.

Another set of circumstances will govern the work of inner leaders becoming comfortable in functioning in novel situations. For example, the expanding scope of multicultural stakeholders suggests that inner leader’s decisions will increasingly depend on contributions of a wide variety of specialist-followers throughout the corporation. An increasingly important attribute of inner leadership will lie in the leaders’ skills and techniques for establishing the validity and relevance of the advice and information furnished by these diverse experts. Collaboration and negotiating skills will be increasingly important in their work.

Chapter 5

Inner Leadership and Spiritual Wholeness

What real leaders do is about the same, wherever it is done. The context in which it is done is critical in directing specific methods or techniques used and in containing the scope of its application. Context-culture-determines not so much what leaders do as how they do it. That is, inner leaders deal with power (or setting values, or inspiration, or creating a vision) differently than CEOs typically would. Their placement in the center of the organization instead of at the top dictates that, for example, authority power is less effective. Inner leaders deal most often with others who can match their authority or in situations where authority is immaterial. In-the-middle leaders find that personal aspects of power such as persuasion and inspiration are more effective tools to insure stakeholder compliance (Fairholm, 1993).

The emerging values theory of leadership is especially useful in both describing inner leadership and predicting the outcomes of a particular leader action. Traditional leadership theory focusing primarily on use of discernible resources-pay, perquisites, and prestige-lend themselves to top leaders in the hierarchy, since they exert ultimate control over most corporate resources. Inner leaders must rely on other means to induce stakeholders to expend energies and commit emotionally to their vision. Values are more important to the inner leader than formal structure, strategy, or system. Values-based theory meets the inner leader’s needs. It provides a frame of reference with which inner leaders can create a plan of action to


capture the hearts of stakeholders and incorporate them into their own values and vision. It also provides a new set of methods, techniques, and tools-a new technology of leadership-well within the capacity of the mid-level leader.

Values leadership theory revolves around the leaders’ use of and response to the unique core values and standards that define them and guide their actions and reactions and those of their stakeholders. Core values are ”heart values” (Fairholm, 1997). They define the core essence, the spirit or soul, of the individual, whether leader or led. They are integral to both personal and professional success. Core values define the individual as a person and constitute both the goals pursued and the criteria defining success. The task set for Number Twos is to harmonize their personal and/or professional heart values and behavior with the heart values and resultant actions of followers. Values theory helps inner leaders understand their role and guides them in the approaches most appropriate for their personal success and that of the corporation.

The rise of values-based leadership ideas and their inherent conse- quence, spiritual leadership, is a reflection of the rise in worker demand for opportunity to use and hone more of their skills, knowledge, and abilities than those used on the assembly line or prescribed by confining policies and standard operating procedures. Leaders attuned to their spiritual core accept as a prime goals the need to help workers become their whole selves as the corporation strives to maximize profit. It is not possible to attain success today without considering the needs and desires of workers as well as the need to establish and maintain corporate health and vigor.

More and more leaders are using this new values model of leadership. A study by Fairholm (1991) cataloged at least partial use by fully two-thirds of leaders in government. The reason that leaders use values leadership technologies to guide their behaviors is pragmatic: It works. Values-spiritual principles-produce improved performance in people and institutions. Improved relationships result. The leader’s recognition increases. Values techniques enhance follower effectiveness and motivation because they allow followers to use more of their whole selves on the job. Customers receive better services.

The principles and core values that guide a company across good times and bad throughout the generations act as a compass, pointing the way. In- ner leaders may not have a clear vision of what their corporation’s products will look like a generation from now. Nor may they have an idea what their yet-to-be-born grandchildren will look like. But as core principles ultimately control, mid-level values-imparting leaders can influence what their future might be like. Their character is what leadership in the middle is all about. Values are the elements of lasting value in an organization (Purcell, 1998).

Spiritual Wholeness 61

Several factors come together in the inner regions of the corporation (and in the larger community) that facilitate use of values leadership technologies by inner leaders. The facts supporting this reorientation of leadership thinking are many and have been abundantly addressed in recent years. Among them, the following seem particularly cogent as guides for corporate Number Twos. The rise of a labor pool made up of diverse workers, each with different kinds of experiences and striving to honor different values systems, contributes to this situation. Today’s workers come to work expecting opportunity to develop all or most of their innate capacities, not just the few required by their current job.

Changes in the nature of work done today facilitated by technology also contributes to the need for leaders to operate out of a whole-souled concern for the ”total person.” The nature of work today asks most workers to be knowledge workers, people who use words and numbers as both the raw material and the results of their work effort. Such workers need and demand more freedom from administrative constraints and a more egalitarian relationship with their bosses, peers, and other stakeholders. Leaders must learn to lead these increasingly independent, though interdependent, workers.

The need for knowledge workers has brought better-educated and better-prepared people into the ranks of every organization, whether or not their work tasks or their leaders have changed to fully accept them. Indeed, knowledge work has changed the nature of the workplace into what Senge (1990) has called the learning organization. A learning organization is a workplace distinguished by continuous worker growth and development, learning to cope with ever-changing customer demand for unique products. Alearning organization is a response to the worker’s personal desires, for opportunity to develop his or her talents.

Finally, today’s workers are more ”wanting.” Television and mass-selling techniques have indoctrinated workers to want the good life at home and at work. At work they want the privileges and benefits that older workers were willing to wait and work for throughout their working lifetime. Today’s workers expect the firm to provide the kinds of work and satisfactions that former generations of workers expected only after years of work and promotion to supervisory ranks (Myers, 1970).

TOUCHING THE SPIRITUAL HEART IN OTHERS

Daniel Webster once said, ”We can do as partners what we cannot do as singles.” This reality has always been apparent to the careful observer. The business world is just now beginning to formally define leadership as a genuine partnership between the top leader and key middle-level leaders (Heenan and Bennis, 1999). The relationship is a kind of collaboration that can help each stakeholder and the group they serve (Fairholm, 1997) be-


cause it is based on core values that define individual participants and shape their decisions and actions. Many of the failings of society are due to a previous disregard for core values and a willingness to let a vocal minority lead us astray with concrete, yet incomplete, leader models.

The struggle both leader and led face is to respond directly to the guidance of the inner voice in contrast to the demands placed on them for external compromise (Whyte, 1994). Life is a challenge to overcome external pressures to conform and to be attentive to the inner voice challenging individuals to excellence. This challenge is part of work, as it is part of all other aspects of life. Because people spend so much time at work, it has become the site where much of this struggle takes place. Increasingly, work experiences have to do with more than economics. It is the place where we learn to govern our conscious life according to core values. It is where many today find the opportunity to exercise their spiritual side.

Indeed, the literature is beginning to extend values leadership theory to encompass a kind of spiritual leadership (see, for example, Greenleaf, 1977; Covey, 1991; Brown, 1992; Renesch, 1992; Hawley, 1993; Jacobson, 1995; Fairholm, 1997,1998). Some have proposed aspects of a definition and have suggested elements of a model for applying spiritual concepts on the job. Others have integrated spiritual leadership ideas into outline paradigm models that may serve as prototypes for more formal theory building.

This serious analysis of spirituality by business professionals is not pro- pelled by concerns about personal faith or past religious traditions (Terry, 1994). Rather, it often arises out of the present feelings of disconnection many workers feel. Spirituality provides the basis for a new connection between the inner leaders’ own spirituality and that of those they want as followers. Spirituality in the workplace is moving all workers away from ideas of us-against-them and even from the idea of taking ownership toward ideas of a unifying stewardship (McMillen, 1994). Several researchers are beginning to define some of the applicable components of spirituality in leadership. The following ideas summarize some of this work.

Self-Respect

Inner leaders build self-esteem-their own and that of stakeholders. The traditional way is through motive satisfaction. As inner leaders let followers satisfy their inner motives through work, their self-esteem grows. When seen from the perspective of the spirit in others, motivation takes on a different character.

An illustration from football may help illustrate the different methods that build self-esteem. Vince Lombardi, perhaps the most famous example of the orthodox sports motivator, influenced his players on the basis of control, fear, and insecurity. By contrast, given today’s type of player/worker, Coach Bill Walsh‘s style is to inspire and encourage players to be their best


selves. The foundation of Lombardi’s style is scientific management founded on control. Walsh’s style is inspiration, innovation, intuition, and spontaneity. He recognizes the power of compassion-openness, receptiv- ity to new ideas, honesty, caring, dignity, and respect for people in holding people together. While he may not summarize it this way, his style is founded in spirit; it is spiritual leadership.

From one perspective, we can describe the leader’s work as a spiritual discipline characterized by compassion. Compassion leads leaders to recognize their own inner strength and creativity, to see these qualities in others and act to enhance follower use of these qualities in their work. Compassion includes all the highest personal spiritual values-honesty, harmony, integrity. It makes empowerment possible. People respond more to moral suasion than to coercion. Compassion carries no threat of punish- ment; rather, it connotes caring, concern, and charity. In this way, Number Two leaders see work in terms larger than economic exchange.

Servanthood

The key to the success of any venture is service leadership (Howe, 1994). Courage, vision, and inspiration, of course, are key ingredients in the formula for Number Two success. But service to the community served plays a critical role in the development of the leadership potential of Number Twos. The importance of service in spiritual leadership paradigms is fundamental in leadership in the middle ranges of the corporation.

Pathfinding

Leavitt (1958) thinks corporate leaders at any level should emphasize critical issues like vision, imagination, and values, not just efficiency and control techniques. He calls them pathfinding issues and skills. More traditional leadership skills like effective problem solving requires mental rigor and analysis of the environment. Effective implementation requires competence in getting work done. These are attributes CEOs demand and their effective deputies possess. Alternatively, Leavitt says, the greater need is for effective pathfinding leadership, a kind of leadership that emphasizes soul, imagination, personal commitment, and deep belief.

The typical CEO may also possess these qualities, but successful inner leaders must have them. Spiritual leadership becomes generalized in work communities when inner leaders accommodate deeply held beliefs about what life is and what it holds for both leader and led. The key to learning these new leadership skills is experimentation. For example, leaders may need to modify staff selection criteria, consciously seek candidates with pathfinding histories, and seeking to increase the diversity of work communities.


Process Thinking

Spiritual leaders view their organization as a circular process of complex interactivity. A process orientation undergirds a new perspective from which to view the corporation and its leadership interactions. Focusing on the organization’s key work activity as a circular process is a way to high- light member interactivity and their essential interconnectedness. The key elements of circular thinking include viewing the Number Two leader as the center of the group-whatever its size or placement in the organization chart. Communications radiating from the interior deputy leader throughout the circular organization are open and unrestricted. These communications can be modeled as a series of concentric circles encircling the inner leader at the center.

Circular process thinking is a holistic approach, with stakeholders providing synergistic support for the total. Its characteristics are imbedded in a carefully designed corporate philosophy and culture, featuring a balanced concern for people and organization goals and commitment to teamwork. This model stresses simplicity and flexibility in organizational structure and systems. It includes internal stability and cooperation and an environment that encourages openness, individuality, and creativity. Process thinking leaders are committed to a style that provides leadership and support and a process that emphasizes continuous evaluation of success.

Principle-Centered Leadership

Covey’s (1991) principle-centered leadership ideas extend the spiritual leadership model based on core values, helping to resolve several dilemmas encountered in applying spiritual leadership. One is to achieve and maintain a wise and renewing balance between work and family, between personal and professional areas of life, in the midst of constant pressures and crises. Principle-centered inner leaders develop a personal vision statement, often separate from the formal corporate document. This becomes a personal credo that helps them decide the priority items in their professional (and personal) lives and to learn to say no to so-called urgent crises and problems that are not vital. These core, soul values constitute the true measures of individual success in the group.

Principle-centered leaders work from the inside out. They deal with issues of individual trustworthiness and interpersonal and group trust, with empowerment, and with ways to attain organizational alignment for self and stakeholders. These core values are central to realization of the spiritual self.

Principle-centered leadership is a holistic ideal that can tap into the leader’s capabilities and resources. The principle-centered Number Two leader focuses on the whole person of individual followers. A principled leadership approach calls into play the leader’s soul and uses it in defining


themselves to his or her team. Principle is another perspective from which to view inner leadership, one that holds promise of success in molding a co- hesive work force out of sometimes reluctant volunteers.

Hawley (1993) developed a leadership pattern (he called it Dharmic Leadership) constructed of spirit, heart, and energy. He notes that, while not all of us are consciously attentive to it, we live in a state of constant spiritual force. This spiritual drive moves us toward our core “source,” beyond the senses, and toward a clearer perception of our spiritual center. For him, spirituality is the goal of and the path to people’s social relationships, including work. It is individual and personal, a private journey. It contains elements common to most religions, like love, belief, the Golden Rule, and other elements. Yet, for Hawley, spirituality is not exclusively religious in its focus. Tapping these forces lets inner leaders pull more work, creativity, commitment, and loyalty from their followers than any other way.

Community

Free individuals require a community that backs them against encroachment by the state or any monolithic force. It is precisely this sense of community that is lacking in America today, according to Etzioni (1993). America is becoming what Etzioni has called a mosaic of diverse ideas, values, and peoples. Americans live in a state of increased moral disorder and social anarchy. Many American institutions, including work units, are be- reft of clear leadership in most matters and distinctly so in moral ones. Peo- ple are free to function fully under their so-called right to do their own thing. What any mosaic needs is some sort of glue to hold the pieces together. The glue that America needs for its social mosaic is a sense of community (Etzioni, 1993).

Etzioni says the time has come to attend to our responsibilities to the conditions and elements we all share, to the work community. We do this by responding to the human spirit that is a part of all we do. Business can be something more than making money. It can be something people feel good about. Business responsibly conducted ennobles the spirit by creating a sense of holism, of personal spiritual development, of feeling connected with our workplace, the environment, and relationships. It is morally enhancing.

Living with Chaos

The world of work has been defined, structured, and ordered on physical scientific models dating to 17th-century Newtonian physics, a science that adopted linearity and predictability to discover order. The social models we now use come out of a science that sought order in nature and imposed it on human structures and institutions. Newtonian science has


created a desire in us to create and control our own lives, regardless of the politics of the time or of social patterns.

Recent scientific advances, however-and pivotally, the evidence of our experience-challenge this traditional scientific logic. Rather than being like machines, organizations are more like intelligent social organisms. Our experiences in the practical world and the new science of chaos theory con- firm that we do not live in a clockwork, linear world (Wheatley, 1992). Yet, many still structure work organizations on that basis. The reality is that life is a dynamic place in which people base their actions on current, often fleet- ing situations that affect the underlying social condition, and, these changed conditions become the basis for future action.

This is not to say that our normal social groups lack order and structure. Order is inherent in all living systems; however, linearity is not the core of this order. Rather, people base their social order on conformance to their (and their community’s cultural) core values, not superficial or external rules and procedures, no matter how logical they seem. The spiritually minded inner leaders’ task is to articulate these core values and use them to guide their leadership of others. Adherence to the new science of chaos theory asks inner leaders to allow people enormous freedom, with the implicit understanding that shared common principles and values will order collective behavior in ways that the leader desires (Wheatley, 1992). Only when leaders and led agree on values can they safely empower stakeholders to work independently in self-directed teams with any assurance that they will do needed work.

Chaos is not randomness. It is order without easily seen predictability (Wheatley, 1992). Uncertainty arises because the wholeness of the universe resists being studied piecemeal. Wheatley calls this kind of wholeness chaos. As inner leaders apply the new quantum science to their work, they bring new insight into the inner workings of people in interaction.

Wholeness

Spirituality is based on wholeness of self. Effectiveness in developing the spiritually integrated personality needed for this kind of leadership depends on leaders’ committing to core values and then directing their powers and abilities toward gaining control over less important physical and emotional drives. Only as they find their true selves can inner leaders fully dedicate their lives to service to their stakeholders and their own development. Only spiritually mature leaders can consistently behave in ways that support others, sustain them in their work, and direct their energies and opportunities to the work of serving others, rather than just themselves.

Losing oneself in the work is most often a matter of commitment to small things. Leaders cannot move toward integration of personality if they compartmentalize their life and limit their highest feelings and aspirations only


toward narrow economic concerns. Rather, they must seek for growth, development, and maturity in all phases of life. When they know themselves, exercise self-control, and are unified in all their feelings and desires, they are integrated. Then they find that their social and personal security does not lie within the position held or in possessions or formal training. It lies within themselves.

Spirituality

Spirituality is a spirit of oneness and cooperation at the base of all that leaders in the middle ranges of the corporation do. Few activities require more cooperation and concerted effort to help and serve others than working as a Number Two leader. Whether it is rallying to find employment for a displaced member, toiling on a production project, serving as a resident expert, or finding needed resources to support a follower’s work, it is cooperation and mutual concern that determines overall success (Kimball, 1982). Spiritual unity brings a wholly different mind-set about business and a different way of organizing work. The new measure of leader success is whether the organization and the people led grow. The focus is on genuine- ness. Love is used as a spiritual connection and an emotional bond within the organization. The focus is on unity while valuing and preserving individual liberty within the collectivity of the group.

Society is increasingly viewing corporations as adaptable organizations, made up of many self-reliant, independent, and smaller organizations or subcultures. Each subculture exists and interacts with the larger whole. This idea runs counter to scientific materialism, the ideology dominant in most of the 20th century. It is a global mind-set change, an emerging shift of an entire society’s mind-set, from scientific materialism to spirituality (Harman, 1992). It is a shifting of our core work paradigm.

Part of this transformation is the present interest in how spirituality focuses on interconnectedness and wholeness. It is a growing awareness that although individual leaders of units may compete, they are nonetheless a part of a unity such that no one wins unless everyone does. It is a shifting of corporate attitudes toward the inner subjective experience, affirming inner wisdom, authority, and resources. The present-day focus on spirituality in the workplace have helped people become aware that they no longer have to adhere to beliefs that they have developed or accepted throughout most of their lives.

We can characterize this change of mind as a repudiation of the competitive, exploitive materialism of modern society exemplified in the business world by downsizing. It is an increased emphasis on values including improved quality of relationships cooperation, caring and nurturing, oneness of humanity, social justice, human and spiritual values, as well as respect and caring for the other creatures on the planet. It is a kind of respiritualiza-


tion. It is a third way (Mollner, 1992). It is characterized by a shift away from a worldview of the universe as a collection of separate parts, each of which competes for its own self-interest in relationship to all other things, toward a world view that sees the universe is a vast number of connected parts, each of which benefits as it cooperates with all other parts.

A Desire for Personal Freedom

Spirituality intensifies personal liberty. Most people work for something more than just bottom-line economic rewards. The workplace provides a venue within which individuals can unite to accomplish things not possible for the individual alone. It provides resources, intellectual capital, inspiration, and ideas that they can use to more fully realize their desires for self-expression. They need to be free to innovate, to alter their work processes, to do the organization’s work in different ways, or even to do other work because in so doing they expect professional growth and personal spiritual development.

RESULTS OF LEADERSHIP IN THE MIDDLE

Spiritual values are the glue holding inner leaders and workers together. Those leaders who cannot or will not see the power of spirit in what they do, in who they think they are, and in who their followers are and want to become will fail to attract or keep their best workers. While CEOs find it difficult to function in this view, whether or not they see it as legitimate, their Number Twos find they need to function on this kind of a basis. This style of leadership pays off for inner leaders, their stakeholders, and the corporation in the following ways.

Personal Liberty

Inner leaders associate with the corporation for many reasons, not the least of which is to make money to survive. But, they identify with the firm for more than just the bottom-line economic rewards possible through work. Spiritual values also link otherwise independent people together in multiple one-on-one relationships, in work communities, and in organizations. Unless followers see the chance to satisfy their personal needs through work, they will go where they can exercise needed freedom.

Achievement

In learning about themselves, inner leaders soon discover that, in concert with most people, they have a basic need to achieve (McClelland and Burnham, 1976). This drive is characteristic of inner leaders. The experi-


ences of leadership provide an opportunity for Number Twos to develop and practice behaviors that allow them to achieve their own aims and those of the corporation.

This personal need to achieve can, of course, conflict with similar drives in individual stakeholders. In many situations leaders, while voicing the desirability of sharing achievement opportunities with followers, do not provide these opportunities. The mark of successful inner leaders is their willingness to sacrifice part of their constellation of desires for the benefit of others.

Authentic Caring

Experience belies the idea that healthy people are motivated by self-interest alone. This idea fails to appeal to the nobility of spirit of which all are capable and which the experience validates. Love of others is often equal to self-love in the eyes of effective inner leaders. Indeed, this aspect of character is a result of practicing the discipline of spiritually motivated attention to the whole person of their followers and themselves.

Nourishing the spirit in self and stakeholders asks inner leaders to learn to create circumstances within which followers can function freely, with the leader subject to only broad accountabilify It is redefining the leader in servant and steward terms. There is peculiar power in this new spirit-based leadership technology, encompassing a holistic conception of the corporation as both an economic enterprise and a human system. This holistic, spiritual approach addresses the personal as well as the professional lives of workers (Kouzes and Posner, 1993). The challenge is to achieve and maintain a renewing balance among work, family, personal and professional areas of life for the Number Two and all of his or her stakeholders.

Character

Three specific spirit leader technologies complete this evolving spiritual leadership model. Individually, they present foundation stones upon which leaders can build their unique leadership ethic. These foundation stones are morality, community, and stewardship. All of the other techniques and approaches used by spiritual leaders are subsumed within these three foundation technologies.

THE NEW AGENDA

Hawley (1993) says getting one’s way in the group today asks members to employ their heads (the thinking part), hearts (the feeling side), bodies (physical muscle, health, wellness aspects), and spirits (the deep inner self, striving for inner peace, happiness, contentment, meaning, purpose). Spirit


refers to aliveness, the vitality dwelling in the individual’s body, the foun- tain of his or her energy. It involves constant spiritual awareness. Both the spiritual and the worldly coexist as a unified whole; they overlap. Spirit and worldly values are two parts of the same thing.

Deep caring is the cornerstone of spiritual values. It is a kind of reverence for others and for our common activities. Reverence is treating all people with deference and respect. Reverence is a continuum of behaviors, including politeness, caring, and respect. It is holding others in esteem. It is genuine kindness, politeness. Reverence consists of dedication, eagerness and enthusiasm. There is deep admiration in reverence, a kind of devotedness. Reverence is an intensified state of commitment-a goal for anyone who would direct others. In many powerful respects, our guidance is nothing more than developing a reverence for the corporate vision, mission, products, customers, employees, and all stakeholders.

Inner leaders maintain power and influence only in ways that enlarge the soul authentically. They base their vision on spiritual beliefs. To be viable, the inner leader’s vision must contain a belief in the power of core values for it to work, for these values create one’s reality. Their affirmation leads to the reality of the affirmation. It is a kind of autoprogramming, a self-fulfilling prophesy. The central drama of life is the fusing of one’s personality with these manifestations of one’s higher self (Hawley, 1993). Number Twos need to be as constantly aware of their spiritual side as they are of their physical, worldly side.

Moving toward a higher spiritual self creates energy, the power that spirit activates. There is power in good thoughts. Inner leaders arouse and channel this human energy. Belief is the force that shapes all human affairs. Belief is power thinking: it focuses thoughts to produce actions. Belief is something the individual is as much as it is anything else. It is the basis for doing anything, not the actual doing.

PART II

VALUES, NOT SYSTEM

Values are an important part of the human experience. Value-laden cultures legitimize appropriate member behavior and punish aberrant actions. Personal values define the core self. The individual’s values set constitutes the essential center of the person, whether worker or leader. Values and the culture they define and support are more important than formal structure or work process systems to leaders in the middle of the corporation in insuring they get what they want from their association with others. They are more powerful in securing desired member behavior than externally imposed systems and procedures. Indeed, leadership is concerned with creating a set of accepted values that serve as the base for linking a cluster of people into a unity, a community. In-the-middle leadership takes place in a culture where the leader’s values are constantly in competition with those of other inner leaders, each employee and the CEO. The task is to make his or her values foremost among others’ values.


Chapter 6

The Impact of Values on Culture and on Inner

Leadership

At the core of corporate culture is the corporate value system. This values system begins with its top officers-the CEO, of course, but also including the multiple executives scattered throughout the middle levels of the organization. These intimate, internal, personal measures of a person’s self impact individual behavior more profoundly than do externally imposed systems or procedures. Thus, in assuring their goals are met, Number Two leaders use their core values to create a culture and maintain it as a primary leadership technology. Since the CEO, all other in-the-middle leaders, and the workers also have values they want generalized in the group, another key task for Number Twos is to develop values-displacement techniques in this situation of alternative value-sets and competing subcultures.

Values can be personal, professional, organizational, community, or societal. They define both the ”oughts” and what is in life (Schein, 1985; Sathe, 1983) in each of these domains. They define our communities and shape our behaviors. These values often find voice in a commonly accepted vision around which the organization and its members act. This values-laden vision articulates what the organization is and what it should do and become. It sets the direction and limits of the organization’s capabilities. To be helpful to leaders in the middle of the corporation, the vision must encompass-or be made to encompass-the inner leader’s core beliefs about the work, the workers, and organizational possibilities.


Personal values cover a wide range of attitudinal and behavioral themes (Lorsch, 1986). Values are the settled beliefs we have about what is true or good or beautiful. They guide our actions and judgments of what is right and appropriate or not appropriate. Group values represent those truths all or most members of a community share and know they should seek after (whether they do or not) because such values are good for them and will result in greater material, moral, or spiritual development. Values are cher- ished, enduring beliefs that a specific kind of conduct or a particular state of existence is personally or socially preferable. They are the basis of a repeated or repeatable pattern of behavior. Individuals freely choose values from among alternatives after reflection. Values are positively affirmed and acted upon.

Commonly shared values are the foundation of relationships between individuals. The group members’ values come to be consonant with a system, or set, of variously rated values that guide their life and actions and that make that action conventional, predictable, and acceptable to peers. In any community, most people’s values are like those of the people around them. In fact, this is a part of the definition of community. Values constitute a network of known and shared understandings and norms that we take for granted and provide a substrata of community in social life. They are the standards by which we judge our actions and evaluate and rate those of others.

Ott (1989) equates values with beliefs, ethical codes, moral codes, and ideologies. For him they mean the same things in organizational culture. Deal and Kennedy (1983) suggest that organizations become meaningful to members only after leaders infuse them with values. Finding and using the common values basis for interaction is the preeminent challenge of any organization member. It is especially critical to the inner leader. Because they lack the final formal authority of the CEO, inner leaders need to use informal subcultures that differ in some respects from or are even, counter to the formal organizational culture fostered by the CEO to get their way in the group. Establishing the values foundation for and citing a significant subculture within the larger organizational culture is one way to do this.

CULTURE CREATION AND MANAGEMENT

The task of subculture development is similar to the task of culture creation for the larger organization. It requires expertise in the same skills, knowledge, and abilities. The difference is that the CEO can legitimize the culture creation process. He or she can engage any or all workers in the task and can validate its definition, vision, and underlying values through the formal corporate communications network. Leaders in the middle of the organization must accomplish this social developmental task without the trappings of the formal organization. They must settle on a values founda-

Impact of Values on Culture 75

tion, communicate that to selected others, and effect a change in their attitudes and behaviors sub-rosa, without resort to formal mechanisms. They must establish a culture that is at least not totally antithetical to the main elements of the parent organizational culture, without expending of enough corporate resources to call the CEOs attention to the activity.

Success in the culturally focused work place requires that members behave consistently with their subculture. Thus, the inner leaders’ task is to determine what they want workers to do, define and create a culture that fosters this behavior, and make this culture dominant over competing cultures, including the formal corporate culture. They must teach the values and behaviors of this subculture to the members of their target group. This task may also involve helping followers substitute the inner leaders’ new cultural parameters for those of the formal corporate culture. The inner leaders must also model desired behavior by behaving in accordance with this new subculture until followers have accepted its values and constraints.

Obviously, all organizations can be described in culture terms. Not all CEOs, however, devote significant attention to this leadership task. Even fewer CEOs demonstrate the ability to forge a co-leadership culture (Heenan and Bennis, 1999) that recognizes and honors its various subcultures. Organizational culture often ”just grows” like Topsy, or, significantly, an enterprising in-the-middle leader undertakes this task.

ELEMENTS OF SUBCULTURE DEVELOPMENT

This task is not so daunting as it may appear. Commonly shared societal values guide both routine and special organizational units and activities. Most group members share certain principles and truths, which are founded in shared values resident in the surrounding cultures. Shared values that form the basis for mutual trust between groups, whether nations, communities, or organizational cultures or subcultures. They provide a common bond upon which we base our interaction with other persons.

Part of successful culture maintenance has to do with managing the system. For example, joining with other like-minded coworkers is good, comfortable, a kind of networking, a support group. While bonding may lead to the undervaluing of some coworkers by decision makers, cause conflict, and even constrain free communication, it is helpful and natural to join with like-minded people to build workable relationships. While the change process is ongoing, individual followers become bicultural-adopting values and behavior patterns from both the formal culture and the inner leader’s subculture. During this transition period followers can be expected to experience stress, and the inner leader can anticipate less-than-full followership. Managing these peer relationships is another part of the process inner leaders undertake.


The idea of culture is really a family of ideas. Analysis of the notion of culture asks the inner leader to become familiar with a variety of ideas that aid in infusing meaning into his or her activities and in communicating that meaning to other group members (Pettigrew, 1973). They are the building blocks of any organizational culture and the tools we use in its formation, alternation, or management. These systems act primarily as points of reference in thinking about and making sense of the organization and its interior, social/cultural work situations.

Typically, both inner leaders and CEOs (and others within the group) engage in culture-creation activity. These activities may be in harmony or in conflict with each other, since each individual engages in group activity to attain personal outcomes that may or not coincide with those sought by the institution or other group members. The task of leaders in the interior of the corporation is to create a culture that can foster their personal, professional goals along with at least some institutional goals.

The literature suggests a variety of techniques for anyone who wants to create and/or change the ambient culture. Most of this literature deals with culture creation generally, from the perspective of the creator, whether or not he or she is a CEO or an in-the-middle leader. Some elements of culture especially relevant to inner leaders are included in the following discussion. Key among them is the idea that as subculture leaders, Number Twos must send clear signals about the kinds of organization they want. They need to clearly articulate desired behavior. Although often this requires methods that bypass the formal communications networks, they must define and articulate group aims and goals and model desired roles.

Organization members base their understanding of their place in the organization in the cultural processes described (in alphabetical order) in the following pages. Together, these processes operationalize a subculture’s system of shared meaning. They are also used to make goals statements, mission statements, job descriptions, and standard operating procedures effective. All other organizational structure and systems of rules, policies, and procedures adopted in the organization flow from these critical cultural processes. Inner leaders must define the nature and scope of these cultural elements if they are to create a subcultural surround conducive to attaining their objectives. If they do not, someone else will-and that person will take over leadership.

Assumptions and Expectations

Assumptions and expectations drive much of group behavior. Without them, workers cannot know what to expect. They cannot understand their roles, nor can they know what to do. Unfortunately, little is found in professional literature to guide leaders in the proper use of assumptions and expectations in leadership from within the confines of the larger


organization. Nevertheless, assumptions and expectations about follower actions are present, if often implicitly, in group action. When inner leaders take action to manipulate the group’s assumptions and expectations, they are shaping the corporate subculture and influencing the behavior of their stakeholders.

Assumptions are the biases about the organization, its people, and its tasks that are present in any social organization. Expectations are like assumptions; they are the expression of our wishes, hopes, desires, and antic- ipations as they concern the organization and the roles of all members in it. We can identify several kinds of expectations. Avision is a form of expectation that inner leaders can create for their followers. Kouzes (1989) suggests followers join a group when they expect that they will come into a relationship characterized by honesty, competence, trustworthiness, and effectiveness. Lundin and Lancaster (1990) add versatility, responsibility, and integrity. Manz and Sims (1991) add ideals of self-leadership. As inner leaders act to create a subculture where the expectations and assumptions upon which the group is based conform to these ideals, they will attract followers to their banner.

Ceremonies, Rites, and Rituals

Ceremonies are celebrations of an organization’s cultural values and basic assumptions. They are events. Rituals, like ceremonies, are consciously elaborate, dramatic, planned sets of activities that combine various forms of cultural expression. In addition to their obvious implications, rituals are often laced with significant symbolism that impacts results. Rites define a kind of ritual. The uses of rites in culture creation and management are similar to those of rituals and serve largely the same purposes.

Ceremonies maintain uniformity. They initiate new members into the organization. They provide a sense of social involvement. They convey symbolic messages. Ceremonies provide connections and order. They bridge between chaos and uniformity. They provide hope. Often ceremonies are repeated at more or less fixed intervals, that is, they are staged. They have explicit purposes, for example, a political party convention to elect a president.

Rituals and rites regularize the boundaries of the routine and special relationships between people: customers and agents, managers and employees, or unions and management. Rituals are specific to culture. What works in one organizational culture may not work in another. They create agreement, clarity, and predictability in dealing with complex or ambiguous problems. Rites and rituals communicate the shared values of the organization and revive common feelings that bind members together. Bocock (1972) defines them as the symbolic use of bodily movement and gesture in a social situation to express and articulate meaning.


There is obvious power in this element of culture. Ceremonies, rites, and rituals comprise much of the social conventions present in organizations. They underlie all relationships and go beyond policy and procedure. Guiding the formation of these social conventions becomes an important part of informal leadership. They are powerful tools of implicit control that inner leaders typically use more than do formal leaders, who may not see the need for these controls since they can readily control formal controls.

Illustrative examples of routine work processes that can be ritualized include the following:

performance appraisal regular meetings management training programs tests and interviews retirement dinners welcoming speeches to new workers lunchtime policies formation and use of task forces assignment of vehicles to executives who speaks at staff meetings expense-reimbursement policies employee awards programs

Cults

Inner leaders often foster the creation of cults that embody and promote d2sired formal or informal behaviors, programs, or policies. Cults are self-contained social entities that demand members’ commitment. They ask members to displace the rules or laws of the prevailing social system (culture). Cults bond ther members in specific, if sometimes dysfunctional (to the organization and its top leaders) ways. Cults can be either functional or dysfunctional enclaves. In its dysfunctional mode, the cult can support atypical organizational actions. Inner leaders sometimes form cults that oppose the parent-organization’s CEO or a particular policy or practice. They can become opposing power centers, challenging formal leadership. On the other hand, inner leaders can create cults that become a positive part of organizational life. For example, they can provide alternative focal points for innovation. Cults can help inner leaders to lead in new directions or to focus organizationally beneficial energies toward specific problem solving tasks.


Heroes

Heroes are people who personify a set of organizational values and model the strengths of the corporation. Inner leaders can create informal heroes or stories about heroes to motivate their followers and to set up an alternative model of acceptable corporate behavior. Heroes can be created in any part of the organization. The founder of the organization is often made a hero (like Tom Watson of IBM), or heroes can be any present or past top executives. In the absence of formally approved heroes, in-the-middle leaders can create heroes from common workers. In any case, heroes reflect shared values in their behavior (Deal and Kennedy, 1983; Ott, 1989) and act as models for general emulation.

Humor CEOs have little need to use humor to get their policies adopted. They

can rely on more objective means. Inner leaders, however, often find humor to be a powerful, informal control tool. They use it as a way to socialize followers. Who uses humor and who cannot, who can make light of whom, what humor is about-all show the status of the user. It conveys membership. Humor also is a way to show arbitrariness in a situation. It lets us assume something stands for something else in the situation. It can mute strong emotions or reinforce them. Humor can express skepticism. It can contribute to desired goals of flexibility and adaptability. It integrates otherwise disparate groups. Humor identifies the "in" and "out" groups. It helps determine hierarchial relationships of domination and submission. Humor showcases cultural values. Humor is a powerful tool inner leaders can use to gain control over a situation or group, to socialize new members, and to gain or retain desired results.

Humor plays a vital role in helping to close the communication gap between inner leaders and their followers, providing an alternative channel of communication and helping to extract information that might not otherwise be volunteered. Humor makes organizational confusion more bear- able and draws attention to areas in need of management attention. It also can enhance trust, facilitate change, and encourage plurality of vision (Barsoux, 1996). In short, humor helps to break down barriers between people and makes an organization more participative and responsive. It follows that a cultural environment that is amenable to humor will also facilitate organizational learning and renewal. Fully appreciating the various functions of spontaneous humor helps middle-level executives lead, communicate, and manage change more effectively.

Jargon Organizations often take special words as their own, give them particu-

larized meanings, and imbue them with unique connotations. The result is


jargon, an exclusive form of usage of specific words to convey special meanings to members of the group. A ubiquitous example is “computerese,” the special language computer experts use to name and describe hardware and software. This kind of special language serves as a kind of verbal shorthand both to identify members and to let them communicate easily and more completely. It also can take on an exclusionary character. Failure to understand the organizational jargon quickly identifies strangers and isolates them. Jargon lets Number Twos set their followers apart from the rest of the group membership and can often give them special status and therefore special power.

Metaphors, Myths, and Stories

A metaphor is something that stands for something else. A myth is a story that explains the origins or transformation of something. Metaphors make confusion comprehensible by simplifying complex, ambiguous issues. They let community members imagine something resembles something else, thereby making the strange familiar. Myths are extended metaphors. They communicate symbolic meaning beyond the obvious content of the words (Ott, 1989). Both arise to protect people from uncertainty. They also communicate unquestioning belief about the practical benefits of certain techniques and/or behaviors, a belief that may not be fully supported by the facts.

Inner leaders often cannot force compliance with orders, policies, or procedures. Using myths and metaphors becomes a way to institutionalize their desires by way of custom and tradition, effectively removing matter from the formal agenda and placing it in the realm of the traditional. Myths can forestall social crisis by providing explanations for causes, meanings, and results that otherwise might be inexplicable. They can order the inner leaders’ otherwise unacceptable or bipolar agendas into holistic units. We can think of metaphors and myths as weapons used to justify either public or private stances and affirm wavering power positions. Inner leaders use them to impart values, to justify alternative positions, to mask differences, and to formalize the implicit meanings people ascribe to corporate events (Taylor and Novelli, 1991).

Along with corporate myths and metaphors, corporate stories help in this process. They are narratives based on true events but often combine both truth and fiction. Stories help organization members find out what meaning to give to particular events. Stories are symbolic of some quality of the organization, such as its effectiveness, its values, or its creativity. Stories may serve as “evidence” of some unique quality that epitomizes an organization. They can be valuable tools for inner leaders who want their policies and programs to be recognized and responded to.


Typically, corporate stories summarize key ideas, abridge detail, and present a clear, simple message. They focus on problems of morale, social- ization, and legitimacy. They reflect and reinforce faith and belief in the group and its programs. Stories help us understand how the group decides, assigns resources, and cooperates in terms consistent with the group’s vision for the future. They are powerfully symbolic, communicating attention, excitement, values, and vision-or their opposites. Stories about the organization, its activities, and the people who make it up represent sym- bolically the organization and its culture, tradition, and history to stakeholders. Properly used, they are powerful tools for inner leaders.

Symbols

A symbol is any object, act, event, quality, or relationship that serves as a vehicle for conveying meaning to something else. Symbols also can be objects, acts, or linguistic formations that evoke emotions and impel people to action (Cohan, 1974). Symbols in organization culture include, among a vast number of other things, building architecture, office arrangements, the organization’s name, subunit titles, and attitudes toward outsiders. How we place chairs in our meetings can have symbolic meaning, as does whom we call by their first names. All of the physical or psychological features within which we do work can and do carry symbolic meaning for members. Symbols help group members cope with uncertainty, confusion, or chaos. A symbolic frame of reference can provide stability when the corporation’s goals are unclear, its technology is uncertain or changing, and when it is in the midst of change.

Using symbols becomes, as a result, a useful tool for corporate Number Twos. They can dramatize the deputy’s vision of what is important. They are a way to focus follower attention on these priority issues. Often symbols can define the character of the organization more than can organization charts or policy or procedure manuals. Getting one’s way within the group consistently involves the use of cultural symbols.


Chapter 7

Culture Change

Cultural change is a process. It engages leaders in activities both to create and then to maintain over time the desired cultural ambience. Culture change responds and reacts to changes in the larger community as well as to internal changes within the group. Culture leadership involves the leader in culture setting, strategic planning, standard or norm setting, values setting, and innovation to establish and then foster cultural features conducive to attainment of the leader’s desired goals. But, the process begins with personal change.

Many factors go to make up effective cultural change, but at the heart of transforming group relationships is changing ourselves (Fairholm, 1994a). This is where inner leaders have the most power to create change and the most reluctance to confront the need for it. The process starts with an honest examination of how they cope with authority relationships and raises issues of subservience, cynicism, and unwillingness to take risks.

Focusing on self rather than on what is being done enables inner leaders to examine their attitudes and behaviors to create relationships that facilitate attainment of their goals. Some of the key questions revolve around issues of common purpose that both leader and led share. What strategies for pursuing these purposes and appropriately aligning and balancing competing self-interests are appropriate? Who takes initiative, the leader or follower(s), in task-accomplishment actions, and what risks are inherent in such actions? What sources of power in the situation can help to insure that


actions taken are successful? Who has the knowledge, skills, status, networks of communication channels, and courage most suitable to this task? (Challif, 1997).

THE INNER LEADER’S ROLE IN SHAPING THE CULTURE

Leadership traditionally has been defined in terms of the institutional chief executive officer. Traditional ideas center around the CEO’s role in interpersonal relations, decision making, alignment of individual with institutional (organizational) goals, and so on. Aligning the role of the inner leader with these tasks has merit. One part of the task has to do with accomplishing organizational goals. Another part has to do with the development of the behavioral tools to get others, including their CEO bosses-to do the work and or behave in ways they prefer.

There is merit in understanding these traditional tools. Some behaviors and some tools are necessary in a particular circumstance. Some work better than others in a given situation. Knowing how to use the tools and knowing which can help attain success in a given situation is important. More important, however, is the leader’s values center. What inner leaders believe, value, dream about and focus on, and commit to is critical in culture creation

, and maintenance. Their personal and institutional vision defines their ”interior world” (Sergiovanni, 1990) and shapes the exterior subculture that makes that interior world real. The inner leaders vision is also the basis of both their individual and their group’s perception of reality.

The emerging literature on intraorganizational leadership is redefining leadership in general and especially the idea of internal leadership. Certain kinds of behaviors, specific values and attitudes of mind, and unique approaches are coming into focus as we consider the problem of changing an organization by beginning with leader change. The following qualities apply to any group leader, but especially to inner leaders.

Self-Management

Most people in today’s economy will have to learn to manage themselves (Drucker, 1999). Great leaders have always done so, which in large measure is what has made them great achievers. Such leaders have been relatively rare exceptions, so unusual in their talents and their accomplishments as to be considered outside the boundaries of ordinary human existence. Now, however, most leaders, even those with modest endowments, will have to learn to manage themselves.

Inner leaders will have to place themselves where they can make the greatest contribution and stay mentally alert and engaged during a 50-year working life, which means knowing how and when to change the work they do. They will have to learn how to place themselves where they can

Culture Change 85

make the greatest contribution. Drucker (1999) suggested that Number Two leaders undertake a self-assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. He says most people think they know what they are good at-and they are usually wrong! Yet, people perform well only from strength. Inner leaders must position themselves within the corporation and its major work systems where their strengths can produce results and be improved upon. It is equally essential to remedy bad habits, the things the leaders do or fail to do that inhibit their effectiveness and performance. They should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. En- ergy, resources, and time should go instead to maximizing their major competencies.

For inner leaders, finding out how they perform may be an even more important issue than assessing their strengths. How one performs is unique, a matter of personality. Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good at, they also achieve results by working in ways they are good at. Whether the leader performs best using oral or written communication, likes working alone or in groups, makes decisions or advises decision makers, or work best with or without stress are all important to know and critical to ultimate success.

To be able to manage themselves, inner leaders also have to deal with their personal values-sets. This is not merely a question of ethics. What is ethical behavior in one kind of organization or subculture may be unethical behavior in another. Ethics are only part of a person’s or group’s value system. To work in a parent organization whose value system is unacceptable or incompatible with his or her own condemns the inner leader to frustration and underperformance. To be effective in the parent organization, the leader’s values must be compatible with the organization’s values. Other- wise, the leader not only will be frustrated but also will not produce needed results.

Finally, inner leaders’ personal preparation for leadership must include an assessment of contribution potential. Historically, most organizational members were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself or by a supervisor. Today, they (and most other workers) are knowledge workers, workers whose tasks are unique and cannot be easily supplanted by another person. The question today is how people can insure that their work helps them become better persons, better workers, and better citizens of the corporation? How can workers make work meaningful to them on their terms?

Paying Attention

Another key way to shape culture is by paying attention, by focusing. Studying the boss to find out what he or she truly thinks important is a common pastime of all group members. Whether the boss knows what he or she


is focusing on or not, chances are the deputies do. Successful inner leaders pay special attention to their obsessions (or lack of them) because what they attend to shapes their part of the organization and conditions their success or failure. To the degree that deputies can isolate their focus, they can direct their actions to meeting the corporation’s needs while serving their own.

Success in inner leaders’ group life also involves paying attention to a few important (to them), programs, values, ideas, and ideals. It involves them in spending time and resources on one or a few items, prioritizing among alternative courses of action. Focusing provides a professional and psychological direction, a values base and a system of balancing competing ideas, values, and systems in the culture. When inner leaders focus clearly on the important aspects of the organizational experience, followers-all stakeholders-understand clearly what to expect. Followers then can more easily find their place in the overall scheme of things in the organization.

Successful inner leaders (as well as all stakeholders) focus on some thing or somethings. Often this prioritization is unconscious and unplanned. Ef- fective inner leaders, however, are proactive focusers. They consciously prioritize focusing and use it to move their subculture closer to their vision. In the process, they build a climate of trust. The act of focusing creates an intellectual and emotional balance relating all else done by the organization’s members into a coherent, understandable pattern. It is an integrating function as well as a goal-setting one. In one respect all inner leadership is focusing. For example, inner leaders

focus people’s attention on those behaviors or ideas that they consistently repeat. Consistency in repetition builds predictability and trust. As followers observe their leaders behave always in a given way, they come to believe that that behavior pattern is important. At the least, they come to know how far they can predict and therefore trust their leader’s behavior. Similarly, consistent repetition of ideas, values, methods, or anything else communicates the inner leader’s interest and level of commitment to that referent. Consistency is paying attention to a given idea or behavior. It is especially forceful if followers observe this behavior in both routine and crisis situations. Consistency in time of crisis or change bestows trust as no other behavior can.

How inner leaders form their meeting agendas also conveys their focus. The priority given to some agenda matters, placement within the agenda, who is invited, who speaks, and what speakers may say all focus followers’ attention on the leaders’ biases. These and other common practices growing up around the ubiquitous staff meeting focus leader-watchers’ attention on what is important. Similarly, how leaders organize available space communicates what they pay attention to and value. Who gets offices, con- ference rooms, or functional work units says much about in what people and what functions they have the most interest. Spacial relationships and

Culture Change 87

relative percentage of space devoted to each function communicates the leader’s priorities. Inner leaders can shape their corporate subculture and follower behavior implicitly and explicitly by these and many other actions commonly taken.

Whom inner leaders talk to, eat with, whom they avoid or emulate, and so on help stakeholders know what are the inner leaders’ values and what they mean. Their actions are more authoritative than formal written policy or even vision statements in formalizing repeatable patterns of stakeholder behavior.

Using Symbols

Every organization has its symbols-ideas, words, objects, processes, or other objects or ideas representing specific aspects of its culture. Symbols include group traditions that define the organization, stories that color personalities, values, programs, visions, and much else. Symbols include physical settings, seating arrangements, and the locations at which we meet. Who gets invited to meetings has symbolic meaning, as does the order of the agenda, its content, and the items omitted from it.

Language is also symbolic. Language is a way to focus, but it is also symbolic. The words used to describe key people or events can carry symbolic meaning far beyond their mere denotation. At Disney, leaders call customers ”guests.” At People’s Express, every employee is a ”manager.” The symbolism in this kind of language use is obvious and effective in changing workers’ perception of themselves and their role in the organization. Stories, too, can be very symbolic. They communicate attention, excitement, values, and vision. They can communicate the inner leader’s aspirations or fears for self and group.

Standard Setting

Norms are standards of behavior and conduct that group members accept. Kelman (1985) notes that we maintain cultures through cultural norms. Norms are unwritten rules of conduct. Group members exhibit them via accepted patterns of behavior. By examining cultural norms, inner leaders may improve quality and productivity while supporting work-life integration (Levinson, 1997). For example, norms for one subculture might include “Don’t disagree with the boss in public” or ”Don’t rock the boat” or ”Don’t reward people on the basis of merit, do it on the basis of compliance.“ Violation of norms results in immediate and strong pressure to get stakeholders to conform. The human need for acceptance by the group gives the inner leader leverage to secure compliance.

Teaching is another way to set standards and to generalize them throughout the organization. Excellent inner leaders set organizational


standards, teach them, live them, and inspire others to live them. The act of setting a standard is a form of teaching. It communicates to followers the values, standards, preferred method, and much else, which the leader then expects them to internalize in their work lives. Though teaching is a little-recognized part of the tasks of leadership, leaders are in a teaching mode most of the time. Giving orders, instructing followers, relaying information useful to workers in their jobs, and even the leader’s general demeanor teaches his or her standards.

Inner leaders especially set and communicate standards via persuasion. The days when the leader could order employees to do the work and it got done are gone-if this ever was the case. Much more effective in transferring standards and values is another technique of standard setting: logical argument, or persuasion.

Active Listening

Inner leaders, above all other leaders, need to be people-oriented. They work by and with others in a mutually respectful relationship. Listening, a critical skill in leadership, calls for a special way to listen. It is listening cou- pled with action. Cronan (1989) defines the leader’s role as one of creative listening. Creative (active) listening involves effort to understand and em- pathize with followers and to respond appropriately to follower comments. Listening helps the leader discover the strengths in followers as well as their driving needs (motives). Only as inner leaders arm themselves with this kind of information can they be effective in moving followers to accept their lead.

Listening fosters trust in the subcultures by letting leaders understand follower needs and respond to them. Listening increases the follower’s sense of being appreciated, even needed. It is the only sure way leaders can be certain that their actions are faithful to follower needs. By listening in this way, they can inspire confidence in stakeholders, understand when something is wrong, and meet their true needs.

Coaching

Coaching is an inner leadership style based on exciting workers, teaching them, and encouraging them. It is a personal relationship similar in many respects to athletic coaching behavior. It cannot easily be done by CEOs, as the interaction mix is too extensive and complex, but it is essential for the more intimate, personal environment of the mid-level leader. At least five roles of the coach-leader have relevance here. Coaches are educa- tors, sponsors, coaches, counselors, and comforters.

Coaches are not tellers, they are teachers. Coach-teaching is a quintes- sential technique in inner leadership. The best deputies are those who build

Culture Change 89

appropriate talent in their followers and therefore in the organization (Fairholm, 1991). The task of teaching (coaching) is little known and until recently has largely been absent from theoretical leadership models or in the literature. Yet Gardner (1990) suggests that those who do it well will be thrust into leadership roles whether or not they hold a formal position as a top leader. He says that in essence inner leadership is to be an educator, a teacher of others.

Showing Love

The literature is almost unanimous in defining leadership in terms of caring for followers. Caring behavior comes from deeply held beliefs and perceptions about people, who they are and their essential goodness. Car- ing-love-is a definitional attribute of interpersonal excellence. Excellent Number Twos care about their coworkers, the services provided, clients, all people with whom they work. Caring-love-is central to inner leadership. Inner leaders are enthusiasts; they are excited about what they do and, importantly, whom they do it with. They nurture their colleagues, showing a genuine concern for them (Clement and Rickard, 1992).

Inner leaders communicate their love in every action, word, or deed they perform. They convey their concern for followers through multiple acts of caring. They care about the values followers hold, their beliefs, and their feelings (Cronan, 1984). Caring behavior also includes allowing others to function independently, insofar as is possible within the group. Locke (1991) researched professional leadership failures. He cites unconcern, in- sensitivity to others, and disregard of the humanness of coworkers as major causes of professional derailment of mid-level leaders.

Most people want and need a degree of independence to perform their work on their own schedule and in their own way. Within the known constraints of the technology or of the parent work organization’s policy, internal leaders strive to allow workers to show some creative independence on the job as a way to increase group productivity. Caring facilitates this kind of guided autonomy, which includes helping stakeholders become capable of doing more than they formerly did.

Maintaining the Culture

Culture change takes resources-time, money, people, structure. This kind of change is typically a long-term problem. It is a costly task fraught with some risk. Especially in large, old organizations, the problem of en- trenched cultural assumptions is severe, making change cumbersome and slow. The risk of failure is always present, as is the risk of success. Failure to realize the desired change is always a possibility, but achieving in cultural


change can also be risky. The change may be made, but not work; or it may only be partially made; or a change may occur, but not the one planned for.

Changing the long-standing values, like the efficiency value, or adding other values of similar priority requires more than just one creative act. It is also a task of managing the culture created, modifying it as needed and insuring that it effectively meets the inner leaders’ changing needs. Several behavior sets are involved, such as the following.

Engineering Desired Conduct. The key to making cultural change is to reengineer the culture. It involves inner leaders in finding (or cultivating) organization members who oppose the existing culture and encouraging them to support desired change. It may involve leaders in asking these followers to propose ideas for a better cultural surround. It may require interior leaders to find the most desirable-from their view points-subculture within the organization and holding it out as a model. It always entails helping stakeholders find new ways to accomplish their task consistent with the inner leaders’ desired cultural values.

Modelivlg Desired Conduct. Culture maintenance is not easy. For example, Number Twos cannot count on their freshly articulated vision alone to be the catalyst to ensure change over time. It may take five or ten years to see significant incremental change in the culture’s value base. The process is for the inner leader to do all he or she can to use the new cultural standards in all decisions made and policies promulgated, to model desired cultural values and behavior, and to trust coworkers to see the utility for them in making needed individual accommodations to the leader’s subcultural values and customs.

Helping New Workers Conform. Membership in a work unit automatically brings with it membership in a culture and a subculture. As a member of a work unit, the worker’s task is to align his or her behavior with that culture or change it, or some of both. Inner leaders need to be alert to the pressures on stakeholders as they try to acculturate in the leaders’ special subculture. Succeeding in the culturally focused workplace requires members to behave in specific ways that are different in some respects from any other work units. They will have to learn new values, behaviors, and attitudes while still being guided by their old ones. Their task is to find out what the organization demands of them and then to learn how to do it. Managing member stress in these ”bicultural” environments is another skill inner leaders need to master.

Inner leaders can help in the worker’s acculturation process. For example, making explicit what values and behaviors are rewarded is key, as is specifying which tasks or methods most easily lead to where they want followers to go, as well as relating desired work effort to followers’ personal and professional goals. Helping members identify influential people in the organization is also helpful in letting followers plan and implement a personal career betterment plan.

Culture Change 91

Upwardly mobile organization members need information about the inner workings of their work unit. Effective Number Twos strive also to provide relevant information about the organization, its programs and goals, methods and approaches. They can help do this by making available appropriate corporation newsletters, annual reports, bulletins and other formal publications. Leaders might also tell followers candidly what success requirements they have and what those other peer and/or superior leaders are.

The burden of cultural and behavioral change is not entirely on new individuals. Nevertheless, their prime job is to become personally useful and accepted. Since appropriate performance is central to individual and organizational success, the newcomer should become a contributor as soon as possible. Inner leaders help by focusing on efforts that they value and on work practices they want workers to follow.

Managing Up the Chain. Managing the CEO is another way to institute cultural change. Managing the boss involves the inner leader in a proactive, not a passive role. Many chief executives like proactive lieutenants, especially if the proactivity results in success. Adapting their relationships to the particular needs of their supervisor and realizing that every leader is different, are also sound culture-creating strategies (Fairholm, 1993).

Inner leaders who learn the CEOs style intimately, are more assured of a favorable relationship than those who ignore this task. Some CEOs are readers, others listeners. Some are political, others not. Some are team players, some work independently. Some are results-oriented, others are process-oriented. Some are people-oriented, others task-oriented. Knowing the specifics about one’s boss is a surer approach to personal success than ignoring these critical data.

Managing the System

Part of successful culture maintenance has to do with managing the system. Inner leaders can be effective in making cultural change by giving attention to the underlying structure and practices of their parent organization’s culture as well as their own portion of it. These leaders can then forge a better, more useful to them organizational subculture that fosters co-leadership (Heenan and Bennis, 1999).

Several factors are relevant here. Initiating and maintaining multiple relationships outside the leader’s normal group spreads the risk of any loss that Number Two might suffer when an immediate leader leaves. This strategy, called clustering, is followed by inner leaders and workers alike. Clustering with other like-minded mid-level peers is good, comfortable, a kind of networking, a support group that can add to the individual’s personal power. Clustering can, of course, also be nonproductive. Clustering is exclusionary. It may lead to undervaluing some workers or leaders, cause


conflict, and/or constrain open communication. Nevertheless, it is natural to cluster with like-minded people. People build trust relationships in this way. Those who cluster with others who share specific organizational values find conforming to these shared values to be easier.

Clustering is one way the leader can make efforts to avoid isolation. Demonstration of willingness to participate can be shown by joining social events, taking lunch with colleagues, and the like. Making an effort to secure a mentor is increasingly effective in this regard. Networking is also often effective. It allows the inner leader to get support from like-minded people whether inside or outside his or her subcultural enclave. It can be a tool to help the organization prosper as well. This kind of office politics is common. Inner leaders need to engage in this legitimate and ubiquitous process.

Managing peer relationships is also a part of the process. Since cultures are different, there often is a lot to learn. Inner leaders need to be aware of the current organizational culture and understand its values, rites, and rituals. Acculturation is a complex process, often subtle and implicit. In many respects the relationship between a leader and a co-leader resembles a close friendship or even a good marriage (Heenan and Bennis, 1999). There is caring, trust, and commitment to the common enterprise. Labor is divided simply and according to the gifts of both parties. In this kind of cultural ambience, disagreements can be resolved without acrimony or loss of mutual respect.

Members of the majority can also learn from newcomers. New members bring new language, symbols, approaches and\or skills that inner leaders may profitably use, if they are open to difference. Indeed, newcomers, by their mere presence in the work unit, often bring cultural change. Inner leaders who recognize this fact of diversity in organizational life have a better chance of directing cultural change to their objectives than those who ignore this leadership task.

A policy of strict equality among members does not always mean inner leaders are restricted to uniform treatment of their coworkers. Inner leaders will find they must vary their formal and informal relationships with each individual in the group. Responding to the unique needs of each individual worker is a way of treating them equally that is more productive of good than treating them all in exactly the same way. Inner leaders should remember that they are altered by their relationships with each individual. Each member in the stakeholder group is different, and each peer group is different. To relate to others stereotypically endangers cultural understanding, undermines trust, and is inimical to personal or corporate success.

PART 111

INSPIRATION, NOT MOTIVATION

Much has been written about the leader’s role in motivating followers to behave according to the leader’s desires. Typically motivation is based on material rewards. Sometimes the rewards dispensed are psychic, relating to desires of followers for psychological well-being. Motivation can be described generally as an external exchange transaction between leader and follower whereby each gives something the other wants and receives something of value in return. In-the-middle leaders do not normally control the range of resources under the CEO’s domain with which to structure useful motivational exchanges. They have to rely more on the intangible technique of inspiration to secure follower compliance.


Chapter 8

Inspiring Followers

A key to success in the inner regions of the corporation is in getting stakeholders to think about and do their work as the leader wishes, not how individual stakeholders may think it should be done. Traditionally this task has been called rnofivufion; an extensive theory and technology encompassing the leader’s tasks in motivating others has evolved. Unfortunately for a clear understanding of how people are induced to do what another person wants, the fact is that leaders cannot motivate followers. Motives come from within the individual; they are internal to the individual and directed by the individual. Leaders have little to do with creating motives. In short, all motivation is personal to the individuals in response to their own inner drives.

The only true motivation is self-motivation. Another person, leader, manager, friend, or colleague cannot motivate anyone. Those who, through their behavior, actions, or words would induce an individual to act can do so only via one or a combination of the following approaches. (1) They can create or alter an environment, within which individuals can satisfy their own needs while (hopefully) also doing corporate work. (2) They can do something to awaken a dormant motive or change the priority of someone’s inner motives to action. (3) They can excite and inspire the person to action to satisfy his or her needs and, optimistically, the organization’s. CEOs and other managers, those in control of corporate resources, can induce follower action most easily by resorting to approaches one or two.


DEFINING INSPIRATION

Rather than be limited by these indirect tasks, in-the-middle leaders have to learn to use other means to encourage follower compliance. Cre- ating culture is one way. So, too, is using interpersonal power. An often used but little discussed, though powerfully effective technology is inspiration. Operationally, inspiration is defined by several emotional results (Burns, 1978). Inspiration is the name of an influence that operates upon our minds under which we may be said to receive extraordinary guidance (Roberts, 1907). Defined in this way, it becomes a key, if complex, tool in the hands of in-the-middle leaders. CEOs may also use it, but often they don’t, as they can employ more physical, tangible methods to secure follower compliance.

Inspiration can be a powerful tool for Number Twos to use to reenergize followers and to commit and bond them together in the joint enterprise. Mid-level leaders frequently find opportunity to use this technology (Fairholm, 1991). Inspirational leaders are seen by their followers to have high self-confidence, dominance, and a conviction of moral rightness. They transfer these qualities to followers (see Bass, 1987; Burns, 1978; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Maccoby, 1981; Nixon, 1982; Fairholm, 1991).

In his definition, Roberts (1907) implies that inspiration consists of a con- firmation in the heart of the follower (believer) that the common message (vision) of the group is true. It connotes the idea of guidance to the individual believer in group relationships. Inspiration is a means of fully understanding the inspiring vision. Inspirational messages are a way for the believer to have communion with other believers. Inspiration impels one toward good, toward excellence and brings with it a feeling of rightness. In- spiration is a way to teach others, a method of teaching.

To inspire means to influence through emotional, even spiritual forces or methods. To inspire is to enliven and animate others. Inspirational leaders stop doubt. They impel people to act without thinking (Roberts, 1907). They refute sterile facts by putting words to people’s dreams and hopes and giving them purpose and direction. Inspiration is articulating the felt needs, values, and visions of the group. It is fundamentally a power activity. Inner leaders may use physical and ideological symbols to mute questions and impel people to act without analytical thinking to bring about change. There is a more-than-rational quality about inspiration. Inspiration goes beyond facts by putting into words people’s dreams and hopes and giving them a sense of purpose.

Inspiration is akin to motivation in that when people feel inspired they want to act on those feelings to satisfy personal motives. As inner leaders learn to inspire their followers they can produce more focused action toward their (or their organization’s) goals. Inspiration goes beyond motivation in appealing to a collective need. Inspiration appeals to a need to be part of and engaged with others in lofty enterprise.

Inspiring Followers 97

APPLYING INSPIRATION

Number Two leaders find that the third approach, inspiration, is most often the only approach available to them and that it is frequently a powerful inducement to stakeholder action. Inspiration is an emotional appeal from one person to another. It is external excitation of another person to action, by the leader; that is technically not motivation because there is an element of coercion in the relationship. Inspiration is a different relationship. What leaders do, are, or say, may trigger followers to behave in ways the leaders want them to. First, they may induce followers to act by coercing them. This is not motivation, since it comes from outside the individual. Nor is it inspiration, since coercion is involved. Second, they may induce another to believe it important to do what is asked of them. This is also external force, but a force of ideas triggered by commonly held values. This is inspiration, not motivation.

Leaders cannot “motivate” others. All they can do is to create a climate and the conditions within which others can find ways to self-motivate within parameters the leaders have set. Inner leaders can also interact with followers individually to help them see that satisfying some of their own motives through organizational effort can result in greater overall satisfaction than relying on their own current motives. That is, an inner leader can ask a follower to complete a difficult (or new, or creative, etc.) task, and through that effort the follower comes to realize that this work satisfies a new motive. Satisfying this need may be more rewarding to them than those motives they usually strive to satisfy. Beyond this, motivation has little meaning as a leader technology.

Inspiration grows out of the interchange between leaders and followers and the cultural environment in which leadership takes place. It is a particular relationship between an individual leader and a group of other people that enlivens both and imbues them with new insight, new emotions and/or new directions. Inspiration is not so much a quality in the leader (the inspirer) as it is a function of the needs of the inspired to which the inner leader responds.

To inspire people, leaders must appeal to them on a different level than mere physical drives. They also must connect at the level of the spirit and emotions. Inspiration appeals to the spiritual self, to the more-than-rational dimensions of personality. One person inspires another by taking the other person beyond routine ways of thinking and behaving and leading them to another, higher level of interaction and focus (Fairholm, 1991) consistent with that person’s sense of spiritual integrity.

Craddock (1985) uses a clerical perspective in analyzing the factors in the cultural situation that facilitate inspirational leadership. Since inspiration is more a function of the readiness of the group member than of the leader, creating a culture high in mutual trust is essential. The inner leader can only inspire others when those others trust what the leader says and


does to be true, right, and appropriate for them. For Craddock, this cultural foundation is a matter of shared history, mutually understood emotional needs, and shared vision.

Shared vision includes purpose (the fundamental set of reasons for the group’s existence), mission (an achievable focal point and goal-aligning subgroup effort with the full group) and vision (creating the future by doing or acting in the present with that future in mind). Shared vision by its very nature implies creative tension-a situation wherein the inner leader focuses on the present as well as on what must happen to arrive at the future vision. The tension comes from holding the vision as real while not yet having arrived at that future state of being (Ramsey, 1994).

Shared meanings developed from past associations and past events help effective deputy leaders understand followers and appeal to them more directly and more personally. From the point of view of inspiration, shared past events are more important for the meanings the group attaches to them than for the details of the event itself. They define meanings and important values and provide an integrating context that lets both leader and followers trust each other enough to work together.

Getting in touch with followers’ understandings of their joint past allows inner leaders to appeal to followers on an inspirational (more-than-rational) level. Working from this historic shared cultural base, the leaders’ vision and other messages have greater authenticity. Because of their common cultural experiences with their leaders, followers can more easily recognize both the leaders’ vision and the meanings they carry and enhance the strength of the vision or other message communicated to them. Joint reference to the customary cultural meanings leaders attach to these shared experiences bind both together.

Typical chief executive officers are adept at insuring that corporations produce tangible things extraordinarily well. They are less adept at producing inspired people. CEOs cannot “control” people into the commitment necessary to accept the risks of (for example) battle or any other significant social enterprise. They can only lead them in these life-changing social activities. Here is the crux of the matter. Most CEOs are not trained nor are their traditional technologies, systems, or theory geared to inspire independent, self-motivated followers. Rather, CEOs are successful if they can direct desired behavior, program behavior, control deviation, and punish recalcitrance. This is in direct contrast to inner leadership, whose purpose is to inspire volunteer followers to take common action whether or not the leader is present to oversee behavior.

DEVELOPING THE SKILLS TO INSPIRE OTHERS

Inner leaders cannot force compliance to their wishes from their stakeholders because their followers are volunteers. A central goal Number


Twos hold in their work in the interior of the corporation is to mold an increasing follower core that is responsive to them whether or not that is responsive to stated corporate goals. How to inspire their follower core in this direction is a critical technology inner leaders need to master. Following are some dimensions of the technology of inspiration most appropriate to leading in the interior of the corporation. First in that regard is understanding the nature of followership. Other dimensions include open communications, loyalty, fostering trust, setting values, a stewardship service orientation, fostering change, building culture and visioning.

Followership

Only half the question of leadership is being addressed in most of today’s organizations. Companies go to great lengths to cultivate corporate leaders. However, followers also are essential to successful leadership. To meet its objectives, every corporation requires far more good followers than leaders (Fairholm, 1994a). Followers are the implementers. They are the ones who must buy into the visions of the leaders and then do something. Organizations depend upon followers to move the organization forward into the future. Inspiring them to willing compliance is the measure of Number Two leadership success.

A study performed by Lieverson and OConnor implied that leadership was not so significant as previously thought when reviewing the performance of 167 U.S. companies (see Fairholm, 1994b). Similarly, a study reviewing mayoral performance in U.S. cities found leadership made only a small difference. Recent studies stress the importance of the follower and the situation itself. For example, we are now coming to understand the importance of follower views of the work, the composition of the work group, and the level of technical training they possess. Studying the significance of followers in the relationship focuses on the importance of both leadership and followership roles in the healthy organization. This research highlights the two-way influence process; both leaders and followers influence each other (Fairholm, 1994a).

Many people harbor misconceptions about followership. Some spring from our language (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). Dictionary definitions center around the idea of someone in service to another, one who follows the ideas or opinions of another or imitates another. These definitions imply a reactive role, not a proactive one. In fact, this is only part of the follower role. Most often followers are proactive in accomplishing needed results. Followers are those who can comfortably work behind the scenes to help meet organizational goals without special status or recognition. Expe- rienced, competent, professional followers minimize the need for leaders. They are, in essence, the unsung costars by today’s standards.


Traditional definitions also ignore the fact that followers are growing, changing, and altering continuously their role vis-a-vis leaders and the organization they both serve. A more accurate definition of followership includes ideas like the following (Kelley, 1992).

Followers are not the same; each functions uniquely in the group. They are often comfortable working at high levels without a lot of praise They can work to achieve both personal and corporate goals without jeopardiz-

Followers desire to participate in team relationships. They can both set a vision and develop the passion in others needed to accom-

Followers may also have a strong desire to lead and do so whenever the situation

ing either.

plish it.

warrants.

Because followers are not often in the spotlight, it is easy to think of them in homogeneous terms. This is a mistake (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy, 1999). Followers vary tremendously in education and experience. They often command much organizational power, and they often are governed by an internal locus of control (Rotter, 1980). Inspiring them to want to do what the inner leader wants, therefore, becomes a critical leadership task.

Open Communications

Inspiring followers asks ”inspirers” to know well the targets of their inspiration. What succeeds today are proactive, not reactive, organizations and the inside people who make them work. We need mid-level leaders who can interact with customers and then create and innovate to meet their demands and who anticipate customer needs and communicate that enthusiasm to their own followers. Close communication with both internal and external stakeholders is necessary if the Number Two is to be anticipa- tory, not reactionary. Leaders capable of anticipation and responsive to a variety of customer-stakeholders are inspiring. They are especially needed today to develop communications systems and structures that can quickly respond to global needs. To be inspiring, inner leaders also must be able to clearly communicate with growingly diverse customer pool, each of whom desires unique services and attention.

It is easier for CEOs to expect subordinates to unconditionally follow their instructions and orders than it is for leaders in the middle of the corporate herarchy. CEOs possess large grants of authority not typically in the hands of the inner leader. As a result, deputies need to learn how to follow their boss’s orders and suggestions. Given this organizational reality, inner leaders cannot expect to inspire other people to follow them unless they


also know how to follow. The goal is active followership, displayed in inner leaders and all those who work with them.

Both leaders and those led share responsibility for setting an example for and communicating clearly (Townsend, with Gebhardt, 1990). A task of inner leaders is to make sure that key followers know details both of their job and the inner leader’s preferences. In athletics, team members must know the coach’s game plan; otherwise, the team is just a bunch of folks who happen to dress alike and show up for games at the same time. This is also the goal of in-the-middle leaders and their active followers.

When information is not forthcoming, conscientious followers seek it out. Just as inner leaders need to keep the CEO informed, they need to communicate broadly to their followers useful information about the external situation. Similarly, followers must keep their leader informed about details of their piece of their collective interior world. They are most informed about issues such as the team’s current capabilities for meeting external-for example, customer-demands (Townsend, with Gebhardt, 1990). Effective leaders need such information, and good leaders learn to ask for it if it is not offered. Effective communications flow in all possible directions at all times. Insuring this flow is a prime task Number Twos accept.

Additionally, a good mid-level leader holds a mirror up to the CEO when necessary (Townsend, Gebhardt, 1990). Mindless ”yessing” is a pattern for organizational disaster. Once a decision is made, good followers ex- ecute their orders. But on occasion, disobeying an order is appropriate, for the inner leader or for his or her coworkers. Such action is ethical in its essence, and such independent action is paramount for corporate long-term survival.

Building Individual Loyalty and Commitment

Success in any organization is a function of understanding that the inner leader’s primary need is to be a faithful follower and hold the CEO in high respect. Anything short of this is likely to mean disloyalty. Some observers see corporate loyalty as obsolete (Umiker, 1998). Nevertheless, it has been and still is a part of all cultures. Loyalty may range from resigned acceptance to fanatical commitment. Dissent is also sometimes a part of loyalty Inner leaders assured of their own rightness need not be acting in a disloyal way when they point out their leaders’ error or omission. True loyalty permits-even encourages-difference. It is not disloyal to express one’s true concerns about a bad policy or practice and to relay them to those who can do something to change the situation. Loyalty is not rigid conformity. In- deed, rigid compliance suppresses creativity and hampers needed change; in the end, it is disloyalty.

Every organization experiences some divided loyalties (Umiker, 1998). Workers often find it easier to be loyal to their small work group than to


their top leaders. Number Twos, also, may have split loyalty as they try to serve both the CEO and their small core of followers. The task is to overcome limited loyalties, since loyalty is the linchpin of productivity, whether personal or corporate productivity. Disloyalty produces worker alienation, apathy, poor quality, and declining service. Second-level leaders must show that they support the corporation and its goals. At the same time, they must earn follower loyalty as they represent the subculture’s interests to the CEO.

Loyalty, like other personal, intimate feelings, is caused by a myriad of factors. Each individual attaches loyalty to his or her relationships with other people or dissociates based on unique factors. The obvious contributing factors include the present practice of dividing workers into special cat- egories-young-old, men-women, innovating-reactive, stable-flexible, and so on. Changing social values respecting work also impact workers’ loyalty quotient, such as the present employee unwillingness to prioritize work over personal or family issues. For example, fewer workers are willing to relocate for the company. Other values include lifestyles that emphasize more family or recreational time and the emergence of a highly independent society.

Morale factors also impact one’s loyalty. Job elimination for whatever reason-restructuring, downsizing, and mergers-or anything that threatens job security also impacts workers’ sense of loyalty. So do leader indifference, breaking of commitments, arbitrary actions, lack of opportunity to earn promotions or grow on the job, poor supervision, favoritism, discrimination, lack of recognition, and authoritarianism. Low pay, unfair salary programs, and seniority-based raises, of course, also factor in here.

Re-enthroning loyalty as a primary factor in leader-led relationships begins with a consensus that loyalty is a two-way street. For example, the fact that leaders cannot guarantee permanent employment and resignation from a job is not necessarily a sign of disloyalty. Loyalty cannot be assumed; it must be developed and fostered. Leaders must share their vision in such a way that employees will see it, understand it, and accept it as a personal guide. Inner leaders gain loyal followers when they combine goal-directed effort with a sense of caring for each employee’s future. Loyalty increases as leaders evaluate subordinates fairly and objectively.

The following actions may help leaders facilitate interactive loyalty.

Fostering a sense of community, or belonging.

Being honest with employees. Setting clear expectations. Expecting the best. Working with follower’s according to their strengths.

Working to make followers’ weaknesses irrelevant.


Being a supporter of the firm and all workers. Being consistent, fair, and impartial. Practicing participation. Valuing every employee. Being loyal. Defending group members and the group against attacks. Nurturing interdependence, mutual respect, and a sense of responsibility for all members. Genuinely caring for the well-being of all the others in a relationship.

Today’s loyalty consists of employers treating employees as partners and employees responding like partners should (Maurer, 1994).

Fostering Trust

People are not inspired by those whose motives are suspect. Experience and observation suggests that inspiration is delimited by the nature and extent of member trust. Unfortunately, the traditional theories of culture and trust do not clearly define trust as an essential element in the cultural surround. Yet trust is central in understanding the pull of culture on individual member actions. The culture created allows members to behave with varying levels of trust that certain actions or events will produce known results. This kind of trust culture is a component of inspiration. One culture may allow for more trust than another, but without the constraints on members to trust each other imposed by cultural features neither leaders nor any member could exercise inspiration at all.

Setting Values

Understanding the practice of inspiration in leadership in today‘s world requires examination of shared values. Leadership, at its heart, is a value-laden activity. People may need to be ordered and directed, but they must be inspired also. That inspiration finds its core essence in shared values. A culture’s ideology, moral code, and ethics are grounded in the core values espoused by the organization. They characterize human experience and give meaning to that experience. Values define both expectation and actual experience (Schein, 1985). For these reasons, Ott (1989) ranks the group’s values system as an important dimension in defining and differen- tiating cultures. Creating and promulgating a unique set of values that support the inner leader’s agenda becomes, therefore, a major task underlying his or her success in inspiring follower to desired action.

Leadership models that forgo values because values contaminate the objective process fail to understand the true function of leadership. Leaders


value the education, inspiration, and development of others. They value the intrinsic reasons for human behavior in a given situation. They value both the similarities and the differences in coworkers’ prior preparation. They inspire others on the basis of preset value constructs that they induce stakeholders to accept. They model the values or principles of life and action-technologies that they endeavor to inspire their colleagues to emulate.

Foster Change

Inspirational inner leaders inspire stakeholders to accept, even seek, change. They do so in part through leader actions to replace traditional controls by substituting an inspired vision, leading by example, and being an involved, visible leader.

Building Culture

The culture is the physical and psychological place in which the leader inspires followers and provides a helpful setting for this interactive relationship. It provides the climate and conditions within which the leaders’ personal needs and particular personal needs of the follower core can be juxtaposed in ways that let the one inspire the other. Culture provides a broad basis of consensus around core values, the mission guiding group and individual actions, and the ways group members can and should interact with each other. A central task Number Twos accept is to create the conditions in the organizational surround that ease the inspiration of followers to accept and act upon their vision, values, and strategic plans.

Past joint relationships provide a history of shared understandings and a reservoir of group emotions that can facilitate inspirational exchanges, just as one’s personal prior history defines one. The shared past of the organization defines the organization. As leaders shape that joint history via culture creation and maintenance actions, they help prepare the stage for inspirational relationships.

Working from the base of a common values and history, leaders can get more fully in touch with their followers’ psychological needs. They can better develop programs and assignments that satisfy followers personal motives and needs while in the same process they accomplish the inner leaders’ desires. The symbiosis thus achieved pays off for both the leader and the led. The connection between the leaders’ message and the personal psychological needs of followers is the essence of inspiration. One is inspiring precisely because what one says impels another to do something out of that person’s personal needs.

The corporation today needs trained, focused, and committed workers who can be trusted to respond appropriately in rapidly changing situations where top-level oversight is not desirable or, on occasion, even possible.


This is true for top as well as in-the-middle leaders. Hard work by itself is not as important any more (perhaps it never was) as making a positive impact on results. The model corporation cannot afford complex, staid, slow-to-change work systems or workers that cannot easily respond to the unique, constantly changing demands placed on them. Success is increasingly defined today as giving the stakeholders particular service, rather than producing a standard product at continuously lowered unit cost and forcing customers to take it. Responding to the post-industrial culture asks leaders to reinvent their organizations (Naisbitt and Aburdene, 1985) and their workers and systems. This forward focus itself is inspiring.

Visioning

Inspirational action or words by the inner leader are inspiring because they clarify and vivify what is already in the hearts of followers. The leaders’ vision is called a vision because leaders put into words the hopes and dreams of followers that are already in their hearts. In visioning, leaders must articulate latent dreams followers share, or the vision is not compelling. Visions become inspiring because leaders have touched powerful inner emotions and desires shared by others in the organization.

Such vision statements guide organizational action. The simple, symbolic, and inspiring vision statement appeals to the emotions of the reader. A vision states and dramatizes the purposes of the organization; more important, it represents the system of beliefs that give the organization texture and coherence. An effective vision statement is inspiring. It appeals to followers in personal, intimate, and direct ways. Properly worded and communicated consistently, the vision statement can guide the organization in ways not easily duplicated by other cultural elements. Vision statements are vital tools in steering member effort over the long term. They use distinctive language to define roles, activities, challenges, and purposes. They are not couched in explicit goal terms. Rather, they create patterns of meanings and consciousness reflected in the organizational culture. Vision statements raise the consciousness level of the organization’s people. They are a potent mechanism for directing and influencing others.

Whether or not the CEO publishes a vision statement, subunits of the corporation have to interpret the corporate vision in unique ways consistent with their task, composition, and history. The vision statement becomes another powerful tool inner leaders can use to modify and interpreteven change-the corporate vision to make it compatible with their own.


PART IV

TRUST, NOT AUTHORITY

Chief executives find it convenient to use formal control mechanisms such as reporting, direct observation, and quality control to induce followers to comply with their work demands. Number Two leaders cannot make un- qualified use of these tangible compliance tools. Rather, they must rely on personal attributes of character to get others to trust them enough to do what they say. In-the-middle leaders use trust as an influence mechanism; it is based more on personality and perceived capacity than on the CEO’s formal authority, which is based on position bestowed by the group, as the underlying compliance pattern. Trust is the bond holding individuals to each other and to the corporation.


Chapter 9

Defining Trust in Organizations

Daily living requires people to trust those around them. A key ingredient in any social interaction, trust is critical in corporate relationships and the cultures that sustain them. Organization itself does not happen unless members trust each other to function in expected or required ways. It is prerequisite to any attempt anyone makes to transform (change) his or her organization’s culture (Sashkin, 1986). It is a central factor in determining effectiveness in relationships (And, 1972). It makes interpersonal acceptance and openness of expression easy. Conversely, mistrust evokes interpersonal rejection, arouses defensive behavior and is destructive of joint action.

DEFINITION OF TRUST

Trust can be defined as reliance on the integrity or authenticity of a person or on similar qualities or attributes of a thing. It is a logical, thoughtful hope in their reality, their authenticity-in a word, their truth. People base their trust on an assumption that what is alleged to be true is in fact true and given time can be proved to be so. Trust becomes both an expectation and a personal obligation to be authentic, trustworthy, and reliable, which is provable by ensuing experience. Seen in this light, trust is one of the values supporting a given culture that helps define how and in what degree mem-


bers accept others, given behavior, or agreed-upon outcomes (Fairholm, 1994a).

In theory, we do not need to trust in situations of absolute knowledge of the truth about a given person, action, or event. In these cases there is no risk, we know. Absolute knowledge, however, is rarely present in most organizations. Mid-level leaders rarely can rely on this level of mutual understanding of the reality of a situation, hence the need for internal subcultures that support a high degree of trust.

Trust is a conscious realization of one’s dependence on another person. Trusting behavior entails increasing one’s vulnerability to another in ways and in circumstances where the risk is not so great as the value of the potential outcome to the trusting person. It is a central factor in understanding culture’s impact on group members. Number Two leaders need to be aware of both the presence and the potential significance of trust in established systems of cultural beliefs and norms. Trust can help us lessen conflicts and avoid potential conflicts before dysfunctional behavior takes place.

Carl R. Rogers (1964) says the quality of trust is the most significant element in interpersonal relationships in determining effectiveness. He suggests that the basic nature of people who function freely in interpersonal relationships is constructive and trustworthy. For him, trust is an interpersonal quality measured by congruence of interpersonal communications. Rogers defines a two-way relationship as simply expressing trust in others and receiving trust from others. One without the other aborts the relationship. This suggests that inner leaders can generate a climate of trust as they first demonstrate trust.

Gibb (1978) defines trust as acceptance of the communications of others. He says trust is the most important of the common concerns of most people in interrelationships. For Gibb, trust and acceptance of self as a leader must preceded acceptance and trust of others. Where trust is present, followership can take place. Where it is missing, leaders lose the ability to lead.

ELEMENTS OF THE TRUST RELATIONSHIP

Trust is the foundation of success in any interpersonal relationship. Al- though organizational theory assumes but largely ignores the idea of trust, it is integral to that set of interpersonal relationships we call the group or the organization or the corporation. While developing a trust culture (Fairholm and Fairholm, 2000) is critical in leadership success, defining it operationally is difficult. Indeed, there is little literature discussing developing intimate trust relationships with others. We know even less about the intricacies of maintenance of trust cultures. It is encouraging, however, to note that people are beginning to recognize the need to understand trust as

Defining Trust 111

an element of culture. Even casual observation, however, suggests that the elements of trust are many and varied and that precise analyses are scarce.

Several factors are central to an understanding of the trust relationship. They represent critical contingencies inner leaders must master in their quest for success in working in the interior regions of the corporation (Fairholm, 1994a). The following discussion drawn from research helps codify this emerging dimension of organizational life and followership. It is interesting to note the close congruence of these elements of trust and the main features of culture defined elsewhere. Culture and trust appear to be comparable in definition, context, and result.

Acceptance

Willingness to accept and participate in group task accomplishment is a function of the level of trust possessed by the inner leader. Acceptance has to do with acknowledgment of self and of others. Gibb (1978) identified acceptance as one of four dimensions of trust-the others being data flow, goal formation, and control concerns. Acceptance is the centerpiece of his model. When inner leaders accept themselves, their fear of personal failure and of others’ negative actions is reduced. This kind of acceptance produces a consequent growth in the leaders’ level of confidence.

Other factors also impact acceptance and therefore trust. Among these factors are hierarchial placement and minority status. Placement in the hierarchy affects the individual leader’s tendency to trust others. Rosen and Jerdee (1977) conclude that a secondary position and minority status are key determinants of the level of trust displayed by mid-level group leaders. Low-level workers and minorities are statistically less willing to trust management and to accept unconditionally the need to participate freely in joint endeavors. Higher-level workers and those not minorities are more willing to buy into group goals and expend energy to participate. Success in shaping the trust levels in a group apparently must consider these structural factors along with more social and cognitive ones.

Assumptions

People behave according to their assumptions of how the world works. Barnes (1981) concludes that the underlying assumptions people hold condition their willingness to trust and that most underlying assumptions hinder full trust. The task for inner leaders is to counter the common assumptions people hold about life-that most important issues are either all ”right” or all ”wrong,” that hard data and facts are better than soft ones, or that the world in general is an unsafe place- with alternatives that foster cooperative action. Inner leaders increase trust when they can institutionalize positive assumptions. When they or their followers hold the opposite


sort of assumptions, both behave differently. When others see the inner leaders’ behavior as both predictable and caring, they can develop positive assumptions about interaction. These leader-set expectations of the future provide the basis of the hope that accompanies interactive trust.

Authentic Caring

Followers trust their leaders when they assume that their leaders genuinely care for them (Gibb, 1978). Trusting followers see their leader as open, personally interested in them, and worthy of their trust. Fairholm (1994a) says trust protects and enhances the dignity of followers. Caring leader behavior communicates the inner leaders’ willingness to serve the needs followers have. As followers see the leaders value service in their actions toward them, the culture changes and becomes more open to interpersonal trust.

Ethical Actions

People also base their trust in others on confidence in their integrity. A variety of cultural forces shape inner leaders’ ethical values and in turn are shaped by the leaders’ values. Among them are peer relations, traditional organizational practices, financial policy, the general social morality of the surrounding community and organizational policy. The idea of ethics is imbedded in the idea of culture, custom, and character (Sims, 1992). Ethical behavior involves leaders in setting and enforcing one ethical standard as opposed to any other standard, some of which may also be good. In this regard, concern for group ethics is a part of culture creation and maintenance. Both ask us to articulate a clear, compelling, and useful set of values to guide individual-in-the-group action.

Ethical behavior is the behavior that group members accept as right and good. In the corporation it is sometimes institutionalized in a document codifying the organization’s values and norms. It is also reflected in the institutional structures, interpersonal relationships, and sanction systems. Most often and most influentially, the organization’s ethical foundation is a function of unit leaders; values are implicitly revealed in their leadership actions, decisions, and comments. Ethical leadership is a function of accommodating key features of organization with the inner leaders’ values and those of followers. This task will involve mid-level leaders more than top leaders since they work directly with an increasingly diverse group of followers. These leaders work together with followers at the values level, not just at the task level of interactivity. New people with differing ethical standards are coming into the work force. The challenge is to build a new ethics that is founded in the past and is responsive to the future.

Defining Trust 113

Leadership

Earning trust is a part of any leader-follower interaction, not just at the CEO level. Among several factors conditioning the process of developing trust in the interior of the corporation, the following appear to be key. Bennis and Nanus (1985) say leading so that followers can predict leaders’ actions or behavior builds trust. Most writers agree that leading on the basis of consistent and persistent open communication is essential in the trust-development process. Sinatar (1988) suggests that cooperation is another key to developing trust. She also says that a gentle manner is important and that congruent actions where both word and deed convey the same message is essential. Greenleaf (1977) says a leader ’S record of service to followers is critical in defining the inner leader’s trust relationship with followers.

Personal Character

For Gibb (1978), trust is a way of life for internal leaders. They view trust as someone’s expectation that he or she can rely upon the word, promise, or statement of another person. In Gibb’s view, trust is a hallmark of a healthy organization. The level of trust present in the group situation affects member willingness to creatively problem solve. It also affects the degree of de- fensiveness present in the group (Gibb, 1978). Meadow, Parnes, and Reese (1959) suggest that a culture of trust affects the degree of problem-solving effectiveness of the group. For them, a group member who does not trust others will distort, conceal, or disguise feelings or opinions that he or she believes will increase his or her exposure in the group. They also correlate high trust levels with honesty. High trust levels are critical in situations where inner leaders desire spontaneous behavior or where they need frankness.

Predictability

Predictability is also a building block of internal, interactive trust. Any erratic or irregular leader behavior limits the willingness of stakeholders to trust them. People apparently trust others only as they can confidently predict what the other person will probably do in a given situation. Trust and predictability also imply truth. Followers trust their leaders when they are confident that the relationship will produce a true result-that they will get what they expect.

THE CENTRALITY OF TRUST

Culture affects willingness to trust, and willingness to trust helps define culture. Trust is the glue holding the organization and its programs and


people together. It is the prime mechanism for group cohesion. Indeed, no organization can take place without interpersonal trust. Inner leaders cannot ignore the powerful element of trust as they go about creating and managing their organization’s culture and inducing stakeholders to behave in needed ways.

The element of trust in any culture is critical to leader success in attaining both personal and organizational ends. No collaborative work can be done over time without some measure of interpersonal trust. It is a necessary and essential element of any situation. It is especially the case in leader-follower relationships in the middle of the organization. In this relationship trust is central to followership because followers are people who choose to accept a leader’s orders, instructions, guidance, or standards. They are not forced to do so.

Follower trust allows leaders to lead. Low-trust cultures reduce the willingness of members to volunteer to follow. Therefore, these low-trust cultures necessitate use of control mechanisms to secure member compliance. That is, low-trust cultures force executives to manage, not lead.

Leaders build trust or tear it down by the cumulative actions they take and the words they speak-by the culture they create for themselves and their organization’s members. They come to trust others based on the developing record of authenticated reality built up in their interactions with followers, that is, on the culture they create. The cumulative effect of a given culture is to define a specific level and quality of interpersonal trust between stakeholders.

TRUST IS A RISK RELATIONSHIC BUT A NECESSARY ONE

When a Number Two leader trusts another person, he or she risks some loss of control. The risk always present in trusting others or in relying on given systems or policies or procedures or specific structural forms is that they will not behave as expected. In essence, when we trust another person, event, or thing, we agree to rely on the authenticity of that person, event, or thing. We agree to accept as true what we now can only assume to be true.

Trust Implies Proactivity

Trust is an active process tinged with some risk. It is central to organizational interaction and critical in understanding cultural ideas of empowerment, expectation, and predictability. A person who trusts someone else acts toward that person with assurance, even without all needed or desired information about them. With trust, leaders can function in an otherwise ambiguous or even risky situation. With trust, they can take control of a situation or circumstance. Without trust, the individual has no power in rela-

Defining Trust 115

tionships, no control over other people not actually in sight. Trust is central to cultural ideas of empowerment, expectation, and predictability.

Trust Is Transforming

Trusting others takes time. It is an incremental process, wherein each successful attempt is immediately reinforcing. Successive positive experiences with another accumulate until full trust is attained. Having trust in a person or something impels change. It lets Number Twos take the risk to act out of that trust. Trusting behavior is a change process that induces change in both leader and led.

TRUST AND TRUSTWORTHINESS

Trust and trustworthiness are closely related. The less trusting a person is, the less others trust that person. The reverse is also true; the more one trusts, the more others trust him or her. Trust is a learned capacity and the best teacher is example. The bottom line appears to be: If leaders want followers to trust them, they have to tell the truth, act on that truth consistently, and then patiently wait for the relationship to be solidified.


Chapter 10

Developing Trust

Developing trust is risky. Handy (1976) says to trust is to take a chance on the other person. Trust is a risk relationship that increases the truster’s vulnerability (And, 1972). And’s work, though, includes a survey of 4200 mid-level leaders that suggests that high-trust relationships stimulate higher performance. Handy revived Rogers’ (1964) assertion that we can causally link trust to increased originality and emotional stability.

The process of gaining trust relies first on having or securing accurate, real (truthful) knowledge of the person or situation. Once given, trust opens opportunities for leaders to gain experiences with that person or thing. These experiences are the means by which they gather and analyze additional data to further build trust-r to diminish it. Trust increases through the acquisition of incremental, true knowledge about the person or thing. It is diminished by the same process: acquisition of information that belies our initial perception of the truth about the person that formed the basis of our initial trust actions.

We increase or diminish trust by this process of incremental development of information about the true reality of the person or thing. This kind of intimate knowledge acquisition about another person or something forms the basis of lasting trust. It is stimulated by a culture that values trust per se, that honors the individual, and that fosters cooperative interaction. Trust takes place only as group members act to create and maintain a cultural situation in which individuals can feel safe enough and confident


enough in the situation to take the risk to unite with others. Being successful as an inner leader is as much a task of building unifying, trust cultures as it is charisma, communication, control or expertise, or position.

Several factors are important in developing trust. For example, trust and distrust are cyclical. The more one trusts, the more trusting the relationship. Alternatively, the more one distrusts others, the more distrust is present. Breaking this cycle is difficult. Two ways are apparent. In the first, the follower strives to gain the leader’s trust, which is hard for the follower to do. It requires maturity, strength, and perseverance. The second approach is for unit leaders to give their trust initially, without evidence that it may be justified, which also takes courage and strength.

It is also important to know that leaders cannot demand trust of another or in themselves. Trust must be earned, and that takes time. While leaders can ask others for their trust, they cannot enforce that demand simply because of their authority to hire and fire. Trust is a gift, given freely by others because of their confidence and respect, even their admiration for the leader.

Trust is a range of behaviors encompassing predictability (Rossiter and Pearch, 1975). Trust behavior is that which shows a willingness to be vul- nerable to another. It is reflected in an attitude of faith or confidence in another person such that leaders believe their followers will behave in ways that will not produce negative results for them. This kind of trust is fostered by open, nondefensive communications.

Trust implies more than confidence (Gibb, 1978). It connotes an unques- tioned belief in and reliance on someone or something by the leader or other trusting person. This kind of confidence implies trust based on good reasons, evidence, or experience. Thus, extensive interpersonal communications with others build trust.

Trust is contingent on several situational factors. In some situations, the trusted person’s behavior affects the results of the trust in nontrivial ways. Trust also develops in situations where individuals can predict with some accuracy a given behavior or result from their actions. Another condition of the culture that Rossiter and Pearch (1975) describe has to do with alternative options. Trust is possible when the leader does more than trust. That is, individuals increase or decrease their vulnerability to each other.

Trustworthiness also flows from self-trust: confidence in one’s own ability, integrity, and ethical fidelity. Self-trust comes as a result of several characteristics leaders exhibit. Among them, knowledge, responsibility, and faith are most important. Knowledge refers to the stored truth we gain from learning and experience. Responsibility defines individuals acceptance of accountability for themselves and for their work and other actions. Faith is confidence in the correctness and appropriateness of our course of action and our capacity to attain desired goals.

Developing Trust 119

Accepted established cultural values also influence the development of feelings of trust. However, only through direct interaction can inner leaders develop a deep conviction in others of their basic trustworthiness. Trust be- gets trust. Someone has to trust to become trusted. Inner leaders form feelings of trust and loyalty between themselves and individual group members initially by the way in which the personalities interact. These feelings become generalized only after a series of incidents over time prove the trustworthiness of the other person. Established cultural beliefs also influence the development of feelings of trust. The leader has a prime responsibility in creating a culture in which trust and trustworthiness are integral parts of its definition.

Human beings do not usually give trust unreservedly. It is earned. Effec- tive inner leaders learn to base their trust of others on expectations developed from past contacts with them (Good, 1988). Sometimes they give their trust to another in novel situations. This is a fragile relationship and not necessarily conducive to a long-term trust relationship. A more durable, full, and mutual trust is contingent upon full communications, need satisfaction, and experience with followers that includes their living up to the trusting leader’s expectations.

For Culbert and McDonough (1985), trust is developed out of a context of mutual respect for the other person, not from dependency. Britton and Stallings (1986) suggest that people develop interactive trust when they present themselves to the world (behave) in certain ways and not in others. The following factors affect individual followers whom leaders may want to trust and the general trust situation within which trust-based interactivity can take place.

MASTERING TRUST

Some see trust as a simplistic belief in the goodness of others and in the benign nature of the world. They see trusting people as somehow less intelligent and more gullible than the rest of society. This perception is a part of the collective wisdom. However, Rotter’s (1980) work challenges this perception. He amassed evidence to suggest that high trusters are no less intelligent and no more gullible than others. His research did find that trusters are happier and more likely to be more trustworthy. In fact, the inner leader’s inclination to trust or distrust is not so much a function of intelligence as it is a willing acceptance of others that is more experiential than intellectual.

Trust develops over a long period of time and is a result of the individual’s cumulative experience. Trust is a generalized expectancy that the leader can rely upon the word, the promise, the verbal or written statement of another person (Rotter, 1980). One advantage of an inner leader’s willingness to trust others is that he or she is more likely to be regarded by oth-


ers as dependable and trustworthy. Trust is belief in the honesty of a communication, an interaction, or a relationship, not necessarily its authenticity. Trusting leaders typically have past experience with trustworthy significant others (parents, teachers, bosses, leaders, etc.).

Several factors are important in understanding how mid-level leaders develop trust, nurture it, and expand it. The following factors seem critical. People trust others who demonstrate these qualities more, and more often, than they do those who lack these qualities. These factors define both the individual and the thing to be granted trust. They are also characteristics of a corporation’s culture that make it suitable for mutual trust.

Moral Integrity

Trust is always related to the ideas of morality and personal integrity. In- dividuals and groups endure in proportion to the strength of their moral base. Shared ethical values are the foundation of cooperation (Barnard, 1968). Leaders, like nations and institutions, stand or fall on the basis of their morals. Many define trust in terms like high moral character and integrity. When integrity levels are low, people tend to be dishonest, evasive, untrustworthy, and inauthentic with one another. In low-integrity relationships, communication is often inaccurate, distorted, or incomplete. On the other hand, when integrity is prioritized in the culture, sharing is common. In these cultures, group members take risks more freely and with less regard for negative effects of misplaced trust.

Patience

It takes a long time to learn to truly trust someone else. While unit leaders may volunteer their trust on first meeting, a fully trusting relationship has to mature out of the cauldron of shared experiences. Trust comes with shared experiences over the long term. It rarely sprouts full blown at the instant of first contact with someone. This idea makes leader action to develop a trust culture critical (Fairholm and Fairholm, 2000). Trust is not a happening, but the result of a process of interaction that matures over time. The development of trust at least partially depends on the environment of the person who desires to trust. The culture must conduce people to trust, or those in interaction will not take the risk to trust.

Altruism

Trust is in part, at least, a gift from inner leaders to others. Leaders trust, in part, out of a concern for the well-being of their followers. They trust because they care for followers or out of their willingness to help others. Leaders give their trust to followers, but they cannot take trust from them.


Followers also bestow trust. Bestowing trust is a volitional act, not a obligation. Withdrawing trust is also voluntary.

Vulnerability

Trust increases our vulnerability, and the risk increases as we increase our level and scope of trust in another person or a thing. On one level, trust can be defined as action that (1) increases one’s vulnerability to another person, (2) whose behavior is under his or her control, when the penalty one suffers if the other abuses his or her vulnerability is greater than the benefit one gains if the other does not abuse that vulnerability.

Action

Building trust is an active process, not a passive one. Actions more than reputation insure people’s trustworthiness or their willingness to trust others. As inner leaders trust other people’s behavior consistently, they can act even in risky situations. Leaders build trust or tear it down by their cumulative actions and words.

Friendship

Friendship is a composite of relationships such as shared values and experiences, compatibility, pleasure in association with another person, and comfort in their company. These aspects of relationship contribute to the presence of trust and its depth and scope. Obviously, friends trust each other more than enemies do. Rogers (1964) suggest that friendship relations contribute to the helping relationship that is founded on mutual trust. The trusting person likes those they trust.

Competence

Trusting people trust in the other’s ability to work with people. They place their confidence in the others’ ability, general competence, and skills. They value the others’ overall sense of the task and their experience, training, and common sense.

Sagacity

The inner leaders’ willingness to trust, in part, depends on their sagacity, their acumen, judgment, shrewdness, and ability to make prudent choices. The capacity to make decisions that followers perceive to be correct, and appropriate increases their trust quotient. Sagacity is affected by a wide variety of factors such as personal self-interest, organizational goals, friend-


ships, larger societal norms, personal morality, cultural norms and laws, and rules and regulations (Sims, 1992).

Ethics

Acting ethically in a given context makes the task of mid-level leadership complex at best and fraught with risk at worst. Obviously, ethical behavior is seldom clear and direct. Introducing formal codes of ethics may help somewhat, but leaders cannot expect a written document to be universally applicable. Leadership places the leader continually in the center of ethical controversy.

Shared Values

The essentially volunteer relationship between inner leaders and their followers grows out of shared values. This kind of relationship flourishes only in a climate within which members can accept the individuality of others without necessarily sanctioning all of their behavior. In such a climate of trust, individuals can give open, candid reactions to what they see as right or wrong. In trust cultures there is little manipulation, few hidden agendas, no unreasonable controls, and no cloying sweetness that masks real problems. Instead, there is a unity in concepts, conduct, and concern appropriate to group membership that does not risk individuality. Without trust, cultural values can become strictures that impede individual and group progress.

Most older texts on management and leadership do not focus on cultural values supporting trust relationships, but on the mechanics of control. At- tention to the mechanics of control is necessary. However, this focus risks ignoring the underlying trust, without which no system of techniques, procedures, mechanics, and follow-up can possibly work. It does little good, for instance, to develop elaborate organizational and work-flow charts if the people who inhabit the real world symbolized by these charts do not trust each other or authentically communicate with each other. It does little good to strive to achieve goals if participants are too much at the mercy of their moods to allow for predictable interaction.

Communication

The level of trust in the relationship determines the quality and fidelity of the communication (Timm, 1980). Trust also permits informal leaders to accept information from coworkers-whether subordinates, peers, or superiors-as accurate or useful. Aworking model of trust in communication is offered by Kanfer and Goldstien (1980). They see communications trust as a function of both leader and follower risk-taking (by divulging informa-


tion about problems, feelings, attitudes, and ideas) behavior; the embrace by both of accepting, warm understanding and cooperative attention; and their mutual reciprocation of disclosures (by being open and reactive to what is taking place in a helping way).

Berlo (1960) suggests that participants’ nonverbal communications also affect the level of interactive trust. As leaders’ nonverbal communications are congruent with their verbal messages, they increase follower trust. When silent language and words are incongruent, followers withhold their support, thus diminishing trust. When trust is not present, evidence of defensive communications is. Culbert and McDonough (1985) say people have an aversion to subjectivity because it is hard to control and inefficient. Yet much of what leaders communicate in every day life is subjective-not fully supported by objective proof. Trust can be jeopardized when anyone in the relationship withholds trust because of leader failure to provide desired proofs.


Chapter 11

Barriers to Shaping Trust Cultures

Much of the current attention given to culture maintenance focuses on creating cultures that empower organizational workers. The conventional wisdom says that an appropriate cultural environment lets workers trust each other enough to take responsibility for their jobs and for realization of their goals and the organization’s as well. The thrust of much of the power literature (see Fairholm, 1993) is also toward empowering individuals and work teams so that they will take ownership of the organization’s goals and purposes. The expected outcome is work system improvement.

Empowering others is a powerful technique. Giving power to workers allows them to be more productive in group goal accomplishment. When individuals use the power received to move the organization away from the inner leader Is desired goals, it is destructive of that leader Is vision. Too, not everyone wants or is prepared to receive power and use it wisely and effectively. Some people don’t or can’t exert power because they fear it. When they do act independently expected improvement may not take place; something else happens. People are flawed, and the systems they create are flawed. Therefore, at times, leaders (or followers) themselves become barriers rather than gates to progress.

Unfortunately, organizations, like people, do not always act as theory or cornmon sense would suggest. Individual or collective behavior is sometimes counterproductive. Berkley (1984) says these so-called pathological behaviors are c o m o n and can bar achievement of stated goals and pur-


poses. Whether or not these aberrant behaviors fit exactly with common medical definitions of pathology, they are obstructions to effective group success. They are the characteristics of individuals or the organizational system that contribute to unhealthy, rather than healthy, organizational relationships or processes. These system-based, personal, or situational barriers can frustrate inner leaders’ attempts to focus group energy on needed results, even if they ”apply” the latest theory or leadership technologies.

Berkley identifies several physical, psychological, sociological, and system barriers to empowerment that inner leaders often ignore in their rush to create a trust culture based on broad-gauged worker empowerment. De- spite their best efforts, characteristics of the people worked with or the character of the current culture can sometimes dissipate collective energy and cause leaders’ explicit goals to become fuzzy and unclear and work effort to be misdirected toward harmful, not helpful, work activity.

Development of a culture supportive of trust may also be hampered by a lack of effective accountability mechanisms. Letting stakeholders know about unethical conduct and punishing it also affects individual willingness to trust or not.

FACTORS LIMITING TRUST

Building a trust culture asks us to engage in a difficult task, one fraught with risk. Observation reveals some of the elements in culture that may hamper development of high-trust relationships. Mid-level leaders need to recognize and respond to these potentially destructive factors in the situation. They also must account for them as they engage in creating a new culture or changing an organization’s existing culture to allow for a higher level of trust in interpersonal relationships.

Following Fairholm and Fairholm (2000), each of these elements in the culture helps define what that culture means and delimits interactive trust within inner leaders’ subcultures. In shaping a culture, they must recognize that individual self-interest may constrain followers’ willingness to trust their coworkers. Building trust cultures takes time. While a situation conducive to high trust is being developed, group members may withhold their trust or parcel it out parsimoniously. Also negative events have a powerful effect on the willingness to trust. The event history of the culture may impair current trust levels.

The General Decay of Moral Values

The values of the larger society permeate corporate cultures. The present tendency toward the dissolution of traditional values and morals is reflected in most work organizations. This decay of core values like honesty, integrity, dependability, and commitment can make difficult leaders’ ef-

Barriers to Shaping Trust Cultures 127

forts to create a culture where interpersonal trust is high. Perhaps the real conflicts in society today should not be seen as those between race, class, and gender, but as those between what is moral and what is not. The real social struggle nationally and within the work team is about the order, purpose, and quality of life. These are moral concerns, but they impact all the individual does and is.

Americans have a strong history of Judeo-Christian values that include at least the following illustrative listing: happiness, freedom, faith, home, hard work, justice, best efforts, a desire for a better way of life, family values, love, respect for life, and service to one another. These (and perhaps a few other) values, principles, and ideals adopted by our founders not only form the basis of freedom but are the rivets that hold it in place in our relationships. Americans define themselves in terms of these values and the ideals they represent. Unfortunately, there is a current tendency all over America to challenge the historicity and moral utility of these values. The impact of political and social policy decisions of the past several decades in America has been to weaken the Judeo-Christian values heritage. One result is that work cultures are weakened, and so is interactive workplace trust.

Apathy and Alienation

A generalized trend in American society is to deprecate our institutions and their leaders. This widespread feeling has cultural implications. Ac- ceptance or rejection of a cultural (or subcultural) feature is in part a function of trust. The requisite trust may come from members’ prior experience in the group or in the larger society. Both affect interactions in the organization. As new members join the corporation, they bring with them perceptions of society and people generally that affect their organizational relationships. If the larger society’s culture turns people off, these perceptions will color their responses to the inner leaders’ subculture.

Too much certainty leads to complacency; not enough can result in alienation of workers. Leaders’ actions create alienated workers, but they can also create committed workers. Alienated workers do not trust their coworkers as much as engaged workers do. The key to maximizing interactive trust lies in the nature of the Number Two leaders’ actions. Some simple and direct actions they can take to reduce worker apathy include the following.

Work to understand their workers needs and requirements. Clarify the organization’s role in the larger society. Infuse the organization with at least some core values that all workers can accept. Be proactive about and responsive to internal and external change that builds, not diminishes, success.


Focus on team building to engage workers in actions aimed at accomplishing

Foster a spirit of cooperation and community. Promote interactive trust relationships. Encourage open communications systems. Place a high value on responsiveness to new demands and needs. Foster interactive participation with bosses, peers, workers, and customers.

pre-set organizational goals.

Authority and Organizational Structure

There is a natural tendency to resort to the use of authority to resolve differences in views. The actions of people in authority, therefore, becomes of major concern in development of a trust culture. The formal and, more de- cisively the informal authority structure formed by the actions of inner leaders determines the organization’s overall climate and culture.

Leaders in the middle of the corporation may use authority to foster and support a culture valuing high trust. They may also use it to create a nontrusting environment. In a growingly complex world, no organization will be able to function successfully without definite internal interaction patterns that let workers know what to expect. These formal and informal structures constitute a regulatory skeleton around which the character of the subculture can be formed. The inner leaders’ role-in this task, like that of CEOs-is to structure institutional patterns of interaction in ways that lead to personal success and, hopefully, to that of the group they lead.

This kind of structure impacts human behavior in many ways. For example, if a Number Two leader institutes too much hierarchy, control may be so diffused that performing the task requires overcoordination. Similarly, too little hierarchy can result in uncontrollable anarchy. Traditional, highly structured bureaucratic organizations are slow to respond to the individual needs of stakeholders. They focus more on process and procedure than on responsiveness to their various stakeholders. Trust flourishes in situations where individual workers are given freedom to control much of their day-to-day work lives. A structure that supports this independence also supports high-trust relationships.

Ineffective Accountability Mechanisms

Trust is built on known, predictable, and stable mechanisms that let all stakeholders know what unacceptable conduct is and how to correct it when it occurs. Achieving this kind of control system is, however, difficult. The potential for inappropriate behavior is unlimited. It is impossible to design a system to counter every conceivable example. Those who try find that they have built cultures that overcontrol and restrict all, not just unde- sired, action. They also constrain trust relationships. Many accountability

Barriers to Shaping Trust Cultures 129

systems focus too narrowly on certain aspects of intraorganizational relationships and exclude many others; that can lead to ineffective conduct.

It is also true that some currently in-place cultural features have the effect of supporting norms counter to those described as supporting trust relationships. Many organizations focus on financial success (bottom-line profit, or maximization of resource use) as a primary goal. They ignore or neglect the methods by which those goals are attained. This kind of end-result-only thinking can result in inappropriate negotiations, sweetheart contracts, and even bribery. Such behaviors detract from stakeholder willingness to trust fully. Any mishandling of a trust situation can weaken the interior leader’s ability to be effective in subsequent similar situations (Bonczek, 1992). Whether the action is intentional or an honest mistake, the damage may be significant. In either case the loss of trust in the culture is the same.

Personal Selfish Interest

People have selfish interests. They use social relationships-including work relationships-to compete with others to attain their personal outcomes. This competition sets the stage for win-lose situations and highlights individual instead of group action. Development of high trust relationships is difficult in this circumstance. ANumber Two leader cannot function at his or her maximum outside a trust subculture characterized by shared interests and commitment to the leader’s agenda.

The task for inner leaders, then, is to create subcultures that support their values and outcomes, not multiple disparate follower values or goals. Trust and unbridled self-interest are inimical. Values supporting high trust differ from those supporting a focused self-interest. Creating a unique subculture asks the leaders to format a values environment that counters this natural tendency in people toward self-aggrandizement. Rather, they focus the culture on values that foster trust.

Building Trust Cultures Takes Time

People often lack the patience or skill to act in a way that develops lasting trust relationships. The focus on short-term results to produce individual success masks the need for longer-term relationships of trust. Leaders in the middle ranges of the corporation find that building trust, in the absence of formal authority sufficient to order compliance, takes longer and is fraught with ambiguity, false starts, and disjointed, incremental progress.

A History of Negative Trust Events

While inner leaders may hope for a positive, supportive subculture in their work organizations, not all are totally positive. All organizations also


have a reverse, or negative, side. In the process of time, cultures and subcultures develop a history of negative events that also contributes to the full definition of that culture. Negative events can have a powerful affect on group members’ willingness to trust (Culbert and McDonough, 1985). For example, many followers are worried about their leader’s replacing them. They react to this situation by, among many other things, withdrawing trust.

It is hard for inner leaders or for anyone to be consistent in all they do and say. Indeed, erratic behavior is as much the norm as compliant behavior. This tendency toward inconsistency produces unpredictability. Since predictability is essential to trust, if in-the-middle leaders do not intervene, the subculture created tends to become an environment where trust levels are lowered.

PART V

PERSONAL, NOT POSITIONAL POWER

Leadership is power, and power use is at its core political. This political dynamic is an ingredient of all aspects of any leader’s work-planning, organizing, staffing, budgeting, goal setting, program management. The organizational reality is that participants influence each other during each phase of any group relationship. Whatever the function performed, the interpersonal political process involves negotiating schedules, compromis- ing competing goals, marshaling support, and competing for limited resources. CEOs most often capitalize on position-based power. Their deputies in the middle regions of the organization cannot control corporate resources as the CEO can, and therefore they must use more personal forms of power. Special characteristics of interorganizational power political theory and practice that apply to leadership in the middle of the organization and its subculture(s) are discussed in the following chapters.


Chapter I 2

Inner Leaders Use Office Politics to Secure Personal and

Corporate Goals

All leadership is political. Chief executives, their second-level leaders, and all other members in all parts of the organization possess and use power continually as a mechanism to get others to do what they want done. Leaders in the middle of the organization, however, cannot command the vast legitimate power of the corporation in the same ways the CEO can. Chief executives acquire their power through a grant of authority from the institution that encompasses total corporate power. This power is based on the legitimate authority to control and use any of the resources and assets of the corporation in furtherance of its mission.

This comprehensive mechanism to secure personal or professional purposes is available to Number Two leaders in significantly smaller incre- ments. They can only command this source of power to the degree the CEO delegates it to them. Rather, they must rely on their own personality, capacities, resources, and expertise (that is, on more personal forms of power) to induce others to follow them-especially if they desire their followers to act counter to the CEO's wishes. Application of this personal power is more intimate, unique to the individual deputy and adaptable to change in the work culture, and requires different strategies and tactics than does legitimate authority.


THE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF OPERATIONAL POWER

All leadership activities, either top or inner, include applied power tasks. Organization members use power tactics implicit in the political action process that many call office politics or organizational power politics (Fairholm, 1993) to accomplish such tasks. Everyone in the organization continually participates in situations where negotiation for power to gain one’s desires is a legitimate part of work life. All participants are regularly in situations of competing with other people for dominance. They compete for the capacity to get their own way in the face of competing action by others in their intimate work group.

We can describe this situation in five statements that describe the power situation.

Interdependence. Organization members act and react continually with other people who are in interdependent relationship with them.

Difference in Goals. The participants’ goals or methods (or both) differ from those of others in the relationship such that if one person achieves his or her goals, others are thwarted from accomplishing theirs.

Competition. The participants are in competition with each other as to who will achieve desired goal(s).

Scarcity. To some extent, scarcity is present in the situation; if one participant gains his or her goals, others do not.

Importance. At least one participant attaches enough importance to the situation, goals, or approach that he or she is willing to expend energy in this relationship.

These five aspects of the power relationship also define routine organizational life. That is, the situations in which corporate workers normally find themselves are situations where our understanding of what is happening increases by viewing the relationship in political power terms. Understanding power use and power relationships is critical to group success, whether practiced at the top of the organization, in its middle ranges, or in frontline work groups. Knowing something of the theory and practice of organizational power politics becomes a critical area of expertise for leaders.

A POWER USE MODEL: USING POWER IN THE ORGANIZATION

Obviously, power is a part of all or most organizational situations. As noted, CEOs use authority-based power most often, while inner leaders are denied that direct form of power. Number Two leaders necessarily draw on more personal than positional forms of power to attain their objectives from the group. These more numerous but less direct methods can be, and often are, very effective in countering (or, if desired, supplementing) the au-

Use Politics to Secure Goals 135

thority they exercise. Since successful Number Twos make more full use of all forms of organizational power, not just authority, understanding the theory and practice of the operational uses of power is a critical technology. The unique characteristics of organizational power politics applicable to leaders in the interior of the firm are delineated next.

Power Requires a Decision Situation

Power politics is an action theory stimulated by a situation. It is triggered by the overt action of one or more of the parties in the relationship. A model of the inner leader’s power process derived from the key factors of the power relationship situation includes four components.

First, inner leaders use power in situations that present a potential for a choice, a decision. Power is the currency through which people resolve their differences (Pfeffer, 1981; Coenen and Hofstra, 1988). Unless there is some opposition, some difference, some uncertainty, some choice among competing options to be made by at least one of the interdependent people in the relationship, there is no need to use power. Power operates in any and all decision situations.

Second, available resources must be such that they cannot easily accommodate both the inner leader’s and another’s goals.

Third, one or more other participants must feel they have the personal capacity to achieve their desired outcome. Powerful people’s position (Me- chanic, 1962), personality (Winter, 1973) or expertise (Pfeffer, 1981) gives them the necessary resources to resolve differences and ambiguities. They can exercise discretion in assigning duties, open previously closed doors to opportunity, and clarify paths to desired goals for those dependent upon them.

Fouvth, either the inner leader or another participant must take action to affect other participants in the situation. Power is the ability to mobilize energy, resources, and information to support a preferred outcome. Power operates in these situations of opposition; of conflict of results or means (Duke, 1976). Conflict is a result of asymmetries of power, values, or status. It occurs out of ambiguity of jurisdiction (Madison, Allen, Porter, Renwich and Mayes, 1980), scarce resources (Russell, 1938), or interdependence (Russell, 1938). We ameliorate these asymmetries through power behavior (Fairholm, 1993).

Viewed in this light, choice options are a routine part of power use in organizational life (Cialdini, 1984). Power is a central aspect of a definition of the environment of inner leaders in group structure. Power differences characterize the professional lives of Number Two leaders.


Situational Factors Implicit in the Inner Leader’s Power Dynamics Model

Power use depends on a social situation where action by one party im- 3

pacts the behavior or choices of the others and where a condition of scarcity of resources critical to achieving the group or individuals’ purposes is present. Authority, or hierarchical power, is, of course, related to social position and role, such as that of a CEO or a program leader. Other power use forms center on the intrinsic capacity or characteristics of the power user. The informal organization phenomenon gets its genesis from these personality factors (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970) and from which in-the-middle leaders derive their most effective influence.

Power relationships are asymmetrical (Homans, 1950). That is, one party must be dependent upon another person, or power is not in play. (If one participant is totally powerless, the need for power is obviated.) This dependence can include tangible or intangible values or psychological status factors. Similarly, if both participants have exactly the same amount of power, its use is moot. The inner leader’s ability to influence another is a function of the potential to dominate another person through control of those tangible or intangible resources desired by that person (Szilagyl and Wallace, 1983). Changes in the situation alter the nature of the power relationship and the strength and utility of the leader’s power.

Individuals both control and are controlled by others in their relationships, and the nature of these relationships shift over time and circumstance. Power is only exercised in situations where scarce resources are needed to achieve of desired results (Allen et al., 1979). That is, power does not concentrate around abundance. Those people are dominant who control the more scarce or critical ideas, attitudes, assets, or other aspects of the organization’s work. Thus, power accrues to those with information, skills, and resources or other critical contingencies, especially when other alternatives or alternate sources of supply are lacking. Salencik and Pfeffer (1977) suggest that critical contingencies, also defined in scarcity terms, determine the sources and extent of power used.

People (and groups) differ in the strength of their capacity to provide needed, scarce resources appropriate to the critical contingencies (important elements) of the organization’s life. Inner leaders who are expert in controlling the critical situational contingencies have a better chance at getting their way than those who do not. Indeed, because of their placement in functional specialist and program leadership roles, inner leaders often have an advantage in gaining this kind of power potential.

Personal Factors of the Power Dynamics Model

We use power in situations where we must choose among alternatives. A power situation must include people who are free to act to achieve desired


results. People engaged in power use must think the situation is sufficiently important or value the potential result or the potential interaction sufficiently to expend energy to engage in relationships on this issue. Finally, a power situation includes people who are competent enough to have some potential to succeed. When these factors are present, people engage in power behavior. Some of these personal factors, as they apply to the Num- ber Two leader, include the following.

Power is the freedom to move, to act. Freedom to act defines power (OBrian and Banech, 1969). Power use asks individuals to act in ways that achieve their will in the face of opposing wills. Freedom, independence, dominance, and dependence are all power-tinted ideas also implicit in the structure of organized groups. Whenever individuals are brought together to accomplish some planned activity, the power process is active. As inner leaders gain control over scarce and needed materials, time, or attention, they have power because they command resources others desire, including friendship, rewards, experience, and information (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970). Kotter (1977) confirms that it is primarily because of the dependence top leaders have on their deputies to insure that needed work gets done or for information, that inner leaders can exercise power. Whether they use it for group or personal goal attainment depends on the individual deputies’ values.

Power implies commitment to the desired result enough to spend needed energy to achieve it. Commitment is a state of being in which people become bound to a particular action or set of actions by a belief system that sustains those actions and our own involvement (Rubinoff, 1968). In this sense, leaders activate power as they commit to a particular outcome that is more important than alternative results (Bacherach and Lawler, 1986). Nyberg (1981) concurs that power is instrumental to inner leaders in achieving their desired results. Power arises out of a felt need (important enough to cause use of energy) and a mechanism (the control over resources needed by others) that allows for possible amelioration of that need (Kipnis et al., 1980).

Power also flows out of competence. Competence involves ability to function in interpersonal situations successfully using the skills of comrnu- nication, persuasion, manipulation, and others implied in human interaction. Competence, the ability to respond appropriately in a situation, is an aspect of power. It implies the need for Number Twos to gain expertise in the task or process areas of value to the group. It also means proficiency in acquiring and using power.

Power Use Is an Action Process

Power originates in the leader’s ability to take needed action to achieve desired results or to withhold action. It is a dynamic, interactive phenome-


non. It is manifest in the unusual (Kanter, 1979). Internal deputies use power to attain goals unlike the formally expressed goals set by their top leaders. They act in unusual ways, seek unusual goals, and use unusual methods to insure that their own personal or corporate desires are made real. The power model closely resembles that of inner leadership. Both function outside the usual organizational mode.

Summary

A descriptive model such as the one described here (originally proposed by Fairholm, 1993) must make some compromise with total accuracy. Power, like any other social interactive process, is complex and multifac- eted. The political power process in organizations is a dynamic, interactive, perishable process that is effective in the moment of use and not so much in its mere potential. Apart of all organizational life, it is implicit in the idea of division of labor and in hierarchial structure. It permeates social intercourse where people interact in more or less intimate relationships to influence others to behave in desired ways. It is, therefore, a common element of organizational action. Inner leaders will find continual opportunity to sharpen their power use skills in every contact they make in the group and with relevant stakeholders. Effective use, however, is conditioned by the factors discussed next.

USING POWER IN THE ORGANIZATION

Failure to exercise power can result in its loss. Conversely, the use of power tends to increase power (Wagner and Swanson, 1979). In fact, even the mere perception by others of our failure to use power (whether true or not) can result in a deterioration of support and a loss of followers. Using one’s power imprudently also can erode power and the support of others necessary to its continuance. Used judiciously, however, it increases or at least maintains extant power levels. Used inappropriately or not at all, that power already held is decreased or diluted. Interior leaders need to factor into their behavior the following issues associated with effective power use.

Power Permeates Our Lives

Power is omnipresent in corporate decision making. It is an essential element in resource allocation, conflict resolution, competition, planning, staff selection, and the whole range of leadership, management, supervisory and followership tasks. “Power in use” is merely organizational dynamics, the customary action of people in relationships. It is critical in selection of key staff and of formal and informal incentive systems, promotion actions,


and reorganization decisions and in the development, flow, and use of information needed by organizational members. Power is the critical difference between the inner leader who seeks to control the conduct of the individual follower and the group and the inner leader who exercises control over the results they achieve (Fairholm, 1993).

No one group or individual has exclusive rights to exercise power; it is a part of every group member’s behavior. Ameasure of skill in its use is, nevertheless, central to any significant accomplishment. Leaders-both top and in-the-middle-seek to exercise power for a variety of reasons. Kipnis, Schmidt, and Wilkinson (1980) produced a list of some of these reasons. Their list included the following kinds of reasons relevant to inner leadership: (1) to receive help in the job, (2) to assign work to a target of power, (3) to acquire benefits from the target of power, (4) to aid in improving the target’s performance, and (5) to initiate change. Others have added additional reasons, including (6) for the fun of it (Mueller, 1970) and (7) to meet ego needs (Adler, 1981).

Expectations and Power Use. Inner leaders have certain expectations of their members, such as being on the job during certain hours, exhibiting a certain level of quality and quantity of work, loyalty, and appropriate appearance (White, 1990). Similarly, stakeholders have certain expectations of the inner leader. Followers may expect to gain work experience, security, and advancement; to make friends and form social relationships; and to receive pay for their efforts. When either the Number Twos’ or the followers’ expectations are not satisfied adequately by the other parties, resistance develops. Failure to resolve expectation problems may culminate in separa- tion of the individual from the organization. Assuredly, it will cause waste, anomie, and dissatisfaction.

Erratic, short-term, unplanned, or haphazard use of power in these situations may well introduce new problems. They may produce side effects that are worse than the original problem. Power use for the sake of power use is not necessarily effective and can be dysfunctional. Political infighting is a reality in organizations. The issue is whether the Number Two leader can deal effectively with the power issues and situations that, in truth, make up organizational life.

Important Factors in Successftrl Power Use. Because power is so much a part of social intercourse, it is difficult to isolate factors most conducive to its successful use. Power use is possible in any circumstance. The following nine situational factors listed next aid its successful use by inner leaders. In- suring the presence of these factors in the culture can increase the inner leader’s relative power in the group and foster its productive use.

Discretion. Power is most easily used in situations that allow discretion and flexibility (Kantor, 1977).

Centrality. Being close to the center of activity enhances power use (Korda, 1975).


Exchange. The power situation is a social exchange. Creating a situation where both parties have something to give and some expectation of potential attractive results facilitates effective power use (Michner and Schwartfeger, 1972; Molm, 1990).

Status Vis-&vis Superiors. Intimate contact with people superior in the hierarchy and

Conformance to Group Norms. Leaders who personify group norms are more power-

Legitimacy. People accepted as legitimate or rightful authorities are more powerful

Association. Power use can be more effective if power targets see the inner leader as associated with other like-minded people.

Personal Status. As Number Twos are held in high esteem, they are more powerful than those with lower status (Bacharach and Lawler, 1986).

Personal Characteristics. Personal attributes like integrity, commitment, high energy use, interest, skill, and personal or professional attractiveness are associated with the successful exercise of power (Mechanic, 1962).

influence with superiors is effective in successful power use (Bass, 1981).

ful than those who do not (Cavanaugh, Moberg, and Velasques, 1981).

than those who are not (Falbo, New, and Gaines, 1987).

Limits of Power Use

Success in achieving desired results in the face of opposition is a function of individual will and control and the imaginative use of available resources. Nevertheless, power use is constrained by a variety of factors in the situation and in the character of participants. Leaders are constrained by whether they see it as an end or only as instrumental to other ends. Per- sonal characteristics or physical appearance also impacts our effective power use. Position held in the hierarchy is significant, as is socioeconomic status, the size of the group, and the nature of the task. Such constraints potentially limit inner leaders as they consider if, how, and when to use their personal power to secure their goals within the group. Overcoming potential constraints is a mark of success as a power user and as a leader.

Resistance to Power Use

Power use occurs when at least one participant in a relationship differs with others on some issue. That person (or group) must use power to get what they want out of the relationship. When this objective causes the object of the inner leader’s use of power to lose something of value, resistance often results. The act of applying power often produces a countervailing power use. The intent of this resistance is to destroy or limit the power base or bases of the original power user, to wrest power bases held by power users from them, or to disengage from the relationship.

Resistance sometimes results from the power targets’ inability to respond appropriately, they may fail to respond to power use because they


do not have the requisite skills, time, materials, or information needed to effect desired outcomes. Resistance also can result from an unwillingness to comply. In either case, the resistance is genuine and the impact on power users is similar: They must increase the force or scope of their power use or give up. Inner leaders need to understand that using power is a risk relationship. It can produce resistance and failure if improperly applied.

Sometimes inner leaders cannot bring enough power to bear to overcome follower resistance. For example, they may not have the means, as when a Number Two leader cannot guarantee a desired reward for needed performance. An inner leader who employs one means of power use often cannot thereafter employ some other form of power in the same situation. Thus, an inner leader whose base of power is authoritarian cannot easily also employ persuasion or influence within the same context.

Results of Power Use

Power is both an offensive and a defensive tool. Inner leaders (like everyone else) use power to realize desired behavior, attitudes, or attributes in others or in groups. They use power when they require any choice. Kotter’s (1977) work suggests that power use increases the speed of results attainment. Power use speeds up action in the group and hastens goal accomplishment for the Number Two at least. Kipnis (1976) also found that power use increased the assertiveness of power users. Power use has the potential for great good.

POWER USE STRATEGIES

Most organizations operate within some type of system that sanctions routine uses of power. It is useful to inner leaders’ success to make explicit (at least to themselves, but often to their followers as well) the nature of the extent of power-use sanction systems in organizations and the various power interventions that can be used. To meet these needs, Number Twos must develop a strategy of coping that employs power in all of its forms, using specific power tactics. A power strategy involves the planning and direction of power action programs. Power tactics are techniques, the specific means by which people attain their power goals. Both must be integrated into a strategic model guiding the leaders’ behavior.

Before inner leaders can effectively implement power techniques or tactics, they need to develop a strategic guideline. Typically, attempts to collapse power use into a few discrete strategies have used resources or bases of power as the desideratum. For example, consider the following definitions.

Weber’s (1968) classification of power exercised in organizations includes three groupings: traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal. One exercises traditional power against others, in one set of circumstances,


because people accept our commands as legitimate and justified when they conform to traditionally accepted patterns of behavior. Or, we use the power of personality or charisma. Or, Weber said, people may accept another's commands as authoritative because the action conforms to known law, rule, or policy: They view the rules on which the specific command is based as legal, rational, legitimate, and acceptable.

Etzioni (1961) distinguished between coercive power-power based on control over sanctions important to the target, remunerative power-control over important and needed resources usable as rewards for compliance, and normative power-control over ideas, ideals, values, goals, or approaches that have emotional appeal to others.

Power can be used also as a reactive strategy, that is, inner leaders can employ it as a response to some actual or assumed initial power play begun by another. It can also be proactive, employed as an initial ploy in a relationship. Power tactics can be rationalized within a strategy of openness or, conversely, it can be used unobtrusively. A persuasion strategy is another strategy commonly seen in routine uses of power (Fairholm, 1993). Simi- larly power canbe exercised according to our desire to persuade, induce, or constrain our target.

A final strategic orientation focuses on the targets of the leader 'S power politics. This three-part strategy emphasizes that organizational politics can be directed toward any participant in the organization and their bosses and colleagues, as well as subordinates. "Managing" the boss and peers is no less frequent than managing subordinates. Exercising power politics to get these several targets to comply with our wishes is all part of organizational politics and asks us to become experts in using different power strategies for each target (Fairholm, 1993).

Strategic orientation is, of course, a significant factor in applying power use. It is an evolving, creative dimension of the power dynamic. It is one the inner leader should not subscribe too closely too quickly. The several types of power use strategies reviewed here offer useful insights into the ways inner leaders can use power in contemporary organizational life. They do not offer definitive guidance as to which strategy will be absolutely effective in a given situation. Neither do they offer significant insights into specific behaviors people use to secure their desires in competition with bosses or peers.

Inner leaders must develop some strategy to rationalize power use tactics in their important contacts with their bosses and peers. The next chapter discusses inner leaders' use of the three-part power strategy of directing power differentially to three targets: subordinates, peers, and superiors. Since power use toward subordinate targets is the same whether employed by the inner leader or the CEO, the discussion focuses on the power tactics inner leaders use toward their bosses and their peers. Of course, inner leaders and all other people in relationships use all three strategic orientations.

Chapter 13

Sources of Power Inner Leaders M a y Draw On

The leader-follower relationship is essentially a voluntary one. Followers need not respond to the inner leader. Gaining the use of followers’ talent, time, and creativity means Number Two leaders must induce them to want to do what needs to be done. Inner leaders cannot force creativity, loyalty, or commitment among their peers, followers, or superiors. Followers freely give these essential aspects of collective success or they are not part of the process. They commit only as they want to do, based in large part on the leaders’ attributes and/or actions. Consequently, these follower capacities are relatively scarce in much of work life.

As recorded, the essence of power is control over needed and scarce resources. The more scarce the resource, the more useful it is as the basis for achieving its holder’s desires from others who want that commodity. The more of these scarce resources one controls, the more powerful one is in the eyes of persons in need. We can define resources as anything physical or psychological inner leaders own, control, or make available to others and valuable to them in meeting their perceived needs. To be useful for power purposes, the object of the power user‘s action must see the resources as available only (or most economically) from the power holder. In effect, power comes to anyone perceived by others as having desired resources in some kind of monopoly (Kipnis, 1976).


Historically, the literature distinguishes five kinds of power (French and Raven, 1959). As applied to the power behavior of inner leaders, these familiar power bases can be defined as follows.

Reward power, based on the inner leader's ability to provide benefits to a power target.

Coercive power, based on the leader's ability to provide punishing effects to the power target for noncompliance.

Expert power, based on the special skill, ability, and/or knowledge of the leader that

Referent power, based on desires others have to identify favorably with inner leaders, the power target would like to have or use.

or with what they symbolize. Legitimate power, based on the feeling others have that an inner leader has the right

and authority to exert influence over their activities. This feeling results from acceptance of the person's grant of power by the formal organization or through historical precedence.

These power sources have dominated thinking about power sources since their presentation in 1959. While useful as a foundation for understanding the sources of power, they nonetheless limit our thinking about and research into alternative power sources inner leaders can tap. In fact, the French and Raven typology is inconsistent and limiting (Patchen, 1974). Patchen points out that the five bases of power are not described consistently. For example, reward and coercion power are described in resource terms. Referent power is couched in terms of the motivation of the power target, while expert power refers to characteristics of the influencer. Legiti- mate power is described in terms of the attitudes of the power target. The French and Raven model can be better described as different aspects of power, not sources of power.

Nevertheless, their work has dominated power research and has, until recently, limited further research. Many theories and empirical studies of power ignore other sources of power than French and Raven's five. The observable facts are that inner leaders gain, maintain, and expand power when they can control any of these five or an extended array of other sources of power. The sources listed next are those that Number Twos have used in the past that current inner leaders may want to consider as they interact with stakeholders within the corporation. They are available in any organization. Analysis of these sources of power reaffirms some of the literature on power foundations and adds many options inner leaders can consider.

These other sources are critical in rounding out and completing the true character of any working power system. The examples of power sources described here are not typically presented in the literature. They are especially useful for inner leaders to consider in their use of power in their relationships in the corporation at every level. This inventory of power sources

Sources of Power 145

materially expands the effective power use options articulated by French and Raven (1959) and available to the inner leaders.

CONTROL OVER REWARDS

Power flows to the individual who can provide desired rewards to others. Number Twos’ capacity to provide benefits to followers allows them to control their behavior and achieve desired results to the extent of the follower’s need for that reward. Rewards can take the form of physical emolu- ment or psychological support. Rewarding someone with a promotion in return for desired performance is an example of this power base, but it is not always an option for inner leaders. They can, however, dispense their praise, smile, attention, or association to a follower in return for compliance. These psychological rewards can be very powerful, sometimes more valuable to followers than promotions or even pay raises.

Use of psychological rewards is more common in people in the inner reaches of the hierarchy. Deputies are less able to gain control over physical or monetary rewards useful in organizational task-accomplishment con- tests. They typically must rely on nonmaterial or noninstitution-based resources. Besides their own energy and skill to do the work, inner leaders can marshal recognition, esteem, and friendship rewards to induce bosses and other coworkers to behave in desired ways.

CRITICALITY

As Number Twos gain control over critical information, time, expertise, or other resources needed by the organization or any member, they will be more powerful than if they control only marginal or noncritical resources. Whatever resources they control that become critical at the time of need becomes a source of power for the inner leader. Implicit here is the idea that power flows to those who control needed, scarce resources-material, psychological, or other. Dennis Wrong (1979) lists a wide array of resources useful in this sense, including money, personnel, presence, popularity, legitimacy, legality, and solidarity.

Johns (1983) found that before people expend energy in power behavior, they must feel they control some strategic contingency. Corporate Number Two leaders exercise power when they or the group they lead perceives that they can control events or resources crucial to others. Criticality is equivalent in many respects to importance. These inner leaders exert power to the extent of the importance (criticality) others attach to the resources they control (Rubinoff, 1968). The power of the inner leaders is dominant to the degree that their contributions are seen as important to the group or to individual group members. Whether the other people desire the inner lead-


ers’ energy, material things, or expertise, to that degree Number Twos have power over them.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

Bierstadt (1950) says, that power also derives from structured relationships in which people combine individual strength to meet group goals. James MacGregor Burns (1978) sees the power of CEOs as deriving from the collective power of their followers. In the final analysis, goal accomplishment comes as a powerful individual mobilizes and transforms followers, who in turn transform their leaders. For Burns, social interaction is a base of power. It is a multiplying of individual power.

Inner leaders multiply their power as they collaborate with coalitions of independently powerful people and thus multiply strengths to attain a sufficient critical mass to achieve desired results. Power can flow from such group solidarity as much as from exceptional (charismatic) people. Power is potential also in any organizational work system. Coenen and Hofstra (1988) reports that leaders of internal corporate information systems are becoming instruments for the exercise of power. Controllers of information systems may design and implement them for various reasons. When the reason is to effect change in the organization or among its members, the information system becomes a source of power for that interior leader. Social power, like traditional positional and personal (charismatic) power, can let the internal information system leader gain his or her desired results.

Power can also accrue in mere numbers of people. Inner leaders who take actions that make them part of a dominant coalition in the organization are powerful. They can control group behavior from this position. This form of social power was clearly illustrated in the formation of labor unions. Perhaps the main sources of power in emergent unions was in the mere fact of numbers-a germane coalition. On at least one level, the amount of power held by inner leaders is in direct proportion to the size of the group represented (Szilagyl and Wallace, 1983). Rule by the majority is a common form of political government and extends to most social and economic institutions as well. It is a part of our cultural value system, and it is operationalized in everyday behavior. Number Twos who proceed with their goal-directed behavior without a solid foundation of support from at least a (power) majority of the members of the applicable organization risk failure.

A PERCEPTION OF LEGITIMACY

Ultimate authority to command may lie with the CEO, but each Number Two (or Three or Four, etc.) also has a grant of institutional authority, another source of his or her power in relationship with others. Even if that


grant is meager, the mere perception of legitimacy in others gives the holder power over them to impose obedience. The perception of legitimacy in the mind of the target of power is critical. Unless the target sees the Num- ber Two leader as having a legitimate right to command, whatever actual authority is resident in the leader is moot. No power use is possible in such a situation. Legitimacy unaccepted is not legitimacy at all, regardless of the official nature of the delegation of right (Barnard, 1968).

Legitimacy may come from delegation from the organization; acceptance of the delegation comes from those affected by it. Regardless of the nature and force or the origin of the grant of authority, the mere perception by others of the leader’s legitimacy bestows capacity to control information, material resources, and esteem symbols held by the legitimizing institution. Inner leaders can hold this base of power independent of the formal legitimizing structure. Or they can be a part of the legitimate corporate foundation certain numbers of the organization occupy vis-&vis others in the organization.

IDENTIFICATION WITH POWERFUL OTHERS

Association or affiliation with other people that their followers perceive as important can augment the power of an inner leader. This source of power can come from a personal relationship such as that of a deputy with the CEO. In this example, the deputy can achieve desired results because of the closeness perceived by organizational members between him or her and the CEO. Often the targets of the deputy’s power behavior cannot easily differentiate the deputy’s personal agenda from that of the CEO. In some instances, the deputy couches his or her instructions in terms or for- mats similar to those used by the top executive. Or, the actions requested conform to the overall pattern of action the CEO has issued in the past. In either situation, the target obeys because of the perceived identification of the deputy with the CEO, not because of intrinsic power resources controlled by this inner leader.

Identification can be actual or merely perceived by follower or it can be symbolic. In-the-middle leaders can acquire or increase their power by ad- hering to the ideals, norms, or goals stakeholders value. Identification with ideas, values, methods, or goals of famous, wise, attractive, or powerful people can add to the inner leader’s perceived power in the same way that direct association does.

EXPERTISE

A prime source of power for French and Raven (1959) was expertise. It still is. The increasing complexity on the modern global organization and organizational growth and technological advances all suggest that this


power base will be increasingly important in the future. David Mechanic (1962) concluded that expertise becomes important as a base of power as the power use targets come to depend on the inner leader’s expertise for acts needed in the organization. This special and needed expertise can impact every one including the CEO in ways that make them all conform to the inner leader-expert’s wishes. Number Two leaders can, therefore, exert power beyond their official role in the organization in any direction-up, down and laterally.

USE OF POWER

The act of using power tends to increase one’s power (Wagner and Swanson, 1979). Failure to act or acting imprudently can erode power and the support of others necessary to its continuance. Even perceptions by others of an inner leader’s failure to use power (whether true or not) can result in an increase or a deterioration of dominance. Used judiciously, power increases or at least maintains Number Two’s power level.

PERSONAL DIFFERENCE

Aunique personality attracts and attractive people command the obedience of others. As Number Twos make themselves different from their colleagues (positively, but also negatively) they are more likely to be in the circle of influential cliques and have access to other influential people in the hierarchy. They are also more likely to have strong bonds with other people who are also attractive and with all those with whom these unique people interact. Whether the interaction is between the appealing deputy and those in key positions or between the individual and the masses, the bond is the same. One depends on the other. Followers depend on atypical Num- ber Two leaders to present their needs to those in higher echelons of the corporation or to satisfy those of their needs that the attractive person himself or herself can supply. In-the-middle leaders can use their personality to supply this need as well as top leaders can.

CENTRALITY

Strategic placement of the inner leader in the organization is also a basis of operational power use. Physical location in the center of activity, in the middle of work operations, or in relationship to powerful people adds to the development and effective use of power. Centrality is significant in power terms in both physical and social dimensions. Propinquity affects opportunities for interaction with others and control of information and materials (Mechanic, 1962).


Mechanic concluded that people can add to their power position by the simple fact of physically close association with key people, needed material, and social or psychological resources. He believed the best way for interior leaders to gain power is to control expertise, energy, information, or space and to form coalitions to multiply individual power. For him, the more central a person is in an organization structure or work process, the greater is his or her access to persons, information, and instrumentalities of power.

SUMMARY

Leading from the interior of the corporation is in part a task of building harmonious, collaborative work communities. The present team-building fad is a part of this, but there is more to it than just teaming. Effective Num- ber Twos remember that the leader-follower relationship is a voluntary one. The key to securing followers is a corporate (or subcorporate) organizational context where the power user and the target of that power use share common values and vision and seek the same or compatible goals. Followership can only take place in such a climate of mutual, coordinated action based on a common vision. These organizations place follower development as a high priority (Hunt and Gray, 1981), for, after all, power use is impossible without followers, and effective power use is impossible without convincing sources of power.


Chapter 14

Managing the Boss: Power Interventions That Work

All people use their personal and positional power to help them be personally successful on the job and in relationships with other members of their group(s). The world calls this behavior ofice politics. Power use is a political process, and office politics can be both good and bad, that is, helpful to the leader and/or the corporation or upsetting to their goals. Office politics can facilitate a Number Two’s objectives, or they can be a bar to the close cooperation needed for trusting relationships and/or can cause well-laid plans to come to nothing. Theory supports both of these perspectives, as does observation in the field of motivational dynamics (Fairholm, 1993).

It is one thing for the Number Two leader to know that power exists and is a part of a interactive dynamics in organizations. It is quite another to be able to make power work for him or her. People behave in organizations in ways that they intend to achieve their own goals. That they also acheve those of the corporation as a result of their action is, while important, often a secondary consideration. This basic fact of organizational life is entirely consistent with the ideas implicit in office politics and attendant power behavior. Analysis of organizational power behavior, its use, theory and ethics, takes on meaning as inner leaders see it applied in work situations that help them to achieve their goals.

At least two kinds of work situation lend themselves especially to inner leadership: power use in relationship with top leaders and its use with peers and colleagues. The inner leader’s use of power in relations with sub-


ordinates, the same as that practiced by CEOs, is amply explained in management textbooks and so is not covered here. The focus of the following sections are on the power politics of in-the-middle leaders, first as in relationships with superiors and then as with other peer leaders.

The conventional wisdom says that power is directed downward. The fact is that it flows in all directions! In fact, some of the most important power relationships of inner leaders are those with their top leaders. These relationships are critical since success here determines deputy leaders’ overall success in their portion of the corporation. This kind of interaction defines much of office politics. Subordinate leaders’ power behaviors toward the CEO are crucial in attaining the Number Twos’ agenda. Their uses of power in these situations may be less explicit, direct, and overt than are their tactics toward other segments of the organization (Porter, Allen, and Angle, 1981), but their successful use is critical.

The notion held by some that seconds in command are powerless-or even significantly less powerful than their top leaders-does not stand up to experience. The CEO literally cannot be successful with out the energy, skill, talent, information, and willingness of their interior leader subordinates. This fact places inner leaders in a favorable power position vis-a-vis the CEO. Too often a CEO find himself or herself in thrall to an expert deputy, a key program leader, or a functional or subject-matter specialist. Always, CEOs are dependent on others to do the actual work of the corporation.

This dependence relationship can account for some of the behavior we see in organizations where Number Twos seem to direct organization affairs in ways not explainable by their role and official, formal prerogatives. Inner leaders can be as powerful as CEOs in that both can control scarce resources needed by the other. The resources controlled may differ, but the relationship is similar. The exact balance seems to be a function of the situation and the personal capacities of the individuals involved as much as it is a function of the formal organization structure, hierarchy, and work systems.

Second-level leaders trying to ”direct” the behavior of their CEOs face a situational context that differs in some real ways from other relationships (Kantor, 1979). In these relations, inner leaders tend to concentrate on using personal skills, attributes, and capacities to attract the top boss to their point of view and to change the boss’s behavior. Deputies normally do not control as many organizational sanction mechanisms or legitimizing resources as their bosses. They rely less on force and authority power forms and more on manipulation, persuasion, threat, promise, and influence forms.

POWER TACTICS TOWARD LEADERS

Inner leaders can and do routinely use a wide range of power behaviors in their group lives. Some appear to have more relevance when used in rela-

Managing the Boss 153

tionship to superiors; some are most effective with peers, and others with subordinates. Six power tactics are commonly used in relations with top leaders. Each is defined below along with some illustrative examples. These six tactics are adapted from research by Fairholm (1993) and rely largely on aspects of personal character rather than prerequisites of position. They are often employed in indirect, unobtrusive-even co- vert-ways. The boss is often unaware that power is in play. They describe specific actions or sets of behaviors inner leaders might use to secure desired behavior from their bosses and thus represent both tactical approaches to effective power use in this dimension of their group life and skills needed for success in the middle of today’s corporate cultures.

Proactivity

Proactive power use is a process of doing something first and of seeking permission afterward. It can be formally defined as taking innovative action to secure personally desired results. Merrell (1979) describes proactivity in terms of assertiveness. Assertive people, he contends, assume a dynamic posture; one involving initiation of action to cause something to happen. Proactivity appears to be commonly used in inner leaders’ relationships with their bosses. They also often use this tactic in relations with both peers or subordinates, but the predominant target of use is toward those in superior positions. Proactivity tends to bypass official system constraints as well as psychological resistance, aggression, and hostility. It reorders internal relationships by changing the power dynamic environment, usually before most participants are aware that a change is occurring. It is often seen as a fait accompli, a situation in which the deputy presents the boss with a completed decision or action and seeks support and en- dorsement after the fact.

The proactive individual acts rather than reacts. Proactive behavior takes many forms. An example is seen when a field manager who does not have the authority to, say, create a new position makes internal staff changes so that someone begins to function in an acting capacity in that position; after that proves useful, the manager then requests validation from headquarters. It is also seen in purchasing actions taken without prior au- thorization, informal internal reorganizations, initiation of new programs, and similar actions. It is a part of blaming or attacking behaviors directed toward other persons in the organization in an effort to reduce competition for scarce resources (such as promotions, status, budgets, or space). Proactive action often takes inner leaders outside the normal organization structures or channels of communication in securing their desired results. Use of proactivity often produces significant accomplishment (McMurray, 1973; Merrell, 1979).


Using Outside Experts

Number Two leaders sometimes use someone not connected with the immediate work group to help convince coworkers or the CEO that their proposed decision or alternative is the correct one. The outside expert must be someone respected or admired by the power target(s). Selection of an expert whose recommendations can be expected to correspond with the inner leader’s objectives can have great influence on both workers and bosses and can predetermine decision results.

The outside expert is useful in any group in power terms because of the respect and deference others have for his or her special expertise. This is an open tactic, one easily recognized by the CEO and other observers. Never- theless, while the fact of use is easily known, the expert’s professional bias or philosophical leaning may not be. Hence, use of this tactic is felt by some to be unethical, even though it is effective. Other factors to be considered in deciding to use this tactic is its use is often expensive. Appropriate experts may not always be readily available. The timing of introducing the expert is also often a key factor, and arrangements to employ experts take time that is not always available. Finally, to be useful as a power tactic, the outside expert’s special capacities must be relevant to the needs of the individual or group.

Selection of an expert known to favor a given approach, philosophy, or technology can insure that perspective will be reflected in the recommendations ultimately given. Experts can be regularly established consultants, persons with expert status within the larger organization, or experts from any of the various organizations in the contextual environment of the host organization. Regardless of the source, if the expert’s expertise is recognized as legitimate, members of the inner leader ’S group will be influenced by resulting recommendations. Although the force of the influence of the expert may vary over time, while it is recognized it represents a power tool inner leaders can use to enhance compliance by their CEO and others.

Displaying Charisma

Charismatic uses of power are based on emotional appeal, an almost vis- ceral connection between the powerful and the relatively powerless, and involve interior leaders in any of a wide variety of behaviors intended to elicit follower compliance. Sometimes Number Two leaders can garner power by fostering an almost unconscious identification in others with their ideas. Using charisma relies on inner leaders’ personal traits of character, their special presence, charm, and attractiveness as well as their unique approaches or methods of dealing with personnel or program elements in their relationships. It is based in power concepts such as persuasion, threat, promise and/or influence.


The success of this behavior set, psychological concept, is most clearly seen in the way people look up to charismatic people. Charisma-personal attractiveness-defines a part of the spiritual nature of an individual. Fol- lowers recognizing this spiritual characteristic feel empowered, loyal, devoted, and obedient to the charismatic person. This tactical power behavior set involves users in inducing support because others are attracted to something about their personality or about their ideas or ideals. That "something" may be a magnetic personality or a gift for persuasion, or it may be that an inner leader arouses confidence in others to the extent that they want to comply. Some charismatic leaders attract followers because they make followers feel stronger about themselves. They define a work situation in which followers are presented with a goal or task and with feelings that they are capable of being successful in its performance.

Many Number Twos make use of their special attributes and traits of personality in their relations with others. They employ charisma most often in relations with top executives, finding it also useful in peer contacts, but not in contacts with employees. It is not needed in these latter organizational relationships since other, more sure approaches are available (Fairholm, 1993). Yukl(l981) lists several factors that, he says, can be used to assess a leader 'S charisma. Thus, inner leaders have been observed man- ifesting the following behaviors.

behaving in trusting ways showing followers how to make their goals congruent with theirs fostering obedience to the deputy's instructions fostering affection for themselves challenging followers to high performance relating follower task accomplishment to the follower's ideals, values, or aspirations showing followers how doing what they want will contribute to group goals at-

developing emotional attachments with followers recruiting people over whom they can exert emotional impact developing communications and persuasive skills-including story-telling

personifying group goals dramatizing themselves being assertive articulating and living an acceptable moral standard

tainment

skills

These behaviors illustrate only partially the range of options in using this tactic that are open to Number Twos.


Rationalization

Anything a Number Two does to consciously engineer reality to justify decision results or specific points of view can be included in the rationalization power tactic. The rationalization tactic uses language or symbols to construct a particularized view of reality that legitimizes the user’s decisions. Pelz (1952) defines it as manipulating the process by which our action is given meaning and purpose. Number Two leaders rationalize by projecting a desired perspective, one that assumes that their (not necessarily the true) orientation or actions are accepted and valued (Nyberg, 1981).

Rationalization techniques run the gamut from education to propa- ganda to outright deception. Even such a lofty activity as theory building is a rationalization. It involves describing reality from a new perspective and/or introducing new constructs of reality that emphasize one or a few elements over other possibilities. This power tactic is also seen when someone uses words to give a particular sense of meaning and focus to events or facts. Budget justifications and program planning rationales are examples of using language to inculcate ideals, values, and overall points of view among decision makers that foreclose alternative constructions of reality. Of course, misrepresenting reality can also be part of this tactic, but so can motivation and inspiration (Pfeffer, 1977).

Some of the ways rationalization is used operationally are described next. They help illustrate the impact of this set of power behaviors.

Persuasion. Persuasion can be effective in situations where both parties care about the result in similar ways. Persuasion is an egalitarian technique that leaves intact the free choice of the person persuaded. Persuasion is effective, requires little expenditure of resources and, given a skillful inner leader, involves little risk.

Structuring Reality. Structuring reality can include selectively presenting factual material and/or physical objects to emphasize one perspective over other possible perspectives. It runs the gamut from selective emphasis to distortion to presentation of false material. At one level, it is logical to say that all people, all of the time, select from available information those items they favor and present them to others as true. Editing out ”irrelevant” materials is one form; another is selective use of statistics, directing only some information to power targets, or outright lying.

Emotional Appeal. When we present information in a way to appeal to the emotions and sentiments of our targets, we use the rationalization tactic. The key to this technique is linking desired performance to a power target’s value system or emotional makeup. Much of informal inner leadership behavior includes this power tactic.

Humor. Humor includes actions Number Twos take to cause the proposals, ideas, or values of another to be rejected in favor of their own by getting group members to laugh at, ridicule, or scorn the other person’s proposals. If respect is lost, so is much of someone’s power. While power may abhor a


vacuum, it equally abhors scorn. Without respect, dominance cannot be maintained. Getting others to laugh at or denigrate in any way other’s proposals that we oppose is another way to exercise power in the situation. While humor is a risk tactic, by using it early on in discussions with the CEO, the effective Number Two can reduce the boss’s ”trial balloon” to ir- relevance by using humor.

Using Ambiguity

By definition, ambiguous situations are situations of multiple, chaotic interactions where understood norms of human interaction are broken down and new standards have not been solidified. Ambiguity can be opportunity for the enterprising Number Two. It may be difficult to garner credit for good work in ambiguous situations, but such times allow them visability and opportunity for doing the work they want to do and for avoiding other work. Ambiguous situations allow Number Twos to assume power and authority for accomplishment in ways and to degrees not possible in a highly structured environment.

Sometimes keeping the situation ambiguous allows in-the-middle leaders to maintain a central position in the communications systems and flexibility in negotiation and decision making. By keeping communications unclear they can often find ways to attain their objectives in the face of opposition from the boss. Using ambiguity allows for several alternative constructions of a particular situation or decision event that, in effect, keeps open a choice that would be closed off were the problem, situation, or language to be made explicit.

Whenever deputy leaders can do something and then say in effect, ”Boss, you didn’t tell me I couldn’t do it,” they are using the ambiguity tactic. Thus, it is to deputies’ advantage to have instructions from the CEO be given in explicit terms when they want to do what the boss wants them to do. It is also to their advantage to attempt to keep the orders vague when the boss is likely to oppose the deputy’s preferred course of action. Ambig- uous goals, jurisdictions, performance criteria, or instructions allow deputy leaders to function independently.

Building a Favorable Image

Building a favorable image refers to attempts by inner leaders to create or change the perception others have of their skills, capacities, values, or attitudes to enhance their power among colleagues, including their bosses. Akin to displaying charisma, it builds power through conscious and delib- erate augmentation of the personal resources they bring to their relationships (Bass, 1981). Persons using this tactic also find it useful in getting peers to do what they want them to do.


When inner leaders enjoy the prestige, regard, or respect of their bosses, they are powerful. Prestige can come from charm, talent, expertise, control over key information, or other sources; but the result is that people with prestige are listened to first and their message is considered more fully than that of those without it. Number Twos who use this tactic may project a particularized image ranging from the honest “nice guy” to the ruthless, scheming tyrant; or they may appear confident, confrontational, develop a flair for the dramatic, or acquire a quality of wisdom. The methods are as varied as the individuals involved, but they all have in common the aim of substituting an emotional response to the leader’s personality for rational action by followers.

Any attempt to induce another to accept inner leaders’ decisions or positions on an issue because they ask, as an alternative to independent analysis, is an example of this tactic. It involves the use of aspects of personality, but goes further than the commonly accepted implication of that word. Any of a wide variety of techniques to change others’ perceptions qualifies as a use of the ”building a favorable image” tactic. For example, one middle-level unit leader attempted to improve her image as a hard worker and creative system designer by requiring all unit reports and systems change recommendations to be distributed only over her signature, regardless of who did the work. Her image among higher managers, at least, was enhanced by this move. Similarly, another unit leader insured that external reports, including news items reporting agency action, always included his name as the ”announcer” of the innovation, implying a direct role in creating the changes reported. Publicity programs that advertise the accomplishments of one unit over other units in the organization imply that more power is resident in that unit and its key people. Image is enhanced-the inner leader’s own and his or her unit’s reputation-for those who effectively place their unit in the forefront of action.

Alternatively, an inner leader can develop and project an image as a can- tankerous, dogmatic advocate against the prevailing position on a set of issues. As this image is generalized, the CEO will come to realize that any attempt to promulgate a decision within that range of issues will incur the wrath of the subordinate leader and may mitigate (or forestall) the action the CEO wants to take.

POWER TACTICS USED WITH PEERS

Much of the thinking about organizational power interaction concerns hierarchial relationships. However, interpersonal interaction also occurs between peers, that is, between people in coordinate-lateral-relationships within the corporation. A peer relationship is one between persons who do not have a clear, unambiguous hierarchial relationship defining their association. Typically, one leader does not report directly to another.


Peers need not be equal in power or capacity or resources. All a peer relationship requires is a nonhierarchial formal or informal relationship (Szilagyl and Wallace, 1983). When someone tries to induce another person at the same relative hierarchial level to do something, we have an example of peer power use. Similarly, when members of a group (either formal or informal) try to socialize a new member with habitual patterns of behavior, accepted mores, or group values, we have another example of peer power at work (Fairholm, 1993).

Because of this structural relationship parameter, inner leaders' power behavior in this situation is not ordinarily characterized by force or authority forms of power. Neither do their peer power relationships typically use persuasion forms. Instead, they rely more on indirection and subtlety. The fact is that power use among peers relies most often on techniques and sets of behavior characterized by manipulation, threat, or influence forms of power.

Peers are interdependent and therefore relate to other peers in ways that recognize this interdependence. That is, they exert power through the forming of coalitions and cooptation of competitors. They also selectively allocate resources needed by others in exchange for desired behavior from them. They take risks. Peer leaders do not use rational, logical tactics as much as their bosses do. Interestingly, neither do peer leaders typically make use of power behavior that relies on personal attributes, capacities, or qualities. Middle-level deputy leaders engage in power use to get other deputy leaders to behave in desired ways, by using "trade-off" techniques.

This section describes and analyzes significant peer-to-peer power tactics.

Allocating Resources

Using this tactic involves inner leaders in allocation of needed resources to others in exchange for their compliance. This is a common phenomenon in the modern corporation. It is implicit in routine assignment of duties and responsibilities, budgeting, information processing, networking, and similar organizational activities. Allocation of needed resources (both psychological and material) makes up much of internal unit leaders' work. Kipnis (1976) says resources may be institutional (controlled by virtue of position held in the organization) or personal (fashioned out of the unique qualities of each). Providing or withholding of resources places the controller in a power position relative to those who need/desire the controlled resource.

Examples of use of this power tactic in peer contacts are common. They range from giving or withholding needed or desired space, material, information, financial resources, skills, cooperation, or work assignments to allowing a competitor to participate in decision or policy activity or have access to powerful, influential, or attractive people. These and similar resources are actions routinely used by a peer leader in gaining compliance


from another. Several kinds of resources are identifiable as they relate to Number Two leaders’ uses of power.

Use ofInfirmation. Control of access to information by the conscious ac- celeration, impedance, or frustration of the official or unofficial information flow to specific individuals or units can help or hinder achievement of unit leader’s goals. For example, when a Number Two executive delays information without altering its form or content, buries critical information in a mass of extraneous data, or intentionally distorts (ranging from lying to judicious structuring of information to emphasize a given perspective), he or she is allocating that resource. This is a common form this power tactic takes in the workplace.

Use ofFinancial Resources. Control over financial resources is also a common version of this tactic. The budget allocation procedure is one form of this tactic. So is requiring individuals to submit to repeated and extended reviews, audits, and other controls to insure compliance with the power user’s goals. Much of the so-called red tape we see in large bureaucratic corporations may be due as much to an inner leader’s desire to accentuate his or her power as it is to the cumbersomeness of procedures.

Use ofPhysical Facilities. Making use of items in the physical environment such as dress, furniture, office size and location, work space layout, and other properties or features of the physical workplace can add or detract from others’ perceptions of the power of in-the-middle leaders. Tangible objects the inner leader possesses as well as symbolic items also fit this tactic.

Use of Energy. Another resource helpful in gaining and maintaining power has to do with the personal energy demands on their followers’ Number Twos are willing or able to bring to bear in the situation to gain their desired outcomes. Obviously, all work activity takes physical and psychological energy. As inner leaders structure relationships with stakeholders that increase or decrease the amount of physical or psychological energy demanded of followers, they are merely using a little-thought-of resource to induce others to do what they want done.

Quid Pro Quo

Peers spend much of their power-related time in exchange relationships where one person has comparably more of a desired resource and is willing to trade it for specified peer behavior or support. The quid pro quo tactic epitomizes this kind of power behavior. It involves a wide variety of efforts to negotiate trade-offs with others to secure desired results from peers. The best example of quid pro quo is in direct bargaining, where individuals use needs and resources to negotiate a mutual agreement. Labor negotiations are an example of this kind of behavior. Other examples include budget negotiations, policy development, and implementation and similar kinds of intraorganizational balancing of resources held by different parties at inter-


est. People in organized relationships often offer a quid pro quo for desired performance to insure task performance by peers.

The quid pro quo power tactic also uses nonmaterial, emotionally based resources as negotiating chips. Accordingly, attention is a negotiable resource, as is time or skill. So, too, are association, recognition, and praise or blame useful forms of this tactic. Indeed, whenever a Number Two leader does a favor for another person in exchange for a specific action by that other person, quid pro quo is in play.

Forming Coalitions

Organizations are coalitions of interdependent people. Coalition building involves allying with certain members of the organization and, sometimes, with persons outside the organization to add to the perceived influence of the Number Two. Coalitions combine the power that people with similar concerns have on an issue, problem, or concern. Examples of this power tactic include office cliques, informal groups or associations of people, groups of people who belong to professional associations, and other work group clusters. Coalitions are fragile. Typically, they are formed specifically for each given power issue. Several variations of this tactic can be seen.

One approach involves conscious efforts by inner leaders to merit the support of followers for a decision or action (Rosen and Lippitt, 1961). This can involve such disparate items as ”being one of the guys” (a gender-neu- tral term), developing mentor-protege relationships, or offering support in return for personal loyalty. Similarly, networks of peers or colleagues used to multiply power to achieve the power user’s aims are also common manifestations of the coalition tactic. Even developing friendships with peers is helpful in securing their support for the leader’s outcomes and can be considered in This connection. Coalitions with individuals and groups outside the immediate organization are also common (Bass, 1981).

Coopting Opposition Members

A kind of coalition building, coopting attempts to add key individuals from opposing forces or potentially powerful individuals whose support would aid in goal attainment or whose opposition would hamper realization of goals to the inner leader’s decision group. Coopting such a rival has the effect that the coopted person becomes connected in the public mind with the position and rationale of his or her former opponent and begins to defend it (or at least not oppose it so vigorously) in public forums. An example of coopting opposition members would be to try to involve constituency group leaders in policy formation forums of an organization serving that constituency.


In their new group, coopted peer leaders now have information, perspective, and logic that they otherwise would not have. They become a part of the new group, and in this new role they become publicly associated in some ways with what they formerly opposed. They acquire a stake in the organization they join. As members of the former opposition group, they are placed in a position where they must now justify their opposition in an environment antagonistic to their former stand on the issues. It also moti- vates them to take an interest in that unit's survival and success as well as their own.

Interestingly, coopted persons' future relationship with their parent group changes after cooptation. Former colleagues now distrust (to some degree) their motives, actions, and words. They may even be labeled advocates of the opposition. It becomes more difficult to obtain an unbiased hearing or to resume their former rhetoric. Coopting opposition members is a risk tactic of some significance, since the coopted member may take over the group and change its former stance on issues. Coopting of members of opposing groups nevertheless is used by inner leaders and is seen as an effective method of power use with peers (Fairholm, 1993).

Incurring Obligation

People create obligation out of an unequal exchange with other people (Szilagyl and Wallace, 1983). This tactic involves interior leaders in developing a sense of obligation in others to induce them to do what they want. It is a common perception in leadership theory that participation in decision making increases the likelihood that participants will support the decision when executed. This perception owes its origin to this powerful, yet subtle, power tactic. Number Two leaders often can insure compliance from others if they can make the target feel indebted to them. The statement "there is no such thing as a free lunch suggests the nature of the obligation tactic. The Number Two leader may provide information, money, materials, psychological support, friendship, or other needs to the target and then use the sense of obligation incurred to later induce compliance.

Several versions of obligation as a power tactic in peer relations are clear. Obligation is incurred when the inner leader promises another person specific action or reward for current cooperation. It is a kind of conditioned compliance founded upon the specific or implied promise or expectation. Friendship, too, can be a form of debt. As internal peer leaders develop friendships with each other, they want to comply with their new friends need to maintain amicable relations. Self-sacrifice may seem altruistic and moral, but it can also be capitalized on as a power behavior. For example, Gandhi's self-sacrificing acts produced a powerful need in millions of Indi- ans, who conformed to his wishes in partial repayment. Obligation can also be incurred through praise. Most people follow another as they perceive


that the other person values that behavior and are willing to express that value in praise and compliment. This is a subtle but powerful principle of action, one in which peers engage regularly.

Using Surrogates

This tactic describes those situations in which the deputy makes use of a third party (or parties) through which to exercise power. That is, sometimes inner leaders elect to use other individuals to mask their use of power. They gain compliance from others by having their proposals for action presented by a popular (or otherwise accepted) individual who ”fronts” for them. Using surrogates can help in accomplishing a Number Two’s goals. Inner leaders use surrogates to mask their real identity, to reduce opposition, or merely because the power user desires anonymity. Number Twos also use surrogates as possible scapegoats to dissipate negative energy in target groups and to allow the leaders to keep their power and the good will of their stakeholders.

Controlling the Agenda

While ignored by many and denigrated by some, controlling meeting agendas is a power tool Number Twos can use to reach their objectives. Fre- quently they use agenda control to attain their desires in the face of possible opposition from peers. It involves prior determination of the issue context within which they conduct peer interaction. This power tactic allows inner leaders to control the topics for discussion, their timing, and their content in relations with peers (and also often in relationships with the CEO). Power comes from controlling action alternatives (Pfeffer, 1981), whether or not the action agenda is innocuous or critical. If a Number Two can determine issues for discussion or decision, he or she has power.

Selecting agenda items and even their placement within the agenda list insures that the issues discussed are those we want and have prepared for. Obviously, placing an item on the agenda when the leader is ready increases the likelihood that arguments proffered will, at the least, receive a hearing. Withholding an item until the power user is prepared or placing it on the agenda when others are not expecting it and, therefore, are not prepared to deal with it also enhances relative power positions.

Brinkmanship

This tactic includes any effort directed toward disturbing the equilib- rium of the organization as a prelude to other action the inner leader might take to control peer choice. Brinkmanship behavior has the purpose of creating organizational crisis (even chaos) preparatory to direct action to at-


tain the inner leader’s goal. Brinkmanship is a risky tactic that entails allowing the situation to deteriorate to a point where colleagues will favorably receive any plausible action suggested (Pelz, 1952). It is also to be seen when projects or actions are promulgated in situations where no other solutions are readily identifiable, that is, suggesting ideas in a vacuum.

The key element for success lies in proper timing in introducing the Number Two’s preferred action to ameliorate the crisis that he or she has al- lowed to develop. An example with which many will be familiar deals with system automation. Sometimes program leaders will resist full automation of manual systems because of initial costs and their fear of this technology. The computer system leader who wants to automate may allow excessive backlogs in the semiautomatic system to develop. Given the pressure to reduce backlogs, the program leader then has no option but to allow the specified computer system enhancements to be installed.

Brinkmanship is risky for the user as well as the target of this tactic. Number Two leaders who opt to use this power tactic risk being perceived as incompetent. The risk for those peer leaders targeted is that failure to follow the power users’ recommendations will result in collapse of their system. Brinkmanship can often be seen in labor negotiations, structural reorganizations, and budget implementation. It is used sometimes in situations where the stakes are high enough and the calculation is that success may result. Demanding stances, confrontation, forceful, assertive (even aggressive), argument, demands for specific results in opposition to all other possible results, and shows of extreme confidence in risky situations are all examples of brinkmanship.

Building a Favorable Image

As noted, the power tactic of building a favorable image is often used in an inner leader’s relationships with top leaders. Many Number Twos also find it helpful in achieving their goals in peer relationships. Acarefully cul- tivated reputation can attract other peers to the inner leader’s point of view. Building an image as having special knowledge, status, wisdom, prestige, presence, or specialization allows inner leaders to influence peers’ behavior and aids Number Twos in personal goal attainment.

PART VI

CAPITALIZI N G ON T H E WHOLE PERSON, NOT JUST

NEEDED SKILLS

Not having the authority to command compliance or disperse tangible resources equal to the typical CEO, Number Two leaders create relationships based on intangible values, like authentic caring, cooperation, community of interests, influence, integrity, morality, and trust. In doing this, internal leaders deal with the total person in their interactions with each stakeholder. No longer (if it ever was the case) can leaders afford to consider just the small cluster of the skills, knowledge, and abilities individual followers might possess that the firm needs at a given point in time.

It is from this relationship basis that Number Twos interact, a foundation that considers and responds to the whole person of their individual followers. This is counter to traditional leadership and management theory that counsels Chief Executive Officers to be objective, considering only that segment of the follower’s capacities directly related to task accomplishment. Rather, the job for in-the-middle leaders is to induce stakeholders to accept the leaders’ core values as their guides too. Doing this without infringing on essential individual privacy is difficult at times, but nonetheless it is a definitional task of successful inner leaders. It involves them in building communities out of their stakeholder groups, setting a high moral standard of conduct within those communities and relating to individual stakeholders as stewards.


Chapter 15

Community Building

Leadership is a social activity; it is done in groups. The nature and character of the group determines in large part what leader’s do and the measure of their success. In today’s world, the top leaders “group” is often defined in terms of a team, a group of people sharing a common purpose and coordi- nating the skills of each member. The authority to coordinate the individual’s effort is implicit in the idea of a work team. Teams characterized by hierarchy, order, and structure are the cultural props CEOs typically rely on, while ideas of shared responsibility-even stewardship-guide the inner leaders in their voluntary work communities.

For the inner leader, the workplace is more intimate and holistic. It lets people feel a sense of belonging to an integrated enterprise that is doing something worthwhile. Inner leaders go beyond team building to community building-close knit, almost family-oriented groups of volunteers who share their vision, beliefs, and values. In order to attract group members, inner leaders create cooperative, action-oriented communities that, in turn, provide the environment, the culture, within which they can operate out of a sense of mutual spiritual wholeness. These communities are partnerships based on the principle of stewardship (Covey, 1998). They provide needed cohesiveness to build the members together and to differentiate the community from other groups.


DEFINING COMMUNITY

Inner leaders cannot buy people’s citizenship in the community they build. It is voluntary. Freedom of action-autonomy-is a powerful implicit value in corporate community citizenship. The use of authority must fall within the employee’s zone of acceptability or group members will resist it (Barnard, 1968). Corporate citizenship can be defined as acceptance of corporate values set by the leader and actions that are in concert with these values. The association can be an ethical one or a contractual, economic, or social one. It is not defined by mere membership, but by acceptance and commitment shown by action in concert with the community’s values.

Acommunity is a group of people sharing a common purpose who coordinate work done by members (Fairholm, 1994b). Communities are cohe- sive, interactive groups. Community members share understanding of self and others in the community. Acommunity is a group in which the individual members share a common aim and in which the jobs and skills of each member fit in with those of each other member (Adair, 1986).

The connotation of the idea of ”community” comes from the root word meaning “with unity.” Inner leaders bring unity to organizations. They strengthen and use corporate culture and define new symbolic ceremonies and rituals that bring people together. They transform groups of workers into a community. A sense of community invigorates workers’ lives with a sense of purpose and a feeling of belonging to an integrated group that is doing something worthwhile. An enticing workplace community counters traditional work structures that have produced worker anomie and alienation.

Obligation, consent, and participation are also elements of corporate citizenship. Individuals have rights the corporation must honor. They also have responsibility to the corporation to be involved, committed, and supportive. Corporate citizenship is a mutual relationship with opportunities and duties on both sides. Whether the relationship is total or limited to task, corporate citizenship asks both leader and led to accept common values and act in accordance with them. Values become the adhesive joining individuals in citizenship in the group.

The present resurgence of interest in flexibility, cultural inclusiveness, and full acceptance of difference in individual group members is antithetical to community-and to leadership itself (Fairholm, 1994a). While emotionally attractive-and even politically correct from the point of view of the CEO-it is operationally toxic to their deputies. The task for leaders in the middle of the corporation is to build group affiliations, not just membership. These leaders create corporate spirit, an intangible force that honors high performance, compassion, empathy, for others and individual contributions. It is a focused force that builds wholeness and drives out factions.

This kind of community is a powerful force. Once created, it directs the professional life of members and their relationships with coworkers. Citi- zenship in a community implies emotional supports for that subcultural

Community Building 169

group and can block acceptance of alternative subcultures. While the community’s values can isolate the individual member from other components of the corporation, they also can unite individual members into a strong coalition, a mutually interdependent community, and form the company into complexes of cooperative communities. The key to attaining this latter result is the strength of community the inner leader builds.

Seeing corporate life in community terms is a basic change in the way one can think about work (and all of) life. In a community members have undergone a fundamental shift in orientation from the belief that people must cope with life and are powerless to the conviction that they are individually and collectively empowered to create their future and shape their destiny. The internal community leader is custodian of the community’s values. This kind of leader empowers and coaches others to create what they want. They structure systems of rewards and incentives. These leaders specify and make personal the application of corporate values and belief structures. Through the values they create via habits, the free flow of information, the physical work flow, and management processes, they energize stakeholders and the community itself.

BUILDING COMMUNITY

Service to a sense of community plays a critical role in developing inner leaders’ potential. Holistic (spirit) leadership is no longer a choice; it is a need in today’s world (Pinchot and Pinchot, 1994). The time has come to engage in the formation of new corporate designs focusing on interactive communities of enabled, moral leaders and followers. Workplaces are the communities in which most people live much of their productive lives. In- ner leaders need, therefore, to learn what they can about how to make a work community out of their part of the corporation if they want to be productive in today’s work world. Traditional bureaucracies cannot do this, nor can work teams. They so segment responsibilities that respect for the humanness of workers becomes a departmental rather than a universal responsibility.

Community-oriented corporations operate out of a matrix of common values, stimuli, and expectations. Number Two leaders build workplace community by providing this shared ideology. No community-no society-can function well unless most members behave most of the time because they voluntarily heed their moral commitments and social obligations (Etzioni, 1993). The task for inner leaders now and in this new century is transforming work organizations into viable, attractive communities capable of attracting increasingly diverse workers with needed skills and talents.

Unfortunately many societal institutions have changed so that now they deny their members a place to exercise their spirit or soul. Traditional insti-


tutions and practices have disconnected their members from customary spirit-building and -fostering communities: family, farm, church, neigh- borhood. In the past, the family and small social neighborhoods (communities) recognized and legitimized spirit. Now, free individuals need a community that backs them up against encroachment on their sense of independence by society’s formal institutions, including economic ones-thus the move to a sense of community and a recognition of the spirit in people.

The resurgence of the idea of community is a reaction against a domi- neering social process that robs people of their sense of self and substitutes a senseless conformity to sterile, abstract, and spiritless ”system.” As people come to recognize the power of the corporation to shape not only their own professional lives but their social, family, and leisure lives as well, they are forcing business to change-to be more accommodating to spiritual values. Hence, the corporation that continues to be described by ideas of authority, power, bureaucracy, competition and profit risks failure. Adding the idea of community adds factors of consistency, democracy, cooperation, interdependence, mutual benefit, and growth, all essential for the spiritually sensitive follower.

Today most Americans relate more to their work or organizational relationships than they do to any other social grouping, with the possible ex- ception of the family. They value their corporate citizenship sometimes more than they do their citizenship in the state. This fact influences how they act, what they value, and how they measure themselves and their actions. Control of environmental stimuli, therefore, becomes the essential mechanism for control over worker performance.

Shonk (1982) says community development is a process of unifying a group of people with a common objective into a functioning unit. It is a productivity-creating process. Building community becomes, therefore, a critical leadership task (Pinchot and Pinchot, 1994). Inner leaders need to focus on interactive communities of enabled leaders and followers. They need to engage the people making up these communities in meaningful work, in work that ennobles them and their stakeholder colleagues. The workplace is a community in which most people live much of their productive lives. Inner leaders need, therefore, to know what they can about how to make work communities not only productive, but personally inspiring.

Many of the most important choices people make that make life happy or sad are not individual choices, but collective choices. Society is coming to know (again) that the important, meaningful outcomes in life cannot be attained alone. People need other people to help them become their best selves. Many people live much of their productive lives in workplace communities (Brown, 1992). Inner leaders need, therefore to know what they can about how to make productive communities, for this is the place they and their followers make themselves.


Just placing several people together doesn’t make them a community. They need to be integrated on goals, be committed to interdependent action, and share an understanding of each other’s talents, capacities, attributes, and attitudes. Not all groups of workers are communities. Community consists of a mutuality of goals or purposes, a generally perceived need for interdependence among members, and a commitment to coordinated group effort. Groups form when the culture is described in the following terms (Fairholm, 1991).

The group is interdependent. Members believe that there are areas that can be improved. They are motivated to change. They have the power to change. They can see tangible results from their efforts. They are willing to risk trying new ways to work together. They are willing and able to diagnose their relationships. They attach themselves psychologically to the group and individual members.

Communities exhibit high participation, shared responsibility, common purpose, and high communications (Buckholz and Roth, 1987). They share responsibility. They are aligned on purpose and results sought. They are high communicators and focus directly on the task. Community members can be most inventive in their communities, and they can be highly responsive. Adair (1986) says community members are self-understanding; they understand individual community members and the community as a unit, unity.

Several principles undergirding community building follow, with brief discussion so:

Participation

Participation engages members’ spiritual selves as well as their physical and mental capacities. Inner leaders find ways to tap members’ need to exercise their spiritual selves and to increase their personal sense of responsibility through involvement. In this way community members come to recognize that their leaders want their total involvement. Full involvement increases members’ sense of duty and ownership in the group and its results. It produces an atmosphere that welcomes challenge and encourages input. It is one characterized by active listening and open discussion and one that recognizes spirit and emotions as essential and right.

Participation is a core issue in a culture that fosters ideas like spirituality, creativity, growth and development, or satisfaction. Participation, for many, has come to be almost a right. Advocates say cultures that emphasize


participation have greater flow of ideas, solutions, and results. Inner leaders expend great energy and resources in building a community of like-minded people focused on common goals and values that celebrate individual and corporate spirit. Inner leaders and all committed employees strive to build successful relationships with their bosses. Rosenback, Pittman, and Potter (1997) say many followers are generally committed to high performance and building effective relationships with their bosses. They say followers can be divided into those who do what they are told, contributors who are known by the quality of their work, politicians who manipulate their relationships, and partners committed to high performance and effective relationships.

Quality Excellence

High quality applied in the firm means more as a description of a psychic surround than it does specific leader (or follower) skill (Peters and Austin, 1985). Inner leaders attain excellence more easily when their attitude is right than they do through aligning followers with their orders or company policy or procedures. Quality comes out of a work climate that fosters trust, risk taking, creativity, and challenge and that recognizes the individual’s spirit and desire to help. Quality results from this kind of a culture. Danforth (1987) defines total quality in performance terms. He says quality is a function of shaping a culture where doing the right things right the first time is the standard of quality.

At least four crucial ideas are at work in any effective quality improvement program. The first asks inner leaders to know what stakeholders need and want and to translate that knowledge into the operating systems of the business. The second asks them to do more that just attending to human needs. It asks inner leaders to convince stakeholders to participate fully and helps by providing education and training and motivation. Third, inner leaders pay close attention to quality dimensions of products and services, as well as the quality component of work processes and procedures, information, and suppliers. Finally, quality depends on followership; organizational quality requires a vision a new way for everyone to do their job.

Overemphasis on individualism and specialization in the American work culture has undermined cooperation and community work and con- tributed to the confederations of ”fractionated fiefdoms” that characterize many large-scale social organizations (Mroczkowski, 1984-1985). The quality imperative is a survival imperative in today’s world (Danforth, 1987). Efficiency principles have been applied to the extent that they have dehumanized work and alienated workers. Adversarial labor-management relations are another adverse characteristic of American work culture contributing to a decline in quality values.


The inner leader’s job is to try to get employees to understand how important it is to adopt a quality imperative as part of their personal commitment to the organization’s success. The problem is that they have committed too much to efficiency values and not enough to the quality value.

Empowerment

Getting others to join the leader’s community is not so much the exercise of power as the empowerment of others (Bennis and Nasus, 1985; Adair, 1986). Inner leaders are members of the community, not outside it. Commu- nities do not emphasize normal rules of authority and hierarchy, though the leader may legally have the last word. Consultation in which each member has a high degree of self-confidence is part of leading communities. Community leadership involves setting and maintaining values and goals structures for the community. Familiarity may interfere with an inner leader’s ability to be impartial. Community building is a slow process and consumes high energy.

Developing effective communities requires different skills, not the least of which is skill in sharing power. Communications are also critical in making a community effective as is skill in values displacement. Community member selection also is critical to the community’s success. Choosing the right people to offer citizenship is critical to community success. Members need to be technically competent, have an ability to work with others, and have desirable personal attitudes.

The idea of increasing the self-control and self-direction of coworkers is a solid part of community building. McGregor (1960) asked leaders to discover and make use of the unrealized potential in workers. Burns (1978) suggests that we can lift people out of mediocrity to fulfill their better selves through transforming them. Bennis and Nanus (1985) say that empowering followers also enhances and strengthens them. Inner leaders are coming to recognize this and changing their behavior to share power with coworkers. Many of these leaders routinely engage in empowering technologies. This is a technology frequently used by mid-level leaders in helping followers to develop and use more of their talents on the job. Empowerment works because it supports deep psychological needs of people in groups. People want to make a difference, and if the leader lets them and teaches them to do it they gain followers.

Inspiration

Inspiration enlivens, exalts, and animates others. When people feel inspired they want to act on that feeling. As they learn to inspire their followers, they can produce more-directed, more-focused action directed to their


(and/or to their organizations’) goals. Inspiration goes beyond motivation in appealing to a collective human need to be part of and engaged with others in lofty enterprise. Inspiration grows out of the interchange between leaders and followers and the cultural environment in which work takes place. It enlivens the group and urges them with new insight, new emotions, and new directions. Inspiration is not so much a quality in the inner leader (the inspirer) as it is a function of the needs of the inspired.

Conflict Difference

Inner leaders are mediators of difference. They are unofficial power bro- kers allocating influence and resources. Contention, while sometimes productive of positive results, often produces a negative effect in groups. Differing values, customs, and beliefs among employees provide the foundation for conflict. The move to excellence and toward cultural diversity and changes in demographics that change the traditional majority-minority picture in the workplace and increasing pressure for innovation and creativity also contribute. The resultant tension may stimulate interest and creativity, but it also can produce intense frustration for leaders and for involved workers. It can cause waste of human energy and other resources.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is trying to understand where the corporation will be tomorrow by using incomplete knowledge about where it is in today’s world. It is quite different from traditional planning. Strategic plans are akin to vision setting (Brassier, 1985). Usually, a strategic plan can be summarized in a page or two. Strategic planning is a mechanism for identifying critical issues that face organizations and that can serve as the basis for implementing organizations’ vision. It is a tool for developing strategies to cope with these critical issues. Strategic plans operationalize the vision and the self-definition of what an organization is now and wants to be in the future. Given this definition of strategic planning, inner leaders have always assumed strategic planning responsibility. They are most intimately associated with the work of the organization. The idea that strategic planning can be done in an ivory tower is bankrupt. Many inner leaders feel that they are strategic thinkers and can do the strategy development their organizations need.

Innovation

Innovation is experimentation. In-the-middle leaders give their stakeholders space to innovate. They create champions. An innovation seldom makes it to the marketplace unless a determined champion pushes it. When


inner leaders see an emerging champion, they encourage him or her (Peters and Austin, 1985). Attention to the need to innovate and encourage innovation in others defines the indisputably excellent leader. It is a hallmark of inner leadership. Peters and Waterman (1982) define internal followership in terms of innovation. Innovative mid-level leaders are especially adroit at continually responding to change of any sort in their environments. They use innovation to try to change the organization to fit their world, while managers often try to change the world to match the organization. Innova- tion is necessary to progress. It requires a willingness to take the risk of fail- ing or loss.

Corporate Citizenship

Corporate citizenship is grounded in self-leadership; the perception that workers can decide many issues in and about their work environment or tasks themselves. It implies autonomy. Corporate citizens are personally involved in the organization and its survival and growth. They are more than workers. They, in effect, are working for themselves. The implications of this idea is that owner-workers will do better work, more work, and higher quality work because they see the task in personal, self-interested terms. They feel a need to deliver because they feel responsible and committed and are free to do the work their own way.

Corporate citizens who take a kind of ownership interest in the corporation typically perform at a higher level of quality than do employees. Citi- zenship indicates that a follower has a sense of commitment to the organization. It refers to the feelings workers have of being responsible, of owning their part of the organization. This feeling of ownership comes from being in charge. It is the ability to control one’s own work situations (Peters and Waterman, 1982). Ownership turns employees on. Citizenship implies that all employees have authority to make some decisions about their work and its methods that formerly were considered the realm of the supervisor (Myers, 1970).

On one level, inner leaders are defined by this idea. These leaders take ownership for their part of the corporation’s work. They foster it among their stakeholders as they allow them increasing control over their work situation and keep them continuously informed about the status, problems, and potential of the firm. Giving stakeholders a citizenship interest in the group may involve asking them to create small problem-solving teams and insuring that information goes to as wide an audience as possible. Citizens make decisions that impact their life and their organization in real ways. Fostering corporate citizenship is a key element of inner leaders. Leading worker-citizens changes the way inner leaders deal with followers. They push problem solutions as low in the organization as possible. They allow


coworkers necessary resources to do their job their way, and they do not overcontrol.

Leaders who foster feelings of corporate citizenship in followers decentralize to the maximum extent possible. They delegate to the limit of their authority and good sense. Such leaders create other leaders out of followers at several levels in the organization. They create a climate of personal satisfaction, individual dignity, challenge, and opportunity to be successful. Al- lowing others to share ownership feelings about the organization, its work process, and its products provides all with a stake in the outcome. It creates a sense of individual and organizational worth.

Chapter 16

Setting a Higher Moral Standard

The work inner leaders do has a strong moral dimension. Ideally, the moral code inner leaders follow conforms to the highest ethical standards present in the cultural surrounds in which they operate. But, understandably, the ethical code adopted by an individual leader may be less than the ideal. Nevertheless, the morality of the inner leader is reflected in the actions of his or her stakeholders, or the leader cannot lead. When leaders’ morals differ significantly from those of their group members, they cannot lead. If they remain with the group, they will have to resort to management, that is, to external control mechanisms, to secure their goals.

However, it appears that most workers-leaders and led-want to do good work and to contribute to the success of the company. Regrettably, in too many work situations they have been led to believe that there is one standard for private morality and another for public (business) morality and conduct (Nair, 1994). Not so. Successful inner leaders understand that morality argues for one standard, applicable in personal, social, economic, and all other aspects of life. Including a moral dimension in their actions and decisions helps them think and act beyond narrowly defined business and office political interests. Such leadership gives meaning and purpose to their working lives and that of their stakeholders. Arguably, this is the only way they can attract tomorrow’s workers to their vision and their goals.


Inner leaders appreciate that they just cannot compromise some personal or professional-ideals. They must defend them. These leaders prefer to contend with some opposing ideas, rather than accommodate them. Their ethical stand requires that they sometimes be outspoken and deliber- ately confrontational of alternative value systems. While traditional leadership functions and roles may be similar, inner leaders find most success when they apply them in overtly moral ways.

We can define morally leadership both as a process asking questions about what is right and wrong and a mode of conduct-setting an example for others about the rightness or wrongness of particular actions (Kouzes and Posner, 1992). The subculture of inner leadership is based on an idea of moral service. The soul of ethics and of inner leadership is respect-ven love. Spiritually activated inner leaders reject coercion to secure desired goals. As a preferred mode of conduct, they do not interfere with human freedom and choices, though these choices may entail some painful decisions and shifts in priorities.

ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUALLY-FOCUSED LEADERSHIP

At least the following elements of the spiritually focused inner leader can be identified. These elements constitute definitional features of the emerging idea of spiritual leadership.

Sharing Meaning

Inner leaders have a sustained ability to build consensus and lead demo- cratically in terms of shared understandings they have created and promulgated to the group. Inner leaders create meaning for others. They engage the heart (Kouzes and Posner, 1987). Their leadership task includes formal relationships, of course. More important, they create an ethical base that provides the context for shared vision, values, meaning, and focus to the frame of reference of the work community.

Inner leaders focus the power present in work relationships toward objectives they (inner leaders) set. Inner leaders shape the cultural surround within which the corporation and its people operate. They provide ethical direction, incentive, inspiration, and support to individuals and teams, if any help is to be forthcoming. Inner leaders inspire a sense of shared community values. Common values provide the basis of the positive and negative sanctions systems that define the morality of members of the work community and determine its measures of success.

Higher Moral Standard 179

Enabling

Moral leaders train, educate, and coach followers in appropriate (to them) corporate ethics-reflected sometimes in formal codes, but always modeled in their conduct. They provide inspiration, involve followers in appropriate networks, and then free them from situational constraints that may hamper their growth (transformation) toward their (followers’) full moral effectiveness.

Influence and Power

The measure of leadership of the group is not structural, but attitudinal (DePree, 1989). Until followers choose to accept the inner leader’s power, that leader cannot lead (Barnard, 1968). The leader’s words and actions, thus, combine to (hopefully) influence all stakeholders to desired levels of performance by making full use of individual followers’ abilities, interests, and capacities. The leaders’ personal power in the group is one of the most effective tools inner leaders use.

Intuition

Intuition is knowledge gained without rational thought (Rowan, 1986) or proof. Inner moral leadership, any kind of leadership, must tap intuitive values held in common by the group. It is the intuition that taps ingrained ideas and values, values held also by group members, that gives inner spiritual leaders their moral legitimacy.

Risk Taking

Sometimes inner leaders need to challenge existing work and team processes (Kouzes and Posner, 1987). They do not simply accept current work codes or existing structural relationships. Rather, these leaders are pioneers when the need arises. They try to produce real change that meets people’s enduring needs regardless of the risk.

Service

Inner leaders are servants committed to principles of whole-person relationships as defined earlier. Their job is to prepare followers to provide high quality, excellent service to clients, customers, and citizens. Rather than attempt to force followers to this kind of behavior, inner leaders motivated by a desire to serve their stakeholders at the level of spirit in effect go to work for them-providing all things necessary for follower success.


Transformation

The net effect of inner leaders’ actions are to transform themselves, others in their group, and the organization. In the process, they help create a new scale of meaning within which followers can see their lives from the perspective of the work and larger community. The role of inner leaders is to change the lives of followers and through them the organization in ways that enhance both. They convert (change) followers into leaders.

Common Ethical Values

Common values shared by group members provide the basis of the strategy that defines a group’s morality scheme and determine its ethical sanctions systems. Their core spiritual values-whether highly moral or less so-are always with inner leaders whether or not they are aware. They are the activating mechanism of the leader’s moral character. These core spiritual values are part of their self-analysis as they observe and reflect on their actions and judgements of events. Moral values are part of all aspects of life; they are critical to inner leaders, who by definitionwork withvolunteers.

Primarily, leaders who take charge, set the moral climate, and are accountable for their actions and results are successful in the business of being ethically moral. Being moral is a matter of personal and professional character. Character is a cluster of related ideas that includes morality, ethics, honesty, and humane values. Operationally, morality involves following ethical standards and patiently sticking to them through varying circumstances. It is feeling good about one’s self as leaders reflect on current business questions, but also thinking about their actions in terms of their inner standards of right and wrong. As they succeed in this endeavor, inner leaders come to know that the actions they take are right, that is, acceptable to themselves and the group. These leaders understand that all people have the inalienable right of free moral choice. They know that the irrevocable law of the harvest-restore good for good, evil for evil-operates in life.

Integrity

Integrity is a function of feeling whole, total, connected. People of integrity are, in the vernacular, “together,” internally unified, honest, authentic, dependable. Their motives are known. They are open, exposed, even about themselves. They are perceptive, communicate truthfully and authentically about who they are and what they think is important. They are also discreet, never violating a confidence. Integrity means a refusal to compromise principles.

Inner leaders effectively block unity when they compartmentalize their lives into separate behavior patterns so that what they accept in one situa-


tion they ignore in another. The compartmentalized person may feel that each separate behavior is internally congruent and satisfying, but the values reflected in each compartment may differ markedly. This situation is one of hypocrisy.

The hypocritical leader might, therefore, punish severely even a little dishonesty in the workplace by a follower, but feel justified in padding his or her own expense account or taking a three-hour lunch. Similarly, leaders can feel comfortable in seeking counsel from their CEO on complex issues but bridle at the thought that they need similar counsel in their relationships with their own group members. It is only when they are integrated around a spiritual value system that inner leaders-or anyone else-can say they are fully integrated.

Willingness to Tell the Truth

Effective deputy leaders are often underappreciated (Bennis, 1997). In a growingly complex world, in-the-middle leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for needed information, whether they want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination. Effective inner leaders look for good people and encourage them to speak out, even to disagree. Moral integrity requires inner leaders to say what needs to be said without needlessly saying what may hurt another. It demands that they be strong and responsive to inner promptings. While most CEOs may support that perspective in conversation, their practice often includes many occasions where this standard is observed more in the breach than in practice.

Besides a willingness to tell the truth, inner leaders need to be willing to dissent (Bennis, 1997), which is another way of telling the truth. Indeed, successful mid-level leaders accept and even encourage dissent. Some even build dissent into the decision-making process-a kind of devil’s advocacy. Whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told from time to time that they are wrong is more than offset by the fact that reflective backtalk increases an inner leader’s ability to contribute to their CEO’s success. Encouraging feedback from followers helps inner leaders make good decisions themselves.

Good deputies may indeed have to put their jobs on the line in the course of speaking up. But consider the price they pay for silence or for inducing it in their own followers. What job is worth the enormous psychic cost of following a boss who values loyalty in the narrowest sense? Competent inner leaders who encourage thoughtful dissent gain much more than a height- ened atmosphere of collegiality; they make better decisions. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the follower willing to speak out shows precisely the kind of initiative that good leadership is made of (Bennis, 1999). Like their


good bosses, good inner leaders understand the importance of speaking out. More important; they do it.

Even in democratic companies, where the only risk is the threat of a pink slip, it is hard to disagree with the person in charge. The sin of silence often costs organizations and their leaders dearly (Bennis, 1997). Most inner leaders suffer more at the hands of so-called friends who refused to tell them unattractive truths than from ostensible enemies. It is the good follower’s obligation to share his or her best counsel with the CEO. Silence, not dissent, is the one behavior that leaders should refuse to accept from their stakeholders.

Loyalty and Commitment

Loyalty between inner leaders and followers is key to community building and teamwork, yet divided loyalties abound in today’s increasingly complex institutions (Umiker, 1998). On the one hand, when workers leave for other jobs, their bosses sometimes ascribe it to lack of loyalty. On the other hand, when a downsizing occurs, the affected employees ”cry foul.” Workers often find it easier to be loyal to their work group and its inner leader than to the CEO. Inner leaders, too, have split loyalty, as they are expected to serve both the CEO and their stakeholders.

To succeed in any organization, the inner leader needs to understand the CEO’s needs and hold the boss in high respect. Anything short of this is likely to be interpreted by the boss as disloyalty. Some observers think corporate loyalty is rapidly becoming an obsolete concept (Umiker, 1998). Op- timistic observers, however, feel that the decline of historic loyalty is actually contributing to a healthy reevaluation of organizational and employee expectations about each other. Today’s inner leaders see the loyalty issue as part of their present culture. They see the inner leaders’ task as, in part, articulating their own standards of loyalty tempered with realism.

Loyalty may range from passive acceptance to total commitment. Some consider dissent to be disloyal, but increasingly in democratic corporate cultures a loyal relationship is characterized by freedom, choice, and responsibility. True loyalty permits-even encourages-dissent and differences of opinion because there are values in conflict. It is not disloyal to express one’s true feelings about a bad policy or practice and to relay that displeasure to those who can do something to change the situation. Loyalty is not rigid conformity. Rigid compliance suppresses creativity and hinders needed change.

The prime loss in disloyal cultures is productivity. When coworkers lack loyalty, the quality of their work diminishes, they become apathetic, and service levels decline. Inner leaders must show that they support their organizations and its goals, but they must also earn stakeholder loyalty by representing their interests to the CEO. A work community comes into be-


ing only after each member begins to sense the loyalty of the inner leader to the group and of the members to each other. Employees who lack loyalty can set work standards at a low level, degrade quality, withhold information, cover up problems, file grievances, and create ill will and nuisances.

Anything that affects morale affects loyalty (Umiker, 1998). Thus, inner leaders should be cautious of the following factors that impact levels of loyalty. Job elimination for whatever reason-restructuring, downsizing, and mergers or anything that threatens job security-decreases loyalty. Leader- ship deficiencies such as indifference, favoritism, discrimination, lack of recognition, authoritarianism, breaking of commitments, and arbitrary actions also adversely impact loyalty levels and work quality. So do demands placed upon stakeholders that they consider onerous, such as demands that they relocate or take a lower-level job. Lack of opportunity for promotion or to grow on the job, poor compensation systems, low pay, unfair salary programs, and the practice of awarding raises on the basis of seniority rather than performance all contribute to the breakdown of loyalty.

Recognizing these situational and techniques issues, inner leaders operate out of a different loyalty paradigm (Umiker, 1998). This technology begins with an assumption that employers cannot be guaranteed permanent employment and that their resignation from a job is not a sign of disloyalty. Loyalty is a two-way street. If inner leaders demand loyalty from their employees, they must demonstrate loyalty to those workers. Loyalty cannot be assumed, it must be developed and fostered. Today’ S employees want interaction with the inner leader, a measure of self-satisfaction and flexible policies. Inner leaders, for their part, need to share their vision in such a way that all stakeholders will see and understand it. They must combine movement toward their personal, professional, and organizational goals with a sense of caring for each stakeholder’s future.

Of course, inner leaders must show that they support the larger organization and its goals. Leader loyalty means explaining and enforcing policies and procedures. It means knowing how and when to constructively point out actions that interfere with the giving of quality patient care and service to other customers. It is evaluating subordinates fairly and objectively. At least the following additional actions inner leaders might take contribute to community loyalty:

Be honest; tell followers the truth about policies and plans that affect their job.

Get them involved in helping to formulate the policies and plans.

Make expectations clear,

Orient and train workers in needed job skills.

Seek out strengths in workers and either eliminate weaknesses or make them irrelevant.


0 Be a supporter, defender, and facilitator rather than a judge, bottleneck, or nit- picker. Be consistent, fair, and impartial. Be participative.

0 Demonstrate that you value each stakeholder.

As inner leaders take such actions and function from a base of loyalty, their employees will follow suit. They will then be more likely to offer their loyalty and refrain from slandering the work community, its members, or its leaders in public. Loyal workers tend to defend their leaders against false accusations or attacks made when their leaders are not present to defend themselves. They tend also to adhere to the corporate ethical system and act out of a higher moral consciousness.

Morality, a sense of attachment to an ethical system, is important. It concerns issues of interdependence, mutual respect, and a sense of responsibility for other people as well as abstract issues of right and wrong. It is an imperative for successful team efforts. The core of loyalty is genuine caring for the well-being of the others involved in the leader-follower relationship made real by heeding its moral standards. Today’s loyalty consists of coworkers treating each other as partners (Maurer, 1994) and responding as partners should-with morality, integrity, ethicality, truthfulness, and loyalty.

Chapter 17

Stewardship

The advent of the 21st century brings with it a dwindling of worker and public confidence in its leaders that seems to cut across government, education, and business. Increasingly Americans no longer think it is their responsibility or obligation to believe what their leaders tell them. There is a hunger in society for a world where people truly care for one another, where people are treated humanely and helped in their personal maturation, where workers and customers are treated fairly, and where our leaders can be trusted to serve the needs of the many, rather than the few (Spears, 1998). This declining confidence cannot alone be attributed to job dissatisfaction or lack of faith in institutions. Rather, surveys show that overall happiness is high. The eroding confidence is a symptom of the decline in perceived legitimacy of the people who run America’s businesses, schools, and governments (Mitchell and Scott, 1987).

In the business sector, anecdotal evidence supports this thesis and suggests that low trust levels and corruption is increasing. Scandals in the public sector are continuous and obvious, and the professional expert is being replaced by political partisans, most of whom lack experience in their appointed fields. Opinion data and other evidence may in fact indicate a continuous decline in stakeholder expectations of the expertise, entrepreneurship, and stewardship, even virtue and performance in leadership (Mitchell and Scott, 1987).


The soul of society is art, and the soul of our communities is business. Yet it is difficult to find either artful or soulful qualities honored in organizations today. Instead, there is a serious depletion of these qualities, or at least in our perception of them. Yet art and soul are key agents in any transformation. Artful Number Two leaders hold the vision of a viable community. Leaders who are in touch with spirit build a caring community. These leaders try to build a work culture focusing on profitability and the common good (Ramsey, 1994).

LEADERSHIP AS A SERVANT RELATIONSHIP

In the past decade, the study of leadership has diverged from its traditional core. Autocratic and hierarchical modes of leadership are yielding to a newer model (Spears, 1998). Rather than concentrate on the traditional model of contemporary organizations, it is moving to a focus on relational models (Dunn, 2000). The business community is growing more aware of the negative consequences of the sterile system, structure, and operation iron triangle of traditional theory. Covey (1998) reports that while 85 percent of organizations have a mission statement, only 15 percent attempt to follow it. These data suggest that while "system" is given lip service, the key idea driving the workplace is something else. Many CEOs operate under the illusion that they can control their destinies through reliance on the bottom-line controls (Douglas and Wykowksi, 1992). Rather, the movement is from formal structure to a stewardship relationship between leader and led.

Americans are redefining leadership. Corporate leaders are coming to see themselves (and be seen by observers) as servants of the organization-whether elected or appointed and whether the organization is a government agency, a business, a hospital, a diocese or an army. While many (including many CEOs) still treat their CEOs like celebrities, Americans are increasingly beginning to see their immediate supervisors more as stewards than as semisovereigns (Heenan and Bennis, 1999). This is a more egalitarian understanding of leadership. Good in-the-middle leaders have always seen-and more and more of them today are beginning to see-their duty to subordinates as more conducive to the ultimate welfare of the institution.

THE LEADER AS STEWARD

Anew notion of the individual-in-the-group is emerging as a foundation for leadership, an idea classically called stewardship. The values-based idea the literature calls ownership shifts to the idea of stewardship (McMillen, 1994) in spirit-focused inner leadership. Ownership connotes possession and control. Stewardship connotes holding work resources in

Stewardship 187

trust for a temporary period. In a stewardship community, power is inherent in each steward to help accomplish the community’s ends. Number Twos know it is by sharing power equally that they become one, united as a group, as a community.

This old-fashioned concept of stewardship is very consistent with the new theory of leadership in the middle as well as the new psychological contract in the workplace because everyone becomes accountable for everybody else. Effective teams-communities of synergistic alliances and partnerships-are based on the principle of stewardship, characterized by personal trustworthiness, interpersonal trust, empowerment, and worker-group alignment. In a stewardship group, inner leaders represent their stakeholders, significantly more than they represent themselves or the parent corporation. They represent the shared vision, mission, and value systems that everyone in their work community has participated in developing (Covey, 1997) and desire to continue.

Business is struggling with work and its meaning. The American economy’s shift away from smokestacks to a situation where 73 percent of private-sector workers are in service jobs has changed the way most people, especially the young, see their careers. Young workers today, unlike those in the past, do not like to think of themselves as confined to a lifelong job or even a single career (Lavelle, 1999). Number Two leaders can enrich and nourish these stakeholder ’S lives by paying attention to the role spirit plays in all of their lives. Finding spiritual sustenance in work is at the heart of finding meaning in that part of life where business is conducted. Spiritual- ity also connotes being a steward. Proper corporate stewardship in business means doing the best for all people concerned, and everyone benefits (Lavelle, 1999).

The Steward-Leader’s Role

Effective in-the-middle leaders go beyond the bottom line by tapping into the purpose and meaning of employees and then reconciling and connecting individual purposes and meanings with those of the organization (Douglas and Wykowksi, 1992). Becket (1999) identifies six essential aspects of business leadership: strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, and spirit. Historically these business elements have gone a long way toward insuring business success. But they are not enough in today’s relationship-oriented workplace. Some additional concepts are equally, maybe more, important. Becket (1999) says business leaders should add service, stewardship, and change.

The idea of service denotes helping followers because it is right, productive, to do so. Stewardship evokes images of service. Service is central to stewardship (Block, 1993). While for many it evokes images of taking direction from others, there is humility in service. The idea of the leader as ser-


vant has ancient (even biblical) origins. Arguably, this has always been a key part of leadership theory-even if the word was not used regularly until a decade ago. Undeniably, the leader’s authority,, whether formal or informal, exists to serve the organization (Levinson, 1997).

Inner leaders take satisfaction in service-oriented leadership. Steward- ship and service have always been descriptive of effective interior leaders. This theme of the leader as in service to others has echoed throughout many cultures across time and geography. Inner leaders must serve to succeed in their work. The leader as a steward and servant accords with natural law. These ideas are integral to and a keystone of excellence (Levinson, 1997) in any endeavor, including leadership in the middle.

Albert Einstein observed that the problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we formulated them. Mid-level leaders need to create a new vision that speaks to all stakeholders. They must take the challenge to change themselves and become responsible for and accepting of the power of their example, which is reflected in their part of the corporation, in their particular work communities, and in the behavior of their followers. Number Two leaders know that everything is affected by their leadership (Ramsey, 1994). Agroup can be very effective when a vision is established that all can share in. Shared vision fosters risk taking and experimentation. It comes when leaders set goals that are worthy of commitment. Shared visions emerge from personal vision-the leader’s ethics, standards, and values, which are discovered by delving deep into the human psyche (Ramsey, 1994).

Mid-level leaders, as perhaps all leaders, sense a growing awareness in the business community that if they continue the present approach characterized by self-interested independence they will lose (Covey, 1997). Tradi- tional leadership, which in most critical ways resembles management, just will not work given today’s diverse, educated, and demanding work force. In a world that changes slowly all a good manager-leader has to do is maintain the status quo. Today’s good leaders, however, tend to take their followers from one place to another; they are transforming.

Inner leaders follow a pattern of action that includes, among other things, the following six skills: self-mastery, stewardship, visioning, persuasive communication, empowerment, and service (Sanborn, 1996). Number Two leaders differ from their program managers and subordinate supervisors on these factors and others. They do not use managerial authority, or ”power over” their subordinates, as much as they exercise ”power with” (Follett, 1942) their people. Nor do their specific titles interest them. It is the substantive difference between leaders and managers that is their prime focus. Most managers set objectives and focus on achieving their goals; inner leaders lead their followers to the fulfillment of their potential-they take followers from where they are to where they ought to be (Sanborn, 1996).

Stewardship 189

The preeminent skill of an inner leader is credibility. Credibility stems from the competency leaders brings to the work and the character they possess as individuals. Stewardship suggests responsibility to an ”owner” of some sort. In the case of interior leaders, owners are the inner leaders’ stakeholders as much or more than are the parent corporation and stock- holders. Stewards keep their stakeholders focused on the tasks that are important to the success of their group. Mid-level executives have relatively few resources they can invest, and money isn’t often one. Their usable resources are their time and expertise and the time and expertise of the people in their subculture. The task is to be good stewards of their own time and expertise and that of their followers.

DEFINING STEWARDSHIP

During the last decades of the 20th century, leadership theory has changed its focus from the production of things to an emphasis on developing broad-gauged and resourceful followers (see the work of Warren Bennis, Steven Covey, Gil Fairholm, James Kouzes and Barry Posner, Bert Nanus, and others referenced herein). These writers have redefined the nature of the relationship between leader and follower to one that can be con- veniently encapsulated in the idea of stewardship. Their models-while not often using the word stewardship-include the leadership practices of enabling and empowering, volunteering, trusting, service, and visioning. Application of some of these ideas at the apex of the organization is often more in the promise than the practice. For in-the-middle leaders, they have become guiding principles of action. Through this theory-building work our understanding of inner leaders’ competencies has expanded in both nature and scope until now we can talk confidently about the inner leader as a steward.

Asteward, according to the dictionary, is one who administers another’s property, finances, or other affairs. That definition hardly reflects the special trust inherent in the idea of stewardship today (Dunn, 2000). The position of steward dates back thousands of years. From what we know, it may be safely inferred that every ancient household of distinction or of sufficient wealth had a steward in charge. This individual was fully accountable to his principal and had to render an account when called upon.

The word steward has been used as the translation for several ancient words, notably the Hebrew sar, ”head” person, and the Greek epitropos, ”manager,” and oikonornos, “overseer.” The similarity of meanings is obvious, but the depth of meaning may not be. Peter Block (1993) defined stewardship as ”holding something in trust for another.” Inner leaders are stewards. They assume a commitment to serving the needs of others. They also emphasize the use of openness and persuasion, rather than control (Spears, 1998). Stewardship means to hold in trust the well-being of some


larger entity; in this connection the larger entity may be the inner leaders’ core work group, the corporation, the community, and even the world. To hold something of value in trust calls for placing service ahead of control. Stewardshp is what is given back to the inner leader once there is a common value system, common vision, and common commitment by the leader’s group.

Stewardship occurs when leader and led exist for the organization’s welfare and benefit. The steward may be in charge of the organization, but he or she is not above it (Levinson, 1997). Stakeholders (as a group of individuals working together) assign members different stewardships to assist them in fulfilling their personal and professional work goals according to a system of shared vision and values. Everyone is accountable to the same set of principles, which are built into the value system (Covey, 1997).

Originally, corporate stewardship meant financial responsibility for both the institution and the community. Stewardship, today, goes beyond mere financial accountability or even accountability for one’s talents. Stewardship is also concerned with the use of power. One intent of stewardship is to replace self-interest with service as the basis for holding and using power. His- torically the best leaders have flourished because they have understood how to exercise accountability and activism in service to their followers.

Mahatma Gandhi identified three elements making up his brand of service-based leadership, which he called frusteeship. For him, trusteeship (stewardship) includes power granted from those below; the leader’s obligation in accepting a position of power is to be a good human being, and, finally, trust comes out of pursuing what is true (Block, 1993). A modern description of stewardship would suggest that the inner leader accepts that the prime purpose of the company is to remain in business and to provide meaningful employment for the people, useful goods and/or services for the public, and a fair return to shareholders.

Stewardship is different from ownership. Stewardship implies a trust in the sense that the steward represents someone or something else. Owner- ship is usually about the idea of ”me and mine.” It’s about independence, where the highest value is personal freedom. With an ownership mind-set, leaders use their freedom to get what they want whether or not it is at the expense of any other stakeholder (Covey, 1997). True inner leadership is responsible stewardship. In a sense, the term leadership applies to everyone in the organization, as well as named leaders.

Introducing stewardship into the lexicon of leadership is, in fact, to propose a revolution. Revolution means a turning, a change in direction. The change required is significant, obvious to the casual observer, even to customers. Evolutionary change is more comfortable. Evolutionary change means everything is planned, in control, and reasonably predictable. The problem with evolutionary change is that it is virtually unnoticeable to the participants (Block, 1993).

Stewardship 191

Stewardship is not a single guiding principle but a part of a triumvirate that includes empowerment and partnership as well as stewardship. The principle of stewardship brings accountability, while partnership balances responsibility. It is a system of sharing governance, whereby each member holds control and responsibility in trust for the group as a team. It is a relationship system based on mutual accountability. A steward role asks inner leaders and their stakeholders to risk losing class distinctions and privilege in the pursuit of living out a set of values and creating a community where members personally reclaim the institution as their own. Stewardship operates at the whole-person-the spiritual-level of existence and interrela- tionship.

Leaders in the middle of the corporation demonstrate their leadership substance by acting as responsible stewards of human and natural resources. They promote concurrent economic, social, biological, and ecolog- ical development. This leadership competence in responsible leadership of their various work and social communities is called ”stewardship sustainable development” as opposed to “agency nonsustainable development” by Petrick, Scherer, Brodzinski, Quinn, and Ainina (1999).

STEWARDSHIP AND SERVICE

The lack of a service attitude is a major defect in much of American business today. Many chief executives look no further than the next quarterly report. Their goal is not to serve their stakeholders, but solely to increase the bottom line. Such a perspective is disastrous. An organization whose leaders believe it exists to serve them is on the path to oblivion. When CEOs act to create compliance in others, they are choosing self-interest over service, no matter what words they use to describe their actions. Inner leaders do not (cannot) share this top leader perspective.

During the past decade, leadership theory has caught up with the practice of leadership in the middle. Values-based spiritual leadership has expanded its boundaries and brought vendors, customers, and even competitors along with their employees into their inner circle as stakeholders equally deserving of growth. Inner leaders always have seen their role as serving and protecting all of their organizational assets-money, material, and manpower. As inner leaders think of themselves as stewards and servants over both things and people, they secure their positions and the corporation’s future (Levinson, 1997).

The Number Two leaders’ job is to encourage and sustain high-quality service to all those who have a stake in the work. They do this partly through overseeing the organizational subculture and partly through teaching. The goal is attained as the leader models desired values and desired behavior. Inspiring others incorporates founding values that energize


and inspire followers to unified action to increase and maintain high-quality services and programs into the culture.

The service role casts the inner leader as a steward in relationships with coworkers. The stewardship role asks these leaders to hold in trust the organization, its resources and its people, and the common vision of the future. In this stewardship role leaders set goals and plan, inspire, and train others to carry them out. Once trained and committed, the leader also can share stewardship responsibilities for action with trained and committed followers. In effect, inner leaders prepare followers, provide facilitating help, and then let followers lead themselves within the constraints of the shared vision (Fairholm, 1997). One can describe inspirational inner leaders on one level as trustees (Greenleaf, 1977) of the joint enterprise held in common with all stakeholders.

Stewardship at the organizational level has to directly address the redis- tribution of power and the redesign of fundamental practices (Block, 1993). Based on the premise that an organization revolves around the distribution of power and wealth, Block (1993) distinguishes management from leadership ”governance” by describing managers as those who regard work processes as a simple way to achieve a purpose, as opposed to leaders who recognize the political nature of those processes.

Block (1993) suggests four principles of service that inner leaders may profitably employ.

Organizational power should be balanced. Primary commitment should be to the larger communiq. Purpose and culture should be defined by the group. Rewards should be equitably shared.

He says that if all leaders were to adopt these propositions and see their role as being one of service, they would undoubtedly promote a more satisfying and productive life for all stakeholders.

STEWARDSHIP PRINCIPLES

The raison d’@tre of some organizations and leaders appears to be capital generation and accumulation-a constantly improving bottom line. How- ever, for most stakeholders, profitability is not enough. Like any tool, the bottom line is only as effective as the person who uses it (Douglas and Wykowksi, 1992). Money in itself can’t capture anyone’s spirit, motivate them to excel, or sustain them in troublesome times. People need something more to spur them on to exact the best of themselves. By identifying and articulating shared values and principles, inner leaders drive an organization beyond the bottom line, positively affecting both work and life sat-

Stewardship 193

isfaction. In doing so, inner leaders capture the spirit, values, and principles of their stakeholder group.

Summarizing the discussion, one can identify several elements of the idea of the in-the-middle leader as steward. These principles of steward-leadership include the following items, which match closely other elements of values-based spiritual leadership discussed throughout this book.

Ethics

Profit and ethics often clash in contemporary culture, but they do not have to and shouldn’t. When improving the bottom line is successfully done, it is always ethical. This is called enlightened self-interest, which means when the inner leader does the right thing, all stakeholders benefit from it. Mid-level leaders make decisions not only because they are profit- able to stakeholder and the corporation, but because they are also the right thing to do.

Vision

A strong sense of stewardship comes from developing a common vision and a value system and then using them as the criteria for making judgments (Covey, 1997). Stewardship unites the inner leader and stakeholders in the common enterprise in otherwise impossible ways. In this way, in-the-middle leaders can commit stewardship stakeholders to a common set of principles; all have stewardship toward those principles and to that vision. Each is accountable to that vision and to each other (Covey, 1997).

Ownership

Like all others, inner leaders struggle in today’s workplace to create and maintain a strong sense of shared ownership in the corporation. The solution is stewardship. As the business world forges ahead with mergers, ac- quisitions, and alliances, the connection between ownership and stewardship become interconnected. Ownership is a clear expression of independence. On the other hand, stewardship is a clear expression of interdependence, which is the nature of the new work contract. Inner leaders have always known what many are just learning: Leader and led are interdependent; neither can succeed without the other. Stewards go beyond ownership to equitable, interdependent ownership (Ramsey, 1994).


Standards

Standards are those policies and actions that function as guidelines to help define the core values of a business and the character of an enterprise. Inner leaders establish core values like integrity, fairness, unity, satisfaction, and respect for the individual (Fairholm, 1991) as the basis of their relationships with their (largely) volunteer stakeholders. They endeavor to embrace and live these values at every level, from the formation of group subculture standards and policies to the practical aspects of their relationships corporation-wide. If problems occur, they can usually be traced to a deviation from these shared standards (Beckett, 1999).

Moral Choice

Inner leaders base their stewardship on the free moral choice of all members of the stewardship community. Every steward has the same rights and is subject to identical limitations in the exercise of self-direction. This sharing of power preserves harmony and goodwill. The inner leader is also a steward and subject to the same limitations and advantages of other stewards. They ensure every member-steward has a voice in sitting-in-council with others and an equal vote in group decisions.

Stewardships preserve oneness, meaning unity or cohesiveness, by procedures that maximize the exercise of shared decision making. In this way each steward is protected against unjust or dominating leaders. Inner leaders gain committed colleagues in what becomes by, their free choices, the common enterprise. The strength of the corporation is derived from the moral choice built into the culture. Emile Durkheim wrote, “When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable” (quoted by Covey, 1997).

Freedom

Personal liberty-the capacity to make free-will choices-is integral to the idea of stewardship. The expectation that stewards can be free to make their own choices in the group is fully American. Many of the most important choices people make are not individual choices, but group choices. In- ner leaders build a stewardship community as they let members make choices about whom to partner with, what products or services to buy from internal or external suppliers, how to spend discretionary funds and time, and how to serve their customers.

However, stewardship implies that group members represent or are part of someone or something else-that their freedom of choice is bounded by respect for coworkers and the demands of the common enterprise. The in-the-middle leader’s task is to insure that stakeholder choices are constrained by the shared vision and values and common standards of behav-

Stewardship 195

ior and conduct. The more stewardship values reign, the less dependent the group is on the strengths and weaknesses of individual members.

Productivity

Stewardship is an expectation of production in proportion to what is given. It involves accounting, but essentially asks inner leaders to give un- restrained support of the steward until the time of accounting.

Equality

The stewardship team is based on decentralization. Stewardship communities eliminate status distinctions. All community members-stewards-are equal. All have equal opportunity to administer their stewardship. All have equal access to available rewards for a well-done stewardship. They are equal in social status. The steward-leader is also a steward and subject to the same limitations and advantages of other stewards. Every steward has a single voice in stewardship councils and a single vote in the power of consent.

Shared Responsibility

The age-old concept of stewardship is very consistent with the new psychological contract emerging in the workplace, because everyone becomes accountable for everybody else. Inner leaders represent the stakeholders who are most relevant in their particular area of responsibility. They are not representing just themselves; they are representing the shared vision, mission, and value systems that everyone has participated in developing (Covey, 1997).

Change and Transformation

The stewardship character of inner leadership is not a simple, easy approach. At its core, inner leadership is a long-term, transformational approach to life and work. It is a way of behaving that has the potential for creating fundamental and positive change (Spears, 1998).

Trust

Stewardship emphasizes the trust that exists between the inner leader and stakeholders in order to blend long-term socioeconomic, human, and environmental growth (Petrick, Scherer, Brodzinski, Quinn, Ainina, 1999).


Building Community

Stewardship is, in one of its dimensions, a structural form of corporate community, the basic building block of which is the self-managed team. The community the inner leader builds may contain several such teams. Self-managed teams are based on the assumption that a successful corporation links individual knowledge workers in a manner that elicits a level of corporate commitment (or creativity, or loyalty, or integrity) that is greater than the sum of each individual's creativity. The self-managed team encompasses systems that enable their effective operation and structures for accountability and recognition (Spencer, 1995). Through these teams, inner leaders can tap employee capacities to enhance the quality of service provided to customers.

Building self-managed communities of teams asks inner leaders to pay attention to benchmarking, learning, balancing uneven team performance, and costs. Success can be measured by the following criteria (Spencer, 1995).

Fiscal health-necessary for sustainability and diversity. Customer satisfaction-the measure of the relevance and quality of services of-

Empowered teams-the measure of the health of the organization. Transformation-the capacity of the organization and its members to change on

fered by the organization to meet client needs and standards.

an ongoing basis.

APPLICATION

Stewardship principles have always been part of the underlying skeleton of inner leadership technology. However, few researchers have done more than identify the concept and recommend its application. They have done little to instruct the fledgling inner leader in the mechanics of this task. Inner leaders rely on a set of leadership competencies useful in selecting, developing, and guiding them and all stakeholders as they set up a stewardship structure in their work community (Dunn, 2000). According to Dunn, the following are among the competencies most obvious in this connection:

Agreeing on Key Expectations. Stewardship is based on common assumptions and practices that need to be set in the initial stages of community creation.

ldentihing Needed Competencies. Inner leaders then translate their expectations into a framework of task competencies and skill sets necessary to accomplish their part of overall corporate goals.

Articulating the Task Competencies. Communicating needed competencies and approaches broadly in the group includes efforts by inner leaders to inform, train, and commit followers in work tasks as well as stewardship attitudes.

Stewardship 197

Setting Performance Expectations. Inner leaders establish standards for steward performance, including behavioral descriptions of acceptable and proficient performance.

lntegrating Performance Expectations into an Accountability Measurement System. Inner leaders need to incorporate a kind of performance sanctions and appraisal system.

Acting in the Organization’s Best Long-Term Interests. Inner leaders know that instant gratification often promotes poor stewardship (Levinson, 1997).

Incorporating lndividual Development. Inner leaders must also insure that stakeholder competencies are incorporated into individual development planning for the organization.

Reinforcing the Behaviors. It is important to reinforce desired behaviors and encourage sharing of successes in learning and implementing these skills.

Rewarding Excellent Performance. Awards, bonuses, and other rewards recognize proficiency in and commitment to stewardship competencies and skills.

Achieving stewardship relationships asks inner leaders to give something up before they get something back. They may give up not only material things but also some prestige and vanity in exchange for an ethic of service and sacrifice. That’s a lot to give up. But inner leaders today stand to lose the capacity to exist as leaders and as viable business elements if they don’t sacrifice self-interested traditional leadership methods and systems. Stewardship is based on this exchange. Until inner leaders give up their perquisites, positions, and possessions, until they first give what they have to the common good and interest, they can’t receive a stewardship (Covey 1997).

Leading through stewardship means inner leaders must maintain responsibility for results, without prescribing the purpose or controlling caretaking. Stewardship does not run counter to the axiom that authority and accountability must be in balance; it pushes control down in the organization, allowing people the right to create a culture that most appropriately serves them (Block, 1993).


Bibliography

Adair, John. Efective Teambuilding. Brookfield, VT: Gower Publishing Co., 1986. Adler, Mortimer J. Six Great Ideas. New York: Collier Books, 1981. Allen, Robert W., Madison, Dan L., Porter, Lyman W., Renwick, Patricia, and

Mayes, Bronston T. "Organizational politics: Tactics and characteristics of its actors." California Management Review, Vol. 22, No. 1,1979,475-83.

And, Dale E., "Trust and managerial problem solving," Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 17,1972,229-39.

Bacherachi S. B., and Lawler, E. J., "Power dependence and power paradoxes in bargaining." Negotiation Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2,1986,167-74.

Bachrach, Peter, and Morton S. Baratz. Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Barnard, Chester. The Functions ofthe Executive. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1968.

Barnes, Louis B. "Managing the paradox of organizational trust." Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1981.

Barnett, E. M. "The dynamics of role interaction." Hospital Materiel Management Quarterly, Rockville, Vol. 17, No. 3, Feb. 1996,9.

Barsoux, Jean-Louis. "Why organisations need humour." European Management Journal, London, Vol. 14, No. 5, Oct. 1996.

Bass, Bernard M. Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership. New York: Free Press, 1981. Bass, Bernard M., et al. "Transformational leadership and the falling domino

effect." Group and Organizational Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 1987, 73-87.

200 Bibliography

Beckett, John D. ”NOBLE ideas for businesses.” Management Review, New York, Vol. 88, No. 3, March 1999,62.

Bennett, William. ”Interview with William J. Bennett,” with Peter Ross Range. Modern Maturity, March-April 1995.

Bennis, Warren. Changing Organizations. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966. . why Leaders Can’t Lead: The Unconscious Conspiracy Continues. San Fran-

. Organizational Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration. Reading, Mass.:

. CO-Leaders: The Power of Great Partnerships. New York John Wiley and

Bennis, Warren, and Nanus, Burt. Leaders: Strategies f o r Taking Charge. New York:

Berkley, G. E. The Craft of Public Administration. Newton, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon

Berlo, David K. The Process of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Bierstadt, Robert. “An analysis of social power.” American Sociological Review, Vol.

Block, Peter. Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Merest. San Francisco:

. ”Choosing service over self-interest.” Executive Excellence, Provo, Vol. 10,

cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989.

Addison Wesley, 1997.

Sons, 1999.

Harper and Row, 1985.

Inc., 1984.

Winston, 1960.

15,1950,730-33.

Berrett-Koehler, 1993a.

No. 8, Aug. 199313, p. 20. Bocock, Robert. Ritual in Industrial Society. London: Allen and Unwin, 1972. Bonczek, Stephen J. ”Ethical decision making: Challenge of the 1990’s-a practical

approach for local governments.” Public Personnel Management, Vol. 21, No. 3, Fall 1992,75-87.

Boyce, W. Duane. “The ecology of the soul.” National Forum, The Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Winter 1995.

Bradford, D. L., and Cohen, A. R. Managing for Excellence. New York John Wiley and Son, 1984.

Brassier, A. ”Strategic vision: A practical tool.” The Bureaucrat, Fall 1985,23-26. Bristol, Lane Voss. ”CO-leaders: The power of great partnerships.” Journal of Busi-

ness Strategy, Boston, Sept./Oct. 1999, Vol. 20, No. 5,4546. Britton, Paul, and Stallings, John. Leadership Is Empowering People. Lanham, Md.:

University Press of America, 1986. Brown, Juanita. ”Developing a corporate community.” In John Renesch (ed.), In

New Traditions in Business: Spirit and Leadership in the 21st Century. San Fran- cisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992.

Buckholz, Steve, and Roth, Thomas. Creating the High Performance Team. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1987.

Buckley, Walter. Sociology and Modern Systems Theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967.

Buhler, Patricia. ”The Flip Side of Leadership.” Supervision, Vol. 54, No. 3, 1993, 18-19.

Burns, J. M. Leadership. New York: Harper and Row, 1978.

Bibliography 201

Cappelli, Peter. "Can this relationshy be saved?" Wharton Alumni Magazine,

Cavanaugh, Gerald F., Moberg, Dennis, and Velasques, J. "The ethics of organiza-

Challif, Ira. "Learn the art of followership." Government Executive, Washington,

Cialdini, Robert. "The triggers of influence." Psychology Today, Feb. 1984,4045. Clement, Linda M., and Rickard, Scott T. Effective Leadership in Student Services:

Voicesfrom the Field. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992. Coenen, L., and Hofstra, N. A. "Informational choice: The development of sys-

tems-related power in organizations." Association paper, Sociological Ab- stracts, 1988.

Cohan, Abner. Two-Dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.

Covey, Steven R. Principle-Centered Leadership. New York: Summit Books, 1991.

Spring 1995.

tional politics." Academy of Management Review, Vol. 6, No. 3,1981,423-39.

Vol. 29, No. 2, Feb. 1997,51.

. "10 Dilemmas." Executive Excellence, Vol. 9, No. 1, Jan. 1992,ll-13.

. "Sense of stewardship." Executive Excellence, Provo, Vol. 14, No. 7, Jul.

. "We're in this together." Incentive, New York, Vol. 172, No. 8, Aug. 1998, 1997,34.

21. Craddock, Fred B. Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985. Cronan, Thomas E. "Thinking and learning about leadership." In W. E.

Rosenbach, and R. L. Taylor (eds.), Contempora ry Issues in Leadership, 2nd ed. Boulder: Westview Press, 1989.

Culbert, S. A., and McDonough, J. J. Radical Management: Power Politics and the PUY- suit of Trust. New York Free Press, 1985.

Danforth, Douglas D. "The quality imperative." Quality Progress, February 1987,

Deal, T., and Kennedy, A. Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life.

Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute

DePree, Max. Leadership Is an Art. New York Doubleday, 1989. Dering, Nancy Z. "Leadership in quality organizations." Journal f o r Qualify and

Participation, Cincinnati, Vol. 21, No. 1, Jan./Feb. 1998,32-35. DeVries, M. F. "Crisis leadership and the paranoid potential." Bulletin, The

Menninger Clinic, 1977, Vol. 41,349-56. "Do you consider yourself a leader or a follower?" Adweek, Eastern ed., New York,

Nov. 14,1994, Vol. 35, No. 46. Douglas, Neil, and Wykowksi, Terry. "Beyond the bottom line." Executive Excel-

lence, Provo, Vol. 9, No. 8, Aug. 1992,8. Drucker, Peter. "The coming of the new age of man." Harvard Business Review,

Jan./Feb. 1988,45-53. . Management Challenges for the 21st Century. New York HarperBusiness,

1999. Duke, James T. Conflict and Power in Social Life. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young Uni-

versity Press, 1976.

17-19.

Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1983.

of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1986.

202 Bibliography

D m , Richard L. “A special trust.” Plant Engineering, Barrington, Vol. 54, No. 1,

Emerson, R.W. “Self reliance.“ The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed.

Etzioni, Amitai. A Comprehensive Analysis of Complex Organizations. New York:

Jan. 2000,lO.

Brooks Atkinson. New York: Modern Library, 1950.

Free Press, 1961. . The Spirit of Community. New York: Crown Publishers, 1993.

Fairholm, Gilbert W. Values Leadership: Toward a New Philosophy of Leadership. New

. Organizational Power Politics: The Tactics of Leadership Power. New York:

. Leadership in a Culture of Trust. New York: Praeger, 1994a.

. “Leading diverse followers.“ Journal of Leadership Studies, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1994b. . “Leadership: A function of interactive trust.” Journal of Leadership Studies,

Vol. 2, No. 2,1995. . Capturing the Heart of Leadership: Spirituality and Community in the New

American Workplace. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997. . Perspectives on Leadership: From the Science of Management to Its Spiritual

Heart. Westport, Conn.: Quorum Books, 1998. Fairholm, Matthew R., and Fairholm, Gilbert W. ”Leadership amid the constraints

of trust.” Leadership and Organization Development Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2,

Falbo, T., New, B. L., and Gaines, Margie. “Perceptions of authority and the power strategies used by clergymen.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 26, No. 4, December 1987,499-507.

Falvey, Jack. ”Before spending $3 million on leadership, read this” The Wall Street Journal, October 10,1988.

Fiedler, Fred E., and Chamers, Martin M. Leadership and Effective Management. Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1974.

Follett, Mary Parker. Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, ed. Henry C. Metcalf and L. Urwick. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942.

French, John R. P., and Raven, Bertram. Studies in Social Power, Donvin Cart- Wright, ed. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1959,150-65.

Gardner, John W. ”Climate for trust formation.” In L. P. Bradford, Jack R. Gibb, and Kenneth D. Benne (Eds.), T-Group Theory and Laboratory Method. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1964.

York: Praeger, 1991.

Praeger, 1993.

2000,102-109.

. “Leadership and the future.” The Futurist, Vol. 24, No. 3,1990,8-12. Gibb, Jack R. A New View of Reason and Organizations Development. New York The

Guild of Tutors’ Press, 1978. Good, David. ”Individuals, interpersonal relations and trust.” In Trust Making and

Breaking Cooperative Relations. Oxford, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Greenleaf, Robert K. Servant Leadership. New York: Paulist Press, 1977. Handy, Charles B. Understanding Organizations. Middlesex, England: Penguin

Books, 1976. . The Age of Paradox. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Bibliography 203

Harman, W. Quoted in John Renesch (ed.), New Traditions in Business: Spirit and Leadership in the 21st Century. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992.

Hawley, Jack. Reawakening the Spirit in Work: The Power of Dharmic Management.

Heenan, David A., and Bennis, Warren. "How to be a great no.2." Across the Board,

Hersey, Paul, and Blanchard, K. H. Management of Organizational Behavior.

Hollander, E. P. Leadership Dynamics: A Practical Guide to Effective Relationships.

Homans, G. C. The Human Group. New York Harcourt, Brace, 1950. Horton, Thomas R., and Reid, Peter C. Beyond the Trust Gap: Forging a New Partner-

ship Between Managers and Their Employees. Out of print. No publisher or date.

Howe, Susan E. S. "Exploring new leadership styles." Pennsylvania CPA Journal, Vol. 65, No. 1, Feb. 1994,14.

Hughes, R. L., Ginnett, R. C., and Curphy, G. L. Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. New York Irwin, McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Hunt, Eugene H, and Gray, George R. "The participative approach: time to catch up." Management World, Vol. 10, No. 5, May 1981,30-31.

Jacobs, Devi. Quoted in John Renesch (ed.), The New Leaders, San Francisco: Ster- ling and Stone, Nov.-Dec., 1994.

Jacobson, Stephen. Spirituality and Transformational Leadership in Secular Set- tings: A Delphi Study. An abridgement of an unpublished dissertation completed in 1994 and available through University Microfilm. Goleta, Georgia, 1995.

San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1993.

New York, Vol. 36, No. 7, July/Aug. 1999,3842.

Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

New York: Free Press, 1978.

Johns, Gary. Organizational Behavior. Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1983. Kanfer, F., and A. P. Goldstein. Helping People Change. New York: Pergamon Press,

1980. Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. "Power failure in management circuits." Harvard Business

Review, July/Aug., 1979. Kelley, Robert E. The Power of Followership: How to Create Leaders People Want to Fol-

low, and Followers Who Lead Themselves. New York Doubleday, 1992. . "How to manage your work life (and become a star)." Training B Develop-

ment, Alexandria, Vol. 52, No. 5, May 1998,5640. Kelman, Ralph H. "Managing the intangibles: Corporate culture." Current,

Kimball, Edward L. The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft,

Kipnis, David. The Powerholders. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Kipnis, David, Schmidt, Stuart M., and Wilkinson, Ian. "Intraorganizational influ-

ence tactics: Explorations in getting one's way." Journal of Applied Psychol- ogy, Vol. 65, No. 4,1980,440-52.

Korda, Michael. Power! How to Get It, How to Use It. New York: Ballantine Books, 1975.

Kotter, John P. "Power, dependence, and effective management." Harvard Business Review, July/Aug. 1977,125-36.

July-Aug. 1985,8-12.

1982.

204 Bibliography

. A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management. New York Free Press, 1991.

Kouzes, James M. "When leadership collides with loyalty." In W. E. Rosenback, and R. L. Taylor, (eds.), Contemporary Issues in Leadership. London: Westview Press, 1989.

Kouzes, J. M., and Posner, B. Z . The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987. . "Ethical Leaders," Journal ofBusiness Ethics, Vol. 11, No. 5-6,479-84. . Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993.

Lavelle, John L., Jr. "The spirituality of work." Life Association News, Washington,

Leavitt, Harold J. Managerial Psychology, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago

Levinson, William A. "Stewardship and service." Executive Excellence, Provo, Vol.

Litzinger, William, and Schaefer, Thomas. "Leadership through followership."

Locke, Edwin A. The Essence of Leadership: The Four Keys to Leading Successfully.

Lorsch, Jay W. "Managing culture: The invisible barrier to strategic change." Cali-

Low, Murray B. "The stakeholder concept and the prospects for prosperity."

Lundin, Stephen C., and Lancaster, Lynne C. "The importance of followership."

Maccoby, Michael. The Gamesman. New York Simon and Schuster, 1976.

Madison, Dan L., Allen, Robert W., Porter, Lyman W., Renwich, Patricia A., and Mayes, Bronston T. "Organizational politics: An exploration of managers' perceptions." Human Relations, Vol. 33, No. 2,1980,455-74.

Manz, Charles C., and Sims, Henry P., Jr. "SuperLeadership." Organizational Dy- namics, Vol. 19, No. 4, Spring 1991,18-35.

Maurer, Rick. Caught in the Middle: A Leadership Guide for Partnership in the Work- place. Portland, OR Productivity Press, 1994.

McClelland, D. C., and Burnham, R. "Power is the great motivator." Harvard Busi- ness Review, March/April1976.

McGregor, Douglas. The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960. McIntosh, Stephen S., "Service over self-interest." HRMagazine, Alexandria, Vol.

39, No. 3, Mar. 1994,97. McKeachie, Wilbert J. Teaching Tips: A Guidebook for the Beginning College Teacher.

Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1969. McMillen, Kim. In John Renesch (ed.), The New Leaders, Sterling and Stone, San

Francisco, CA, Sept./Oct., 1994. McMurray, Robert N. "Power and the ambitious executives." Harvard Business Re-

view, Vol. 51, No. 6,1973,140-45. Meadow, A., Parnes, S. J. and Reese, H. "Influence of brainstorming instructions

and problem sequence on a creative problem-solving test." Journal of Applied

Vol. 94, No. 2, Feb. 1999,130-31.

Press, 1958.

14, No. 7, Jul. 1997,4.

Business Horizons, Vol. 25, No. 5, Sept./Oct. 1982,78-81.

New York Lexington Books, 1991.

fornia Management Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, Winter 1986.

Wharton Alumni Magazine, Fall/Winter, 1988 23-30.

The Futurist, Vol. 24, No. 3,1990,18-22.

. The Leader. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Psychology, Vol. 43,1959,413-16.

Bibliography 205

Mechanic, David. "Sources of power of lower participants in complex organizations." Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2, Dec. 1962,349-64.

Merrell, V. Dallas. Huddling: The Informal Way to Management Success. New York AMACOM, 1979.

Metzger, Norman. "Beyond survival to excellence." Health Care Supervisor, Aspen Publications, Vol. 5, No. 2, January 1987.

Michner, A., and Schwartfeger, M. "Liking as a determinant of power tactic pref- erence." Sociometry, 1972, Vol. 35,190-202.

Miller, William C. "Put spiritual values to work." In John Renesch (ed.), New Tra- ditions in Business: Spirit and Leadership in the 21st Century. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992.

Mintzberg, Henry. The Nature of Managerial Work. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

Mitchell, Terence R., and Scott, William G. "Leadership failures, the distrusting public, and prospects of the administrative state." Public Administration Re- view, Washington, Vol. 47, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 1987,445.

Mollner, Terry. "Developing a relationship oriented world view." In John Renesch (ed.), New Traditions in Business: Spirit and Leadership in the 21st Centu ry. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992.

Molm, Linda D. "Structure, action, and outcomes: The dynamics of power in social exchange." American Sociological Review, Vol. 55, No. 3, June 1990, 427-47.

Mroczkowski, Tomasz. "Productivity and quality improvement at GE's video products division: The cultural change component." National Productivity Review, Winter 1984-1985,l.

Mueller, Robert Kirk. Risk, Survival and Power. New York: American Management Association, 1970,161.

Myers, Scott. Every Employee a Manager. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. Nair, Keshavan. A Higher Standard of Leadership: Lessonsfrom the Life of Gandhi. San

Naisbitt, John, and Aburdene, Patricia. Reinventing the Corporation. New York

Nixon, Richard. Leaders. New York: Warner Books, 1982. Nourse, Bartley B., Jr. Quoted in John Renesch (ed.), The New Leaders, Sterling and

Nyberg, David. Power over Power. Ithaca, NY: Cornel1 University Press, 1981. OBrian, Conner, and Banech, W.D. Power and Consciousness. New York New York

Ott, J. Steven. The Organizational Culture Perspective. Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1989. Patchen, M. "The locus and basis of influence on organizational decisions." Orga-

Pelz, Donald C. "Influence: A key to effective leadership in the first-line supervi-

Peters, Thomas J., and Waterman, Robert H. In Search of Excellence. New York

Peters, Tom. "Questions and comments to Tom." On Achieving Excellence, Vol. 9,

Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1994.

Warner Books, 1985.

Stone, San Francisco, March/April, 1995.

University Press, 1969.

nizational Behavior and Human Performance, 1974, Vol. 11,195-221.

sor.'' Personnel, Nov. 1952,209.

Harper and Row Publishers, 1982.

NO. 7, July 1994,9-11.

206 Bibliography

Peters, Tom, and Austin, Nancy. A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difierence. New York Random House, 1985.

Petrick, Joseph A., Scherer, Robert F., Brodzinski, James D., Quinn, John F., and Ainina, M. Fall. "Global leadership skills and reputational capital: Intangi- ble resources for sustainable competitive advantage." Academy of Manage- ment Executive, AMA, New York, Vol. 13, No. 1, Feb. 1999,58-69.

Pettigrew, A. M. The Politics of Organizational Decision-Making. London: Tavistock, 1973.

Pfeffer, Jeffery. "The ambiguity of leadership." Academy of Management Review, 1977, Vol. 2,104- 12. . Power in Organizations. Marshfield, Mass.: Pittman Publishing Co., 1981.

Pinchot, Gifford, and Pinchot, Elizabeth. The End of Bureaucracy and the Rise of the Intelligent Organization. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1994.

Porter, Lyman W., Allen, Robert W., and Angle, Harold L. "The politics of upward influence in organizations." Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 3, ed- ited by L. L. Cummings and Barry M. Staw, 1981,408-22.

Pritchett, Price. New Working Habits for a Rapidly Changing World. Dallas, Tex: Pritchett and Associates, 1994.

Purcell, Robert C., Jr., "Values for value: Integrity and stewardship." Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. 64, No. 24, Oct. 1,1998,76346,

Ramsey, Sajeela Moskowitz. "Leading with art and soul." Executive Excellence, Provo, Vol. 11, No. 12, Dec. 1994,18.

Raspberry, William. "Churches shouldn't neglect their strong inside game." Rich- mond Times-Dispatch, Thursday, Feb. 16,1995,15.

Renesch, John (ed.). New Traditions in Business: Spirit and Leadership in the 21st Cen- tury. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992.

Reuss, L. E. "Catalysts of genius, dealers in hope." Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. 53, No. 6, Jan. 1,1987,173-76.

Roberts, B. H. "Revelation and Inspiration." In Defense of the Faifh and the Saints. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1907.

Rogers, Carl B. On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1964. Rosen, Benson, and Jerdee, Thomas H. "Influence of subordinate characteristics

on trust and use of participative decision strategies in a management simulation." Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 62, No. 5,1977,628-31.

Rosen, S., Levinger, G., and Lippitt, R. "Perceived sources of social power." Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology. Vol. 62,1961,43941.

Rosenback, W. E., Pittman, T. S., and Potter, E. H. "The performance and relationship questionnaire." Gettysburg, Penn.: 1997.

Rossiter, Charles M., Jr., and Pearch, Barnett W. Communicating Personally. New York Bobbs- Merrill Co., 1975.

Rotter, Julian B. "Trust and gullibility." Psychology Today, Oct. 1980,3541 and 102. Rowan, Roy. The Intuitive Manager. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986. Rubinoff, Lionel. The Pornography of Power. New York Ballantine Books, 1968. Russell, Bertrand. Power: A New Social Analysis. New York Norton, 1938. Salencik, G. R., and Pfeffer, J. "Who gets power-and how they hold on to it: a

strategic contingency model of power." Organizational Dynamics, 1977, 52-71.

Bibliography 207

Sanborn, Mark. ”Are you a leader or a manager?” American Agent t3 Broker, St. Louis, Vol. 68, No. 12, Dec. 1996,4347.

Sashkin, Marshall. ”True vision in leadership.” Training and Development Journal, May 1986,58.

Sathe, Vijay. Organizational culture: Some conceptual distinctions and their managerial implications. Working paper, Harvard Business School, Division of Research, July 1983.

Schein, Edgar H. Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985.

Scott, W. G., and Hart, D. K. Organizational America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

Selznick, P. Leadership in Administration. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1957. Senge, Peter. “The leaders’ new work Building learning organizations.“ Sloan

Sergiovanni, T. J. “Adding value to leadership gets extraordinary results.” Educa-

Shonk, James H. Working in Teams. New York: AMACOM, 1982. Sims, Ronald R. ”The challenge of ethical behavior in organizations.” Journal of

Sinatar, Marsha. ”Building trust into corporate relationships.” Organizational Dy-

Spears, Larry C. ”Servant-leadership.” Executive Excellence, Provo, Vol. 15, No. 7,

Spencer, Raymond J. ”Success with self-managed teams and partnering.” Journal

Steller, Arthur. ”Leadership and followership.” Education Update, Feb. 1995. Szilagyl, Andrew D., and Wallace, Marc J., Jr. Organizational Behavior and Perfor-

mance. Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1983. Taylor, Sylvester, and Novelli, Luke, Jr. “Telling a story about innovation.” Issues

and Observations, Greensboro, N.C., Center for Creative Leadership, Vol. 11, No. 1,1991,6-9.

Terry, Robert W. “Authentic leadership: Courage in action.“ The New Leaders, Jan./Feb. 1994.

Timm, Paul. Managerial Communication. New York Prentice-Hall, 1980. Townsend, P. L., with Gebhardt, J. E. Commit to Quality. New York John Wiley

Umiker, William. Management Skills f o r the New Health Care Supervisor.

Vaill, Peter. Managing as a Performing Art. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989. Wagner, Karan Van, and Swanson, Cheryl. ”From Machiavelli to MS: Differences

in male-female power styles.” Public Administration Review, Jan./Feb. 1979, 66-72.

Weber, Max. On Charisma and Institution Building. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.

Wheatley, Margaret J. Leadership and the New Science: Learning about Team from an Orderly Universe. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992.

Management Review, Fall 1990.

tional Leadership, Vol. 47,1990,2527.

Business Ethics, Vol. 11,1992,93948.

namics, Winter 1988, 73.

July 1998,ll.

for Qualify and Participation, Cincinnati, Vol. 18, No. 4, July/Aug. 1995,48.

and Sons, 1990.

Gaithersburg, Md.: Aspen Publishers, 1998.

208 Bibliography

White, Judy. "Helping themselves to power: The burgeoning of women in leisure management." Center f o r Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birming- ham, England, 1990, B-15.

Whyte, David. Quoted in John Renesch (ed.), The New Leaders, Stirling and Stone, San Francisco, CA, Sept./Oct., 1994.

Wilkinson, Roderick. A Supervisor is a ??." Supervision, Burlington, Vol. 51, No. 10, Oct. 1990,17.

Winter, David G. The Power Motive. New York: Free Press, 1973. Wood, Gale S. "You're next in line for the top." Association Management, Washing-

Wrong, Dennis H. Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses. New York: Harper, 1979. Yukl, Gary A. Leadership in Organizations. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,

Zaleznick, Abraham. "Managers and leaders: Are they different?" Harvard Busi-

ton, Vol. 51, No. 1, Jan 1999,71-73.

1981.

ness Review, May/ June 1977,67.

Index

Acceptance, 111 Accountability, measurement system,

Achievement, 68 Action, 121,197 Active listening, 88 Allocating resources, 159; use of en-

197

ergy, 159; use of financial resources, 159; use of information, 159; use of physical facilities, 159

Altruism, 120 Ambiguity, using, 15 Analytical skill, 35 Applying inspiration, 97 Applying whole-souled inner leader-

Association, 140 Assumptions, 76,111 Authentic caring, 69,112 Authoritarian, 7; leaders, 7 Authority and organizational struc-

Automatons, xvii

ship, 47

ture, 128

Bamard, Chester, 147,168 Barnett, E.M., 6, 7 Barriers to shaping trust cultures, 125 Basis of comfort, strength, happiness,

Bass, Bernard M., 39,157,161 Behaviors, consequences of, 35; rein-

forcing of, 197 Berkley, G.E., 125 Bierstadt, Robert, 146 Block, Peter, 187,189,190,192,197 Boss, managing the, 151-64 Bradford, D.L. and A.R. Cohen, 11,45 Brinkmanship, 163 Building a favorable image, 157,164 Building community, 45,169,196 Building culture, 104 Building follower strengths, 38 Building individual loyalty and com-

mitment, 101 Building trust cultures takes time, 129 Burns, J.M., 45,146

41

210 Index

Capitalizing on the whole person, not

Cappelli, Peter, 49 Caring behavior, 19; and respect, 19;

and support, 19 Centrality, 139,148 Ceremonies, 77 Change, foster, 104; productive, 6 Change and transformation, 21,195 Changing tasks, roles and values of

inner leaders, 20 Chaos, living with, 65 Character, 69; personal, 113 Charisma, displaying, 154 Chief executive officer (CEO), xvi, 1,

11; alliances with their deputies are critical, 9; traditional roles, 84

just needed tasks, xix

Clustering, 91-92 Coaching, 88 Coalitions, forming, 161 Coercive power, 144 CO-leader/co-leadership, 2 CO-leadership culture, 75 Collaborators/collaboration, 3 Comfort with complexity, 57 Common ethical values, 180 Communicating meaning, 35 Communicating understanding, 38 Communication, 100,122; face-to-face,

Community, 3,44,65; conflict differ- 30

ence, 174; corporate citizenship, 175; elements of, 168,171; empowerment, 173; innovation, 174; inspiration, 173; participation, 171; quality excellence, 172; strategic planning, 174

Community building, 45,167-76,196 Competence, 44,121; analytical skill,

35; build follower strengths, 38; communicating meaning, 35; communicating understanding, 38; decision making, 36; in human relations, 35; loving concern, 35; measuring work effort, 36; performance, criteria of, 37; planning, 36; priority setting, 37; in problem solving, 35; program effectiveness,

36; program knowledge, 36; in promoting follower performance, 37; providing needed resources, 37

Competencies, task, 196 Concern for the whole person, 45 Conflict difference, 174 Conformance: to group norms, 140;

helping new workers with, 90 Consequences of behavior, 35 Continuous improvement, 44 Control over rewards, 145 Controlling the agenda, 163 Cooperation, 56 Coopting opposition members, 161 Core values, xv, 15,46,74 Corporate: citizenship, 168,175; hu-

man capital, 3; leadership, 3; stories, 80; values, 73

Counseling and counciling-with, 31 Covey, Steven R., 17,62,64,167,

Coworkers, 3 Critical situational factors, 18 Critical thinkers, 30 Criticality, 145 Cults, 78 Cultural inclusiveness, 168-69 Culture, xvi, 74; building, 104; change,

83-92; creation and maintenance, 18,7475; impact of values on, 73; maintenance, 75,89-91; shared values, 19; value-laden, 73

187-89,190,193-95,197

Decision making, 7,36 Delimiting the unique character of in-

ner leadership, xviii DePree, Max, 17 Desire for personal freedom, 68 Development of stakeholders, 6 Discretion, 139 Displaying charisma, 154 Dissent, willingness to, 31 Drucker, Peter, 18,84,85

Effective face-to-face communications,

Egalitarian leaders, 7 Emerson, Ralph W., 55

30

Index 211

Emotional appeal, 156 Emotional openness, 56 Empowering, 12,19,173 Enabling, 179 End of hero leadership, 11 Energy, use of, 159 Engineering desired conduct, 90 Entrepreneurial leaders, 3 Equality, 195 Essence of self, 41 Ethical actions, 112 Ethics, 122,193; ethical values, 180 Etzioni, Amitai, 65,142,169 Exchange theory, 140 Exchange transaction, 93 Expectations, 76,196 Expert power, 144 Expertise, 57,147

Face-to-face communications, 30 Fidelity, 56 Financial resources, use of, 159 Focusing, 83 Follett, Mary Parker, 4,188 Followers, 1,34,99; building strengths

of, 38; part of leadership action, 18; role of, 6; significance of, 9-11; sitting in council with, 31

Followership, 34 Forming coalitions, 161 Foster change, 104 Fostering trust, 103 Freedom, 68,194 Friendship, 121

Gibb, Jack R., 110-113,118 Globalization, 22 Goal of inner leadership, 46 Goals, xv Greenleaf, Robert K., 19,62,192

Handy, Charles B., 117 Hawley, Jack, 62,65,69 Heart-values, xx Helping new workers conform, 90 Heroes, 79; end of hero leadership, 11 Hierarchy, 3 Higher moral standard, 44

History of negative trust events, 129 Holistic (spirit) leadership, 169 Hollander, E.P., 13,18 Human capital, 17 Humor, 79,156

Identification with powerful others, 147

Impact of values on culture and on inner leadership, 73

Incurring obligation, 162 Individual development, 197 Influence, 7; and power, 179 Information, use of, 159 Information explosion, 22; transfer, 22 Inner and top leader, differences be-

tween, xix Inner certainty, 40 Inner leaders, xvii; avoid major con-

flict, 8; character of, xviii, 7; competence in human relations, 35; competence in problem solving, 35; competence in promoting follower performance, 37; concentrate on core needs, 8-9; corporate operations, 29; counciling and counciling-with, 31; counseling followers, 31; critical thinking, 30; dis- senting, 31; effectiveness of, 29; enthusiasm of, 29; face-to-face communications, 30; follow as well as lead, 9; followership, 34; give the CEO what they want and what they need, 8; goals of, 12; know when to stay put, 9; lead balanced lives, 9; mitigating job stress, 33; na’ive listening, 33; performance of, 7; place in corporation, 3; proactivity, 30; psychological maturity, 30; success of, 7; teaching, 31; team players, 32; truth, 31; understand their bosses, 8; understand themselves, 7; use office politics to secure personal and corporate goals, 134

Inner leader’s role in shaping the culture, 84; active listening, 88; coaching, 88; engineering desired

212 Index

conduct, 90; helping new workers conform, 90; maintaining the culture, 89-91; managing the system, 91; managing up the chain, 91; modeling desired conduct, 90; naive listening, 88; paying attention, 85-87; self management, 84; showing love/caring, 89; standard setting, 87; using symbols, 87

Inner leadership, xv, 2,4,17; elements of, 21-22; environmental conditions within which it is practiced, 22; ethical values, 180; globalization, 22; goal of, 46; information explosion, 22; information transfer, 22; integrity, 180; intuition, 179; loyalty and commitment, 84; misconceptions about, 9; more whole-souled concern for the follower, 23; multi-cultural characteristics of the work place, 23; nature of, 4; part of leadership action, 18; pressure for creative approaches, 24; risk taking, 179; service, 179; sharing meaning, 178; special competencies, 34; spiritual wholeness in, 59; spiritually focused, 178,179; stakeholder view of the leader’s role, 22; tasks of, 44-45; technologies of, xx; theory of, xx; transformation, 180; truth, willingness to tell, 181; values and, 73,180

Inner leadership skills: power use, 70; reverence, 70

Innovation, 174 Inspiration, 44,95,96,173; inspiring

Inspiration, not motivation, xviii, 93 Integrity, 22,180 Intuition, 179

followers, 93,95; inspiring others, 4

Jacobson, Stephen, 17,41,62 Jargon, 79 Job stress, mitigating, 33

Kantor, Rosebeth Moss, 152 Kelley, Robert E., 3,5,12,13,29,30,

100

Kipnis, David, 137,143,159 Knowledge about the technical tasks

of the group, 44 Kotter, John l?, 137,141

Laissez-faire, 7 Leader, entrepreneurial, 3; attitudes,

19; as communicator, 21; egalitarian, 7; formal, xvi; as figurehead, xvii; role of, 6; as steward, 186; steward-leader’s role, 187

Leaders in the middle, challenges for, 24; community-building, 25; difference, 24; enthusiasm, 26; a future focus, 25; leader-building25; self-confidence, 26; taking risks, 24; trustworthiness, 26

Leadership, 113; agenda, the new, 69; behaviors, 20; building other leaders, 18; and hard sciences, 20; holistic (spirit), 169; as political action, 133,134; principle-centered, 64; as a servant relationship, 186; a social event, 18; values-based, xx

the same process, 12

and top leaders, xx; techniques, 2; technologies, 2,4

Leadership task, xvi Leavitt, Harold J., 63 Legitimacy, 140; perception of, 146 Legitimate power, 144 Levinson, William A., 39,87,190,191 Liberty, personal, 68 Life, a complex competition, xv Limits of power use, 140 Living with chaos, 65 Love/caring, showing, 89 Loving concern, 35 Loyalty, 102,182-84; and commit-

ment, 101,182

Leadership and followership, part of

Leadership differences between inner

Maccoby, Michael, 45 Maintaining the culture, 89-91; engi-

neering desired conduct, 90; helping new workers conform, 90;

Index 213

managing up the chain, 91; modeling desired conduct, 90

Management, 20 Management science, 20 Managing peer relationships, 92 Managing the boss, 151-64 Mastering trust, 119 Maturity, psychological, 30 McGregor, Douglas, 173 Meaning, communication of, 21,35;

Measuring work effort, 36 Mechanic, David, 148 Metaphor, 80 Middle-echelon executives, 1 Mitigating job stress, 33 Modeling desired conduct, 90 Moral choice, 194 Moral integrity, 120 Moral standard, higher, 44; setting a,

Moral values, general decay of, 126 Morale factors, 102 Motivating followers, 93 Motivation, xviii, 93,95 Multicultural characteristics of the

Myth, 80

sharing, 178

45,177-84

work place, 23

Nair, Keshavan, 177 Naive listening, 33,88 Nature of Number Two's follower

Nature of success, 51 Nature of work and the worker in to-

day's world, 47; reorientation of the inner leader ' S role, 50; reorientation of worker roles, 48

role, 5

Number Two, xvi, 2; follower role, 5 Nyberg, David, 137,156

Obligation, 162,168 Open communications, 100 Operational power use, 134 Ott, J. Steven, 74,105 Ownership, 193

Participation, 171

Partnerships, 2,14 Pathfinding, 63 Pathologies of trust, 125-26 Patience, 120 Paying attention, 85-87 Peer relationships, managing, 92 Perception of legitimacy, 146 Performance, 197; criteria of, 37; ex-

Personal, not position power, xix, 131 Personal character, 113 Personal characteristics, 140 Personal difference, 148 Personal liberty, 68 Personal selfish interest, 129 Personal status, 140 Personal values, xix, 73 Persuasion, 21,156 Pfeffer, Jeffery, 135,136,156,163 Physical facilities, use of, 160 Place of inner leaders in the corpora-

tion, 3 Planning, 36 Post-bureaucratic organizations, 11 Power, xviii, 7; association, 140; cen-

tral to interaction, 20; centrality, 139; coercive, 144; competition, 134; conformance to group norms, 140; control over rewards, 145; criticality, 145; difference in goals, 134; discretion, 139; exchange, 140; expectations and power use, 139; expert, 144; expertise, 147; forms, xvii; identification with powerful others, 147; importance, 134; important factors in successful power use, 139; interdependence, 134; legitimacy, 140,144,146; nature and character, 134; permeates our lives, 138; personal characteristics, 140; personal difference, 148; personal nature of, 20; personal status, 140; referent, 144; reward, 144; scarcity, 134; social organization, 146; status vis-a-vis superiors, 140; use of, 148

building a favorable image, 157; displaying charisma, 154;

pectations, 197

Power tactics toward leaders, 152;

214 Index

proactivity, 153; rationalization, 156; using ambiguity, 157; using outside experts, 154

Power tactics used with peers, 158; allocating resources, 159; brinkmanship, 163; building a favorable image, 164; controlling the agenda, 163; coopting opposition members, 161; forming coalitions, 161; incurring obligation, 162; quid pro quo, 160; using surrogates, 163

Power use model, 134; limits of power use, 140; personal factors of the power dynamics model, 136; power requires a decision situation, 135; power use is an action process, 137; power use strategies, 14142; resistance to power use, 140; results of power use, 141; situational factors implicit in the inner leader’s power dynamic model, 136

Predictability, 19,113 Pressure for creative approaches, 24 Principle-centered leadership, 64 Priority setting, 37 Proactivity, 30,153 Process thinking, 64 Processes: building community, 45;

concern for the whole person, 45; of inner leadership, 45; setting a higher moral standard, 45; stewardship, 45

Productive change, 6 Productivity, 22,195 Program effectiveness, 36 Program knowledge, 36 Providing needed resources, 37 Providing service, 45 Psychological maturity, 30

Quality excellence, 172 Quid pro quo, 160

Rationalization, 156; emotional appeal, 156; humor, 156; persuasion, 156; structuring reality, 156

Redefining leadership as applied by inner leaders, 52; comfort with complexity, 57; cooperation, 56; courage, 55; emotional openness, 56; expertise, 57; fidelity, 56; self-mastery, 54

Referent power, 144 Relationships, 3,14; and power, 20 Renesch, John, 62 Reorientation: of the inner leader’s

Resistance to power use, 140 Responsibility, shared, 195 Results of leadership in the middle,

role, 50; of worker roles, 48

68; achievement, 68; authentic caring, 69; character, 69; personal liberty, 68

Results of power use, 141 Reward power, 144 Rewarding excellent performance, 197 Rewards: control over, 145; economic

Risk taking, 179 Rites, 77 Rituals, 77 Rogers, Carl B., 110,121 Role: of follower, 6; of leader, 6; selec-

and social, xviii

tion, 6

Sagacity, 121 Sashkin, Marshall, 109 Schein, Edgar H., 73,105 Seconds-in-command, 1 Self management, 84 Selfish interest, personal, 129 Self-mastery, 54 Self-motivation, 95 Self-organizing systems, 3 Self-respect, 62 Senge, Peter, 61 Servanthood, 44,63 Service, 179; providing, 45 Setting a higher moral standard, 45,

Setting values, 103 Shared responsibility, 195 Shared values, 75,122 Sharing meaning, 178

177-84

Index 215

Showing love/caring, 89 Sit in council with followers, 31 Skills to inspire others, 98; building

culture, 104; building individual loyalty and commitment, 101; followership, 99; foster change, 104; fostering trust, 103; loyalty, 102; morale factors, 102; open communications, 100; setting values, 103; visioning, 105

Social exchange relationship, 19 Social organization, 146 Source of personal meaning, values,

life purposes, 41 Sources of power inner leaders may

draw on, 143; centrality, 148; coercive power, 144; control over rewards, 145; criticality, 145; expert power, 144; expertise, 147; identification with powerful others, 147; legitimate power, 144; perception of legitimacy, 146; personal difference, 148; referent power, 144; reward power, 144; social organization, 146; use of power, 148

Spears, Larry C., 195 Special skills of inner leaders, 30; be-

ing a team player, 32; counseling and counciling-with, 31; counseling followers, 31; critical thinking, 30; effective face-to-face communications, 30; followership, 34; mitigating job stress, 33; naive listening, 33; proactivity, 30; psychological maturity, 30; sitting in council with followers, 31; teaching, 31; willingness to dissent, 31; willingness to tell the truth, 31

Spiritual dimension of whole-souled inner leadership, 39; basis of comfort, strength, happiness, 41; emotional level, a feeling, 42; essence of self, 41; inner certainty, 40; source of personal meaning, values, life purposes, 41

Spiritual heart, touching in others, 61

Spiritual leadership model, community, 44; competence, 44; continuous improvement, 44; elements of a, 43; higher moral standard, 44; servanthood, 44; spirituality, 44; stewardship, 44

Spirituality, 44,67; and work, 42 Spiritually-focused inner leadership,

common ethical values, 180; elements of, 178; enabling, 179; influence and power, 179; integrity, 180; intuition, 179; loyalty and commitment, 182; risk taking, 179; service, 179; sharing meaning, 178; transformation, 180; willingness to tell the truth, 181

Stakeholders, xv; development of, 6; view of the leader's role, 22

Standard setting, 87 Standards, 194 Status: personal, 140; vis-a-vis superi-

ors, 140 Steward-leader ' s role, 187 Stewardship, 22,44,45,185-97,189;

act in terms of the organization's best long-term interests, 197; agree on key expectations, 196; application of, 196; articulating the task competencies, 196; building community, 196; change and transformation, 195; equality, 195; ethics, 193; freedom, 194; identifying needed competencies, 196; individual development, 197; integrating performance expectations into an accountability measurement system, 197; moral choice, 194; ownership, 193; principles, of, 192; productivity, 195; reinforcing the behaviors, 197; rewarding excellent performance, 197; and service, 191; setting performance expectations, 197; shared responsibility, 195; standards, 194; trust, 195; vision, 193

Strategic planning, 174 Structuring reality, 156

216 Index

Subculture, xvi; assumptions and expectations, 76; ceremonies, rites and rituals, 77; cults, 78; culture maintenance, 75; culture-creation activity, 76; development, 75; elements of, 75; heroes, 79; humor, 79; jargon, 79; metaphors, myths and stories, 80; symbols, 81

Success, nature of, 51 Surrogates, using, 163 Symbols, using, 87

Tasks of spiritual leadership, 44-45 Teaching, 31,44 Team player, being a, 32 Thinking partners, 2 Top leadership, 6 Touching the spiritual heart in others,

61 Traditional leadership, myths about,

11; theory, xx Transformation, 180 Trust, 195; apathy and alienation, 127;

authority and organizational structure, 128; barriers to shaping trust cultures, 125; building trust cultures takes time, 129; centrality of, 113; and confidence, 118; cyclical nature of, 118; definition of, 109-115; and dependence, 110; developing of, 117; and effectiveness, 110; factors limiting, 126; fostering, 103; general decay of moral values, 126; history of negative trust events, 129; implies proactivity, 114; ineffective accountability mechanisms, 128; and knowledge, 117; mastering, 119; pathologies of, 125-26; personal selfish interest, 129; and predictability, 118; risk of, 114,117; and the situation, 118; is transforming, 115; and trustworthiness, xviii, 44,115; and truth, 117; and values, 119

Trust, not authority, xviii, 107 Trust relationships, 19; acceptance,

111; assumptions, 111; authentic caring, 112; elements of the, 110;

ethical actions, 112; leadership, 113; personal character, 113; predictability, 113

Trustworthiness, xviii, 26; 44,118 Truth, willingness to tell, 31,181

Understanding, communication of,

Unique nature of inner leadership, 14 Use of energy, 159 Use of financial resources, 159 Use of information, 159 Use of physical facilities, 159 Use of power, 148 Using ambiguity, 15 Using outside experts, 153 Using power in the organization, 138,

limits of power use, 140; power permeates our lives, 138; resistance to power use, 140; results of power use, 141

38

Using surrogates, 163 Using symbols, 87

Vaill, Peter, 40 Value-laden cultures, 73 Values, xv; 73.74; and beliefs, 74; core,

xv; ethical, 180; not system, xviii, 72; personal, xix, 73, setting, 103; shared, 75,122

Values-based leadership, xx Values-set, xx Valuing, 4 Vision, 193 Vision setting, 20,45 Visioning, 44,105 Volunteers, 18 Vulnerability, 121

Weber, Max, 141 Wheatley, Margaret, J., 66 Whole person, xix; capitalizing on,

165; concern for, 45 Wholeness, 66 Whole-souled inner leadership, spiri-

tual dimension of, 39; basis of comfort, strength, happiness, 41; emotional level, a feeling, 42; es-

Index 217

sence of self, 41; inner certainty, 40; Work and the worker in today’s source of personal meaning, val- world, nature of, 47 ues, life purposes, 41 Work life, xv

Whole-souled spirit, xix, Wrong, Dennis H.,145 whole-souled concern for the follower, 23 Yukl, Gary A., 155

Willingness: to dissent, 31; to tell the truth, 31,181 Zaleznick, Abraham, 21

Documents

Mastering_Inner_Leadership.pdf