Business growth: Approaches to leadership
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change,” Charles Darwin is known to have said. One thing is constant; that one thing is change. How you, as a leader, adapt, adjust and re-align your approach is critical for the growth of your firm.
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because they want to do it,” said Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Many leaders who continue to use their same leadership style often fail, when they confront some of the new and different challenges of today, according to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review. Company leaders who are determined to successfully reinvent themselves, rarely do it in a linear fashion. Associate Professor Ryan Raffaelli of the Harvard Business School has identified three “action orientations” leaders can utilize to minimize organizational disruption.
In other words, each situation that a leader encounters might require different leadership styles to be deployed, depending upon the situation or problem that is encountered. Further, his research suggests that the historical style of a leader can end up being their greatest liability, unless they consider using the “action orientations” outlined.
When a new situation confronts a leader, Raffaelli suggests that leaders should “fall into one of three ‘action orientations’ that govern how they take action in unfamiliar settings: analytical, contextual, or relational. The challenge for leaders is to develop a style that blends elements of all three, because an over reliance on any one orientation can lead to poor action plans that may derail your ability to execute.”
Raffaelli goes on to delineate the three styles:
Analytical: When a leader is in doubt about anything, going to the ‘facts of the matter’ is often helpful in decision making. Raffaelli says, “Leaders with an analytical orientation often find comfort in data, leaning on numbers or models to develop a plan that provides the best chance for success (e.g., data is king).”
Contextual: People with this type of orientation take other issues into consideration, looking for how those issues impact the problem and therefore, the decision making process. “Individuals with a contextual orientation tend to focus on how the situation is influenced by external factors beyond the specific task at hand (e.g., an appreciation for broader market changes, competition behavior, or emergent industry trends),” he says.
Relational: This is a very straight forward orientation, yet is still warrants the attention of the one making a decision; determining how your decision will be viewed by the people who are impacted. “Relational leaders design a plan of action based on how others will perceive and be affected by the course of action (e.g., a focus on power dynamics, social networks, or personal impact.)”
As one might expect from a Harvard article, Raffaelli goes on to cite a case study of retailer JCPenney and former CEO Ron Johnson. Johnson was successful at Apple and its success with the Apple Store, so his transition to JCPenney was based upon that experience. His style in developing the Apple Store was utilizing the contextual style, so he employed the same approach at the retailer, according to Raffaelli, developing “new concepts in retailing and new compensation plans that drew inspiration from emerging trends across the industry. While Johnson’s prescription might have been strategically correct, JCPenney wasn’t ready for such dramatic changes. Johnson never got the buy-in he needed from employees, requiring a more relational action orientation, and resigned after 18 months.”
Raffaelli goes on to say, “An orientation may serve you well for many years and in many circumstances, but the trap is when you rely too heavily on one orientation, the environment shifts around you, and you expect that it will produce the same sort of results.” The key to solving the problem relates to the fact that past success can become a future failure, unless and until you become more aware of which orientation is more important for the particular set of circumstances you are facing.
He also suggests that you work with others seeking their inputs and observations.
In conclusion, it is imperative for the decision maker to assess each and every problem that needs to be decided, frame it utilizing these three orientations, and determine what degree of effort needs to be applied from each of the orientations, in order to maximize the outcome of the decision.
