The Leadership That Conceals Leadership

Liu Bolin Hiding in Italy, The Court Theatre in the Royal Palace of Caserta, 2018

Leadership is not about being in charge.

As soon as we allow ourselves to look beyond the charismatic management styles of a four-star general or the boss in The Office (UK or US version), we feel the discomfort of having to consider many different possible definitions of what leadership is.

There is transactional and transformational leadership, adaptive leadership, and even creative leadership, to name a few of the current leadership types on which empirical, meta-analytic, and theoretical studies have been conducted by leadership scholars to envision and create the future of leadership.

Meanwhile, in the field, some staff members may not spontaneously or easily be spotted as leaders, their freaky costumes being too shiny or too “casual” for traditional gate-keepers of Taylorian management traditions. But we wonder if not being seen as a leader may paradoxically be a leadership quality.

Playing with appearances, sometimes over-dressed, sometimes hiding in ordinariness, remaining anonymous, some professionals have understood, like the contemporary Chinese artist Liu Bolin, that invisibility can be useful to counter-power, influence and make loopholes visible. Lao-Tzu, another Chinese nonconformist and a semi-legendary figure of ancient philosophy stated (as mentioned by Dr. Shinagel, acknowledged as the longest-serving dean in the history of Harvard University): “‘A leader is best when people barely know he exists when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.’ This is the art of leadership at its best: the art that conceals art.” (Shinagel, October 29, 2018)

As leaders, those company members have a different role than the rest of the team; creating and securing a space to help individuals reveal themselves and express their hidden potential, they are acting as catalysts for the team to succeed, and like for chemical reactions, their purpose is the reaction’s success.

Sometimes, to make it simple and to reassure their audience, some of those leaders present themselves on the company’s stage as leadership coaches. Contrary to performance-oriented coaches though, they do not seek inspiration in sports psychology; more than goals and results, they value the quality of awareness in the process, in the dialogue. In doing so, they help us detect buried biases and elucidate what is difficult to think about and express clearly within the organization: the unthought-of in our thought (Jullien, 2014).

Such leaders “work outside established goals, procedures, and structures” (Ibarra, 2015, p. 36), as required by the leadership that drives them. As leaders, they “walk the talk” and “walk the walk”, and, by doing so, more often than not, they set standards for the new followers who evolve with them.

Already more than fifteen years ago, The Harvard Business Review published a piece titled “Are You Picking the Right Leaders?” (Sorcher & Brant, February 2002), in which it was stated that “leaders must also be adept at handling problems that are nebulous or ambiguous”, able to thrive in ill-defined and complex situations, comfortable acting in grey areas.

Managers and proficient individuals may tend to heavily rely “on systems, policies, and procedures, rigidly expecting everyone to operate in that same style”. Superior to problem-solving capabilities, they are at risk of “masking a deficiency in long-range, conceptual, or strategic thinking. (…) Being able to solve a problem is one thing; knowing which problem to solve — and then taking the initiative to solve it — is quite another.”

As a famous former CEO of GE claimed, perhaps carried away by a slightly excessive eloquence: “A leader’s job is not to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room.” (Welch, 2005, p. 74)

For sure, if you believe a leader should be straightforward, productive, efficient and focus explicitly on performance, you will claim that those professionals are no leaders.

Nevertheless, the leadership of those staffers may have been spotted by the Harvard Business School, which launched a new executive education program in December 2018, called “Leading and Building a Culture of Innovation” ($15,500).

This program focuses on innovation as a critical component of business agility and growth and its teasing ad states that “companies require a new kind of leader — one who can create a culture and develop the competencies that foster creative, innovative problem-solving across the entire organization” (hbs.edu/programs).

Leadership is not about being in charge, leadership is about taking care of those in your charge, wrote on his Twitter account (January 28th, 2015) the bubbly organizational consultant Simon Sinek, famous for having gotten back in touch with some ingenious childhood drive and having promoted the importance of “Why” in his talks on TED’s stage. Let’s dare to twist his quote and add: leadership is not about being in charge, it is about taking care of those in charge.

References
Ibarra, H. (2015). Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
Jullien, F. (2014). Vivre de paysage ou L’impensé de la Raison. Paris: Gallimard.
Shinagel, M. (October 29, 2018). The Paradox of Leadership. Retrieved from https://www.extension.harvard.edu/professional-development/blog/paradox-leadership
Sorcher, M, Brant, J. (2002, February). Are You Picking the Right Leaders? Harvard Business Review, 80, 2, 78–85.
Welch, J. (2005). Winning. New York: HarperBusiness.
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