How Great Leaders Think

by Lee G Bolman

  Inquiry and listening are critical for two reasons. One is to ensure that you understand the political map: Who are the players? What are their interests? What moves are they likely to make? Answers to these questions help you anticipate the flow of the game and assess which solutions are feasible and which are not. Listening is also critical because parties who feel they have been heard and understood are better able to put emotions aside and focus on solving the problem.

  Engage the Parties: Put People to Work

  Consider the case of John Alden, the academic vice president in a large state university. Under a mandate to make significant budget cuts, he invited his deans to participate in the process, but they persuaded him to make the decisions himself. After all, they told him, he had the broader institutional perspective needed for something so important. Alden collected data, developed criteria, and conducted a thoughtful analysis to generate a list of tentative cuts. He intended them as a starting point for discussion, but when they became public, he became the problem. It was “Alden’s plan” and “the vice president’s budget axe.” Those who liked his proposals mostly watched from the sidelines. The opponents were vocal, visible, and persistent. The ensuing firestorm marked the end of a promising leadership career. For Alden, it was painful and devastating, and he chose to leave the academy to work in the private sector. Meanwhile, the campus could blame him and evade responsibility for addressing the financial realities.

  When parties are deeply in conflict, leaders need to orchestrate a process that engages them in understanding the issues and searching for a way forward. The leadership task is to bring together different sides to engage in a conversation that the parties would often prefer to avoid. Leaders need to create arenas with rules, roles, and referees and be prepared to tightly manage the exchange. When these tasks are done well, they increase the chances that participants can learn from the dialogue and find a way out of the impasse. Alden intended to move in that direction, but backed off in response to the deans’ successful effort at upward delegation.

  Defuse Emotion and Depersonalize Criticism

  Conflict stirs up powerful feelings. The challenge for leaders is to recognize and acknowledge those emotions without being overwhelmed by them. Others’ feelings may seem unreasonable or wrong, but that does not make them any less real. You can listen and acknowledge without agreeing, and that often helps lower the heat.

  It is inevitable that leaders will make mistakes and enemies. Even when leaders are right, some people will think they’re wrong or will react emotionally to what they experience. A conflict situation is the wrong place for a leader to look for love. When criticism wounds and feels unfair, remember that others are usually responding more to your role in a messy situation than to you personally. One of the hardest and most important tests of professionalism is to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”9 When your emotions run hot, as they sometimes will, slow down, take a deep breath, and buy time before doing anything rash. “Go to the balcony” and try to gain another perspective on the action. Talk it over with someone you can trust. Stay on task, and focus on the purposes you’re trying to achieve. That makes it easier to depersonalize an emotionally charged situation and to keep your emotions from goading you into impetuous and regrettable actions.

  The Warrior: Turning Up the Heat

  When conflict burns too hot, it overwhelms reason, undermines dialogue, and increases the likelihood of destructive warfare. Such cases call for peacemakers. But, in business and elsewhere, you often face competitors or opponents whose goals and values are fundamentally incompatible with your own. If you win, they lose, and vice versa.

  The combativeness we saw in Steve Jobs is not exceptional among the entrepreneurs who have built great business enterprises. It’s true of contemporary leaders such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Oracle’s notoriously feisty Larry Ellison. It was also true a century ago. Kodak founder George Eastman was a warrior as well as an innovator. “Peace extends only to private life,” he observed. “In business it is war all the time.”10 Cornelius Vanderbilt on occasion defended his business interests with his fists. In his later years, he was less physical but no less combative. On one famous occasion, some associates tried to wrest control of his company while he was away on business. He fired off a famous letter:

  Gentlemen:

  You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.

  Yours truly,

  Cornelius Vanderbilt.11

  Ruin them he did.

  These examples all tell the same story: leaders often need to confront conflict head-on rather than fear it and back away. Both modern research on leadership and ancient wisdom on strategy teach that successful warriors combine four basic ingredients: spirit, mind, skill, and power.12 Spirit gives warriors passion, courage, and persistence, the “fire in the belly” that propels them forward in the face of the perennial challenges of combat: risk, confusion, danger, obstacles, and reversals. Mind gives warriors the direction and guidance that enables them to recognize and choose the best available moves on the chessboard of life, while avoiding snares, ambushes, and blind alleys. Skill determines how well a leader fights and leads. Power furnishes the resources that enable leaders to win.

  Each of these ingredients provides the warrior leader a potential path to victory: (1) overcoming a less determined or more fearful opponent with superior courage and passion; (2) outsmarting a more confused or less disciplined opponent with a better game plan or tactical superiority; (3) besting an opponent through greater skill; or (4) winning by putting stronger assets on the field—a larger force, better players, or superior weaponry.

  Four guidelines can help leaders achieve victory in combat.

  Fight with Passion and Persistence—or Avoid Combat

  Passion, or heart, is vital to leadership. It is rooted in a deep, sometimes obsessive, personal and emotional commitment to a cause, group, or task. It is a basic quality of all great warriors and leaders. It energizes, sustains courage, and fuels persistence. It is also contagious. The leader’s passion, or lack of it, is known and felt by followers. Almost anyone who worked for Steve Jobs acknowledged that he was a notoriously difficult boss, but his passion and commitment to a larger cause made it all worthwhile. Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton was all of twenty-seven years old when he started his business with the second-best variety store in tiny Newport, Arkansas, but he was always a happy warrior who loved people, and loved winning even more. His passion led him to work harder, travel more, and spend as much time as he could in his competitors’ stores looking for any idea he could steal.13

  Out-Think Opponents—Win with a Better Game Plan

  Passion fuels the warrior, but without direction and discipline, passion may lead to ruin. Mind without spirit is sterile, but spirit without mind is reckless, often suicidal. The effective leader needs both. Operating in better light than your opponent gives you a substantial edge. If you know the playing field better than your opponents and know more about them than they do about you, the odds shift in your favor, even if they have superior resources.

  Clear thinking is never more important than before you embark on a campaign. It is foolish to go into combat without knowing what you are fighting for and what price you are willing to pay. Yet this principle is violated regularly, often with tragic results. Leaders overreact to immediate pressures and provocations, allowing passion or truncated judgment to take them down a road that will confront them with a terrible dilemma: they cannot afford to lose, yet the price of victory is more than they can pay.

  Once your purpose is clear, you need a game plan: a strategy for achieving your purpose. In sports, business, or any other competitive arena, if you think harder and better than your adversaries do, you usually win. Sam Walton entered a mature and crowded retail industry, dominated by big national players such as Sears and JCPenney with better experience, scale, and financial resources than W
alton could hope to match. He bested his competitors with a simple but powerful game plan: cut costs, sell for less, offer a money-back guarantee, and go where your competitors aren’t. The competition owned the cities and suburbs, so Walton gradually built his empire in rural America. Only when Wal-Mart had become a retail juggernaut did he invade the cities.

  Recruit and Rally Your Team

  In combat, you want comrades at your side, and they need a reason to support you. To get their support, you need to cultivate relationships and offer compelling reasons for joining your team. Sometimes followers will be spontaneously so spirited that you need only stand out of their way. More often, you need to rally your troops. Knowing the group psyche is vital: rallying constituents involves making an offer so attractive that they are eager to sign up. Such an offer needs to respond to five vital questions: What is the larger purpose of the enterprise? What makes this effort worthwhile? What is the personal meaning for each individual? (What’s in it for me?) What is my role? and Will we succeed?

  Steve Jobs consistently demonstrated mastery of this process, as when he recruited John Sculley from Pepsi to Apple by asking him if he’d rather sell soda or change the world. Sam Walton was an astute judge of people who drew them in with his warm, folksy touch. Even as his company grew, he stayed connected—visiting stores, talking to customers and sales clerks, asking for their ideas and suggestions. His common touch helped maintain a positive, almost warm and fuzzy image for Wal-Mart in the minds of employees and consumers, an image that only began to dissipate after Walton’s death.

  Build and Leverage a Power Base

  No warrior wants to go into battle without the resources to win. In the old days, warriors needed physical weapons—swords, lances, bows, and the like. The modern warrior leader needs social and institutional power. Four power assets are paramount: position, allies, organization, and resources.

  The power of position lets generals outrank colonels, which gives them more authority, visibility, and access to other powerful players. Allies are a second vital source of power. Smart leaders understand that they need friends. The solitary warrior, the courageous and indomitable hero, is deeply rooted in legend, myth, and movies, the central figure in many of the stories we read or watch. In film, one individual often defeats an army, fulfilling a deep hope we all share: that with skill, courage, and luck, one person can change the world. In the real world, solitary warriors usually lose, outnumbered and overwhelmed by opponents who mobilize a larger force.

  Allies are all the more potent when they are welded into an effective organization or a tightly knit team. A small army can easily defeat a much larger mob. Teams and organizations are tools—sometimes very powerful tools—in the hands of anyone who can control them. Larger organizations are typically more powerful than smaller ones, because they can do more things and have more resources. But size can breed complexity and unmanageability. A fast and heroic horse may be invaluable, or useless, depending on how well you can ride it. Sam Walton demonstrated how a smaller, nimble competitor could outmaneuver and eventually overwhelm much larger competitors. The final power asset is resources—things that you own and control that give you leverage. Money, land, and a variety of physical assets can all augment leaders’ ability to achieve their ends.

  A CASE EXAMPLE: LOIS PAYNE

  Suppose that you are a sales manager, and Lois Payne has worked in your unit for eight years. Like most employees, she has strengths and weaknesses. She meets her sales targets, and her customers like her, but she is not a top performer and can be difficult to work with. Usually friendly and charming, she nods when you make requests or offer suggestions. But then she seems to ignore your input; she’s fiercely independent and likes to do things her way.

  Payne tells you that she has received a job offer from a competitor that would give her a significant pay bump. She says she’ll stay if you match the other offer, give her a new company car, and increase her expense account. You don’t want to lose her, but she’s asking for more than you think she merits. If you met her demands, she’d be earning more than your top salespeople who are significantly more productive than she is.

  The job offer is real, but you suspect that Payne is bluffing and doesn’t really want to leave. She’s familiar with your company’s product line and her current customer base, and she’d have a fairly steep learning curve at the new job. You’re comfortable telling her that she’s a very valuable member of the team but that you’re not able to make a counteroffer at this point.

  Meanwhile, one of Payne’s customers has written to your boss, the sales VP, saying he knows about her job offer and might have to change vendors if she leaves. Your boss doesn’t know Payne well, but your company is still recovering from the business downturn of recent years. After hearing from the customer, your boss sends you an email telling you to “figure out a way to keep her.” It doesn’t help that your relationship with your boss has been strained in recent months because he thinks your group should be doing better on customer retention. In light of the ideas in this chapter, how might you handle this situation?

  Start by asking yourself what you’re up against: Does this situation call for a warrior or a peacemaker? If you choose to become a warrior and go to battle, who is your opponent? What would constitute a win? It’s easier to see costs than benefits in going to war with your boss, but you might be tempted to do battle with Payne. You suspect that she orchestrated the customer note that’s adding to your problems with your boss, and you might feel that her political maneuvering is unacceptable and insubordinate. If you choose to go down the warrior path, though, remember that passion without discipline can lead to ruin. What’s your goal? How well do you know your opponent? If she’s politically smart, as the case hints she may be, might you start a war that costs more than it’s worth? What’s your strategy? Are there allies or resources you need in order to increase your chances of success? Unless you have good answers to these questions, a battle with Lois Payne could turn into the kind of self-destructive mistake that Michael Eisner made in battling Steve Jobs.

  Contemplating questions like these might convince you that this is a better time to become a peacemaker. You’re enmeshed in a three-way conflict without an obvious solution—unless you can orchestrate a meeting of the minds. But there’s reason for optimism about a win-win solution. What if you could find a way to retain Lois Payne at a price you can afford while also improving your relationship with her and your boss? How might you go about this? Our guidelines for peacemakers counsel starting with patience: plan to spend the time needed to orchestrate a solution. The second guideline—listen and inquire—suggests spending time with both Lois and your boss (in person if possible), making sure that you understand their concerns, interests, and feelings. Ideally, this will help you strengthen your relationship with each of them and give you a clearer sense of what solutions might be workable. Payne has framed all her demands in financial terms, but you might learn, for example, that there are other, noneconomic incentives she would value.

  The third guideline says to engage the parties in working on the issue. You could begin in your meetings with each of them. As you hear from Lois and your boss about their perceptions, you could ask “What if . . . ?” and “What about . . . ?” questions to test directions for coming up with solutions. You might also engage allies to assist. If, for example, you know that some of your salespeople have a good relationship with Lois, you could encourage them to talk to her, both to learn more about her thinking and to nudge her thinking in a productive direction.

  A process like this does not guarantee a particular outcome. Lois Payne may stay or may wind up moving on. But you will know that you have done your best to understand what’s at stake and to lead the parties toward a resolution that makes sense to everyone.

  CONCLUSION

  Conflict is intrinsic to leadership and can be a barrier that prevents leaders from achieving their dreams, particularly when they fear it or handle it badly. B
ut in the hands of gifted leaders, conflict can also be a powerful lever for change. Sometimes conflict burns too hot, and leaders need to be peacemakers who find ways to lower the flame. Listening, engaging others, and depersonalizing the conflict all help to do this. In other situations, leaders need to be warriors who turn up the heat to increase their chances of success or to get people’s attention and involvement in the issues at hand. But before going to war, leaders need to be sure they know what they hope to achieve, and have a strategy and tools that offer a reasonable prospect for success.

  NOTES

  1. Heffron, F. Organization Theory and Public Organizations: The Political Connection. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989, p. 185.

  2. Isaacson, W. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

  3. Reingold, J. “Bob Iger: Disney’s Fun King.” Fortune, May 12, 2012, pp. 166–174. http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/09/500-disney-iger/.

  4. Isaacson, Steve Jobs, p. 436.

  5. Reingold, “Fun King,” p. 169.

  6. Isaacson, Steve Jobs, p. 438.

  7. Ibid., p. 439.

  8. Heifetz, R. A., and Linsky, M. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002, p. 12.

  9. Kipling, R. “If.” Accessed Feb. 16, 2014, from http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_if.htm.

  10. Klein, M. The Change Makers: From Carnegie to Gates, How the Great Entrepreneurs Transformed Ideas into Industries. New York: Time Books, 2003.

  11. Brands, H. W. Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J. P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey. New York: Free Press, 1999.