Leadership Unravelled: The Faulty Thinking Behind Modern Management PDF
Preview Leadership Unravelled: The Faulty Thinking Behind Modern Management
LEADERSHIP UNRAVELLED Why is it that leaders – in social, political, and (most importantly) organisa- tional contexts – are seemingly unable to address meaningfully the wicked problems and complex challenges that we currently face? There’s enormous busyness around reconfiguring departments and adopting ‘transforma- tional’ operating models, but in general plus ca change, plus la meme chose. Eyewatering amounts of treasure and time are spent in corporate life on leadership development, with people working hard to try and demonstrate that something useful has happened as a result. An entire pseudo- science has emerged to try and prove its worth, in part to justify the economic dividend that goes to those who make it to the upper levels of positional power. The fetishisation of leadership, especially strong leadership, fills our news outlets holding up carefully distorted images of great men (leader- ship is still deeply gendered) from across the worlds of politics, business, and sports. This book explores the persistently disappeared and unac- knowledged constraints that inhibit leaders in every context. It argues that these constraints – defined in this volume in terms of five organisational paradoxes and six management myths – are found at large in society and are especially impactful in organisational life. By calling attention to, and exploring in rigorous detail, these paradoxes and myths, this book helps leaders, and the leadership systems they are part of, to wriggle free of the tacit assumptions that lock them into a cul- de- sac of simplistic prescription and heroic individualism. Once these mind- forged manacles are removed, new forms of leadership practice become possible, ones that are fit for purpose in engaging with a world facing systemic crisis and existential risk. This book is essential reading for leaders and managers at all levels look- ing for solutions to traditionally simplistic leadership practice and who want to affect systemic change. It will be beneficial to all those in the world of leadership development including business schools and HR departments. Mark Cole is an OD practitioner with over 30 years’ experience working on development in organisations in and around the NHS. Latterly, he has been critically thinking about work and the workplace and his book called Radical Organisation Development was published by Routledge in 2020. John Higgins is an independent researcher, tutor, and coach specialising in how people use and abuse power throughout the workplace and society. He is widely published and has written extensively alongside the faculty and students of the Ashridge Doctorate and Masters in Organizational Change. LEADERSHIP UNRAVELLED The Faulty Thinking Behind Modern Management Mark Cole and John Higgins First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Mark Cole and John Higgins The right of Mark Cole and John Higgins to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cole, Mark, 1960- author. | Higgins, John, 1962 June 27- author. Title: Leadership unravelled : the faulty thinking behind modern management / Mark Cole and John Higgins. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021003154 (print) | LCCN 2021003155 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367473471 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032033686 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003035015 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. Classification: LCC HD57.7 .C6437 2021 (print) | LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/092–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003154 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003155 ISBN: 978-0 -3 67-4 7347-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1 -0 32-0 3368-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 03501- 5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003035015 Typeset in Joanna by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive) CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Preface viii 1 An introduction… in seven uneasy pieces 1 2 The use and abuse of paradoxes in organisational life 31 3 The six myths of management (thinking) 104 4 Conclusion… Enrichessez- Vous! 185 Index 240 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Mark recognises the debt that he owes to John, in terms of the way in which their conversations and explorations have helped him to move his thinking forward and thence jointly to develop the analysis and ideas herein. It began with occasional discussions over coffee at the Caffe Tropea in Russell Square Gardens and developed into regular weekly calls as the pandemic took hold. He also acknowledges the boundless support that he gets from his fam- ily. Aside from being constantly encouraging, Sarah also generously offered her services as a proof- reader for the work. And his son Thomas is a con- stant inspiration – not least because he is ceaselessly curious, as children tend to be, and looks at everything with completely fresh eyes. Regardless of our age, this is how we should seek to engage with the world. John knows that anything good he has ever written has come about through his personal and professional relationships. In Mark he has found a co- conspirator who has a very different take on life – and also has to go on living in the world as it is (while John has temporarily withdrawn to the fringes as he tries to find a constructive way of engaging with life in the raw). He also wants to make a large nod, a bow even, to his long running ‘other’ research partner, Megan Reitz – who keeps dragging him back into the muck and bullets of organisational life. ACkNOwLeDgeMeNTS vii At home he is kept in touch with both domestic priorities and the world of the portfolio non- executive through Rosie. Meanwhile Livia, at the start of her career, reminds him of why it’s worth trying to shift the dial on what passes as good practice in the workplace – while Isobel keeps him in touch with debates around breast- feeding in the ancient world. PREFACE This book is an argument, one that takes to task the established beliefs about leadership, its role as a practice in organisational life and how the constel- lation of advisers, advocates, and apologists sustain an ideology which is forever denying its presence, while it ceaselessly shapes the workplace. It is also an argument with itself, teasing out and picking at the contra- dictions within the world and with its own assertions and understanding. It stays with its own mess and the mess of the world, rather than rushing to tidy itself up and make itself look presentable according to established conventions. It has been written to be expansive, to explore philosophical and ide- ological roots – and the tangle of meanings that exist around how the workplace gets organised (while of course having to grapple with what we mean by meaning). It has some distillations, some punctuation points, but its form is also its message. We need to relearn how to have sustained inquiry when it comes to matters of leadership in organisational contexts, stay with theoretical and inter- disciplinary complexity rather than allow ourselves off the hook by only privileging perspectives that are quick and easy to swallow. In that regard, it represents a method in action. We have engaged crit- ically with all that seems common sense and commonplace about how PReFACe ix organisations are experienced at this time. We have looked to these taken- for- granted models, techniques, precepts, and approaches as if they were alien to us, things to which we have no real attachment. And we have pulled that method into our conversational and written exchanges, con- stantly asserting the need to take our thinking beyond the artifice of the presenting surface, to visit what lies behind or beneath. Our method, then, has been dialogic, in conjunction with a commit- ment to reflexivity and critical thinking. As a metaphor it can be seen to resemble an old- fashioned vinyl record, which sees us circling around the subject and the stories that we feel are germane, returning to them time and again, knowing them through different lenses, refusing to accept that they can exist as definitive accounts of a singular experience. We quite deliberately have stepped away from the traditional linear narrative, which moves inexorably through a beginning, middle, and end – and all but inevitably results in a flattening of any depth of understanding as we rush towards some clearly identified endpoint, which in our established culture is readily conflated with the ‘answer’ or ‘solution’. We blend together high- theory with the quotidian, the ordinary experi- ence of people who occupy all sorts of positions and perspectives through- out the organisational ecosystem. The much vaunted ‘view from the top’ is not only not privileged, as it is in so much consulting and business school verbiage, it is also explored with a critical eye and its political intention held up to scrutiny. Most of what we hold up to be evidence of a deeply suspect and self- serving discourse around leadership already exists, hiding in plain sight. We spend time paying attention to the obvious, the overlooked, the taken for granted – a discipline which is actively undermined by most established organisational practices, which keep us too busy to ask the straightforward question, to be curious about what we discount, to inquire as to why the King is walking naked down the street while being acclaimed for the won- der of his (nearly always his) raiment. We also address directly the slippery, pseudo- complexity, of the endless tsunami of leadership and management fads – and also name who benefits from all this noise and distraction. What don’t we see when we’re too busy chasing after the latest thing? What happens when everything is about the future, which is always rosy, and we ignore the deep shadows that live on however much we wish them away in our bubbles of optimism?
The list of books you might like
