The Hindu Business Line : The taxonomy of leadership

It is said that the amount of literature about leadership far exceeds the supply of leaders themselves all around the world. However, all of this literature does not seem to satiate the desire to know more about leadership, leaders and leading. So, more gets written every single day!

Even for the well informed, this huge body of knowledge can be overwhelming and intimidating. Since each author seems to view the subject from his own vantage point and his own logic bubble, readers find it hard to compare what one author said with another. The end result is more confusion and, therefore, more books!

To try and lessen this confusion, I am making an effort to present a simple taxonomy of leadership — a framework for the categorisation, classification or arrangement of all leadership literature.

In my opinion, all (or most) leadership literature can be classified into four broad groups:

Literature that deals with the task of leaders

Literature that deals with the competencies of leaders

Literature that deals with the traits and styles of leaders as well as their situational effectiveness

Literature that deals with the assessment and development of leaders

Literature that deals with the task of leaders

A very significant amount of literature, especially in more recent years, has focused on what the leader is actually supposed to do rather than who he is as a person.

Many of the classical management thinkers such as Henry Mintzberg and Peter F. Drucker have focused a lot on the work of a manager and a leader and the differences between managing and leading.

More recently, books such as Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan and Charles Burck have also focused significantly on the task of leadership. Many of the works of other authors on Vision, Values, Culture, Strategy and Execution have all indirectly focused on the task of leadership.

Literature relating to the task of leadership serves the important purpose of reminding executives at every level of their important leadership responsibilities.

Literature that deals with the competencies of leaders

There is an enormous amount of literature on the behaviour that differentiates a great and effective leader from an ineffective one.

While some of this literature has focused on the action dimensions of leadership competencies, others have focused on the intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions. In the last few years, a lot of literature including the work of people like Daniel Goleman, has focused on the emotional and even the biological dimensions of leadership competencies.

There is also a huge body of knowledge around the science of defining leadership competencies in a manner that promotes the assessment, evaluation and development of leaders around these competencies.

Even as the work on leadership competencies became extremely generic and all organisations seemed to talk of the same competencies, the recent work on Leadership Brand by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood attempted to reverse this trend and urged organisations to ensure that competencies represented their unique brand identity.

Literature on the traits of leaders and their situational effectiveness

It is in this area that we find the most work about leadership and, therefore, the greatest amount of confusion.

The various theories of leadership, including the great man theories and trait theories, have all focused on the belief that leaders are great and gifted men, or ones with certain traits. While we tend to dismiss the great man theory as something of the past, we are constantly reminded of the modern day fascination with this theory in the form of books by or about today’s so-called legendary leaders.

Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch, Nuts by Kevin Freiberg on Herb Kelleher and his style of leadership, My life and work by Henry Ford, Maverick by Ricardo Semler, Who says elephants can’t dance by Louis V. Gerstner, Go Kiss the world by Subroto Bagchi and Iacocca by Iacocca, to name a few, are all books that share the stories of great men and their leadership lessons.

While the motivational theory of McGregor (Theory X & Y) and the Managerial Grid model of Blake & Mouton have both focused on the impact of certain styles on motivation and effectiveness, Hersey & Blanchard’s situational leadership theory has added to the body of knowledge about the situational implications on style and their impact on leadership effectiveness.

Literature on assessment and development of leaders

The final dimension of leadership literature represents the body of knowledge about assessing people for leadership potential and developing people to become leaders. The work done by David C. McClelland in Competency Research and Testing is often considered legendary here.

The literature on psychometric testing, assessment centres and 360-degree feedback for assessing leadership competencies has grown rapidly over the years.

Equally vast is the literature on how leaders develop and what helps develop leaders. The work by institutions such as CCL has contributed significantly to this body of knowledge.

In more recent years, the field of Executive Coaching has created its own body of knowledge about the role of coaching in developing leaders and shaping leadership styles and behaviours.

Why is this taxonomy important?

The terms leader and leadership lend themselves to multiple interpretations in multiple contexts.

In the absence of a sensible means of classifying and categorising the body of knowledge about the subject, readers run the risk of picking up and applying ideas inappropriately.

Readers are likely to either over-generalise what they have read or interpret it too narrowly and literally.

This framework will hopefully provide a context to one’s quest for insights about leadership and makes the search a lot more purposeful and focused!

(The writer is the founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR consulting firm. He is also the co-founder of the Executive & Business Coaching Foundation of India Ltd. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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