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A Conventional but Flawed View of Leadership

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38 pointsgreenyoda22 comments

I'm not sure I understand.

The implication seems to be that martha is the leader here. However, consider a situation where all four members behaved exactly as Martha, staring at the printout for an hour in silence, looking for the solution. In this hypothetical, Martha still gets the answer first.

In that example, it seems pretty clear that Martha was not the leader, since they all behaved exactly the same; she was merely the strongest individual contributor. It seems like that's probably the case in the blog post example as well, since Martha's behavior is the same.

This post seems to be pushing the idea that the loudest and most social person in the room is not necessarily the best leader, which I can agree to. However, it also seems to be saying that the person who contributes most directly to the solution may be the leader, which I'm not sure is accurate. In a situation like the one described, it seems like the best leader would be the one who best facilitates the performance of the individual contributors- that is, leaves Martha alone.

I think the point of the article is that an outside observer (Weinberg talks about a research psychologist, but also picture a non-technical manager or CEO) could easily miss the contributions of people who quietly solve problems as compared to the ones who take a dominant role in discussions. Even the group members themselves were confused:

"When I asked the group who had been their most inﬂuential member, they all said, 'Arnie.' Then I played the videotape, asking them to be especially alert to the method by which their problem was solved. After watching the tape, Arnie, Phyllis, and Weber changed their answer to 'Martha.' Why? Because in terms of solving their problem, the table of effective inﬂuencing actions should have read

Arnie 0 actions

Phyllis 0 actions

Weber 0 actions

Martha 1 action

Without Martha's contribution, the meeting would have gone nowhere, yet non-programming psychologists would have probably missed Martha's role entirely. When such nontechnical psychologists observe our workshops, they are consistently befuddled by the dynamics of the teams as they solve technical problems. It's as if the psychologists were watching people from another planet, people whose culture and language look and sound superﬁcially like ours but are entirely different."

I like the article but I don't think it makes its point clearly.

What I took from it is that notions and mechanisms of defining leadership/influence are somewhat orthogonal to problem-solving.

In the example, it was Martha who came up with the solution, yet when asked who had been most 'influential' [1] it was Arne. Does that mean Arne was the 'leader'? According to the psychologists viewpoint/definition, yes, but does it really matter? When the question is re-framed and they watch the video again the author proposes that there was only one 'effective influencing action', which came from Martha. I find this viewpoint just as valid (and useful) as the former (i.e. not very).

[1] Note also that influence and influencing actions aren't defined in this post. It's difficult to discuss this with out further detail. It even seems like the definition changes partway through.

I think the point is, that people think the person making the most noise is having the most influence, even if their influence is mostly just white noise.

The article is part of a book. I'd imagine the book has a broader thesis.

> it seems like the best leader would be the one who best facilitates the performance of the individual contributors

This is just as wrong as a the "perceived leader fallacy" the post is trying to debunk. The person you refer to is a "facilitator" or manager. Leader don't always have to "facilitate" or manage. The manager is almost never the true leader. Leaders should bring the vision AND set the direction AND provide the main motivation (if one person doesn't bring all 3, then you have a collective leadership situation, which is probably the most healthy anyway).

In this example, the actual leader is the unseen person that actually identified that bug as "critical" and decided that the software should in under no circumstances be released without that bug fixed!

(or if we want to find a leader here, at this level, it would be whoever came up with the idea of "what to look for in order to fix the bug" - Martha may have had the idea herself, most likely, or she may have fished it from the discussion happening around her and just happened to be the first one lucky to find the bug while following this "fished" strategy)

Not sure about what you're saying here. In no way did Martha bring vision, set direction (see note below), or provide motivation. She sat and read the code for a while until she found the problem. Without any more detail, it seems likely enough that Arnie was setting the vision/direction and providing motivation. They just didn't reach their goal before (relatively uninvolved) Martha figured things out.

Not trying to devalue Martha's contribution. I love the Marthas in my workplace. But, very often, they're not leaders. They're the people leaders know to turn to in times of crisis. They're extraordinarily valuable, and should be compensated/lauded accordingly, but that doesn't mean they're the leaders. Nor, in my experience, do they always wish to be.

Note: Martha did, of course, "set the direction" at the end of the meeting, when she'd found the bug. But I take direction-setting to generally be an event prior to the activity (in this case, debugging). Martha did not do that.

Martha was the best problem-solver, in that she found the problem before anyone else did. But I don't see how it follows that problem-solving == leadership.

Have you never solved a problem and had people completely ignore you? That they listened is what he's pointing at.

What if the problem is one that doesn't have a self-evident solution? Like "who should we hire", or "what is the best way to implement our current goals".

Are you implying that Martha found a self-evident solution? :)

Leaders are followed by people. That's how you define and recognize leaders.

Competence is often more valuable than leadership. Martha in this case was highly competent, and all the great leadership in the world wouldn't affect this issue.

Leadership CAN be great if it inspires people and helps them go in the right directon.

That's sort of a problem. It is unfortunately often implied that leadership beats all other traits. Here we have a - specific - example when it doesn't. This example won't change the culture which values leadership above everything else (if, e.g., we have such a culture). And that's, I think, an important idea out of the story.

Leadership could be valued so high that someone would automatically equate success with leadership. I.e., that who solves the problem is the leader by definition. Which is not - but might be overlooked too often.

A though provoking anecdote, yet who is in charge, versus who has final influence are often times different. Although Martha influenced the outcome, she was not involved throughout the entire process. She could have worked with her colleagues to find the answer faster rather than on her own. To argue in her favor, maybe directed analysis was the right approach and her success will guide her colleagues in the future to take a similar strategy.

He writes, "Then Arnie, Phyllis, and Weber resumed their agitated discussion" to make it seem like the group did not consider Martha's lone contribution. Then in the next line he describes how it took 10 whole minutes! to confirm that this was the actual solution. I feel like he was trying to portray Martha as someone who neglected by the rest of the group when in fact she was seen as just as important.

A framework of leadership types:

- positional (the boss) - subject matter expertise (the PhD) - many social connections (the politician) - particularly valuable/strategic connections (the guy dating the owner's daughter) - charismatic (the guy who talks the talk, may or may not walk the walk)

Solving bugs does not make you a leader.

Quality vs. quantity.

I have two things.

First, in the revised action table, 'effective influencing action' seems to be used as 'action along the causal path to the solution', which is a departure from the context in which it was introduced:

    There are two principal ways to identify the leaders of a group:
    1. asking the members to identify which members they
       regard as most inﬂuential in directing the group, or
    2. asking observers to name the most inﬂuential members,
       or to record the frequency of effective inﬂuencing actions.

In summary,

1. "influential in directing the group" 2. "influential members" ... "effective influencing actions"

The introduction of the term implies (to me, at least), that effective influencing actions ought to be used as 'actions effective in altering the course of the group'. I suspect that "effective" as a modifier is just misleadingly simple enough to make this non-obvious. It leaves the question "Effective at what?" in the air, and everyone is free to imagine their own answer, and to assume that we all share one common answer.

Second, I think Arnie was a leader, just not a good leader.

As has been discussed in other threads here, Martha does not exhibit leadership in this scenario -- she exhibits some individual problem-solving skills. And, as has been said in other threads, this can lead to a number of implications about leadership != solution-finding. Whether the article is proposing that she was the leader is unclear to me.

Arnie was initially reported as having the highest number of 'effective influencing actions', and by the group's definition, he was their leader. He influenced the actions of the group the most. But think about some information we have about the scenario:

    - he left Martha sitting there alone, being silent
    - the rest of the group fell into "agitated discussion"
    - no clear progress was made over the hour

I'm going to suggest a possible narrative of "leading" this situation by taking imaginary control of Arnie:

After some initial wildness ("agitated discussion"), it would be apparent that the group needs some direction. Trying to take a rational, rather than authoritative approach, Arnie could suggest that everyone propose some courses of action for the group, and write them on a whiteboard, to aid in systematically choosing one / ruling some out. He may have to snap Martha into participation here to get a suggestion from her. This may set her back in her solution -- unfortunate, but necessary.

Now, all the suggested approaches would be up on a board. It sounds like Martha's would be "let's just think it through very carefully", and the others, apparently, would write "let's talk about it", or at least different enough approaches that they warrant agitated discussion.

Seeing the polarization, Arnie could suggest that everyone work on their own approach for 20 minutes, taking some notes, and then report their progress to the team. At that point, if any approach is clearly winning or losing, the team can refocus their efforts. If not, they'll deal with that then.

Twenty minutes later, three or four different approaches would be partly documented (no matter what, some progress is made), and if Martha made more progress than the others, they can now help her break down the problem space. If it can't be broken down, and she's making good progress, everyone else can now go back to doing other work until she's stuck or finished. Then they can help (e.g. unstick her or check it over).

In this scenario, Martha may have finished 10 minutes later, but: the group would spend less time arguing. They might finish earlier by helping her. If that's impossible, they can get other work done while she finishes. If a different approach was more promising, they'd know. And even if no one were to succeed, they'd have documented their approaches and any progress made on them. Arnie could offer to write it all up on the wiki.

There are likely flaws to my scenario, but my point is this: good leadership is not control of the solving of a problem. It also is rarely steps taken to directly solve a problem. Good leadership is facilitating useful communication and organization, preventing distractions, and removing blockers.

Arnie may have been loud and influential, and he was probably the group's leader, but more important than identifying a leader is identifying good leadership. He was just not a good leader.

Hmm, seems like another meeting that should never have been called. Martha could have said that over IM, email, etc.

Yes, except that tuning out and working during a meeting was her first hour of un-interrupted zone time all month. Been there.

I have to admit I haven't heard this particular justification for excessive meetings before. b^)

The story looks like it's more about personal branding than leadership.

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