Academy o/ ManagemenI Executive, 2004. Vol. 18. No.

Leadership and management development: An afterword

Henry Mintzberg

In response to the Executives Ask topic in this issue, we have a lovely example of the rich variety of views that a group of academicsall practical, all scholarlycan produce. Together they also take us to places quite different from so much of the currently popular literature in management development. In one sense, these are four different placesfour different perspectives on management developmentyet they are remarkably similar in important respects: on the ground (academics showing how practical good scholarship can be), thoughtful, and provocative, each in its own way, with some surprisingly similar messages. Let's start with Linda Hill's article, since she starts at the beginning, namely when people first become managers. (In the book I just published. Managers not MBAs, I seek to make the case that training before managing, as assumed in the conventional MBA, is the wrong place to start.) As in her book Becoming a Manager, Linda expresses important views that are so often ignoredcertainly in management research, but also in so much company practice. I often ask groups of managers "What happened the day you became a manager?" I get puzzled looks and shrugs. Mostly nothing happens. "Did they at least give you something to read?" (How about Linda's book?) No. Different as managerial work is from the specialized work that usually precedes ita "profound psychological adjustment," in Linda's words, also "a transformation of professional identity"people are supposed to figure it out, like sex. Usually with the same dire initial consequences. Importantly, Linda points out, as do the other authors, that to become a manager, even just to know what that means, and to appreciate how constraining that job can be, means to learn from experience. She describes how lonely that road can be, which is perhaps a prime reason why bringing new managers together to share their experiences can be so powerful. Linda writes that as social learners, managers need others to provide candid feedback and coaching. This can be
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done systematically. A manager I know was bemoaning to me recently the difficulties he was having with a group of his young employees who were suddenly thrust into managerial roles. (Their programming work was outsourced to Eastern Europe, and some of the programmers found themselves having to manage other programmers.) Why not get them together regularly to share and discuss experiences, I suggested. He liked that thought it a lot better than the usual solution of him coaching them one at a time. Perhaps, instead of being a threat to their development, as Linda writes is so often the case with the bosses, he can become a resource for them. Linda goes on to discuss "What managers need to know in the 21st century." Happily she provides prose here, not a list of competencies. There is something reifying about reducing behaviors to lists, perhaps thereby reducing judgment to analysis. Learning a set of competencies does not per se make a manager competent. As Joe Raelin puts it in his article, the "list approach" assumes, fallaciously, that once managers "becomes expert in this list, they would have graduated into leadership." And Jay Conger adds that such lists (not to mention the popular normative models, such as "transformational leadership") are not usually sensitive to needs that vary by the function and the level in which managers work.

Learning a set of competencies does not per se make a manager competent.

Seeing "leadership as collective genius" (to use Linda's phrase) instead of as some kind of gestalt that infuses an organization strikes me as a far more powerful way to think about management and leadership (together!). What she calls a functional shift in emphasis, from "Am / managing and leading?" to "Am I creating the context in which others are willing and able to manage and lead?"

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(italics added), is long overdue (although I wish Linda had gone a step further and changed the second "I" to a "we"). We are now inundated with heroic leaders who are dragging their organizations down amidst their own hubris. It really is time for some quiet managing, from behind, as Linda discusses, by people who "can subjugate their egos for the collective good." And all this, as she concludes, has important implications for helping managers face this daunting job. Like Linda, Morgan McCall emphasizes learning from experience. But he carries this idea to the trajectory of a managerial career. And that causes him to focus on assignmentscreating experiences that stretch a manager's learningas the "core" of development. This, Morgan believes, must start earlya point with which he is in clear agreement with Lindaand is especially important at "critical transition points." This is a key idea that, it seems to me, is largely lost in most academic writing about management development, although not in the more sophisticated companies. Morgan puts programs "as a supplement to, rather than the core of, development" behind experiences through assignments. Fair enough, except that the two together can be far more powerful than the latter alone. Recall Linda's comments about the loneliness of on-the-job learning, and also my comments above about giving managers a chance to reflect on experience with each other instead of just being coached or mentored one-onone. "People don't automatically learn from experience," Morgan says. But they are much more likely to do so when they can share with colleagues who have faced similar problems, especially when encouraged to do so in a reflective atmosphere away from work, while being exposed to useful concepts and provocative questions. I am unashamedly making the case for the academic setting, not for conventional lecturing and case discussing so much as for what we do best in the university (ironically, especially with our doctoral students): engaging in thoughtful conversations. I take Morgan's thrust fully and believe it to be that much more powerful when coupled with some engaging education. Joe Raelin adds a third factor: work-based learning. But before he does that, he takes a fully justified shot at leadership courses that are supposed to transform people. Much as Linda concludes, Joe believes that leadership belongs in the organization more than in the heroic leader. Indeed, in a statement that should be obvious, yet leaped off the page for me because of its novelty, he writes

that the "very presupposition" that "preparing people for leadership" means preparing them for "upper managerial positions . . . is flawed to begin with as long as we insist that leadership is built into positions or people in positions and not into an organizational unit or organization as a whole." We have, as Joe notes in criticizing it, made such a fuss in our literature trying to separate leadership from management; imagine turning this around and building leadership into the entire organization! But is that not the very secret behind so many successful organizations: that all kinds of people are prepared to take the leadto initiate and to innovate? We attribute so much to the great one: "In four years Gerstner has added more than $40 billion to IBM's share value," Fortune magazine wrote in 1997 (April 14), as have hundreds of articles since. All by himself! Maybe it's time we grew into the realization that organizations are communities that function collectively rather than having to be driven individually. Maybe, as Joe notes, the view of "people as somehow static awaiting a signal from the leader to propel them into activity"all the fuss about motivation and empowerment, etc.is just so much childishness that we need to grow out of. Or as Linda puts it, "those best suited to lead from the front may not be as well suited to lead from behind or to help others learn how to do so. (I have italicized what I believe to be the key part of this sentence.)

Maybe it's time we grew into the realization that organizations are communities that function collectively rather than having to be driven individually.
Joe writes: ". . . much of leadership development prepares some people to assume leadership over others who are followers. Might we be prepared to consider that the very nature of this relationship between leaders and followers may be outdated?" He too questions the idea of the leader "out in front" but follows that by questioning the followers "back in line," offering instead a view of leadership as "a mutual social phenomenon." Very nice! Isn't it interesting how, on one hand, we can write so much about knowledge workers and network organizations and on the other hand so casually use labels such as "top management"? A manager who is on top of a network is out of it. Joe then offers "the qualities that make for an effective follower." Imagine people lining up for a

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course on followership! (One prominent business school did offer such a course: one MBA student signed up. The leadership course offered in the same semester was full.) Joe then goes into his favored form of development: work-based learning, which recognizes the workplace as the site of learning, the place of "a community of practice." This sounds much like Morgan, but there is an important difference. While Morgan proposes managing the trajectory the placement in key positions at key junctions Joe proposes managing the activities themselves: "the deployment of action projects, learning teams, and other interpersonal experiences." With this he combines the need for "learning dialogues," by reflecting with colleagues and mentors, etc. The latter are, of course, mandated by the former: what is the sense of designing activities unless the people who do them are encouraged to learn formally from them? (A great problem with much so-called "action learning," as Joe discusses, and this includes General Electric's famous "Work-Out" programs, is that there tends to be much more action than learningmore doing than reflecting on doing. Managers mostly do plenty; they hardly need programs to do more, unless they can learn much more.)

as more conventionally defined, in order to draw together various perspectives of how that is supposed to develop, from family environment to formal training. Although Jay has studied the latter extensively, he too, like the other authors, recognizes its limitations. Interestingly, and in a sense combining the themes of the other three papers. Jay concludes that effective development practice is not what in particular is done so much as "the sheer quantity and intensity of [the organization's] interventions." In other words, a bit like the conclusion of the famous Hawthorne studies, it is serious attention to the process of development that matters. No flavor of the month when something as important as development is at stake! So the problems. Jay concludes, lie not in a lack of knowledge about development so much as in the application of that knowledge, and especially in recognizing the need for versatilitymatching leadership style to circumstances. "Can individuals themselves make such transitions?" is the important question that Jay asks in conclusion. Taken together these four articles offer us a rather well-rounded perspective both on what the needs are for serious development of management, whether leadership or leaderful, and what key issues are in need of more attention.

What is the sense of designing activities unless the people who do them are encouraged to learn formally from them?
Joe combines the two themes of his article work-based learning with shared leadershipby calling for activities that are collective, concurrent, collaborative, and compassionate, in which "everyone is primed for learning." That is "leaderful development"a wonderful term with which Joe concludes his article. Finally Jay Conger brings us back to leadership

Henry Mintzberg is Cleghom Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He recently completed the book Managers not MBAJS and is working on an electronic pamphlet entitled "Getting Past Smith and Marx Towards a Balanced Society." He is working with colleagues around the world on the development of a family of master's programs for practicing managers. Contact; henry.mintzherg@nicgiii.ca.