Part 1 Leadership Is a Process, Not a Position

CHAPTER 1
What Is Leadership?
Most of this disagreement stems from the fact that leadership is a complex
phenomenon involving the leader, the followers, and the situation. Some
leadership researchers have focused on the personality, physical traits, or
behaviors of the leader; others have studied the relationships between
leaders and followers; still others have studied how aspects of the situation
affect how leaders act. Some have extended the latter viewpoint so far as to
suggest there is no such thing as leadership; they argue that organizational
successes and failures are often falsely attributed to the leader, but the
situation may have a much greater impact on how the organization functions
than does any individual, including the leader.

Perhaps the best way for you to begin to understand the complexities of
leadership is to see some of the ways leadership has been defined.
Leadership researchers have defined leadership in many different ways:
 The process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a
desired manner.
 Directing and coordinating the work of group members.
 An interpersonal relation in which others comply because they want to,
not because they have to.
 The process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing
its goals.
 Actions that focus resources to create desirable opportunities.
 Creating conditions for a team to be effective.
 The ability to engage employees, the ability to build teams, and the
ability to achieve results; the first two represent the how and the latter
the what of leadership.
 A complex form of social problem solving.

As you can see, definitions of leadership differ in many ways, and these
differences have resulted in various researchers exploring disparate aspects
of leadership.
Although having many leadership definitions may seem confusing, it is
important to understand that there is no single correct definition. The
various definitions can help us appreciate the multitude of factors that affect
leadership, as well as different perspectives from which to view it. For
example, in the first definition just listed, the word subordinate seems to
confine leadership to downward influence in hierarchical relationships; it
seems to exclude informal leadership. The second definition emphasizes the
directing and coordinating aspects of leadership, and thereby may
deemphasize emotional aspects of leadership. The emphasis placed in the
third definition on subordinates’ “wanting to” comply with a leader’s wishes
seems to exclude any kind of coercion as a leadership tool. Further, it
becomes problematic to identify ways in which a leader’s actions are really
leadership if subordinates voluntarily comply when a leader with
considerable potential coercive power merely asks others to do something
without explicitly threatening them. Similarly, a key reason behind using the
phrase desirable opportunities in one of the definitions was precisely to
distinguish between leadership and tyranny. And partly because there are
many different definitions of leadership, there is also a wide range of
individuals we consider leaders. In addition to the stories about leaders and
leadership that we sprinkle throughout this book, we highlight several in
each chapter in a series of Profiles in Leadership.

As it turns out, successful managers (i.e., those promoted quickly through

the ranks) spend relatively more time than others in organizational
socializing and politicking; and they spend relatively less time than the latter
on traditional management responsibilities like planning and decision
making. Truly effective managers, however, make real contributions to
their organization’s performance. This distinction is a critical one, even if
quite thorny to untangle in leadership research.
All considered, we find that defining leadership as “the process of influencing
an organized group toward accomplishing its goals” is fairly comprehensive
and helpful. Several implications of this definition are worth further
examination.

Leadership Is Both a Science and an Art

Saying leadership is both a science and an art emphasizes the subject of
leadership as a field of scholarly inquiry, as well as certain aspects of the
practice of leadership.
Nonetheless, knowing something about leadership research is relevant to
leadership effectiveness. Scholarship may not be a prerequisite for
leadership effectiveness, but understanding some of the major research
findings can help individuals better analyze situations using a variety of
perspectives. That, in turn, can tell leaders how to be more effective. Even
so, because skills in analyzing and responding to situations vary greatly
across leaders, leadership will always remain partly an art as well as a
science. Highlight 1.1 raises the question of whether leadership should be
considered a true science or not.
Is the Study of Leadership a “Real” Science?

HIGHLIGHT 1.1
In this chapter we posit that leadership is both a science and an art. Most
people, we think, accept the idea that some element of leadership is an art
in the sense that it can’t be completely prescribed or routinized into a set of
rules to follow, that there is an inherent personal element to leadership.
Perhaps even because of that, many people are skeptical about the idea that
the study of leadership can be a “real” science like physics and chemistry.
Even when acknowledging that thousands of empirical studies of leadership
have been published, many still resist the idea that it is in any way
analogous to the “hard” sciences.

It might interest you to know, then, that a lively debate is ongoing today
among leadership scholars about whether leadership ought to model itself
after physics. And the debate is about more than “physics envy.” The debate
is reminiscent of the early twentieth century, when some of the great minds
in psychology proposed that psychological theory should be based on formal
and explicit mathematical models rather than armchair speculation. Today’s
debate about the field of leadership looks at the phenomena from a systems
perspective and revolves around the extent to which there may be
fundamental similarities between leadership and thermodynamics.

Leadership Is Both Rational and Emotional

Leadership involves both the rational and emotional sides of human
experience. Leadership includes actions and influences based on reason and
logic as well as those based on inspiration and passion. We do not want to
cultivate merely intellectualized leaders who respond with only logical
predictability. Because people differ in their thoughts and feelings, hopes
and dreams, needs and fears, goals and ambitions, and strengths and
weaknesses, leadership situations can be complex. People are both rational
and emotional, so leaders can use rational techniques and emotional appeals
to influence followers, but they must also weigh the rational and emotional
consequences of their actions.
A full appreciation of leadership involves looking at both of these sides of
human nature. Good leadership is more than just calculation and planning,
or following a checklist, even though rational analysis can enhance good
leadership. Good leadership also involves touching others’ feelings; emotions
play an important role in leadership, too.
Aroused feelings, however, can be used either positively or negatively,
constructively or destructively. Some leaders have been able to inspire
others to deeds of great purpose and courage.
The mere presence of a group (even without heightened emotional levels)
can also cause people to act differently than when they are alone. Leaders
need to consider both the rational and the emotional consequences of their
actions.
In fact, some scholars have suggested that the very idea of leadership may
be rooted in our emotional needs. Belief in the potency of leadership,
however—what has been called the romance of leadership—may be a
cultural myth that has utility primarily insofar as it affects how people create
meaning about causal events in complex social systems. Such a myth, for
example, may be operating in the tendency of many people in the business
world to automatically attribute a company’s success or failure to its
leadership. Rather than being a casual factor in a company’s success,
however, it might be the case that “leadership” is merely a romanticized
notion—an obsession people want to and need to believe in.   Related to this
may be a tendency to attribute a leader's success primarily if not entirely to
that person's unique individual qualities.

Leadership and Management

In trying to answer the question “What is leadership?” it is natural to look at
the relationship between leadership and management. To many people, the
word management suggests words like efficiency, planning, paperwork,
procedures, regulations, control, and consistency. Leadership is often more
associated with words like risk taking, dynamic, creativity,
change, and vision. Some people say leadership is fundamentally a value-
choosing, and thus a value-laden, activity, whereas management is
not. Leaders are thought to do the right things, whereas managers are
thought to do things right. Here are some other distinctions between
managers and leaders:
 Managers administer; leaders innovate.
 Managers maintain; leaders develop.
 Managers control; leaders inspire.
 Managers have a short-term view; leaders, a long-term view.
 Managers ask how and when; leaders ask what and why.
 Managers imitate; leaders originate.
 Managers accept the status quo; leaders challenge it.
While acknowledging this general distinction between leadership and
management is essentially accurate and even useful, however, it has had
unintended negative effects: “Some leaders now see their job as just coming
up with big and vague ideas, and they treat implementing them, or even
engaging in conversation and planning about the details of them, as mere
‘management’ work that is beneath their station and stature.”
Zaleznik goes so far as to say these differences reflect fundamentally
different personality types: Leaders and managers are basically different
kinds of people. He says some people are managers by nature; other people
are leaders by nature. One is not better than the other; they are just
different. Their differences, in fact, can be useful because organizations
typically need both functions performed well.
With regard to the issue of leadership versus management, the authors of
this book take a middle-of-the-road position. We think of leadership and
management as closely related but distinguishable functions.

FIGURE 1.1   Leadership and Management Overlap

Leadership Myths
Here we examine several beliefs (we call them myths) that stand in the way
of fully understanding and developing leadership.

Myth: Good Leadership Is All Common Sense

At face value, this myth says one needs only common sense to be a good
leader. It also implies, however, that most if not all of the studies of
leadership reported in scholarly journals and books only confirm what
anyone with common sense already knows.
The problem, of course, is with the ambiguous term common sense. It
implies a common body of practical knowledge about life that virtually any
reasonable person with moderate experience has acquired. A simple
experiment, however, may convince you that common sense may be less
common than you think. Ask a few friends or acquaintances whether the old
folk wisdom “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true or false. Most
will say it is true. After that, ask a different group whether the old folk
wisdom “Out of sight, out of mind” is true or false. Most of that group will
answer true as well, even though the two proverbs are contradictory.

If leadership were nothing more than common sense, there should be few, if
any, problems in the workplace. However, we venture to guess you have
noticed more than a few problems between leaders and followers. Effective
leadership must be something more than just common sense.

Myth: Leaders Are Born, Not Made

Some people believe that being a leader is either in one’s genes or not;
others believe that life experiences mold the individual and that no one is
born a leader. Which view is right? In a sense, both and neither. Both views
are right in that innate factors as well as formative experiences influence
many sorts of behavior, including leadership. Yet both views are wrong to
the extent they imply leadership is either innate or acquired; what matters
more is how these factors interact. It does not seem useful, we believe, to
think of the world as comprising two mutually exclusive types of people,
leaders and nonleaders. It is more useful to address how each person can
make the most of leadership opportunities he or she faces.

More specifically, research indicates that many cognitive abilities and

personality traits are at least partly innate. Thus natural talents or
characteristics may offer certain advantages or disadvantages to a leader.
Consider physical characteristics: A man’s above-average height may
increase others’ tendency to think of him as a leader; it may also boost his
own self-confidence. But it doesn’t make him a leader. The same holds true
for psychological characteristics that seem related to leadership. The stability
of certain characteristics over long periods (for example, at school reunions
people seem to have kept the same personalities we remember them as
having years earlier) may reinforce the impression that our basic natures are
fixed, but different environments nonetheless may nurture or suppress
different leadership qualities.
Myth: The Only School You Learn Leadership from Is the School of
Hard Knocks

The Interactional Framework for Analyzing Leadership

Hollander’s transactional approach to leadership. We call our approach
the interactional framework.
Several aspects of this derivative of Hollander’s approach are worthy of
additional comment. First, the framework depicts leadership as a function of
three elements—the leader, the followers, and the situation. Second, a
particular leadership scenario can be examined using each level of analysis
separately. Although this is a useful way to understand the leadership
process, we understand the process even better if we also examine
the interactions among the three elements, or lenses, represented by the
overlapping areas in the figure. A final important aspect of the framework is
that leadership is the result of a complex set of interactions among the
leader, the followers, and the situation. These complex interactions may be
why broad generalizations about leadership are problematic: Many factors
influence the leadership process.

FIGURE 1.2   An Interactional Framework for Analyzing Leadership

An example of one such complex interaction between leaders and followers
is evident in what have been called in-groups and out-groups. Sometimes
there is a high degree of mutual influence and attraction between the leader
and a few subordinates. These subordinates belong to the in-group and can
be distinguished by their high degree of loyalty, commitment, and trust felt
toward the leader. Other subordinates belong to the out-group. Leaders
have considerably more influence with in-group followers than with out-
group followers. However, this greater degree of influence has a price. If
leaders rely primarily on their formal authority to influence their followers
(especially if they punish them), then leaders risk losing the high levels of
loyalty and commitment followers feel toward them.

The Leader
This element examines primarily what the leader brings as an individual to
the leadership equation. This can include unique personal history, interests,
character traits, and motivation.
Leaders are not all alike, but they tend to share many characteristics.
Research has shown that leaders differ from their followers, and effective
leaders differ from ineffective leaders, on various personality traits, cognitive
abilities, skills, and values. Another way personality can affect leadership is
through temperament, by which we mean whether a leader is generally calm
or is instead prone to emotional outbursts. Leaders who have calm
dispositions and do not attack or belittle others for bringing bad news are
more likely to get complete and timely information from subordinates than
are bosses who have explosive tempers and a reputation for killing the
messenger.
Another important aspect of the leader is how he or she achieved leader
status. Leaders who are appointed by superiors may have less credibility
with subordinates and get less loyalty from them than leaders who are
elected or emerge by consensus from the ranks of followers. Often emergent
or elected officials are better able to influence a group toward goal
achievement because of the power conferred on them by their followers.
However, both elected and emergent leaders need to be sensitive to their
constituencies if they wish to remain in power.
More generally, a leader’s experience or history in a particular organization
is usually important to her or his effectiveness. For example, leaders
promoted from within an organization, by virtue of being familiar with its
culture and policies, may be ready to “hit the ground running.” In addition,
leaders selected from within an organization are typically better known by
others in the organization than are leaders selected from the outside. That is
likely to affect, for better or worse, the latitude others in the organization
are willing to give the leader; if the leader is widely respected for a history of
accomplishment, she may be given more latitude than a newcomer whose
track record is less well known. On the other hand, many people tend to give
new leaders a fair chance to succeed, and newcomers to an organization
often take time to learn the organization’s informal rules, norms, and
“ropes” before they make any radical or potentially controversial decisions.
A leader’s legitimacy also may be affected by the extent to which followers
participated in the leader’s selection. When followers have had a say in the
selection or election of a leader, they tend to have a heightened sense of
psychological identification with her, but they also may have higher
expectations and make more demands on her. We also might wonder what
kind of support a leader has from his own boss. If followers sense their boss
has a lot of influence with the higher-ups, subordinates may be reluctant to
take their complaints to higher levels. On the other hand, if the boss has
little influence with higher-ups, subordinates may be more likely to make
complaints at these levels.

The Followers
Followers are a critical part of the leadership equation, but their role has not
always been appreciated, at least in empirical research. For a long time, in
fact, “the common view of leadership was that leaders actively led and
subordinates, later called followers, passively and obediently followed.” Over
time, especially in the last century, social change shaped people’s views of
followers, and leadership theories gradually recognized the active and
important role that followers play in the leadership process. Today it seems
natural to accept the important role followers play. 

Followership Styles

HIGHLIGHT 1.4
The concept of different styles of leadership is reasonably familiar, but the
idea of different styles of followership is relatively new. The very
word follower has a negative connotation to many, evoking ideas of people
who behave like sheep and need to be told what to do. Robert Kelley,
however, believes that followers, rather than representing the antithesis of
leadership, are best viewed as collaborators with leaders in the work of
organizations.
Kelley believes that different types of followers can be described in terms of
two broad dimensions. One of them ranges from independent, critical
thinking at one end to dependent, uncritical thinking on the other end.
According to Kelley, the best followers think for themselves and offer
constructive advice or even creative solutions. The worst followers need to
be told what to do. Kelley’s other dimension ranges from whether people
are active followers or passive followers in the extent to which they are
engaged in work. According to Kelley, the best followers are self-starters
who take initiative for themselves, whereas the worst followers are passive,
may even dodge responsibility, and need constant supervision.
Using these two dimensions, Kelley has suggested five basic styles of
followership:

1. Alienated followers habitually point out all the negative aspects of

the organization to others. While alienated followers may see themselves
as mavericks who have a healthy skepticism of the organization, leaders
often see them as cynical, negative, and adversarial.
2. Conformist followers are the “yes people” of organizations. While
very active at doing the organization’s work, they can be dangerous if
their orders contradict societal standards of behavior or organizational
policy. Often this style is the result of either the demanding and
authoritarian style of the leader or the overly rigid structure of the
organization.
3. Pragmatist followers are rarely committed to their group’s work
goals, but they have learned not to make waves. Because they do not like
to stick out, pragmatists tend to be mediocre performers who can clog
the arteries of many organizations. Because it can be difficult to discern
just where they stand on issues, they present an ambiguous image with
 both positive and negative characteristics. In organizational settings,
pragmatists may become experts in mastering the bureaucratic rules that
can be used to protect them.
4. Passive followers display none of the characteristics of the
exemplary follower (discussed next). They rely on the leader to do all the
thinking. Furthermore, their work lacks enthusiasm. Lacking initiative and
a sense of responsibility, passive followers require constant direction.
Leaders may see them as lazy, incompetent, or even stupid. Sometimes,
however, passive followers adopt this style to help them cope with a
leader who expects followers to behave that way.
5. Exemplary followers present a consistent picture to both leaders and
coworkers of being independent, innovative, and willing to stand up to
superiors. They apply their talents for the benefit of the organization even
when confronted with bureaucratic stumbling blocks or passive or
pragmatist coworkers. Effective leaders appreciate the value of exemplary
followers. When one of the authors was serving in a follower role in a
staff position, he was introduced by his leader to a conference as “my
favorite subordinate because he’s a loyal ‘No-Man’.” Exemplary followers
—high on both critical dimensions of followership—are essential to
organizational success.

FIGURE 1.3   The Leadership/Followership Möbius Strip

This does not mean leadership and followership are the same thing. When
top-level executives were asked to list qualities they most look for and
admire in leaders and followers, the lists were similar but not identical. Ideal
leaders were characterized as honest, competent, forward-looking, and
inspiring; ideal followers were described as honest, competent, independent,
and cooperative. The differences could become critical in certain situations,
as when a forward-looking and inspiring subordinate perceives a significant
conflict between his own goals or ethics and those of his superiors. Such a
situation could become a crisis for the individual and the organization,
demanding a choice between leading and following.
As the complexity of the leadership process has become better understood,
the importance placed on the leader–follower relationship itself has
undergone dynamic change. One reason for this is an increasing pressure on
all kinds of organizations to function with reduced resources. Reduced
resources and company downsizing have reduced the number of managers
and increased their span of control, which in turn leaves followers to pick up
many of the functions traditionally performed by leaders. Another reason is a
trend toward greater power sharing and decentralized authority in
organizations, which create greater interdependence among organizational
subunits and increase the need for collaboration among them. Furthermore,
the nature of problems faced by many organizations is becoming so complex
and the changes are becoming so rapid that more and more people are
required to solve them.

These trends suggest several different ways in which followers can take on
new leadership roles and responsibilities in the future. For one thing,
followers can become much more proactive in their stance toward
organizational problems. When facing the discrepancy between the way
things are in an organization and the way they could or should be, followers
can play an active and constructive role collaborating with leaders in solving
problems. In general, making organizations better is a task that needs to be
“owned” by followers as well as by leaders. With these changing roles for
followers, it should not be surprising to find that qualities of good
followership are statistically correlated with qualities typically associated with
good leadership. One recent study found positive correlations between the
followership qualities of active engagement and independent thinking and
the leadership qualities of dominance, sociability, achievement orientation,
and steadiness.

In addition to helping solve organizational problems, followers can contribute

to the leadership process by becoming skilled at “influencing upward.”
Because followers are often at the levels where many organizational
problems occur, they can give leaders relevant information so that good
solutions are implemented. Although it is true that some leaders need to
become better listeners, it is also true that many followers need training in
expressing ideas to superiors clearly and positively. Still another way
followers can assume a greater share of the leadership challenge in the
future is by staying flexible and open to opportunities. The future portends
more change, not less, and followers who face change with positive
anticipation and an openness to self-development will be particularly valued
and rewarded.

Among other things, this openness to change and self-development likely

will include openness to reconsidering how we use the
words leader and followers. Even when followers’ importance in the
leadership process was finally receiving the attention it deserved, early
attention tended to focus on followership as a role (that is, a part that is
played), often if not always designated by a term like subordinate. In
contrast—to carry the theatrical analogy a bit further—the role of leader
virtually always remained the “lead” role.

Recently, however, an alternative approach to understanding followership

has been advanced. In contrast to the aforementioned role approach to
understanding followership, the constructionist approach views leadership
as combined acts of leading and following by different individuals, whatever
their formal titles or positions in an organization may be. In other words,
leadership emerges from the intertwined acts of individuals in complex social
interactions that may include times when “followers may be leading” and
“leaders may be following.” From the perspective of the constructionist
approach, leadership is co-created through acts of leading and following,
whoever may be performing those acts.

Thus, to an ever-increasing degree, leadership must be understood in terms

of both leader variables and follower variables, as well as the interactions
among them. But even that is not enough—we must also understand the
particular situations in which leaders and followers find themselves.

The Situation
This view of leadership as a complex interaction among leader, follower, and
situational variables was not always taken for granted. To the contrary, most
early research on leadership was based on the assumption that leadership is
a general personal trait expressed independently of the situation in which
the leadership is manifested. This view, commonly known as the heroic
theory, has been largely discredited but for a long time.

Decision Making in a Complex World

HIGHLIGHT 1.5
Decision making is a good example of how leaders need to behave
differently in various situations. Until late in the 20th century, decision
making in government and business was largely based on an implicit
assumption that the world was orderly and predictable enough for virtually
all decision making to involve a series of specifiable steps: assessing the
facts of a situation, categorizing those facts, and then responding based on
established practice. To put that more simply, decision making required
managers to sense, categorize, and respond.
That process is still effective in simple contexts characterized by stability and
clear cause-and-effect relationships. Not all situations in the world, however,
are so simple, and new approaches to decision making are needed for
situations that have the elements of what we might call complex systems:
large numbers of interacting elements, nonlinear interactions among those
elements by which small changes can produce huge effects, and
interdependence among the elements so that the whole is more than the
sum of its parts. The challenges of dealing with the threat of terrorism
represent one example of the way complexity affects decision making, but
it’s impacting how we think about decision making in business as well as
government. To describe this change succinctly, the decision-making process
in complex contexts must change from sense, categorize, and respond to
probe, sense, and respond.

In other words, making good decisions is about both what decisions one

makes and understanding the role of the situation in affecting how one
makes decisions.

There Is No Simple Recipe for Effective Leadership

To fill the gaps between leadership research and practice, this book critically
reviews major findings about the nature of leadership and provides practical
advice for improving leadership.

As noted previously, it is important to understand how the three domains of

leadership interact—how the leader, the followers, and the situation are all
part of the leadership process. Understanding their interaction is necessary
before you can draw valid conclusions from the leadership you observe
around you. When you see a leader’s behavior (even when it may appear
obviously effective or ineffective to you), you should not automatically
conclude something good or bad about the leader, or what is the right way
or wrong way for leaders to act. You need to think about the effectiveness of
that behavior in that context with those followers.

The following statements about leaders, followers, and the situation make
these points a bit more systematically:

 A leader may need to respond to various followers differently in the

same situation.
 A leader may need to respond to the same follower differently in
different situations.
 Followers may respond to various leaders quite differently.
 Followers may respond to each other differently with different leaders.
 Two leaders may have different perceptions of the same followers or
situations.

All of these points lead to one conclusion: The right behavior in one situation
is not necessarily the right behavior in another situation. It does not follow,
however, that any behavior is appropriate in any situation. Although we may
not be able to agree on the one best behavior in a given situation, we often
can agree on some clearly inappropriate behaviors. Saying that the right
behavior for a leader depends on the situation is not the same thing as
saying it does not matter what the leader does. It merely recognizes the
complexity among leaders, followers, and situations. This recognition is a
helpful first step in drawing meaningful lessons about leadership from
experience.

CHAPTER 2
Leader Development
For efficiency, organizations that value developing their leaders usually
create intentional pathways for doing so. In other words, leader
development in most large organizations is not left to osmosis. There
typically are structured and planned approaches to developing internal
leaders or leaders-to-be. Formal training is the most common approach to
developing leaders, even when research consistently shows that it’s not the
most effective method. It should not be surprising, then, that organizational
members are often not satisfied with the opportunities generally provided
within their organizations for developing as leaders.

Morgan McCall has summarized some of the key things we’ve learned about
leader development over the past several decades in these seven general
points:
1. To the extent that leadership is learned at all, it is learned from
experience. In fact, about 70 percent of variance in a person’s
effectiveness in a leadership role is due to the results of her experience;
only 30 percent is due to heredity.
2. Certain experiences have greater developmental impact than others in
shaping a person’s effectiveness as a leader.
3. What makes such experiences valuable are the challenges they
present to the person.
4. Different types of experience teach different leadership lessons.
5. Some of the most useful experiences for learning leadership come in
the jobs we’re assigned to, and they can be designed to better enhance
their developmental richness.
6. Obstacles exist to getting all the developmental experiences we may
desire, but we can still get many of them through our own diligence and
with some organizational support.
7. Learning to be a better leader is a lifelong pursuit with many twists
and turns.

The Action–Observation–Reflection Model

The action–observation–reflection (A-O-R) model, depicted in Figure 2.1, which shows
that leadership development is enhanced when the experience involves three different
processes: action, observation, and reflection. If a person acts but does not observe the
consequences of her actions or reflect on their significance and meaning, then it makes
little sense to say she has learned from an experience. Because some people neither
observe the consequences of their actions nor reflect on how they could change their
actions to become better leaders, leadership development through experience may be
better understood as the growth resulting from repeated movements through all three
phases rather than merely in terms of some objective dimension like time (such as how
long one has been on the job). We believe the most productive way to develop as a leader
is to travel along the spiral of experience depicted in Figure 2.1.

FIGURE 2.1   The Spiral of Experience

The Key Role of Perception in the Spiral of Experience

Experience is not just a matter of what events happen to you; it also depends on how
you perceive those events. Perception affects all three phases of the action–observation–
reflection model and thus plays an important role in what anyone will extract from a
leadership course or from any leadership situation. Human beings are not passive
recorders of experiences that happen to them; rather, people actively shape and
construct their experiences. To better understand how perception affects experience, we
will examine its role in each part of the A-O-R model. We begin with the part that seems
to correspond most directly with perception—the observation phase. 
Perception and Observation
Observation and perception both deal with attending to events around us. Both seem to
take place spontaneously and effortlessly, so it is easy to regard them as passive
processes. Our usual mental images of the perceptual process reflect this implicit view.
For example, it is a common misconception that the eye operates essentially like the film
in a continuously running camera. The fallacy of this passive view of perception is that it
assumes we attend to all aspects of a situation equally. However, we do not see
everything that happens in a particular leadership situation, nor do we hear everything.
Instead we are selective in what we attend to and what we, in turn, perceive. A
phenomenon that demonstrates this selectivity is called perceptual set. Perceptual sets
can influence any of our senses, and they are the tendency or bias to perceive one thing
and not another. Many factors can trigger a perceptual set, such as feelings, needs, prior
experience, and expectations. 

A similar phenomenon takes place when one expects to find mostly negative things
about another person (such as a problem employee). Such an expectation becomes a
perceptual set to look for the negative and look past the positive things in the process.
Stereotypes about gender, race, and the like represent powerful impediments to learning
because they function as filters that distort one’s observations.

Perception and Reflection

Perceptual sets influence what we attend to and what we observe. In addition,
perception also influences the next phase of the spiral of experience—reflection—
because reflection is how we interpret our observations. Perception is inherently an
interpretive, or a meaning-making, activity. An important aspect of this is a process
called attribution.

Attributions are the explanations we develop for the characteristics, behaviors, or

actions to which we attend.  The tendency to overestimate the dispositional causes of
behavior and underestimate the environmental causes when others fail is called the
fundamental attribution error. People prefer to explain others’ behavior on the basis of
personal attributions even when obvious situational factors may fully account for the
behavior.

Self-serving bias is the tendency to make external attributions (blame the situation) for one’s
own failures yet make internal attributions (take credit) for one’s successes. A third factor that
affects the attribution process is called the actor/observer difference. This refers to the fact that
people who are observing an action are much more likely than the actor to make the fundamental
attribution error.

Perception and Action

The self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when our expectations or predictions play a causal role in
bringing about the events we predict. It is not difficult to see how certain large-scale social
phenomena may be affected this way.
Reflection and Leadership Development
Perhaps the most important yet most neglected component of the action–observation–
reflection model is reflection. Reflection is important because it can provide leaders with
a variety of insights into how to frame problems differently, look at situations from
multiple perspectives, or better understand subordinates. However, most managers
spend relatively little time on this activity, even though the time spent reflecting about
leadership can be fruitful. The importance of reflection in developing executive
competence continues to be a major element of advancing scholarly thought and
practice.

Here is a brief description of the nature of each of the webs of belief:

Learning
Beliefs regarding the capacity to develop increasingly complex and nuanced
knowledge and skills in new and diverse situations, and integrate them into
practice throughout one’s career and lifespan.

 To what extent do I actively try to learn about my experiences?

 Do I look back on my experiences and identify lessons I can apply in
the future?

Reverence
Beliefs associated with respecting and caring for all creation, and honoring
the needs and identities of everyone in every culture. Reverence provides a
bridge for leaders to understand, embrace, and practice global citizenship
and multiculturalism.

 How comfortable do I feel around people whose beliefs and practices

seem very different from mine?
 Do I feel attracted to learn more about them, or am I inclined to keep
my distance from them? Why?

Purpose
Beliefs about how one understands one’s roles in work and life, and the
implications of those beliefs for the kind of life one lives. A developing
leader’s purpose web of belief presumes progression toward broader goals and
perspectives, participation in activities that are increasingly connective, and
increasing efficacy in influencing outcomes in ever more complex and
relational contexts.

 Do I think about my development as “something that just happens,” or

do I try to guide it in some purposeful direction?
 What do I want to achieve?
 How do I want to be thought of and remembered?
Authenticity
Beliefs grounded in self-knowledge, and behavior consistent with deep
convictions. This web is the foundation for leaders to function in complex,
uncertain, and changing environments where leadership solutions to
challenges depend on mutual trust and respect among parties.

 Do I sometimes present a different “version” of myself in different

groups? Does that feel comfortable or uncomfortable?
 Do I trust others easily? Does it seem that others readily trust me?

Flaneur
Beliefs that undergird how one balances active participation in the events of
one’s life with alternating periods of observation, reflection, detachment, and
rest. Although the word flaneur is probably an unfamiliar one, it is
nonetheless an apt one for this web. Derived from the French noun for
“stroller,” it has referred since the 19th century to a person who comes to
understand a city by walking around and observing it. We hope you can see
a connection between the concept of flaneur and the A-O-R model in this text.

 Do I take regular time to reflect on what’s happening with me?

 Might it be useful to keep a journal of my daily or weekly reflections on
what I’m experiencing and learning?