Feb 16, 2006 - problems, uncertainty, conflict and, hopefully for those involved, a happy ending. In chapter four, the interviews are read not as stories, ...
16 February 2006 Hatch, M.J., Kostera, M., & Kozminski, A. (2005) The Three Faces of Leadership: Manager, Artist, Priest. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 14051-2260-9 141pp. soft cover Keywords: Leadership, Aesthetics, Story-telling, Ethics, Managerialism, Culture The Three Faces of Leadership starts with the premise that leadership is moving away from traditional forms of control through supervision and domination towards artistry and spirituality. While leaders who emphasise control will be followed, “the leader who is inspired will be emulated” (p.vii). How then, to become worthy of emulation? Two aesthetic domains of leadership are identified – the creative and the ethical – and both are held to be essential for successful leadership, in addition to technical competence and a rational mind. Combing the technical with the aesthetic produces three faces of leadership – manager, artist and priest. The manager attempts to bring order to a chaotic world through rational forms of organization, control and the application of expertise. In contrast, the artist is independent and curious and harnesses creative forces to challenge established ways of organizing, while the priest symbolizes the values of the organisation and provides comfort and inspiration in times of change and uncertainty. It is argued that until now, the face of the manager has dominated both management education and practice. Rationality and technical competence might be necessary for leading a successful business, but they are not sufficient in the rapidly changing context of the 21st century. This in itself is hardly a novel claim, as evidenced by the number of books on transformational, charismatic and other forms of values-based leadership. So what is special about this book? For me, it is the insights into the role of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) in the production and dissemination of a global managerial culture that dominates seemingly every sphere of organizational life. The empirical study involves interviews with 30 CEOs (all men) that appeared in HBR from 1989 to 1998, together with an interview with HBR’s then editor-in-chief. Unsurprisingly, the sample is heavily weighted towards American companies, but this seems appropriate given that the “managerial way” (p.116) is largely an American creation. The book is organised into six chapters. After introducing the three faces in chapter one, the authors analyse the storytelling that CEOs engaged in during the HBR interviews. Four basic types of stories are identified (comic, tragic, epic, romantic) and each is illustrated with examples. Predictably, more than 90 per cent of stories were epic tales involving heroes and villains, challenges, missions and ultimately great victories. As the authors note, “this form fits the image of the powerful leader as hero – whereas the other three detract from the power and the glamour of the role” (p.33). Also predictably, given the gender composition of the sample, there was only one female hero in the entire set of interviews. In chapter three, the interviews are read as theatrical performances, examining how each CEO dramatized their organisations in ways that demonstrated the faces of the artist and the priest. Business leaders are encouraged to think of themselves as producers and directors of dramas that combine the talents of actors (employees or
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stakeholders) to achieve both aesthetic and practical ends. Four types of theatre are used to analyse the data: morality play, modern drama, the happening and the global show, which highlight (respectively) ethics, ambiguity, improvisation and universality. The modern drama is the predominant type, which combines complex problems, uncertainty, conflict and, hopefully for those involved, a happy ending. In chapter four, the interviews are read not as stories, or dramas, but as mythic texts that are created by the CEOs (who are represented as Greek Gods) in collaboration with HBR. The focus is the construction of their identities in the interviews, not the way they conduct themselves in practice, presumably because this was not part of the data set. The three most popular gods are Hermes (innovator and communicator), Athena (rational strategist) and Demeter (goddess of growth and renewal). Of greater interest are the Gods who do not appear often – Zeus, who occupies a position of supreme power in Greek mythology, makes few appearances in the interviews, as does Ares (the competitor) and Hephaestus (the technician). This observation is used to support the assertion of a shift away from the stereotype of the intensely competitive and rational manager. The authors believe “the greater presence of Hermes, Athena and Demeter points to significant change in managerial culture and its preference for the particular forms of leadership these gods portray” (p.98). It is here that The Three Faces of Leadership is in danger of extending beyond its methodological limits. As the authors acknowledge, theirs is not an especially critical reading of the CEO interviews published in HBR, a publication itself which is more interested in illuminating the virtues of the subjects than their vices. Hatch, Kostera and Kozminski position themselves as the “appreciative audience for the aesthetic performances of CEOs presented by HBR” (p.10). This “willing suspension of disbelief” is held to be appropriate since “art, drama, and myth can only be fully experienced through appreciative engagement” (p.10). While this approach works in providing illustrations of CEO identifications with the faces of the priest and the artist, it is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the existence or extent of any shift away from a preoccupation with the all-powerful and controlling face of the manager. There is for example, no reference to HBR interviews published prior to 1989 against which their analysis could be compared. Those interviews might also have been dominated by a humane style of leadership because of the ideas around corporate culture that became popularised during the 1980s. It might also be in the interests of CEOs to present themselves as humans who care about their staff rather than that than rational automatons who act strictly according to the principles of economic efficiency. As Hatch, Kostera and Kozminski themselves acknowledge the ‘dark side’ of humanity seldom appears in official discourses of management. This construction of the leadership ‘face’ is the subject of chapter five and is the most interesting part of the book. The authors locate HBR at the forefront of the production and dissemination of contemporary managerial culture. The focus of the chapter is an interview with HBR’s then editor-in-chief Suzy Wetlaufer, which presents a fascinating behind-the-scenes look the production of the CEO interviews. Wetlaufer notes that “we inform them that we are not about news, we are not about “gotcha,” we are not about uncovering deep, dark secrets – we are about your theory of business” (p.120). All the CEOs receive a draft of the interview and work together with the author to refine the text, often line by line, to get their desired message. It is little wonder that HBR has never had a CEO turn down the offer of an interview.
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Wetlaufer also makes it clear that HBR uses the CEO interviews to promote the concepts, theories and ideas that it believes should be on the agenda of practising managers. Continuing the religious theme that pervades the book, the authors draw parallels between the roles played by Harvard with that of the Vatican, suggesting the selection of CEOs who appear in HBR shares a resemblance to the process of choosing the Pope. While not wanting to push the metaphor too far, they conclude that HBR acts as an institutional force that selects those who are revered as ‘gods’ and through this process can shape ideas about what constitutes successful management. The sixth chapter contains some final reflections on the themes developed throughout the book. A point well made is that all three faces of the leader are interdependent, with real-life artists and priests increasingly making use of managerial ideas and techniques, leading to the suggestion that managers look to the aesthetic spheres for the creativity and inspiration necessary for organizational success. This is followed by an interesting discussion about viewing business as religion and the meaning of faith in this context. The privileging of faith reflects the authors’ commitment to a more ethical managerialism and they also regard it as critical in times of organizational change, with the artist providing the vision and creativity to imagine change and the priest strengthening the organisational culture to make its members comfortable with that change. However, there must be a balance between the three faces and we are reminded that the manager’s discipline is needed to temper the other two. The Three Faces of Leadership will challenge those practitioners whose ‘manager face’ is dominant to get more in touch with their spiritual and emotional sides. Practitioners might feel that the textual analysis which occupies large sections of the book inhibits the delivery of its core themes, but there are useful suggestions at the end of each chapter for putting the faces of the artist and the priest into practice. The book should also interest students of organisations at whatever level, especially those who believe that management is about art and not just about science. Overall, The Three Faces of Leadership makes a valuable contribution to the leadership literature.
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