Interview

Rob GOFFEE & Gareth JONES

Current ranking: 49

Rob Goffee, professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School, and Gareth Jones, first brought their original slant on the business world to a broader audience with their 1998 bestseller, The Character of a Corporation.

In the years since Goffee and Jones have focused their attentions on leadership and innovation.  They won the McKinsey Award for their Harvard Business Review article, “Why should anyone be led by you?”  Their latest book on leadership will be published by Harvard Business School Press in 2006.

Their research is resolutely based in the reality of leadership rather than in the leader-as-hero genre. Jones was director of human resources and internal communications at the BBC and a senior vice president at Polygram, as well as holding a series of academic positions.  

Stuart Crainer recently interviewed Goffee and Jones at their offices.

Is leadership about attitude and personality; traits and characteristics; or something else?

Rob Goffee:  True, leadership is about results.  It has to be. Great leadership has the potential to excite people to extraordinary levels of achievement. But it is not only about performance; it is also about meaning. This is an important point – and one that is often overlooked. Leaders at all levels make a difference to performance. They do so because they make performance meaningful.

Gareth Jones: In organisations the search for the meaning and cohesion leaders provide is increasingly clear.  Look at hierarchies. In the old world of organisations there were ornate hierarchies, more or less stable careers and clear boundaries. All this has changed.  The trouble is that people now realise that hierarchies were not just structural co-ordinating devices in organisations. Rather, and much more significantly, they were sources of meaning.  As hierarchies flatten, meaning disappears so we look to leadership to instill our organisations with meaning.

What’s the link between leadership and meaning?

Goffee: If there isn’t a clearly articulated purpose, meaning is elusive. Leadership provides that articulation. This search for authenticity and leadership is reinforced whenever we work inside organisations. CEOs tell us that their most pressing need is for more leaders in their organisations – not the consummate role-players who seem to surround them. And lower down the organisation the plea is either for more inspiring leadership, or, just as common, a fierce desire to develop leadership skills for themselves. Authentic leadership has become, the most prized organisational and individual asset.

Do universal leadership characteristics exist?

Jones: We don’t think so. What works for one leader will not work for another.  If you want to become a leader you need to discover what it is about yourself that you can mobilise in a leadership context.

Do you mean that to lead you need complete self-knowledge?

Jones: That’s what a lot of the contemporary writing about leadership suggests.  But, none of the leaders we have talked to or worked with have full self knowledge.  Life and leadership aren’t like that.

Goffee:  What they do have is an overarching sense of purpose together with sufficient self knowledge of their potential leadership assets.  They don’t know it all, but they know enough.

Are there any essential truths about leadership?

Jones: There are three fundamental axioms about leadership.  The first of these is that leadership is situational.   What is required of the leader will always be influenced by the situation.  In organisational life, for example, hard edged, cost-cutting turnaround managers are often unable to offer leadership when there is a need to build.

Our second observation is that leadership is non-hierarchical.  Reaching the top of an organisation does not make you a leader.  Hierarchy alone is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the exercise of leadership.

The third pillar of our view of leadership is that leadership is relational. Put simply, you cannot be a leader without followers. Leadership is a relationship built actively by both parties. This web of relationships is fragile and requires constant re-creation.

Effective leaders know how to excite followers to become great performers.

What are the implications – at a very practical level – for those who aspire to leadership? What do they need to know and do?

Jones: The answer is simple, deceptively simple, in fact: to become a more effective leader, you must be yourself – more – with skill. First, to be a leader you must be yourself.  Look at Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin boss, and the way he uses his physical appearance – casual dress, long hair and a beard – to convey the informality and non-conformity which has become a central part of his leadership.  Followers want to be led by a person – not a role holder or a position-filler or a bureaucrat.

The leaders we studied were very adept at deploying their differences in ways that attract followers.  Richard Branson’s differences signify a message; they are authentic – not falsely manufactured; and they are seen by others.  We are talking, then, not of any personal difference but of an artful and authentic display - often fine tuned over many years – of genuine differences which have the potential to excite others.

Goffee: Leaders must be themselves in context. Great leaders are able to read the context and respond accordingly.  They tap into what exists and bring more to the party. This involves a subtle blend of authenticity and adaptation; of individuality and conformity.

Effective leaders do not simply react to context.  They also shape it by conforming enough.  This is the skill element. This involves knowing when and where to conform.  To be effective, the leader needs to ensure his or her behaviours mesh sufficiently with the organisational culture to create traction. Leaders who fail to mesh will simply spin their wheels in isolation from their followers.

Can you explain what you mean by conforming enough?

Goffee: Leaders who succeed in changing organisations challenge the norms - but rarely all of them, all at once.   They do not seek out instant head-on confrontation without understanding the organisational context.  Indeed, survival (particularly in the early days) requires measured adaptation to an ongoing, established set of social relationships and networks.  To change things the leader must first gain at least minimal acceptance as a member -- and the rules for early survival are rarely the same as the rules for longer term success.

Leadership sounds like a tough challenge, with no easy solutions.

Goffee:  Yes. There are a lot of tensions – leaders must reveal strengths but show weaknesses; be an individual but conform enough; establish intimacy but keep their distance.  Managing these tensions lies at the heart of successful leadership.  

Jones: And leadership is uniquely difficult. There is no point pretending that leadership is straightforward. Anyone who has ever been in a leadership position will you that it is complicated, demanding and full of personal risk.  Clearly, not everyone can be a leader and there are many very talented individuals who are simply not interested in shouldering the responsibility of leadership. Each of us has to address the blunt question: do we want it?  And if we do, do we want it enough to put in the work required and make the necessary sacrifices?

Goffee: And then if you take on a leadership role you have to ask Why should any one be led by you? Why should we be led by you? Effective leaders must answer these questions every day in all they say and do.  Otherwise the shortage of leaders will continue as their practice of leadership will be fatally flawed.

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