The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow Read online

  The Leadership for the Common Good series represents a partnership between Harvard Business School Press and the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Books in the series aim to provoke conversations about the role of leaders in business, government, and society, to enrich leadership theory and enhance leadership practice, and to set the agenda for defining effective leadership in the future.

  OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

  Changing Minds

  by Howard Gardner

  Predictable Surprises

  by Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins

  Bad Leadership

  by Barbara Kellerman

  Many Unhappy Returns

  by Charles O. Rossotti

  Leading Through Conflict

  by Mark Gerzon

  Five Minds for the Future

  by Howard Gardner

  Through the Labyrinth

  by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli

  ALSO BY MICHAEL MACCOBY

  Narcissistic Leaders

  The Productive Narcissist

  Agents of Change

  (with Charles Heckscher, Rafael Ramirez,

  and Pierre-Eric Tixier)

  Sweden at the Edge

  A Prophetic Analyst

  (with Mauricio Cortina)

  Why Work?

  The Leader

  The Gamesman

  Social Character in a Mexican Village

  (with Erich Fromm)

  Social Change and Social Character in Mexico and the United States

  Leaders We Need

  And What Makes Us Follow

  Michael Maccoby

  Copyright 2007 Michael Maccoby

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  11 10 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to [email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Maccoby, Michael, 1933-

  The leaders we need : and what makes us follow / Michael Maccoby.

  p. cm.

  9781422163603

  1. Leadership. 2. Leadership—Psychological aspects. 3. Context effects (Psychology) 4. Transference (Psychology) I. Title.

  HM1261.M317 2007

  303.3’4—dc22

  2007017284

  The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

  The book is dedicated to those leaders who are making this world a better place.

  Table of Contents

  OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

  ALSO BY MICHAEL MACCOBY

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  PREFACE - Who’s a Leader?

  CHAPTER 1 - Introduction

  CHAPTER 2 - Revising Leadership Thinking

  CHAPTER 3 - Why We Follow

  CHAPTER 4 - From Bureaucratic Followers to Interactive Collaborators

  CHAPTER 5 - Understanding People in the Knowledge Workplace

  CHAPTER 6 - Leaders for Knowledge Work

  CHAPTER 7 - Leaders for Health Care

  CHAPTER 8 - Leaders for Learning

  CHAPTER 9 - The President We Need

  CHAPTER 10 - Becoming a Leader We Need

  APPENDIX - Social Character and the Life Cycle

  Notes

  Index

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  THIS BOOK GREW out of two articles, written for different readers. One, “Toward a Science of Social Character,” was written for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, to help them understand the changes they are facing in the personality and problems of their patients.1 I first tested out the theory of a shift from the bureaucratic to the interactive social character in meetings of the Academy of Psychoanalysis and the International Forum of Psychoanalysis. Mauricio Cortina, a psychiatrist, made valuable contributions to my thinking, especially how changes in psychotherapy were matching the change in social character.

  Later, I introduced this theory of a changing social character in a research seminar on collaborative organizations led by Charles Heckscher, a sociologist who has been extremely helpful with his encouragement and criticism of a draft of this book. I benefited greatly from the interaction with members of the seminar, whose research enriched my understanding of the changes taking place in the knowledge workplace: Paul S. Adler, Lynda M. Applegate, Mark Bonchek, Nathaniel Foote, Jay R. Galbraith, Robert Howard, John Paul MacDuffie, Saul A. Rubinstein, Charles F. Sabel, and Barry Wellman. Their research and earlier versions of some of the material I’ve developed in this book were published in The Firm as Collaborative Community, edited by Heckscher and Adler.2

  The second article, “Why People Follow the Leader: The Power of Transference,” published in the Harvard Business Review, was written for business leaders to help them understand how to deal with changes in the motivation of their followers.3 That article describes how the shift in social character requires a revision of Freud’s theory of transference—the projection on to others of unconscious emotional attitudes shaped by infantile and childhood relationships. My editor, Diane Coutu, encouraged me to write the article, and as always, she was a brilliant and demanding guide and partner.

  Jeff Kehoe, a senior editor at the Harvard Business School Press, read the article and suggested I expand it into a book on leaders and followers. Over a period of two and a half years, Jeff helped me first to craft a book proposal and then became an indispensable critic and speaking partner as I wrote the book. He has been the kind of editor writers wish for but seldom find, someone who understands and appreciates what the writer is trying to say and challenges him to stretch himself.

  Others have also been helpful. Mike Wolff, editor of Research Technology Management, edited and published articles I wrote for “The Human Side,” which tested out some of the ideas I’ve used in this book. Paul Griner read and corrected the descriptions of healthcare organizations in chapter 7. Phillip Cleary, Mike Feinberg, Rick Frechette, Reinhart Koehler, Dave Levin, Ed McElroy, Laura Rico, Susan Schaeffler, Henry Simmons, and Gary Smuts all responded generously to my questions about their lives and work.

  The Harvard Business School Press sent a draft of the book to five anonymous reviewers who wrote useful criticism and gave their approval for publication. I thank them for the care they took, and I believe their suggestions improved the book.

  I am also grateful to Bob McLean, an inspirational bridge-builder who has led the Washington Metropolitan Dialogue, a group of business, religious, government, and educational leaders supporting each other to improve relations in the city. Bob has been an enthusiastic supporter of my studies of leadership.

  I appreciate the time, thought, and useful criticism contributed by Nora Maccoby, Max Maccoby, Erik Berglof, and Richard Margolies.

  Thanks to my assistant, Maria Stroffolino, who prepared the many drafts of this manuscript, and to Monica Jainschigg, my careful and exacting copy editor.

  Most of all, I am grateful to Sandylee Maccoby, who has been a very helpful critic and loving companion. She brightens every day we’re together, and I’m fortunate t
o be married to her.

  —Michael Maccoby

  Washington, D.C.

  April 2007

  PREFACE

  Who’s a Leader?

  THE NEED FOR LEADERS is urgent—to mobilize human intelligence and energy to grapple with historic threats such as global warming and weapons of mass destruction, and also to respond to vast opportunities to improve life on this planet. Only effective political leadership can show the way to achieve health care for all Americans, to gain energy independence through alternative nonpolluting technologies, or to fix public education so that it prepares children of every background for a demanding global economy. Only a persuasive national leader can gain support at home and abroad for policies that protect our society from its enemies. Only exceptional business and organizational leaders can provide employment and produce the goods and services essential for a strong economy. Yet despite the thousands of books and articles on the subject, we haven’t improved on classic writings about leadership. To start with, even the best recent writers on leadership stumble over the definition of a leader, and a good definition is the beginning of understanding the kinds of leaders we need and how they’ll gain followers in the context of our time.

  John Gardner, a former secretary of Health and Human Services and noted leadership thinker, described very well what bureaucratic leaders do, but like a number of writers on the subject, his definition is inadequate. He defines a leader in terms of tasks: setting goals, motivating people, evaluating them.1 This definition doesn’t distinguish a leader from a manager or even from some leaderless teams that set their own goals and motivate each other. Other writers tell us the defining task of a leader is visioning.2 Certainly, many leaders have been visionaries, but lots of people with visions have no followers; some of them have ended up isolated—and even in mental hospitals.

  James McGregor Burns’s brilliant treatise on leadership is full of rich historical vignettes.3 Burns has given us the useful distinction of transactional versus transformational leaders. By his definition, a transformational leader raises people to higher moral levels, changing them in a positive way. But this definition implies that monsters like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao weren’t transformational leaders—even though millions of people worshipped them and millions were changed by them, mostly for the worse. Even if a leader is just defined as someone who gets people to change, this wouldn’t distinguish a leader from a manager who shakes up an organization by redesigning roles and incentives. It wouldn’t even distinguish a leader from a skillful psychotherapist.

  There is only one irrefutable definition of a leader, and that is someone people follow. This may seem too simple a definition for many academics, but once accepted it opens the door for plenty of hard thinking. Once we agree that anyone with followers—liberator or oppressor, transformational visionary or transactional problem solver—is a leader, then we have to answer two difficult, essential questions about leadership.

  The first is: why do people follow this person? Much is written about leaders, but much less about followers. This book is about the leaders we need and also about the attitudes toward leaders and leadership that are being formed in a new historical context. How will leaders gain these followers? This is not just a question of using well-known techniques; we’ll see in this book that would-be followers are no longer moved by what worked in the past.

  Of course, there are and always have been leaders who force people to follow them and make the alternative unpleasant—imprisonment or execution by despots; firing by managers. In fact, most of the organizational leaders I’ve met are followed grudgingly, without enthusiasm or trust. But those leaders won’t inspire anyone to meet the challenges of our time.

  The second question: How do people follow the leader? Do they follow blindly? Do they do what they are told to do? Do they imitate the leader? These are typical follower behaviors in the bureaucratic-industrial world. But in the emerging era of knowledge work in which technical and professional specialists work across organizational and national boundaries, we’ll see that leaders are most effective when they and their followers become collaborators who share a common purpose.4

  Leadership always implies a relationship between leader and led, and that relationship exists within a context. Leaders who gain followers in one context—which could be historical, cultural, or organizational—may not attract followers in a different context. A well-known example is Winston Churchill, the indispensable leader who was willingly followed when Britain was attacked by Germany, but was rejected by his countrymen before and after World War II. Another example is the Confucian benevolent despot Lee Kwan Yu, who led Singapore, a poor city-state, to glittering prosperity. But he’s not a leader who’d be followed in the democratic West.

  Who are “the leaders we need”? They are the leaders motivated to achieve the common good who have the qualities required to gain willing followers in a particular culture, at a historical moment when leadership becomes essential to meet the challenges of that time and place. In short, they are the leaders needed within their contexts. To understand leadership in context, we have to place ourselves within that culture and get inside the heads of the people a would-be leader is trying to mobilize (i.e., the followers). Furthermore, we should have intellectual tools for understanding these qualities, which add up to the leader’s personality.

  In the global marketplace of our time, the leadership context has changed from that of fifty years ago, when corporate bureaucracies rode along in stable, predictable markets. Then, managers were needed to plot a steady course; innovative leaders could be seen as disruptive and were often sidelined. Now, in the context of continual change brought about by knowledge workers, leadership is needed not only at the top, but also throughout companies. Furthermore, different types of leaders are needed to integrate projects and teams of technical professionals working across department and national borders: strategic, operational, and network or bridge-building:

  Strategic leaders communicate a vision with a compelling sense of purpose.

  Operational leaders build the organization and infuse the energy that transforms visions into results.

  Network/bridge-building leaders facilitate the understanding and trust that turns different types of specialists into collaborators.

  These leadership roles are most effectively filled by different types of people in terms of their intellectual skills and personalities. Furthermore, these leaders need to understand each other in order to work together; and most importantly, they need to understand the diverse mix of people they want to follow them.

  The reader should know that my approach to the study of leadership is shaped by my academic training and professional experience as a psychoanalyst and anthropologist who for over thirty-five years has studied and counseled leaders in business, government, universities, and unions. As an anthropologist, I view leadership within a cultural context, a system that weaves together modes of work, political institutions, family structure, and values. As a psychoanalyst, I focus on the way personality determines how we relate to others, especially at work. Erich Fromm’s idea of social character, which integrates anthropological context with a psychoanalytic approach to personality, is an essential concept for developing what I call Personality Intelligence, the ability to understand people.

  Although I don’t subscribe to all of Freud’s theories, in this book I do make extensive use of his concept of unconscious transference, and I build on his theory of personality types. Transference helps to explain why people sometimes idealize leaders, projecting onto them comforting childhood images of protective parents. And it also explains why they sometimes turn against these leaders, seeing them as inept or neglectful parents. In chapter 3, we’ll examine how changes in the experience of childhood and a shift in the social character cause different perceptions of parents and peers resulting in dramatically different attitudes to leadership.

  In my teaching and consulting work, I’ve met many inspiring young lead
ers with strong values and high aspirations for the common good. This book expands on what I have taught to and learned from them, and I hope that it will strengthen their Personality Intelligence and their ability to become the leaders we need.

  CHAPTER 1

  Introduction

  Leadership in a New Context

  IN TIMES OF GREAT CULTURAL CHANGE, such as the present, people need leaders to take them to a positive future. But what makes leaders successful depends not only on their message and their skill in getting it across, but also on their grasp of what followers want from them. Throughout history, people have not always followed the leaders they needed. Sometimes they have been forced to follow oppressive dictators. Sometimes they have idealized and willingly followed Pied Pipers. This book is about why people follow leaders and what it takes to become the kind of leader we need today in a time of profound change in organizations, work, family life, and the social character—a time when both opportunities to improve life and threats to life have never been so great.

  The cultural change we’re experiencing is at least as far-reaching as the Industrial Revolution that drove people from farms into factories and bureaucracies, and changed their work from handling tools to mastering machines. It can be compared to the changes wrought by Genghis Khan and his Mongol followers nine hundred years ago.1 The Mongol invaders smashed feudal ties in eastern Europe and began to build an innovative culture in China. The new Chinese technologies—gunpowder, the compass, printing—spread to the West and became tools for an era of exploration and conquest, the rise of a new entrepreneurial class, the beginnings of capitalism, and profound changes in values and emotional attitudes. At the height of the Renaissance, in the sixteenth century, Niccoló Machiavelli and William Shakespeare described how leaders gain power in ways that still influence our thinking.