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

  10 Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976).

  11 Michael Maccoby, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership (New York: Broadway Books, 2003), released in paperback edition with a new preface by author as Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails, (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007).

  12 Michael Maccoby, Why Work: Leading the New Generation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988; 2nd ed. Why Work? Motivating the New Workforce [Alexandria, VA: Miles River Press, 1995]); Charles C. Heckscher et al., Agents of Change: Crossing the Post-Industrial Divide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

  13 Charles Heckscher and Paul S. Adler, eds., The Firm as a Collaborative Community: The Reconstruction of Trust in the Knowledge Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

  14 Rakesh Khurana, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

  15 Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Rinehart: 1941).

  16 Erich Fromm, The Working Class in Weimar Germany: A Psychological and Sociological Study; trans. Barbara Weinberger, ed. Wolfgang Bonss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984); see also Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1922–1939 (London: Penguin, 2005).

  17 In “Employees Want to Hear It ‘Straight’ from the Boss’s Mouth,” Financial Times, December 1, 2006, Alison Maitland reports: “What employees really want, according to a new survey, are straight-talkers who keep them up to date with bad, as well as good news instead of putting on a performance or preaching through PowerPoint.”

  Chapter 2

  1 These qualities were cited by CEOs and other leaders in speeches given at The World Business Forum in New York, September 13–14, 2005.

  2 Thomas H. Davenport, Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005).

  3 Betsy Morris, “Genentech: The Best Place to Work Now,” Fortune, January 11, 2006, 79–86.

  4 See, for example, Donald Roy, “Quota Restrictions and Goldbricking in a Machine Shop,” American Journal of Sociology (March 1952): 427-442.

  5 Elton Mayo, The Problems of an Industrialized Civilization (Boston: Division of Research, Harvard Business School, 1933); F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, Management and the Worker: An Account of a Research Program Conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939).

  6 See the description of my work at AT&T in Charles C. Heckscher et al., Agents of Change: Crossing the Post-Industrial Divide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), chapter 2.

  7 Richard Gillespie, Manufacturing Knowledge: A History of the Hawthorne Experiments (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 79. In his fascinating history of the Hawthorne studies, Gillespie goes back to the original field notes and memos and finds that the researchers differed among themselves about the findings and the workers argued about the conclusions.

  8 Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960); Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harper, 1954).

  9 Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management (Homewood, IL: R.D. Irwin, 1965), 36. Maslow’s examples of evolved versus unevolved people compare Americans to people from the third world. For example, referring to Peter Drucker’s elaboration of Theory Y, management by objectives, he writes, “Where we have fairly evolved human beings able to grow, eager to grow, then Drucker’s management principles seem to be fine. They will work, but only at the top of the hierarchy of human development. They assume ideally a person who has been satisfied in his basic needs in the past, while he was growing up, and who is now being satisfied in his life situation. He was and now is safety-need gratified (not anxious, not fearful). He was and is belongingness-need satisfied (he does not feel alienated, ostracized, orphaned, outside the group; he fits into the family, the team, the society; he is not an unwelcome intruder). He was and is love-need gratified (he has enough friends and enough good ones, a reasonable family life; he feels worthy of being loved and wanted and able to give love—this means much more than romantic love, especially in the industrial situation). He was and is respect-need gratified (he feels respect-worthy, needed, important, etc.; he feels he gets enough praise and expects to get whatever praise and reward he deserves). He was and is self-esteem-need satisfied. (As a matter of fact this doesn’t happen often enough in our society; most people on unconscious levels do not have enough feelings of self-love, selfrespect. But in any case, the American citizen is far better off here, let’s say, than the Mexican citizen is” (p. 15).

  10 Michael Maccoby, The Leader: A New Face for American Management (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 75.

  11 Ibid., 166; see also Heckscher et al., Agents of Change, chapter 2.

  12 Anabel Quan-Haase and Barry Wellman, “Hyperconnected Network,” in The Firm as Collaborative Community, ed. Charles Heckscher and Paul S. Adler (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 314.

  13 Edward E. Lawler III, Motivation in Work Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993), 43.

  14 See Michael Maccoby, Why Work? Motivating the New Workforce, 2nd ed. (Alexandria, VA: Miles River Press, 1995).

  15 Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child (New York: The Free Press, 1965; orig. pub. 1932); Jean Piaget, Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood (New York: Norton, 1951).

  16 For a fuller description of Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning and other views on the subject see Daniel K. Lapsley, Moral Psychology (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

  17 It is dedicated to Lorenzo de’Medici, Duke of Urbino (1492–1519). This was not Lorenzo the Magnificent of Florence, the great patron of the arts who died in 1492, but a grandson who ruled as a dictator and whose claim to fame is his tomb in Florence, sculpted by Michelangelo. By dedicating his book to Lorenzo, Machiavelli hoped, vainly as it turned out, that the duke would revive his political career and end his exile from France.

  18 Niccoló Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 69.

  19 Niccoló Machiavelli, The Discourses, Book 3 (London: Penguin Classics, 1984), chapter 20. However, Machiavelli writes that for a republic, it’s better to have a harsh commander like Manlius because he reinforces republican values of discipline and justice without regard for rank or riches. Valerius’s method is harmful, he writes, because it prepares the way for tyranny. How so? What Machiavelli doesn’t mention but history tells us is that Valerius Corvinus while originally a republican went over to join Octavian (who became emperor Augustus) to destroy the republic. This message may be that a considerate general can become a popular politician, think of Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, and might become a dictator while a tough general, think of George Patton, sticks to the military and is no such threat.

  20 Machiavelli, The Discourses, 468.

  21 Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter XXV.

  22 Michael Maccoby, “Trust Trumps Love and Fear,” MIT Sloan Management Review 45, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 14–16.

  23 Alan Deutschman, “Psychopathic Bosses,” Fast Company, July 2005, 44–51.

  24 Jim Collins, Good to Great (New York: Harper Collins Business, 2001), 127.

  25 Ibid., 27.

  26 Michael Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007). Neither Collins nor Jack Welch mentioned the other personality types I’ve observed: the caring and marketing types. I’ll discuss these types in chapter 5.

  27 Jack Welch with Suzy Welch, Winning (New York: Harper Business, 2005), 181–184.

  28 This research on professional football players was done on the San Diego Chargers by Dr. Arnold T. Mandell, then chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego (“A Psychiatric Study of Professional Football,” Saturday Review, October 5,
1974, 12–16).

  29 Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976), chapter 6.

  30 Andrew Pollack, “Hewlett’s ‘Consummate Strategist,’ ” New York Times, March 10, 1992.

  31 Personal communication from Martin C. Faga, CEO of MITRE in McLean, Virginia, June 22, 2006.

  32 Leonard Shapiro, “NFL Coaches Take a Gentler Approach,” Washington Post, November 6, 2005.

  33 Carol Hymowitz, “Two Football Coaches Have a Lot to Teach Screaming Managers,” Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2007.

  34 John Brauch, “NBC Gives Barber the Ball and He Runs with It,” New York Times, February 14, 2007.

  35 Reported by Jena McGregor, “Game Plan: First Find the Leaders,” BusinessWeek, August 21–28, 2006.

  Chapter 3

  1 This chapter builds on my article “Why People Follow the Leader: The Power of Transference,” Harvard Business Review, September 2004, 76–85.

  2 Sigmund Freud, Character and Anal Eroticism, vol. IX, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), 167–177 (orig. pub. 1908).

  3 Sigmund Freud, Observations on Transference Love, vol. XII, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), 168 (orig. pub. 1915).

  4 http://www.cps-ltd.co.uk.

  5 Michael Maccoby, “Achieving Good Governance for Psychoanalytic Societies,” American Psychoanalyst (Winter/Spring 2004): 9, 13.

  6 Lydia Thomas, interview with author, August 5, 2004.

  7 I’ve disguised all names and possible identifying aspects of my clients.

  8 Freud, Observations on Transference Love, 196.

  9 This thesis of the increases of sibling transferences linked to the changing family structure is based on my experience and that of colleagues, including academic researchers and psychotherapists who report that their patients from these family backgrounds express these transferences in therapy.

  10 Along with the emphasis on protecting Americans from terrorists were ads projecting a paternal image of George W. Bush. One widely broadcast TV ad was “Ashley’s story,” in which Bush comforts a teenage girl who lost her mother in the 9/11 attacks. The transferential appeal reaches its peak when Ashley says about Bush, “He’s the most powerful man in the world, and all he wants to do is make sure I’m safe, that I’m OK.” Cited by Kevin Lanning, “The Social Psychology of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election,” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy 5, no. 1 (2005): 150.

  11 Michael Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007).

  Chapter 4

  1 Michael Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007). In the village, the entrepreneurs bought the land these people had been given after the revolution in order to build weekend houses for rich people from Mexico City. Left landless, these villagers soon used up the money and were forced to become day laborers.

  2 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), 330.

  3 Peter F. Drucker, “Management and the World’s Work,” Harvard Business Review, September–October 1988, 75.

  4 Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857; New York: The Modern Library, 2002), 114.

  5 “Public officers in the United States are not separate from the mass of citizens; they have neither palaces nor ceremonial costumes. This simple exterior of persons in authority is connected not only with the peculiarities of the American character, but with the fundamental principles of society . . . A public officer in the United States is uniformly simple in his manners, accessible to all the world, attentive to all requests, and obliging in his replies. I was pleased by these characteristics of a democratic government; I admired the manly independence that respects the office more than the officer and thinks less of the emblems of authority than of the man who bears them.” Tocqueville, ibid., 214–215.

  6 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958), 182 (orig. pub. 1904–1905).

  7 Cited by Robert K. Merton, “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality,” in Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture, ed. K. Kluckhohn and H. A. Murray (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), 378.

  8 Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 294.

  9 Merton, “Bureaucratic Structure and Personality,” 363–376.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Drucker, “Management and the World’s Work.”

  12 Michael Maccoby, Why Work? Motivating the New Workforce (Alexandria, VA: Miles River Press, 1995).

  13 In Melvin L. Kohn and Carmi Schooler’s Work and Personality (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1983), a massive study of 3,100 men at all levels of corporations and government, the authors found that the ideal job for these bureaucrats is one that allows autonomy. Notably, labor unions in the United States bargained to give workers the rights to ownership of their jobs, in effect giving them a certain autonomy and protection from arbitrary authority. In contrast, European unions tended to bargain for influence at the executive level while allowing management more flexibility in running the shop floor. As a result, American industry suffered from elaborate contracts that detailed a worker’s job and made clear that the worker could not be asked to do anything else. This led to the ridiculous and costly situation in American industries like steel where one electrician only would do work on a wall up to a certain height while above that a different electrician owned the job.

  14 Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, The One Minute Manager: Increase Productivity, Profits, and Your Own Prosperity (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1982).

  15 According to 2003 U.S. Census statistics, 67 percent of Americans work in private service producing industries, 17 percent in government, and 11 percent in manufacturing. That’s a lot of organizations.

  16 Michael Maccoby, The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976).

  17 William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956).

  18 Maccoby, The Gamesman, 120.

  19 Jack Welch with Suzy Welch, Winning (New York: Harper Business, 2005).

  20 Among AT&T’s well-known bad decisions were: giving up cellular telephony after inventing it, trying to compete in computers, buying NCR, and deciding the Internet was a fad.

  21 Maccoby, Why Work?

  22 John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, Got Game? How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004). Beck, in a private talk, said that 100 percent of Harvard undergraduates were video gamers.

  23 But these gamesters can lose touch with reality. A research laboratory director told me that one of them she directed kept playing with the data until he got the “right” result. When she questioned its accuracy, he said, “But that’s the result you asked for.”

  24 Beck and Wade, Got Game? 154. Surveys of video gamers show a drop-off in play as the gamers age and have to focus more on work and family. It remains to be studied whether or not these attitudes toward work and leadership are sustained; see Nick Wingfield, “Game Companies Worry as Players Grow Up, Grow Bored,” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2007.

  25 Beck and Wade, Got Game? 121–122.

  26 I’ve found that they do appreciate, even enjoy, the kind of co-coaching designed by Marshall Goldsmith, where neither person is superior to the other. See for example, Marshall Goldsmith, “Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback,” http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com.

  Chapter 5

  1 Although few managers have advanced very far in understanding people, almost all have taken and discussed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, which is based on the theories of C. G. Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst. However, test-retest studies of the Myers-Briggs don’t show high reliability. Even so, since introversion-extraversion is genetically determined, Myers
-Briggs taps into a valid trait. See, for example, Leslie A. Thomas and Robert J. Harvey, “Improving Measurement Precision of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator” (paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, FL, May 1995).