Current theories and models of leadership have placed considerable emphasis on hierarchical leadership that, in order to be effective, takes situational variables into account.
There are many instances where “substitutes for leadership” exist. In these instances, the subordinate’s dependency on the leader is reduced. Rigid bureaucratic rules and regulations, can reduce subordinates’ information needs about the task to almost zero. In other instances the task may be totally specified by technology, or “professional standards” and the prescribed methodology may render the leader superfluous.
The substitute concept identifies situations in which the leader’s behaviors are neutralized by characteristics of the subordinate, the task and/or the organization.
SUBSTITUTES FOR LEADERSHIP
Characteristics Of Subordinates
h Ability and experience
h Need for independence
h Professional orientation
h Indifference towards rewards
Characteristics Of Tasks
h Routineness
h Availability of feedback
h Intrinsic satisfaction
Characteristics Of Organization
h Formalization
h Group cohesion
h Inflexibility
h Rigid reward structure
LEADERSHIP TYPES FOR CHANGING TIMES
The rapidly changing face of the world of business here and internationally has offered up some rather interesting organisational phenomena that have served to challenge traditional views on everything from the practice of management to the conduct of production processes. Perhaps the most intriguing of these new developments, though, has been the re-orienting of notions of management. For one, the current thinking is that different structures, new challenges and the prospect of a perpetual state of change have demanded more by way of leadership and less and less in the line of age-old models of management.
Indeed, our own Employers’ Consultative Association (ECA), in celebrating its 40th Anniversary, focused on what it termed “Re-Engineering Management: the Mandate for New Leadership.” For sure, the threat of obsolescence stares many in their faces. Some will recognise it for what it is. Others will simply be washed away by this giant tide of change. The fact is the world of business is in the throes of a gigantic revolution which requires a style of leadership reminiscent of that displayed through some of the more challenging times in the history of Mankind.
Anthropologist, Michael Maccoby, argues in an article in a recent edition of Harvard Business Review that such leadership should be both “visionary and charismatic”. But, very importantly, he has noted that there has been a tendency to promote the role of a kind of leader who isn’t that much different from the narcissistic personalities of times past.
“Throughout history,” he suggests, “narcissists have always emerged to inspire people and to shape the future.” Among such notable personalities are: Napoleon Bonaparte, Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Such styles of leadership have not only been witnessed in the world of politics but also in the world of business where captains of industry and commerce such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were pre-dominant in changing the face of the modern world.
Of course, descriptions of the narcissistic personality emerge out of the turn-of-the-19th Century work of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who identified the erotic, obsessive and narcissistic types. Narcissists, Freud argued, are independent, not easily impressed, innovators and are driven by a sense of power and glory. “Unlike erotics,” Maccoby adds, “they (narcissists) want to be admired, not loved.”
“And, unlike obsessives, they are not troubled by a punishing super-ego, so they are able to aggressively pursue their goals.” Sounds like somebody you know? It should. For, Trinidad and Tobago, has not escaped the grasp of this reliance on leadership personalities who display some of the more impressive qualities of the narcissist even as they exhibit some of their sharpest deficiencies and weaknesses.
Such personalities, the experts contend, tend to be poor listeners who lack empathy, have a distaste for mentoring and possess an intense desire to compete. “One serious consequence of this oversensitivity to criticism is that narcissistic leaders often do not listen when they feel threatened or attacked,” says Maccoby.
Productive narcissists, on the other hand, “are not only risk takers willing to get the job done but also charmers who can convert the masses with their rhetoric.” This, however, can be converted to negative ends when, according to Maccoby, “lacking self-knowledge and restraining anchors, narcissists become unrealistic dreamers”. “They nurture grand schemes and harbour the illusion that only circumstances or enemies block their success,” he argues.
This interesting blend of personality trait has served to create a management style that has created its share of problems and conflict but has also tended to help organisations, through their leadership, confront many issues head-on and with a greater degree of self-confidence.
In the end, however, there does not appear to be an automatic correlation between the existence of narcissistic leadership and the success of modern leadership. In fact, success may well rely more heavily on the degree to which this particular personality type co-exists alongside Freud’s erotic and obsessive types and what Erich Fromm many years later described as the fourth personality type – the marketing personality.
In the end, we may conclude that all four types have the potential to be as productive as they are, many times, unproductive and not particularly useful. The rise of the narcissistic leader, however, poses very special challenges to modern day society even as it, clearly, has led to so many advances and special achievements of our time.