Leadership theory and research tend to focus more on leader style, interpersonal relationships, and subordinate task performance than on the performance of leaders themselves. But ultimately ... successful leadership is identified by its positive impact, at unit and organizational levels.

By TOM BATEMAN
Organizational Dynamics

What do people want in their leaders? Charisma, sure; it's better for a leader to be charismatic than not. But they also want performance. As Julius Caesar said, "Every soldier has a right to competent command"-this is a general point underlying the analyses and recommendations that follow. Caesar's comment, just like recent references to a leadership crisis in which we have too few effective leaders in the public and private sectors, begs the question: what does it mean for a leader to be competent in ways that deliver results?

The leadership literature is of course vast, and helpful toward the goal of achieving greater leader competence. It provides useful perspective and prescriptions on a variety of relevant topics including the personality dimensions that can predict people's emergence as leaders; the importance of attending to both people and tasks; how leaders can satisfy and appeal to followers' needs; path-clearing to enhance subordinate performance (and satisfy their needs); establishing and maintaining credibility; providing substitutes for leadership; team-building and teamwork; identifying situational factors that determine the most appropriate styles; understanding when and how to use groups to make decisions; influencing attitudes and behavior; managing emotions; making ethical decisions; the behaviors that create perceptions of leader charisma; and so on.

The temptation is to complete the string with ad infinitum, but that would sound inappropriately demeaning; the list is in fact a long and productive one, and those interested in strengthening their leadership can find much to recommend.

But what about leader performance in the form of real results? The academic literature speaks to this, but often more implicitly than explicitly-for instance, team building and ethical decision-making and follower need satisfaction are important goals in their own rights that also can improve performance. When performance is invoked more explicitly, the focus typically is on how leaders can improve subordinates' performance via proven techniques including goal setting, empowerment (done correctly), creative freedom with appropriate controls, feedback, and deserved rewards. Or, the performance focus lies in the literatures that are not explicitly about leadership: accounting, finance, strategy, operations, and so on.

Thus, leadership theory and research tend to focus more on leader style, interpersonal relationships, and subordinate task performance than on the performance of leaders themselves. But ultimately - although not necessarily in the short run - successful leadership is identified by its positive impact, at unit and organizational levels. Unsuccessful leadership is attributed when leaders or institutions fail to deliver hoped-for results.

In their attempts to deliver results, managers and leaders are continually making decisions, many of which are consequential and some profoundly so. The heart of truly effective leadership therefore is found, academically speaking, in the literatures on problem-solving and decision-making. Leaders can apply these skills to increase the effectiveness of all aspects of leadership listed earlier; problem-solving and decision-making both enhance and envelop the other leadership skills. Moreover, they have tighter and more direct connections to results, thereby forming a powerful foundation of competence. The starting point for the analysis that follows is a dual requirement for competence and effectiveness: leaders must (1) attain substantive rationality, or the best possible results in the pursuit of corporate goals, and (2) pursue that objective via procedural rationality, using the best possible problem-solving and decision-making processes.

The attainment or failure to attain substantive rationality can be determined only after the results are in. In contrast, leaders can pursue procedural rationality in real time, and directly. This is the essential requirement of competent leadership in the service of results. Thus, practically speaking, the heart of competent leadership is active problem-solving: engaging in the processes needed to successfully fix problems, identify and seize opportunities, and otherwise meet and conquer challenges-and to inspire others to do the same.

In the analysis that follows: I describe the importance of these processes and highlight key leader strategies for enacting them, with the goal of increasing leader competence. The recommendations apply to all sectors including the private sector, but I draw especially from two powerful public sector examples: Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war. The cry for competent leadership has become especially loud, from all along the political spectrum, in the wake of Katrina and with the advent of the war. These events offer useful opportunities to learn about leadership through a results-oriented lens. The purpose here is not to criticize post hoc or make political hay. Nor do I pretend to provide a complete analysis of such extraordinarily complex events. But I do offer a succinct roadmap to leader competence inspired in part by two of the most momentous events of our lives.

Leadership as action/reaction: the case of Hurricane Katrina

Deciding to Act

Even when leaders are aware of problems, they often do not take action. Like all people, leaders are unlikely to act, even though they may care about an issue, until they make a real decision to do so. Resolving that "I will do X" is a powerful stimulus to action; musing "maybe someday" and "wouldn't it be nice if···" are not.

With Hurricane Katrina, scientists, journalists, some politicians and businesspeople, and other citizens had been trying for years to sound the alarm about inadequate levees, but the problem didn't capture the attention of decision makers or the needed resources. New Orleans' main hurricane project was 37 years behind schedule. FEMA had sponsored a hurricane simulation a year earlier that vividly portrayed a coming disaster- a useful training experience, but one that did not inspire subsequent investment and preparation.

Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans had more seemingly urgent priorities, including the city's murder rates and school systems. Even when Katrina loomed, city leaders ignored serious hurricane advisories and warnings, and when the storm hit, evacuation orders were slow in coming. Meteorologist Robert Ricks broke with the tradition of dry scientific language and sent a warning with strong language and distressing images intended to gain notice. This, plus National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield's phone call to Mayor Nagin saying that Katrina was the Big One, eventually succeeded in getting attention and action. The action, unfortunately, was more reactive than proactive, and not particularly effective.

Taking Appropriate Action

Actions are more likely to be appropriate and effective if they represent a coherent strategy, have been planned a priori, and if leaders and others are prepared to provide resources and execute. When Katrina struck and people took refuge in the Superdome and the Convention Center, food, water, and medical supplies were wholly inadequate. The city's evacuation plan seemed to consist of telling people to go to the Superdome and wait for buses. There was also a shortage of talent, as FEMA's top ranks were filled with political appointees with little expertise. Mayor Nagin implored federal and state officials to take action rather than do media appearances. When outside help came (for example, from the Red Cross and the Department of the Interior), FEMA often refused it, and in one case diverted 100 first responders for sexual harassment training. Firemen, search and rescue experts, Hazmat experts, and paramedics were told that they were allowed to do nothing except hand out flyers with the FEMA toll-free number. Leaders no doubt were busy, but too often were acting in ways that, in appearance and substance, were not appropriate.

Fortunately, many others stepped in to fill the void, revealing how results can derive from shared or distributed leadership. Whereas elected officials and top-level FEMA appointments were the leaders most visible to outsiders, many other organizations and individuals demonstrated great leadership and performed brilliantly. The U.S. Coast Guard evacuated more than 33,500 people with helicopters and flat-bottom boats. In the private sector, Wal-Mart offered huge warehouses full of supplies to emergency workers. Coca-Cola assigned an incident management team, and provided the means to deliver and track goods that relief agencies didn't have. American Airlines landed planes within 24hours of Katrina's arrival at Louis Armstrong International Airport, and soon evacuated over 1,000 people. Professor Ivor van Heerden of LSU took a leading role in investigating why the levees failed.

Agencies, grassroots organizations, and faith-based groups swung into action. Small towns and big cities provided shelters and supplies; families offered their homes; self-appointed rescuers brought their own boats to help the stranded; assistance came from everywhere.

Learning and Adjusting

Clint Eastwood's line in a movie about rescuing medical students from Grenada pertains perfectly to leading for results: "You're Marines now. You improvise. You adapt. You overcome." After Katrina passed, scientists and engineers collected data to learn more about the storm's impact and about the human and institutional errors that compounded the catastrophe. Many scientists believe that New Orleans should not be rebuilt if mistakes from the past are repeated. But reports indicate that the same strategic and engineering mistakes were again being made. Two years after Katrina struck, only 22% of the funds set aside by Washington for rebuilding Louisiana had been spent.

A well-known but under-pursued goal in leading for results is to learn and adjust in ways that turn problem into opportunity. At one level, some individuals and businesses in New Orleans saw new chances for new profits. More broadly, a few leaders begin to envision the possibility of New Orleans - a troubled town before Katrina - realizing a better future than was likely without the storm. Considering the challenge as an opportunity, Tulane University President Scott Cowen said in 2007, "I've got to believe that this is one of the great development stories in America, especially as people more clearly can see the progress we're making."

Hurricane Katrina illustrates some important leadership fundamentals, the fact that they are not automatically provided by those in leadership roles, and the vital importance of shared or distributed leadership. Katrina makes it clear that a basic prerequisite for competent leadership is an action/reaction cycle that includes deciding to act when action is needed, taking appropriate action, and adjusting as necessary.

Leadership as problem solving: the case of the Iraq war

Prioritizing and defining problems

It is hard to imagine a better learning opportunity than the Iraq war, or one that more compellingly illustrates the importance of the fundamental steps of effective problem-solving. To begin, all leaders ignore some issues and choose others for attention and action. Critics accused the Bush administration of seeing a problem where one didn't exist. Supporters, including key decision makers, saw Iraq as an opportunity to finish the job started by the senior Bush administration, improve Israel's strategic position, create an Arab democracy, create a friendly source of oil for the U.S., and ultimately to permit the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia.

According to many experts, though, Iraq was a low-urgency problem and a distraction from bigger challenges. Some senior national security officials maintained that Saddam Hussein's army was degraded, only residual amounts of weapons of mass destruction remained, and his ambitions were already constrained. Former military officers in the State Department thought that a war in Iraq would drain crucial resources from the war in Afghanistan, and that waging two wars would seriously compromise both. Other major concurrent challenges included Iran, al Qaeda, securing weapons and materials of mass destruction around the world, and winning the war of ideas. Making this point and discussing these issues, Steven Rosefielde and D. Quinn Mills stated that "Effective leadership...requires that this crucial sense of priorities and proportion not be lost." This statement, like others in this analysis, is offered not as a political comment but rather to highlight the central relevance to leadership of the problem-solving stages-in this case, choosing priorities for action.

U.S. leaders focused on the more doable goal - taking Baghdad militarily - to the neglect of the occupation, rebuilding, and other longer-term goals. Moreover, the invasion's rationale and goals were shifting, unclear, or misleading. Whereas the publicly-stated goals usually derived from one issue - Iraq's danger to the United States - different goals entered the public discourse, including removing a tyrant in order to protect the Iraqi people and building a newly-democratic society. Changes in goals and poor communication confused the public and arguably undermined the enterprise. More broadly, the most appropriate problem scope was difficult to ascertain and define. For example, in retrospect, The Economist suggested that the war was against al-Qaeda specifically, and that declaring a broader "war on terror" made the challenge unmanageable.

General Anthony Zinni said bluntly that there existed many more important priorities, and that an attack would be expensive, stretch the military, antagonize allies, interfere with efforts against al-Qaeda, and require troops for decades to come. A Strategic Studies Institute report accurately predicted the consequences: civil war, violent resistance, the need for an extended stay, free elections that would increase rather than mitigate divisions within the country, suicide bombings, sabotage, inadequate oil revenues, and difficulties in supplying basic needs for electricity, water, food, and security. But it appears that little weight was put on this report.

Generating and Assessing Options

At least from the standpoint of journalists and other outside observers - whose perceptions do matter, as they become opinion leaders - decision makers appeared unwilling to consider all options, leading to a premature, near-unilateral decision to invade. They also apparently failed to fully consider the consequences of their actions, or at least to convey that they had fully considered both direct costs and opportunity costs. Throughout, the administration oversold the positive consequences and minimized the negative. At the same time, administration critics typically did not address the costs of inaction or the possible benefits of invasion, and initially predicted negative consequences of invading (including Saddam attacking Israel and attacking U.S. forces with weapons of mass destruction) that did not materialize. Similarly, and more recently, critics of the administration and proponents of withdrawal, in commenting on the costs of the war, often fail to consider fully the ongoing costs that would be incurred had the intervention not occurred, the benefits that have accrued from the intervention, and the costs of withdrawal.

Leading for results requires choosing the options that yield the best possible consequences for multiple stakeholders. That may sound obvious, but history and academic research show that various biases often get in the way. In the case of Iraq, decision-makers chose to act based on the preferences of an in-group, more than on the opinions of knowledgeable others (examples include the decision to invade, the invasion's timing, the size of the invading force, and various aspects of the occupation and reconstruction). Regarding the number of troops deployed, General Anthony Zinni had recommended 500,000; CENTCOM wanted several hundred thousand, to which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld allegedly said "You're crazy, you're not gonna get it." Based on experience, analysis, and knowledge gained in other regions of the world, plus specific facts of Iraq, many experienced military people were deeply concerned about the resulting troop levels planned for Iraq.

Decision makers also engaged in a classic bias, wishful thinking, in which positive consequences are emphasized and negative consequences ignored. The insistence on sticking with past decisions - staying the course - is commendable when it comes to matters of principle or ethics or the sheer persistence that it might take to prevail. But when it comes to strategy and tactics, it often inhibits objective consideration of the need to make adjustments. This status quo bias can also prevent leaders from taking action to prevent a crisis or minimize predictable negative consequences-think again of Hurricane Katrina.

In contrast, a positive example of competent problem-solving came right after 9/11, when President Bush and his team generated and analyzed a wide array of possible options, culminating in the aggressive - and most said appropriate and initially successful - actions in Afghanistan. The array of options included not only multilateral and unilateral approaches, but also various legal, financial, diplomatic, humanitarian, and military strategies and tactics. For example, militarily, the attacks on Taliban strongholds could have been via unmanned cruise missiles, manned bombers, forces on the ground, or a combination. Consequences, including worst-case scenarios, were carefully considered before President Bush made his decision and assigned responsibilities for implementation.

Planning, Implementing, and Adapting

With Iraq, mistakes were made not just in failing to consider and thoroughly evaluate options and their consequences, but also with planning and implementation. Worried about the lack of postwar planning, Representative Ike Skelton quoted von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu by saying that the White House should not "take the first step without considering the last" and "To win victory is easy; to preserve its fruits, difficult." He also cited the dog that might catch the car and then not know what to do with it.

Many believe that the invasion was well-planned and executed, but that the occupation was not. Postwar planning had low status in the military, and the administration discouraged it. But many independent analyses were conducted, converging on similar observations about what the key challenges would be and recommendations for how to address them. These analyses were ignored by senior policy makers, apparently because they identified the difficulties and thereby would undermine the case for war.

Even within the government, there was extensive planning for the occupation. A Strategic Institute Report listed 135 post-invasion tasks, and the State Department created 17 working groups in the Future of Iraq Project, which produced 13 volumes of recommendations for how to prevent lawlessness, create a new legal system, restructure the economy, and accomplish other objectives. The Pentagon reportedly did not inform Jay Garner (L. Paul Bremer's predecessor as Director of the Organization of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq) of the State Department's Future of Iraq project.

As to be expected in war and most obvious in retrospect, unfounded assumptions and major implementation mistakes were made. Some of the false assumptions are widely known: that the U.S. would be considered liberators rather than occupiers; that postwar Iraq would be peaceful; that Iraqi exiles sympathetic to the U.S. would be popular in Iraq. Congress appropriated $18 billion for reconstruction in October 2003; one year later, only $1 billion had been spent for reasons including the need to divert funds to security, bureaucratic delays, and corruption. Some say that much of the time and money that was put to work would have been better spent on repairing existing Iraqi systems than on new large-scale construction by U.S. firms. The CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) was underresourced, ineffective, and jokingly said to stand for Can't Provide Anything. There were far too few armored vehicles, and no apparent attempt to increase production.

According to Charles Ferguson (director and producer of the acclaimed film No End in Sight), a pivotal decision by President Bush was to give control of the occupation to the Defense Department, which had little interest in reconstruction, rather than to State, where more experience and expertise resided. Two months before the war, there still was no organization for managing postwar Iraq (as a point of contrast, the U.S. began planning for the occupation of Germany two years before the end of World War II,). Complicating matters was that the division of authority between the CPA and the military was unclear. Decisions didn't get made, or were routinely reversed by someone other than the original decision maker.

The administration seemed to ignore the need for accountability. Regarding the original stated objective of the Iraq war, it was unclear who was responsible for finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). When President Bush asked who was in charge of the WMD search, Ambassador Paul Bremer claimed not to be responsible. So did General Tommy Franks. Responsibility and accountability had not been established, or at least were not clearly understood or accepted. Troops generally were disciplined, effective, and well-behaved; in contrast, many contractors were exempted from the law, and to the detriment of the effort were accountable to no one.

Staff moved continually through a revolving door. Americans arrived in Baghdad, took time to develop relationships with Iraqis, and then returned home as new recruits restarted the cycle. Many were inexperienced and untrained, hired based less on expertise than on how they responded to political and ideological questioning. People right out of school were put in charge of the traffic plan for Baghdad and of the stock exchange.

Some major mistakes were strategic choices with predictable consequences that cannot be attributed solely to the fog of war. For example, Ambassador and chief of the CPA Paul Bremer de-Baathified the Iraqi government and dissolved the Iraqi army, putting hundreds of thousands of men on the streets, unemployed and armed. Bremer ordered deBaathification after less than two weeks on the job and before even visiting Iraq, allegedly without consulting with those who knew better.

Speed of execution by a surprisingly small invasion force was a key in the early success. But after the fall of Baghdad, size and strength rather than speed were essential to cementing the victory. The small force lacked the right types of troops, and relied too heavily on technology and Special Forces rather than on civil affairs units, military police, and interpreters. For several years, the lack of progress on rebuilding infrastructure, let alone establishing and strengthening security, was stunning.

The administration was unwilling to adjust when things didn't go well. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's comment that "stuff happens" became a notorious symbol of apparent indifference to setbacks and of rigidity in plans. The administration neglected to create (or at least communicate or execute) contingency plans. Perhaps the best-known failure to adjust was allowing several years to pass before by sending more troops in a military escalation. Another such failure was the lack of response to postwar looting, which was allowed to continue for weeks. Martial law was never declared; why is not clear. Even a year after the invasion, the administration had not asked the intelligence community for any analysis of postwar Iraq. Over time, the administration did adjust to some realities, including sending more troops, supplying more language and intelligence capabilities and armored vehicles, new security measures, and diplomatic efforts.

Distributed leadership helped but was insufficient. Some took it upon themselves to step into the leadership vacuums. Upon realizing that no such list existed, a volunteer waiting in Kuwait to go into Baghdad rounded up a few colleagues to draw up a list of sites that the military needed to protect. More generally, and very fortunately, military leadership and execution in the field in some ways compensated for errors by the civilian leadership. The hope remained that ultimately, shared leadership from the Iraqis themselves would provide the strategies and execution needed to solve the persistent problems.

Katrina showed that shared or distributed leadership can contribute exponentially to results, and that an action/reaction cycle of deciding to act, taking appropriate actions, and learning and adjusting is fundamental to effective leadership. But the question remains, how to do this well? Leader competence is exercised and revealed through, among other things, conscientious and thorough execution of a problem-solving (and opportunity-pursuing) model that includes the following steps: choosing appropriate issues for action; defining the scope of the problem and establishing clear goals; generating and assessing options; choosing optimal courses of action; planning implementation; taking action; and following up by assessing results and changing the approach as needed. The importance of each of these stages, which below are collapsed into three broader categories, is evident by their apparent neglect or mismanagement in the Iraq saga.

Leading for results via essential communications

Everyone knows that communication generally is important to leadership, but the communications most essential to leading for results are those surrounding problem-solving activities and performance. Two key factors here are (1) the content of leader communications regarding problem-solving and results, and (2) the leader's receptivity to others' communications about same.

The essential, performance-relevant content of communications can include goals, decisions, plans, explanations, indications of progress or setbacks, and so on. Regarding Iraq, opinions may differ and biases abound but prominent opinion leaders have described the case offered for war as visionary, valid, misleading, justified by false premises, built on fear rather than on the real case, fictional, and fraudulent. Whatever the validity of the negative appraisals, they represent widespread opinion and a failure of leadership to make the case convincingly to important constituencies.

Important communication content is that which is directly relevant to performance-related challenges of the past, present and future. The keys here are optimism plus realism and honesty about the future path with its attendant obstacles and opportunities. For the leader, the temptation is strong to conceal things, but succumbing to the temptation will forfeit people's trust, in part because when truth isn't told, people ultimately learn it anyway. Truth doesn't undermine support as much as misleading does.

Regarding receptivity to upward communications, the administration ignored or shut down well-meaning attempts to provide alternative viewpoints. Many interviews with experts who had supplied information, opinions, and suggestions ended with refrains like "I never heard back" or "they didn't want to hear it." Consequential examples are numerous; one is the CIA memo describing an insurgency gaining strength that generated no feedback other than Condoleezza Rice being furious about the statement. Another, more famously, is that General Shinseki is widely although not universally believed to have been fired for his high estimate of required troop strength which undercut the administration's argument that fewer troops were needed.

Those who worked with Bremer describe him as extremely hardworking, dedicated, and courageous, but also as rigid and unwilling to listen to contrary opinions or to reconsider or reverse his decisions, even in the face of warnings and evidence of dangerous consequences. For example, after the Iraqi military was disbanded, a group of Sunni army officers warned about the coming insurgency and offered to negotiate before joining it. Bremer refused to meet or consider changing his decision. Another major Bremer decision was to reverse the original plan for a rapid formation of an interim Iraqi government in favor of a long-term occupation. Needless to say, such decisions are complex, and legitimate differences of opinion existed. But most agree that the Iraqis should have had a larger role, at least involving more participation in decision-making processes.

Leaders cannot solve problems in isolation. The best leaders solicit input from others whom they know will offer useful, and sometimes contrary, perspectives. They are firmly decisive when necessary, but they also encourage initiative and problem-solving from others. They communicate openly and honestly about goals, plans, and progress (or lack thereof), short of giving away secrets that aid the enemy.

At this writing, the Bush Administration was talking about victory, convincing some people but not others. The presidential candidates were making public statements of what they would do about Iraq after they would take office, but without communicating an understanding of potential consequences or the need to adapt in the face of circumstances that would likely differ from those that existed when they were campaigning. In the long run, uninformative communications, misleading statements, and secrecy (other than essential secrets) undermine credibility, support, and results-and make people think that leaders are incompetent and perhaps unethical. Credibility gaps develop when leaders try to convey an image that differs from substance as perceived by others, and when leaders' abilities are then questioned. Too little honesty about performance realities, not too much, is most likely to be the culprit that undermines leadership success.

Conclusions

In his highly regarded The Utility of Force (2007), British General Rupert Smith describes how to best consider and use military force. General Smith frames conflicts in terms of the whole of the campaign rather than a series of discrete events. He then describes the relationship of specific conflicts to the overall global war on terrorism; important differences among the goals of winning the battle, winning the military war, and winning the will of the people; the alternative approaches to achieving various types of goals; how to think about consequences, including limiting risks and understanding the interdependence of military and political events; planning implementation on the basis of commonality of purpose, goodwill to all allies, and equity in risk and reward; forming and maintaining the will to succeed; directing and coordinating the overall effort; allocating responsibility, authority, and resources; and anticipating opponents' responses, forming contingency plans, and maintaining a portfolio of options to call upon as events unfold.

General Smith's recommendations follow perfectly the prescriptions of competent problem-solving. Leaders are responsible for both doing these things and ensuring that others do these things. Effective problem-solving, in the service of results, is key to leader performance in the short run and shared leadership in the long run.

To conclude - at the risk of sounding overly simplistic, but the points are both timely and timeless - consider these broad-based prescriptions for leading for results:

Show up: Cycling back to the action/reaction cycle: leaders need to show up. Mayor Nagin was not often seen in the Superdome or on the streets of the city, in negative contrast to President Bush's famed "bullhorn moment" during his visit to Ground Zero. Two years after Katrina, some suspected (true or not) that the federal government was allowing New Orleans to fend for itself and/or fade away, and was not adequately helping dislocated people.

Conduct an attention audit: Leaders choose some issues intuitively, based partly on whether they think the problem is solvable. Threats are more likely than opportunities to draw managers' attention, although they cause people to restrict attention to limited information and to limit the number of solutions considered. What do you pay attention to, and how do you attend?

Cross the bridge from knowing to doing: Don't just think "Maybe someday···" you'll tackle that problem or pursue that opportunity. Think, "I will do X." Then take the first step. Don't forget to think about the problem-solving model as you go, so you can choose the best strategies and tactics and adapt as needed.

Style's fine, but not at the neglect of substance: Some leaders are all style and no substance. Some care only about short-term performance, to the neglect of everything else. Some aren't good at either. It's worth striving for both.

Visit and revisit Management 101: The best-selling book title, Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, is an overstatement of course. But the problem-solving activities described above derive from variants of the classic problem-solving model found in every management textbook. Too often, leaders don't perform the basics, perhaps because they think they "already know" these things, and therefore presume that they must be doing them. Often, they are not.

Don't just make decisions; problem-solve: Back to Iraq: multiple observers have suggested, in so many words, that a crucial and misleading National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) resulted from a counterproductive work environment, one that discouraged openness and dissent-even though leaders operated under the illusion of a professional approach to decision-making (reminiscent of the old groupthink concept described by Irving Janis). Don't kid yourself; make sure that your own thinking is more objective than biased, and that you stimulate the thinking and input of other people.

Don't just communicate; communicate about problems and performance: One participant in high-level discussions described a particularly vocal advocate of the Iraq invasion thus: "All he did was spout rhetoric. He would launch into these diatribes···he had no interest in problem-solving." Communicating is one thing, but substantive communications matter most.

Turn problems into opportunities, really: Business students know the classroom drill: consider how the problem can be turned into an opportunity. Of course, like so much about leadership, this is more easily said than done, and more common in classroom talk than in practice. Here's the big-picture good news: The Economist recently pointed out that America - despite Iraq, Katrina, and other problems - still faces greater opportunity than threat, and still holds as one of its great strengths its ability, more than any rival, to correct itself.

Distribute the leadership: CIA Director George Tenet says that early top-level meetings about Iraq focused on what actions needed to be taken if the U.S. attacked, and did not seriously consider an attack's potential negative implications. Tenet admits in hindsight that the intelligence community should have brought those questions and answers to the discussions, even though they were not asked. This is an example of the need and opportunity for "followers" to demonstrate leadership in the form of ensuring a thorough and effective problem-solving process-and for leaders to encourage the same in others.

Managers seeking to be competent and respected leaders can benefit from working on their personal style and interpersonal relationships, but a focus on problem-solving for performance will close the deal. Leading for results, via appropriate action and reaction, problem-solving, and surrounding communications, will increase constructive followership. Moreover, as leaders ask followers to engage in problem-solving activities that deliver results, they will get more such participation and more widely-distributed - and competent - leadership from others.

Copyright © 2010 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.    Terms and Conditions Privacy Policy