The end of big ego leadership
Lorraine Mallinder

Back in the second half of the 1990s, when hype alone could inflate share values and stock markets were caught up in a self-perpetuating state of euphoria, CEOs of hot companies became minor celebrities. This boom-time economic environment, fuelled by the effects of globalisation, accelerated deregulation and the advent of new technology, proved to be an extremely fertile breeding ground for the monster ego.

But then came the crisis of confidence. The bursting of the ‘bubble’ economy, coupled with startling revelations of high-level corporate misdemeanours, cast a long shadow over successes of old. As newsrooms rang with tales of greed, deception and megalomania in once mighty corporations such as Enron and WorldCom, the charismatic ‘big ego’ managers and leaders started to look just like the rest of us: mortal.

A messy tale
Take the case of Jean Marie Messier, the former CEO of French media conglomerate Vivendi Universal, who in 2002 experienced a particularly vertiginous fall from grace. Back in the 1990s, the self-styled J6M (‘Jean Marie Messier: moi-même, maître du monde’—roughly translated as ‘Jean Marie Messier: Me, Myself, Master of the World’), was riding high after masterminding the spectacular transformation of the decidedly dowdy utility group, Compagnie Générale des Eaux, into sexy global media giant Vivendi Universal.

Hailed by Forbes magazine as a ‘rock star CEO’, his power and influence were such that French commentators joked about a forthcoming acquisition of heaven itself. Not noted for his shyness, and perhaps rather in thrall to his own hype, Messier set up J6M.com, a platform dedicated to . . . himself. However, the glitz soon wore off when it later transpired that Messier’s six-year spending spree on overpriced holdings had left Vivendi with debts to the tune of $17.1 billion. Messier’s delusions of grandeur cost shareholders and employees dear.

‘No’ to the yes men
In a 2002 article in Canada’s Globe and Mail, Harvard professor Rakesh Khurana described how the bulldozer behaviour of big ego leaders tends to create a ‘yes man’ culture that can be detrimental to organisations. “Charismatic authority, by its very nature, discourages criticism. Visionary leaders generally do not respond well to questions or complaints,” he said. “However, without being able to hear any critical, questioning voices, the charismatic leader in a large, complex organisation has no way of knowing whether he or she is being effective—let alone whether the pursuit of grandiose visions has led across legal or ethical boundaries that should not be crossed.”

Other business pundits join Khurana in sounding the death knell on big ego leadership. “Nobody is so smart that they’ve got all the strategic thinking wrapped up in their own head. They need to be humble enough to learn from others,’ said Wharton professor Michael Useem said in a 2002 piece in The Economist. The big ego leader, it would appear, is well and truly an endangered species.

Soft Sven
As the sun sets on the glory days of the big ego leader, we now look towards something quieter, more modest, and who’s to say, perhaps more enduring. Our gaze comes to rest on a quiet, unassuming type from Torsby, Sweden: England football manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson.

In the book, Leadership the Sven-Göran Eriksson Way (Birkinshaw and Crainer 2002), Eriksson’s approach is held up as the new leadership archetype, one characterised by attributes such as listening skills, sensitivity and humility. Sven-Göran Eriksson is upheld as the archetypal new leader. He has soft skills, he is definitely not charismatic, but gets things done through people. He achieves results in different ways than the dictatorial leaders of yesteryear.

This lurch towards a softer leadership model is perhaps more than just an overnight consequence of our recent disillusionment with messianic CEOs. In fact, the trend could be said to be the product of a school of thought that emerged in the early 1990s. According to Birkenshaw and Crainer, it all began in 1991 with a highly influential article published in the Harvard Business Review. In this article, William Pearce, a Westinghouse Electric Corporation executive, launched the debate with his opening line, ‘I am a soft manager’.

Another significant marker in the evolution of this trend is Daniel Goleman’s best-selling book, Emotional Intelligence (2000). According to Goleman, the emotionally intelligent leader exhibits five key characteristics in the workplace: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill. Goleman’s influence on current leadership thinking has been massive. When the Harvard Business Review published an article on the topic in 1998, it attracted a record number of readers, more than any other article published in that periodical in the previous 40 years. The CEO of pharmaceuticals giant Johnson & Johnson was so impressed that he had copies sent out around the world to the company’s 400 top executives.

Blessed are the meek
Perhaps one of the most well-known contributions to current thinking is Jim Collins’ bestseller Good to Great (2001). Collins attempts to bring some hard facts to bear on what could risk becoming a purely moral debate on the virtues of humble leadership. Extensive research into companies that have made the leap from mediocre to excellent reveals the pivotal role played by what Collins calls ‘level 5’ leaders. According to Collins, these leaders ‘embody a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will’. He explains how such leaders ‘channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company’. Collins claims that his discovery of the level 5 leader was based on empirical evidence, rather than on a predetermined ideological stance.

The humble leader is presented as a proven necessity for any company aspiring to enduring greatness. Former Kimberly-Clark CEO, Darwin Smith, is cited in the book as an example of a level 5 leader. When reflecting back on an extraordinary career, in which he turned Kimberly-Clark into the global colossus we know today, Smith said simply, ‘I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job’.

Interestingly, religious groups, no strangers to the virtue of humility, are quick to identify with level 5 thinking. It’s true that, in the grand scheme of things, the concept of the humble leader is nothing new. “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth,” said Matthew in the Bible (although he probably wasn’t thinking of management trends at the time). In an interview with a Christian magazine (Lee 2003), Collins does not shy away from associating level 5 leadership with the greater universal truths. “You would hope that [ . . . ] the findings would map with the teachings of great world religions,” he says. “If you thought you had to be anti-Level 5 to be successful, but now you find this evidence that your instincts were right all along, that can be powerful.”

How the pendulum doth swing
So, the age of the humbler leader would appear to be upon us. But fashion, as we all know, can be fickle. Could it be that, at the first signs of trouble, we shall find ourselves running straight into the arms of the next management guru offering some inspiring answers to our organizational dilemmas?

Michael Maccoby, psychotherapist and author of The Productive Narcissist (2003), flies in the face of current thinking with his defence of supposedly misunderstood narcissistic leaders such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates. In his book, he reminds us of Freud’s assessment of the narcissist as “the type of person who impresses us as a personality, who disrupts the status quo and brings about change.

“The current tendency to link successful leadership with empathy, listening to others, […] anger and impulse control, and working through consensus,” argues Maccoby, “is the business equivalent of wishful thinking.” He goes on to proclaim that narcissists have got what it takes to lead innovative companies, such as Cisco and Intel, while level 5 leaders are best suited to the more staid enterprises—hardly a flattering assessment of the latter.

Beware those false gods
But the prevailing wind does seem to be blowing in favour of the nice guy. While there is almost certainly an element of faddism in our current fascination with all things soft, there is reason to believe the humble leader could be sticking around for a while yet. Companies would be wise, however, to keep an open mind when it comes to selecting their leaders, rather than relying excessively on rigid leadership templates.

Looking to the past, it might be worth taking a tip from one who definitely does not fit into the mould of the humble leader: Winston Churchill. “There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away,” thundered the mighty one. In our rush to embrace a brighter new leadership model, albeit one that does seem to offer hope of real improvement in the workplace, we need to beware of worshipping at the altar of false gods.

References

Source: J. Birkinshaw and S. Crainer, Leadership the Sven-Göran Eriksson Way: How to Turn Your Team into Winners (Oxford, UK: Capstone, 2002).
Collins, J. (2001) Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t (New York: HarperBusiness).
The Economist (2002) ‘High Climbers’ [online], The Economist, 28 January 2002, www.
economist.com/business/globalexecutive (accessed 14 June 2005).
Goleman, D.P. (2000) Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (New York: Bantam).
Khurana, R. (2002) ‘False Prophets, Lost Profits’, The Globe and Mail, 3 July 2002.
Lee, H. (2003) ‘Good to Great’s Leadership Model Looks Familiar to Christians’, Christianity Today, 24 February 2003.
Maccoby, M. (2003) The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership (New York: Broadway Books).

Excerpt from Above the Clouds © 2008 EFQM. All rights reserved.