Putting leaders on the couch. A conversation with Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries. Interview by Diane L. Coutu

Much of the business literature on leadership starts with the assumption that leaders are rational beings. But irrationality is integral to human nature, and inner conflict often contributes to the drive to succeed. Although a number of business scholars have explored the psychology of executives, Manfred F.R Kets de Vries has made the analysis of CEOs his life's work. In this article, Kets de Vries, a psychoanalyst, author, and instead professor, draws on three decades of study to describe the psychological profile of successful CEOs. He explores senior executives' vulnerabilities, which are often intensified by followers' attempts to manipulate their leaders. Leaders, he says, have an uncanny ability to awaken transferential processes--in which people transfer the dynamics of past relationships onto present interactions--among their employees and even in themselves. These processes can present themselves in a number of ways, sometimes negatively. What's more, many top executives, being middle-aged, suffer from depression. Mid-life prompts a reappraisal of career identity, and by the time a leader is a CEO, an existential crisis is often imminent. This can happen with anyone, but the probability is higher with CEOs, and senior executives because so many have devoted themselves exclusively to work. Not all CEOs are psychologically unhealthy, of course. Healthy leaders are talented in self-observation and self-analysis, Kets de Vries says. The best are highly motivated to spend time on self-reflection. Their lives are in balance, they can play, they are creative and inventive, and they have the capacity to be nonconformist. "Those who accept the madness in themselves may be the healthiest leaders of all," he concludes.     

The work of leadership

More and more companies today are facing adaptive challenges: changes in societies, markets, and technology around the globe are forcing them to clarify their values, develop new strategies, and learn new ways of operating. And the most important task for leaders in the face of such challenges is mobilizing people throughout the organization to do adaptive work. Yet for many senior executives, providing such leadership is difficult. Why? One reason is that they are accustomed to solving problems themselves. Another is that adaptive change is distressing for the people going through it. They need to take on new roles, relationships, values, and approaches to work. Many employees are ambivalent about the sacrifices required of them and look to senior executives to take problems off their shoulders. But both sets of expectations have to be unlearned. Rather than providing answers, leaders have to ask tough questions. Rather than protecting people from outside threats, leaders should let the pinch of reality stimulate them to adapt. Instead of orienting people to their current roles, leaders must disorient them so that new relationships can develop. Instead of quelling conflict, leaders should draw the issues out. Instead of maintaining norms, leaders must challenge "the way we do business" and help others distinguish immutable values from the historical practices that have become obsolete. The authors offer six principles for leading adaptive work: "getting on the balcony," identifying the adaptive challenge, regulating distress, maintaining disciplined attention, giving the work back to people, and protecting voices of leadership from below.     

Avoiding integrity land mines

How does a large multinational keep thousands of employees, operating in hundreds of countries, honest in a high-pressure business environment? As the chief legal officer at General Electric for nearly 20 years, Ben Heineman was part of the senior management group that sought to do just that--to make sure its executives and employees are moved to do the right thing as strongly as they are motivated to make their numbers. Heineman describes a set of systems that combine the communication of clear expectations with oversight, deterrence, and incentives. Nowhere are the expectations higher--and the sanctions more powerful--than for top executives. Heineman recounts example after example of senior leaders terminated for ethical lapses even when the business consequences of doing so were painful--and even when they had no direct knowledge of the violations occurring on their watch. To make expectations clear throughout the company, GE has systematically sought to set uniform standards that stay well ahead of current legal developments and stakeholders' changing attitudes about corporate accountability. Responsibility for implementing those standards, which are embedded in GE's operating practices, rests with the business leaders in the field. Oversight is both methodical and multifaceted. A host of auditing and assessment systems enables GE to compare the performance of its various business units against one another and against industry benchmarks. Perhaps the most powerful is the company's ombudsman system, which doesn't just allow but requires employees to lodge concerns. Failures to report into the system or up the line, or retaliation in any form, are firing offenses. The current intense focus on board-level governance has missed the point, Heineman argues. It is time to shift the debate from board oversight of the CEO to how top company leaders can most effectively infuse integrity at all levels of the corporation.     

The people who make organizations go--or stop

Managers invariably use their personal contacts when they need to, say, meet an impossible deadline or learn the truth about a new boss. Increasingly, it's through these informal networks--not just through traditional organizational hierarchies--that information is found and work gets done. But to many senior executives, informal networks are unobservable and ungovernable--and, therefore, not amenable to the tools of management. As a result, executives tend to work around informal networks or, worse, try to ignore them. When they do acknowledge the networks' existence, executives fall back on intuition--scarcely a dependable tool--to guide them in nurturing this social capital. It doesn't have to be that way. It is entirely possible to develop and manage informal networks systematically, say management experts Cross and Prusak. Specifically, senior executives need to focus their attention on four key role-players in informal networks: Central connectors link most employees in an informal network with one another; they provide the critical information or expertise that the entire network draws on to get work done. Boundary spanners connect an informal network with other parts of the company or with similar networks in other organizations. Information brokers link different subgroups in an informal network; if they didn't, the network would splinter into smaller, less effective segments. And finally, there are peripheral specialists, who anyone in an informal network can turn to for specialized expertise but who work apart from most people in the network. The authors describe the four roles in detail, discuss the use of a well-established tool called social network analysis for determining who these role-players are in the network, and suggest ways that executives can transform ineffective informal networks into productive ones.     

The ethical mind. A conversation with psychologist Howard Gardner

Business leadership has become synonymous in the public eye with unethical behavior. Widespread scandals, massive layoffs, and inflated executive pay packages have led many to believe that corporate wrongdoing is the status quo. That's why it's more important than ever that those at the top mend relationships with customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Professor Gardner has spent many years studying the relationship between psychology and ethics at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. In this interview with HBR senior editor Bronwyn Fryer, Gardner talks about what he calls the ethical mind, which helps individuals aspire to do good work that matters to their colleagues, companies, and society in general. In an era when workers are overwhelmed by too much information and feel pressured to win at all costs, Gardner believes, it's easy to lose one's way. What's more, employees look to leaders for cues as to what's appropriate and what's not. So if you're a leader, what's the best way to stand up to ethical pressures and set a good example? First and foremost, says Gardner, you must believe that retaining an ethical compass is essential to the health of your organization. Then you must state your ethical beliefs and stick to them. You should also test yourself rigorously to make sure you're adhering to your values, take time to reflect on your beliefs, find multiple mentors who aren't afraid to speak truth to your power, and confront others' egregious behavior as soon as it arises. In the end, Gardner believes, the world hangs in the balance between right and wrong, good and bad, success and disaster. "You need to decide which side you're on:" he concludes, "and do the right thing."     

How business schools lost their way

Business schools are facing intense criticism for failing to impart useful skills, failing to prepare leaders, failing to instill norms of ethical behavior--and even failing to lead graduates to good corporate jobs. These criticisms come not just from students, employers, and the media but also from deans of some of America's most prestigious B schools. The root cause oftoday's crisis in management education, assert Warren G. Bennis and James O'Toole, is that business schools have adopted an inappropriate--and ultimately self-defeating--model of academic excellence. Instead of measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their graduates, or by how well their faculty members understand important drivers of business performance, they assess themselves almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research. This scientific model is predicated on the faulty assumption that business is an academic discipline like chemistry or geology when, in fact, business is a profession and business schools are professional schools--or should be. Business school deans may claim that their schools remain focused on practice, but they nevertheless hire and promote research-oriented professors who haven't spent time working in companies and are more comfortable teaching methodology than messy, multidisciplinary issues--the very stuff of management. The authors don't advocate a return to the days when business schools were glorified trade schools. But to regain relevancy, they say, business schools must rediscover the practice of business and find a way to balance the dual mission of educating practitioners and creating knowledge through research.     

The tests of a prince

When a CEO takes office, stakeholders dissect his or her intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities as they try to gauge whether the new leader will help them fulfill their aspirations and protect them from trouble. For the heir to a family business, the challenge of turning stakeholders into followers is particularly thorny: He or she must manage many constituencies--family members, directors, senior executives, investors, trade unions--that may not be convinced the successor has earned the right to hold the top spot. Making matters worse, says Lansberg, a family business expert, corporate scions usually ignore or greatly underestimate stakeholders. They don't realize that, particularly after they are formally anointed as CEOs, they must establish their credibility with and authority over these spheres of influence. Smart CEOs understand that their success depends on how well they respond to the iterative testing process that stakeholders use to make judgments about would-be leaders. This article offers a road map for managing the four kinds of tests that constitute iterative testing: Qualifying tests are assessments based on criteria--such as formal education, work experience, and professional awards--that executives can cite as evidence of suitability for the top job. Self-imposed tests are expectations that leaders themselves set and against which they assume stakeholders will measure their performance. Circumstantial tests are unplanned challenges or crises, during which stakeholders can observe the leader coping with the unexpected. And political tests are challenges from rivals who want to enhance their own influence, often by undermining the leader.     

Future skills and current realities: How the psychological (Jungian) type of European business leaders relates to the needs of the future

How ready for the future are our business leaders? This paper addresses this question by drawing on two pieces of research. An international skills audit was carried out to ascertain if the skills needed by future business leaders would be different from the skills needed today; the results from 340 respondents are presented. These are compared with data on the Jungian type of over 8000 senior managers and executives taken from nine different European countries. Type was measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI^®) instrument. The findings are used to identify challenges for the future. For example, although the audit suggested that skills such as the ability to empower others are likely to become increasingly important, people with the most common type preference amongst European senior managers (ESTJ) may, especially when under stress, have a particular tendency to want to make all the decisions themselves, without any input from others. The ways in which organisational psychologists and HR practitioners can employ psychological type to help leaders meet these challenges are briefly discussed.     

Who really makes the big decisions in your company?

In many companies, the top management team is officially responsible for helping the CEO make a company's big decisions. But another, unofficial group usually does that job de facto. That's the way it should be, argues Frisch, of the Strategic Offsites Group, provided that the CEO is deliberate in devising the role of this informal and unnamed "kitchen cabinet." Problems can nevertheless arise when senior executives learn about important decisions after the fact, mistakenly assume that they have real power to protect their departments, and find themselves in a system where the way decisions are actually made goes unacknowledged. The key, according to Frisch, is to make better use of senior executives' time and talents by giving them specific responsibilities that complement--but do not overlap--the advisory duties of the kitchen cabinet. A CEO who explicitly acknowledges the role of her cabinet and strikes the right balance between it and her official advisory group of executives can get the best from both.     

Leading by feel

Like it or not, leaders need to manage the mood of their organizations. The most gifted leaders accomplish that by using a mysterious blend of psychological abilities known as emotional intelligence. They are self-aware and empathetic. They can read and regulate their own emotions while intuitively grasping how others feel and gauging their organization's emotional state. But where does emotional intelligence come from, and how do leaders learn to use it? In this article, 18 leaders and scholars (including business executives, leadership researchers, psychologists, an autism expert, and a symphony conductor) explore the nature and management of emotional intelligence--its sources, uses, and abuses. Their responses varied, but some common themes emerged: the importance of consciously--and conscientiously--honing one's skills, the double-edged nature of self-awareness, and the danger of letting any one emotional intelligence skill dominate. Among their observations: Psychology professor John Mayer, who co-developed the concept of emotional intelligence, warns managers not to be confused by popular definitions of the term, which suggest that if you have a certain set of personality traits then you automatically possess emotional intelligence. Neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg agrees with professors Daniel Goleman and Robert Goffee that emotional intelligence can be learned--but only by people who already show an aptitude for it. Cult expert Janja Lalich points out that leaders can use their emotional intelligence skills for ill in the same way they can for good. "Sometimes the only difference is [the leader's] intent," she says. And business leaders Carol Bartz, William George, Sidney Harman, and Andrea jung (of Autodesk, Medtronic, Harman International, and Avon respectively) describe situations in which emotional intelligence traits such as self-awareness and empathy have helped them and their companies perform at a higher level.     

Crisis communication. Lessons from 9/11

The sheer enormity of last year's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave new meaning to the term "crisis management." Suddenly, companies near Ground Zero, as well as those more than a thousand miles away, needed a plan. Because the disasters disrupted established channels not only between businesses and customers but between businesses and employees, internal crisis-communications strategies that could be quickly implemented became a key responsibility of top management. Without these strategies, employees' trauma and confusion might have immobilized their firms and set their customers adrift. In this article, executives from a range of industries talk about how their companies, including Morgan Stanley, Oppenheimer Funds, American Airlines, Verizon, the New York Times, Dell, and Starbucks, went about restoring operations and morale. From his interviews with these individuals, author and management professor Paul Argenti was able to distill a number of lessons, each of which, he says, may "serve as guideposts for any company facing a crisis that undermines its employees' composure, confidence, or concentration." His advice to senior executives includes: Maintain high levels of visibility, so that employees are certain of top management's command of the situation and concern; establish contingency communication channels and work sites; strive to keep employees focused on the business itself, because a sense of usefulness enhances morale and good morale enhances usefulness; and ensure that employees have absorbed the firm's values, which will guide them as they cope with the unpredictable. The most forward-thinking leaders realize that managing a crisis-communications program requires the same dedication and resources they give to other dimensions of their business. More important, they realize that their employees always come first.     

Coaching the alpha male

Highly intelligent, confident, and successful, alpha males represent about 70% of all senior executives. Natural leaders, they willingly take on levels of responsibility most rational people would find overwhelming. But many of their quintessential strengths can also make alphas difficult to work with. Their self-confidence can appear domineering. Their high expectations can make them excessively critical. Their unemotional style can keep them from inspiring their teams. That's why alphas need coaching to broaden their interpersonal tool kits while preserving their strengths. Drawing from their experience coaching more than 1,000 senior executives, the authors outline an approach tailored specifically for the alpha. Coaches get the alpha's attention by inundating him with data from 360-degree feedback presented in ways he will find compelling--both hard-boiled metrics and vivid verbatim comments from colleagues about his strengths and weaknesses. A 360-degree assessment is a wake-up call for most alphas, providing undeniable proof that their behavior doesn't work nearly as well as they think it does. That paves the way for a genuine commitment to change. In order to change, the alpha must venture into unfamiliar--and often uncomfortable--psychological territory. He must admit vulnerability, accept accountability not just for his own work for others', connect with his underlying emotions, learn to motivate through a balance of criticism and validation, and become aware of unproductive behavior patterns. The goal of executive coaching is not simply to treat the alpha as an individual problem but to improve the entire team dynamic. Initial success creates an incentive to persevere, and the virtuous cycle reverberates throughout the entire organization.     

Lessons in power: Lyndon Johnson revealed. A conversation with historian Robert A. Caro

No one can lead who does not first acquire power, and no leader can be great who does not know how to use that power. The trouble is that the combination of the two skills is rare. Amassing power requires ambition, a focused pragmatism, and a certain ruthlessness that is often at odds with the daring, idealistic vision needed to achieve great things with that power. The tension is as real in business as it is in politics. This magazine is replete with examples of successful senior managers who could not make the switch from ambitious executive to corporate leader because they did not know what to do with the power they had so expertly accumulated. Robert Caro is a student of power. For the past 27 years, the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson has focused on the question of how Johnson amassed and wielded power. Caro's deep understanding of the inner workings of power offers senior executives a nuanced picture of leadership at the highest level. In this wide-ranging conversation, Caro shares his insights about the nature of power, the complexity of ambition, and the role that the greater good can play in the making of a leader. Power doesn't always corrupt, he insists. But what it invariably does is reveal a leader's true nature. "Today, when CEOs have acquired more and more power to change our lives," Caro says,"they have become like presidents in their own right, and they, too, need to align themselves with something greater than themselves if they hope to become truly great leaders."     

Developing globally responsible leaders: What role for business schools in the future?

This paper reports on a collaborative research process to explore the future role of business schools in the development of globally responsible leaders. Swinburne University of Technology held a collaboratory workshop of academics across disciplines and a range of business leaders to explore firstly what a globally responsible leader would look like and secondly how these capabilities would be developed. In taking forwards actions from the workshop, the Business School was noticeably absent which raised the specific question regarding the on-going role for business schools in the future development of leaders, and how they would need to change in order to maintain a future role in this sphere. The paper reflects on the transformative process necessary within business schools if they are to meet this future agenda.     

Leading clever people

In an economy driven by ideas and intellectual know-how, top executives recognize the importance of employing smart, highly creative people. But if clever people have one defining characteristic, it's that they do not want to be led. So what is a leader to do? The authors conducted more than 100 interviews with leaders and their clever people at major organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cisco Systems, Novartis, the BBC, and Roche. What they learned is that the psychological relationships effective leaders have with their clever people are very different from the ones they have with traditional followers. Those relationships can be shaped by seven characteristics that clever people share: They know their worth--and they know you have to employ them if you want their tacit skills. They are organizationally savvy and will seek the company context in which their interests are most generously funded. They ignore corporate hierarchy; although intellectual status is important to them, you can't lure them with promotions. They expect instant access to top management, and if they don't get it, they may think the organization doesn't take their work seriously. They are plugged into highly developed knowledge networks, which both increases their value and makes them more of a flight risk. They have a low boredom threshold, so you have to keep them challenged and committed. They won't thank you--even when you're leading them well. The trick is to act like a benevolent guardian: to grant them the respect and recognition they demand, protect them from organizational rules and politics, and give them room to pursue private efforts and even to fail. The payoff will be a flourishing crop of creative minds that will enrich your whole organization.     

Discovering your authentic leadership

The ongoing problems in business leadership over the past five years have underscored the need for a new kind of leader in the twenty-first century: the authentic leader. Author Bill George, a Harvard Business School professor and the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and his colleagues, conducted the largest leadership development study ever undertaken. They interviewed 125 business leaders from different racial, religious, national, and socioeconomic backgrounds to understand how leaders become and remain authentic. Their interviews showed that you do not have to be born with any particular characteristics or traits to lead. You also do not have to be at the top of your organization. Anyone can learn to be an authentic leader. The journey begins with leaders understanding their life stories. Authentic leaders frame their stories in ways that allow them to see themselves not as passive observers but as individuals who learn from their experiences. These leaders make time to examine their experiences and to reflect on them, and in doing so they grow as individuals and as leaders. Authentic leaders also work hard at developing self-awareness through persistent and often courageous self-exploration. Denial can be the greatest hurdle that leaders face in becoming self-aware, but authentic leaders ask for, and listen to, honest feedback. They also use formal and informal support networks to help them stay grounded and lead integrated lives. The authors argue that achieving business results over a sustained period of time is the ultimate mark of authentic leadership. It may be possible to drive short-term outcomes without being authentic, but authentic leadership is the only way to create long-term results.     

IT doesn't matter

As information technology has grown in power and ubiquity, companies have come to view it as ever more critical to their success; their heavy spending on hardware and software clearly reflects that assumption. Chief executives routinely talk about information technology's strategic value, about how they can use IT to gain a competitive edge. But scarcity, not ubiquity, makes a business resource truly strategic--and allows companies to use it for a sustained competitive advantage. You only gain an edge over rivals by doing something that they can't. IT is the latest in a series of broadly adopted technologies--think of the railroad or the electric generator--that have reshaped industry over the past two centuries. For a brief time, as they were being built into the infrastructure of commerce, these technologies created powerful opportunities for forward-looking companies. But as their availability increased and their costs decreased, they became commodity inputs. From a strategic standpoint, they became invisible; they no longer mattered. that's exactly what's happening to IT, and the implications are profound. In this article, HBR's editor-at-large Nicholas Carr suggests that IT management should, frankly, become boring. It should focus on reducing risks, not increasing opportunities. For example, companies need to pay more attention to ensuring network and data security. Even more important, they need to manage IT costs more aggressively. IT may not help you gain a strategic advantage, but it could easily put you at a cost disadvantage. If, like many executives, you've begun to take a more defensive posture toward IT, spending more frugally and thinking more pragmatically, you're already on the right course. The challenge will be to maintain that discipline when the business cycle strengthens.     

The myth of secure computing

Few senior executives pay a whole lot of attention to computer security. They either hand off responsibility to their technical people or bring in consultants. But given the stakes involved, an arm's-length approach is extremely unwise. According to industry estimates, security breaches affect 90% of all businesses every year and cost some $17 billion. Fortunately, the authors say, senior executives don't need to learn about the more arcane aspects of their company's IT systems in order to take a hands-on approach. Instead, they should focus on the familiar task of managing risk. Their role should be to assess the business value of their information assets, determine the likelihood that those assets will be compromised, and then tailor a set of risk abatement processes to their company's particular vulnerabilities. This approach, which views computer security as an operational rather than a technical challenge, is akin to a classic quality assurance program in that it attempts to avoid problems rather than fix them and involves all employees, not just IT staffers. The goal is not to make computer systems completely secure--that's impossible--but to reduce the business risk to an acceptable level. This article looks at the types of threats a company is apt to face. It also examines the processes a general manager should spearhead to lessen the likelihood of a successful attack. The authors recommend eight processes in all, ranging from deciding how much protection each digital asset deserves to insisting on secure software to rehearsing a response to a security breach. The important thing to realize, they emphasize, is that decisions about digital security are not much different from other cost-benefit decisions. The tools general managers bring to bear on other areas of the business are good models for what they need to do in this technical space.     

Thinking about ... leadership. Warts and all

Does using Tyco's funds to purchase a $6,000 shower curtain and a $15,000 dog-shaped umbrella stand make Dennis Kozlowski a bad leader? Is Martha Stewart's career any less instructive because she may have sold some shares on the basis of a tip-off? Is leadership synonymous with moral leadership? Before 1970, the answer from most leadership theorists would certainly have been no. Look at Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tsetung--great leaders all, but hardly good men. In fact, capricious, murderous, high-handed, corrupt, and evil leaders are effective and commonplace. Machiavelli celebrated them; the U.S. constitution built in safeguards against them. Everywhere, power goes hand in hand with corruption--everywhere, that is, except in the literature of business leadership. To read Tom Peters, Jay Conger, John Kotter, and most of their colleagues, leaders are, as Warren Bennis puts it, individuals who create shared meaning, have a distinctive voice, have the capacity to adapt, and have integrity. According to today's business literature, to be a leader is, by definition, to be benevolent. But leadership is not a moral concept, and it is high time we acknowledge that fact. We have as much to learn from those we would regard as bad examples as we do from the far fewer good examples we're presented with these days. Leaders are like the rest of us: trustworthy and deceitful, cowardly and brave, greedy and generous. To assume that all good leaders are good people is to be willfully blind to the reality of the human condition, and it severely limits our ability to become better leaders. Worse, it may cause senior executives to think that, because they are leaders, they are never deceitful, cowardly, or greedy. That way lies disaster.