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John P. Kotter defines Management as creating predictability and order and leadership as creating change.

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Leadership can be seen as being in the heart of all management disciplines.

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JEAN LIPMAN-BLUMEN

Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Organizational Behavior at CGU’s Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management. Director and co-founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Leadership at the Drucker/Ito Graduate School of Management.

Special consultant to the White House Domestic Policy Staff under President Jimmy Carter, consultant to various departments and agencies of the U.S. government, as well as to private sector organizations and other governments worldwide.

Recipient of the 2010 Leadership Legacy Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Leadership Association (ILA) in Boston.

Selected Publications

Gender Roles and Power (1984) Hot Groups: Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organization (1999) The Connective Edge: Managing in a Changing World (2000), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize The Allure of Toxic Leaders (2006)

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In 1984, Jean Lipman-Blumen first described Connective Leadership and Achieving Styles and developed her theories of leadership from there, underlying the following slides.

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Managers are acting in constantly changing environments.

In project management, these changes happen specifically fast and in an unpredictable manner. This can be seen in many major construction projects all the time, especially when trouble strikes. For example, after the terrorist attacks in the US in 2001, a bypass route was planned to be built around the Hoover Dam on the Nevada/Colorado border, planned to be completed in 2008. When two building cranes were overthrown by heavy winds in 2006, the scheduled finish date of the project had to be changed to November 2010. As every project manager knows, there are many more examples like this one.

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Managing in operations is like a broad and straightforward freeway: Mostly everything is predictable, and the same set of Achieving styles will very probably be successful over a long time.

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The image of a narrow, winding road is what most often applies to project management: Full of changes and surprises, coming across landmarks like little towns, each moment bearing new challenges. Achieving styles applied have to be double-checked ongoingly.

Foto: Forest & Kim Starr; http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starr_080314-3431_Albizia_lebbeck.jpg

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Stage 1 – The Physical Era: This era began long before recorded history, when natural borders such as forests, mountains, and oceans formed physical boundaries. People needed strong, independent leaders.

Stage 2 – The Geopolitical Era: In this stage, ideologies were created, charismatic leaders were followed and alliances formed interdependence, but on a smaller scale than today

Stage 3 – The Connective Era: We are entering this era now. Borders lose importance. Everything is interconnected, supported by modern communication technology trends. In this stage, small groups are formed for special purposes and disbanded again once the task is completed – like for example in project management.

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The combination of achieving styles that matched previous situations and helped us achieve our current position may prevent us from mastering other situations in the future. It is therefore crucial for connective leaders to study and be able to apply each achieving style, as presented in detail in the following slides.

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Individuals applying one of the direct styles use their own resources to achieve objectives. They are not necessarily the best team players. They also represent the heart of traditional business thinking especially in the U.S., but also in other industrialized nations. Direct achieving styles were indeed helpful in the more isolated circumstances of the past. Today, they might not be enough and even create an impression of exaggerated individualism when interacting with other cultures.

People who prefer the intrinsic direct style mainly rely on themselves to get things done. They are simply attracted by the feeling of achievement, using their individualistic creativity as a resource: The doing is its own reward.

Examples: inventors, creative artists, or extreme athletes like climbers.

The competitive direct style is applied when leaders feel they are doing something better than anyone else, with the result that as member of a team, they also compete with their teammates. Competitive direct leaders want to be number one.

Examples: Olympic athletes, many celebrities, advertising experts. Studies have shown however that blind competitiveness can hamper high performance.

People relying on the power direct style need to be in control of everything,

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preferably not answering to anyone. They are good organizers who like to give instructions and like to bring order out of chaos: they often reorganize reporting structures and responsibilities to strengthen their own position and control in order to get things done. This style is sometimes very necessary in times of crises.

Examples: many executives, political leaders and activists, among them historic figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Kissinger, and Margaret Thatcher. Adolf Hitler is a negative example for the use of power to achieve egomaniac goals.

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Individuals applying an instrumental leadership style use other persons to achieve objectives. If they don’t have formal power, they learn to interpret nuance, to negotiate and persuade. People tend to the personal instrumental style when they deal with situations and other people mostly through their appealing personality. They like to speak in public, know how to be convincing, are great negotiators and have a good sense of timing. Relationships to followers are based on compassion and inspiration, rather than competition and power. Examples: Gorbachev, Martin Luther King, Gandhi.

A style is called social instrumental when someone knows exactly which person to assign with a given task due to that person’s individual skills. It is a way of using the system as an instrument for goal attainment, being comfortable with informal processes, demonstrating political savvy and reshuffling a group when necessary.

Example: George Bush Sr. building an alliance of Gulf states during the Gulf War.

People applying the entrusting instrumental style make everyone feel they completely confide in them to accomplish their tasks, thereby motivating them to meet these expectations. They often help people over whom they do not have

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formal authority reach their goals.

Examples: The instrumental styles as a whole are often applied by diplomats in times of crises.

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Relational styles set: Individuals applying a relational style utilize social networks to obtain success from other people’s attainments of their objectives. Relational achieving styles are commonly associated with traditional ‘female’ traits and therefore considered weak in some cultures. However, these styles are most important in the athletic environment, therefore many examples can be found in this context.

People who achieve through the collaborative relational style enjoy team work. They approach their goals by working with others on common goals.

Example: Athletic teams (a combination of collaborative and competitive)

The contributory relational style includes the preference to support others while they are accomplishing tasks. People using it draw feelings of satisfaction from not being the one up front, but the one behind the scenes when the people who receive help from them succeed. They feel like a partner, and their focus is not at all on taking credit.

Example: Coaches of athletic teams

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Individuals who prefer the vicarious relational style feel they are successful primarily through the accomplishments of others. They are not involved in the process themselves; they merely provide a little guidance for those whom they support. They feel proud when those people succeed, which suffices for them to have a sense of achievement themselves.

Example: Mentors

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“Achieving styles are the underlying complement of behaviors that an ideal typical (a la Max Weber) connective leader would use. Everyone, even non-leaders, learn and use a characteristic, comfortable set of achieving styles that they use in most situations, even when they are not particularly appropriate, alas.

Oftentimes, this set contains less than all nine styles. The goal is to have access to ALL NINE achieving styles to "mix and match" as the context/situation requires.” (Jean Lipman-Blumen in an e-mail)

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The relational achieving styles are often problematic in modern business culture, because individuals, more often than groups, still receive the bonuses and awards, organizational slogans and academic treatises on teamwork notwithstanding.

This is just one of many reasons why a lot of troubled major projects that make the news worldwide are managed with lacking ability to apply appropriate leadership styles, as in the now following examples.

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The Gotthard Base Tunnel

In Switzerland, a tunnel that is to be the longest in the world is under construction right now and planned to be opened for traffic in 2017. Current projections say the actual finish date will range from mid-2016 (best case) to mid-2020 (worst case).

The idea to build a base tunnel through the Gotthard mountain has been around since the 1940s. The ‘Ground-breaking finally took place in late 1999. Back then, the projected finish date was between 2010 and 2012; 700 million Swiss franks had already been spent. The responsible organization is an affiliate of SBB (Swiss Rail). Up to now, the main work has been detonating and drilling in order to make room for 152 km worth of roadway for the tunnel. Eight workers have died in that process.

Due to a bid protest filed by a rejected seller, the contract awarding process for parts of the construction site were in heavy delay. Other factors, like unexpected consistencies of rock in some areas of the drillings, caused further slippages. As a result, the anticipated finish date is now more or less 4 years later than originally planned – with definite possibility for this number to grow even larger.

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Deepwater Horizon

In April of 2010, an explosion sunk an oil rig that had been drilling 84 kilometers south-east of Louisiana. The event gained worldwide notoriety through the oil spill which was among the largest ones in history. Eleven workers lost their lives in the process. The involved companies BP America, Transocean, and Halliburton tried to blame each other in senate hearings set up to investigate the incident and the poor crisis handling that had followed.

A congressional examination found that a number of human and technical errors had led to the sinking. The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement had neglected to develop a fallback plan for oil rig accidents, because they did not consider a disaster of this dimension, and believed that even upon the almost impossible occurrence of an accident, no coast lines would be affected anyway. Evidence suggests that there had been several large-scale intrusions of gas into the drilling systems, and that BP regarded the impacts on the overall operation of these intrusions „negligible“.

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Heathrow Terminal 5

In March of 2008, after a costly construction process, an additional terminal for London‘s Heathrow airport was opened, and chaos followed. British Airways, exclusively using terminal 5, had to cancel a number of flights when a baggage transportation system proved to be full of defects and flaws, transporting pieces of luggage into the catacombs. The systems was again result of a cooperation between several large corporations, among them BA itself and IBM. In spring of 2010, the British government decided to not build a 3rd runway for Heathrow, which makes high-tech terminal 5 serve simply as spacial expansion in the existing situation rather than as a check-in location for any additional passengers some day, though that had certainly been hoped for by the project initiators.

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Stuttgart 21

Planning for the project „Stuttgart 21“, supposed to make the Southern German city fit to meet what officials believe to be the demands of future traffic situations, began 15 years ago. Among project partners are the Deutsche Bahn AG (German Rail), the district of Baden-Württemberg, the city of Stuttgart, the federal republic of Germany, and the European Union. Their plans to remove the existing, dead-end central station and build a new through station under ground as well as to remodel further railway stations and build some new high-speed railway connections in the region had continuously been presented to keep the public informed.

What started to cause objections were the project‘s cost projections, which kept rising as the planned start date drew nearer. Shortly before project work officially started, public protests against it arose, with objections based on reports that questioned the efficiency of the project‘s results, especially considering the constantly rising and differing cost forecasts. As Stuttgart 21 is an official construction project, all project costs will have to be paid with taxes.

Official bodies failed to take protests seriously and to meet questions early enough in the process to not endanger the project. The public as a project stakeholder got the feeling of only being a nuisance; making the whole process is a serious example for bad stakeholder management.

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When construction works had begun, they were immediately accompanied by an ever-growing number of almost uncontrollable protests, making national German news almost every day. On September 30, 2010, over 100 protestants who had tried to hinder construction progress were injured as a consequence of the use of police force against them, among them some minors.

Discussions on whether or not brutal force should have been used dominated the German political and societal landscape over the days that followed. Responsibles then invited protest leaders to meetings, appointing a popular politician who was born in the region as mediator. Opponents of the project, among them the German Green party, demand no less than its total cancellation.

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Central concepts are

- Diversity: Each management situation requires appropriate leadership styles.

- Interdependence: These styles tend to be dependent on each other and should always be considered in the perspective of their style set continuum as a whole.

Both aspects mark extremes in management theory. A management approach that‘s too diverse creates confusion; whereas one that is too dependent on others is too inflexible.

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Since Lipman-Blumens first addressed the topic of diversity and interdependence, its importance has increased signifcantly. Two major driving forces for this development are:

1. The internet

2. Overseas shipping containers

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The Connective Leadership Institute has developed an online assessment which allows leaders to self-assess their set of Achieving styles and test them to the degree of appropriateness for their organization.

The Achieving Styles Individual Leadership Inventory (ASI), based on statistical data of over 23,000 people, measures the leadership behaviors that individuals use to accomplish their goals. There are nine leadership behaviors the Individual Inventory identifies and when taken together they constitute an individual's Connective Leadership Profile.

This allows for an analysis of which styles leaders like to implement and use with confidence, and in which they should develop their skills in order to be able to master all situations that include attainment of objectives and goals.

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Further methods of diagramming:

The Achieving Styles Organizational Inventory (OASI): Measures the leadership behaviors that an organization rewards. Used in conjunction with the ASI, the Organizational Inventory can determine the fit between an individual's leadership behavior and the leadership behavior valued and rewarded by a particular organization.

This is important for project management: It is about moments that can only been controlled by turning to, for example, the power set of leadership styles. Project managers need to constantly change the styles they apply, in a rhythm which is rather unknown in functional organizations.

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Further methods of diagramming:

The Achieving Styles Situational Evaluation Technique (ASSET): Measures a specific task or project in terms of the leadership behaviors that are necessary for success. Used in conjunction with the ASI, ASSET can aid in the selection of the appropriate individuals to participate in any particular task or project.

This type of diagram helps when teams are to be built and compatible profiles in potential team members need to be found.

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Further methods of diagramming:

The Achieving Styles 360° Feedback Inventory (ASI360): Measures the individual Achieving Styles Profile of a focal person and the perceptions of that focal person's Achieving Styles Profile as seen by relevant peers, colleagues, direct reports, supervisors, clients/customers, acquaintances, etc. The ASI360 is useful in executive and leadership coaching, as well as in conflict management situations.

The 360 degree peer review or multi-rater assessment shown in this slide is the framework for this instrument. Purpose of the review is to compare a leader’s perception by others with the person’s own expectation on this perception and to develop a Gap analysis, a neutral image of what the person wants to achieve and what is actually attained.

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To gain the connective edge needed in today’s economy, leaders have to further develop their Achieving Styles to become Connective Leaders; persons who play all keys on the Achieving Styles piano and know which combination of styles is most beneficial and effective for each individual situation.

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The Connective leadership/Achieving styles model and inventories can be used to improve:

- An individual’s Ccnnective Leadership capacity

- Individual and organizational fit and effectiveness

- Intra-organizational communication

- Organizational culture and merging cultures

- Diversity in an interdependent world

- Executive coaching

- “Hot Groups”

- Interpersonal and inter-group conflicts

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More information:

www.connectiveleadership.com

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