Leadership Series Article 1 : Crucibles of Leadership
CRUCIBLES OF LEADERSHIP - Trial-by-Fire
Growing up, Harry Truman never thought of himself as a leader, nor did anyone else. With “eyeglasses thick as the bottom of a coke bottle”, writes historian David McCullough, Truman couldn’t try out for school sports and mostly stayed at home, working the farm, reading, or playing the piano. Friends thought he was a sissy, and so did he. When he graduated high school, his family had run into hard times and he remained on the farm, the only president of the 20th century who never went to college.
But the course of his life changed forever when, at the age of 33, he signed up for the Army to fight in World War 1. He was shipped off to France as the head of an artillery battery, and there for the first time in his life he was forced to lead men through moments of mortal danger. His initial test came on a rainy night in the Vosges mountains. The Germans has dropped an artillery barrage close by, and his troops, panicked that they were being gassed, ran for it. In the frenzy, Truman’s horse fell over on him and he was nearly crushed. Write McCullough “Out from under, seeing all others running, he just stood there, locked in place, and called them back using every form of profanity he’d ever heard…shaming his men back to do what they were supposed to do.” They regrouped, got through the night and many of them eventually got home safely. Throughout the rest of their lives they were loyal to Harry Truman, their leader who refused to back down in the face of his own fear.
According to McCullough, Truman discovered two vitally important things about himself that night. First, that he had plain physical courage; and second, that he was good at leading people. “He liked it and he had learnt that courage is contagious. If the leader shows courage, others get the idea.”
The War was the crucible.
A crucible is an unnatural set of circumstances, high in its degree of difficulty and complexity, which calls for competencies beyond the ordinary for success. Bennis and Thomas, in their book ‘Geeks and Geysers’, site these crucibles as being significant determinants of leadership potential and success as a leader.
Think of the leaders you know about – Nelson Mandella’s 27 years in prison and his victory over apartheid, Mahatma Gandhi’s unceremonious removal from a train in Pretoria and the Indian freedom struggle, Buddha’s encounter with a leper that propelled him towards enlightenment, Einstein, Mother Theresa, the Mumbai spirit… the examples are endless and all of them tell a story of triumphing over the odds and surviving and growing. Each of these people faced a choice of either being paralysed by fear or of facing the adversity head on. They chose the latter.
We seem to have some understanding today, of the concept of crucible finally, but, there are many unanswered questions. Why, for example, do some people find times of testing and adversity a great source of strength while others become discouraged and crash and burn? If you are running an organisation, how can you spot those who will succeed and those who will fail when trials come? As an HR professional, I have been witness to many who undertook the ‘hero’s journey’ as well as many who crashed and burned.
The one common theme:
Crucibles showcase our ‘adaptive capacity’. It is about finding meaning in a crisis without or inspite of being crippled by fear. Bennis and Thomas write: “To the extent that any single quality determines success, that quality is adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity which includes such critical skills as the ability to understand context and recognise and seize opportunities, is the essential competence of leaders. People with ample adaptive capacity may struggle in the crucibles they encounter, but they don’t become stuck in or defined by them. They learn important lessons, including new skills that allow them to move on to new levels of achievement and learning.” It is more than problem solving, diagnosing or analysing…it is about choosing your destiny…
Adaptive capacity is applied creativity, tolerance of ambiguity and change and thriving in chaos. It is about looking at a problem and coming up with unconventional solutions.
As with all competencies, it has significance and meaning for us once we can deconstruct it and make it measurable. As it is with most deconstructed concepts, I can’t help thinking that the whole is always more than the sum of its parts…
Gender differences:
There seems to be quite a difference between men and women as far as their exposure to crucibles of leadership go. Gergen writes: “The women who emerge as leaders are far more the product of self-selection than are the men. What that suggests is that many other women have not had the same opportunities as men to discover their leadership potential and thus remain hidden. We know women make excellent leaders; that debate is largely over. Now, we must face the challenge of ensuring equal opportunities for development.”
Practical implications:
Organisations the world over have tried to capture the essence of leadership development through various processes such as succession planning, identifying top performers, etc.
It is believed by many, that leadership potential has to be identified in an employee, almost as soon as his first managerial opportunity. This is relevant for employees between 25-35 years of age. This essentially helps the organisation track the progress of the employee’s leadership skills and also helps in charting out critical assignments and experiences (such as turnaround assignments, tough client situation assignments, change management assignments, different functional exposure, multi-cultural and multi-georgraphical exposure, high-growth pace and super-stretch targets etc) that the organisation’s philosophy necessitates.
For e.g, there are organisations like Colgate who believe in the 2x2x2 philosophy which refers to the need to have an employee go through at least 2 product lines, 2 functions and 2 geographies before taking on senior leadership positions. Many organisations like Wipro Ltd, GE etc have had a succession planning process and leadership identification process in place for many years, but have recently started concentrating on identifying leaders early. Most organisations end up putting some of their best leaders in crisis situations. All the above end up creating a wide range of experiences, which ought to have cumulatively provided, the skills to survive in the top job.
The idea seems to be to ‘create’ crucibles for employees so as to ‘test their mettle’ and identify leadership potential.
While ‘creating crucibles’ separates the leaders from others, there are 2 major limitations with this approach:
Growing up, Harry Truman never thought of himself as a leader, nor did anyone else. With “eyeglasses thick as the bottom of a coke bottle”, writes historian David McCullough, Truman couldn’t try out for school sports and mostly stayed at home, working the farm, reading, or playing the piano. Friends thought he was a sissy, and so did he. When he graduated high school, his family had run into hard times and he remained on the farm, the only president of the 20th century who never went to college.
But the course of his life changed forever when, at the age of 33, he signed up for the Army to fight in World War 1. He was shipped off to France as the head of an artillery battery, and there for the first time in his life he was forced to lead men through moments of mortal danger. His initial test came on a rainy night in the Vosges mountains. The Germans has dropped an artillery barrage close by, and his troops, panicked that they were being gassed, ran for it. In the frenzy, Truman’s horse fell over on him and he was nearly crushed. Write McCullough “Out from under, seeing all others running, he just stood there, locked in place, and called them back using every form of profanity he’d ever heard…shaming his men back to do what they were supposed to do.” They regrouped, got through the night and many of them eventually got home safely. Throughout the rest of their lives they were loyal to Harry Truman, their leader who refused to back down in the face of his own fear.
According to McCullough, Truman discovered two vitally important things about himself that night. First, that he had plain physical courage; and second, that he was good at leading people. “He liked it and he had learnt that courage is contagious. If the leader shows courage, others get the idea.”
The War was the crucible.
A crucible is an unnatural set of circumstances, high in its degree of difficulty and complexity, which calls for competencies beyond the ordinary for success. Bennis and Thomas, in their book ‘Geeks and Geysers’, site these crucibles as being significant determinants of leadership potential and success as a leader.
Think of the leaders you know about – Nelson Mandella’s 27 years in prison and his victory over apartheid, Mahatma Gandhi’s unceremonious removal from a train in Pretoria and the Indian freedom struggle, Buddha’s encounter with a leper that propelled him towards enlightenment, Einstein, Mother Theresa, the Mumbai spirit… the examples are endless and all of them tell a story of triumphing over the odds and surviving and growing. Each of these people faced a choice of either being paralysed by fear or of facing the adversity head on. They chose the latter.
We seem to have some understanding today, of the concept of crucible finally, but, there are many unanswered questions. Why, for example, do some people find times of testing and adversity a great source of strength while others become discouraged and crash and burn? If you are running an organisation, how can you spot those who will succeed and those who will fail when trials come? As an HR professional, I have been witness to many who undertook the ‘hero’s journey’ as well as many who crashed and burned.
The one common theme:
Crucibles showcase our ‘adaptive capacity’. It is about finding meaning in a crisis without or inspite of being crippled by fear. Bennis and Thomas write: “To the extent that any single quality determines success, that quality is adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity which includes such critical skills as the ability to understand context and recognise and seize opportunities, is the essential competence of leaders. People with ample adaptive capacity may struggle in the crucibles they encounter, but they don’t become stuck in or defined by them. They learn important lessons, including new skills that allow them to move on to new levels of achievement and learning.” It is more than problem solving, diagnosing or analysing…it is about choosing your destiny…
Adaptive capacity is applied creativity, tolerance of ambiguity and change and thriving in chaos. It is about looking at a problem and coming up with unconventional solutions.
As with all competencies, it has significance and meaning for us once we can deconstruct it and make it measurable. As it is with most deconstructed concepts, I can’t help thinking that the whole is always more than the sum of its parts…
Gender differences:
There seems to be quite a difference between men and women as far as their exposure to crucibles of leadership go. Gergen writes: “The women who emerge as leaders are far more the product of self-selection than are the men. What that suggests is that many other women have not had the same opportunities as men to discover their leadership potential and thus remain hidden. We know women make excellent leaders; that debate is largely over. Now, we must face the challenge of ensuring equal opportunities for development.”
Practical implications:
Organisations the world over have tried to capture the essence of leadership development through various processes such as succession planning, identifying top performers, etc.
It is believed by many, that leadership potential has to be identified in an employee, almost as soon as his first managerial opportunity. This is relevant for employees between 25-35 years of age. This essentially helps the organisation track the progress of the employee’s leadership skills and also helps in charting out critical assignments and experiences (such as turnaround assignments, tough client situation assignments, change management assignments, different functional exposure, multi-cultural and multi-georgraphical exposure, high-growth pace and super-stretch targets etc) that the organisation’s philosophy necessitates.
For e.g, there are organisations like Colgate who believe in the 2x2x2 philosophy which refers to the need to have an employee go through at least 2 product lines, 2 functions and 2 geographies before taking on senior leadership positions. Many organisations like Wipro Ltd, GE etc have had a succession planning process and leadership identification process in place for many years, but have recently started concentrating on identifying leaders early. Most organisations end up putting some of their best leaders in crisis situations. All the above end up creating a wide range of experiences, which ought to have cumulatively provided, the skills to survive in the top job.
The idea seems to be to ‘create’ crucibles for employees so as to ‘test their mettle’ and identify leadership potential.
While ‘creating crucibles’ separates the leaders from others, there are 2 major limitations with this approach:
- it involves taking a significant risk on the part of the organisation as some leaders will make it, and others will crash and burn
Footnote: Bennis and Thomas’s model of leadership studies the interplay of factors such as ‘era’, individual factors, experience and organisation of meaning in the crucible as determinants of leadership competencies. Impact of era on leadership- Just as there are defining moments in the life of individuals, there have been defining moments in the lives of entire generations, be it World Wars, the great depression, the end of the cold war, advent of the internet, etc and they have left indelible stamps on that generation. Bennis and Thomas believe that this is a significant factor that causes variations in the leadership of the ‘geeks’ and the ‘geysers’. In this article, however, I have chosen to highlight only the ‘crucibles of leadership’.
References:
1. The Leader to Leader Institute is a great resource and I have found many worthwhile articles there. A must read if you a student of ‘leadership’. http://www.leadertoleader.org
2. Geeks and Geysers, 2004 – Warren Bennis, Robert J Thomas, Magna Publishing co
Comments
Its not a write up but a Marvel !!
Keep Doing !!!