Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders: The Three Essential Principles You Need to Become an Extraordinary Leader - Hardcover

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Rajeev Peshawaria was one of the founding members of the renowned Goldman Sachs leadership development program, the Pinestreet Group, and was the global head of the Leadership Advisory Services practice. At Morgan Stanley, he held the position of Chief Learning Officer and created and led Morgan Stanley University – a globally integrated learning and consulting hub within the firm. At The Coca-Cola Company, also as the Chief Learning Officer, he created and headed Coca-Cola University, and he was the Global Director of Leadership Development programs at American Express. He was just appointed Chief Executive Officer of the International Centre for Leadership in Finance in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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INTRODUCTION

Mohandas Gandhi started his working life like any other professional and soon became a very successful attorney in the UK. He might have spent the rest of his life practicing law if he had not taken a trip to South Africa on behalf of a client at the age of twenty-four. It was a clear day in South Africa, 1893. Dressed in an elegant suit, Gandhi was traveling first class on a train when he was asked to move to third class because he was “colored.” When he produced his ticket to show his right to travel in a first-class compartment, he was asked how he even managed to buy a ticket because only whites were allowed to travel in first class. “I asked for it in the mail,” he said, “and as I am a citizen of the British Empire, I should be allowed to travel in first class just like any other citizen regardless of the color of my skin.” His protests yielded no results and he was physically thrown out of the train.

Upon meeting with members of the local community, he learned about the extent of segregation of people and life in South Africa. The plight of the people of color, along with his own experience on the train, really moved him. As an attorney, his first response was to legally challenge the validity of certain rules that severely restricted the freedom of colored people. Soon realizing that the goal of obtaining equal status for all people was unlikely to be achieved through litigation, he thought long and hard about what to do. He finally decided that his sole purpose from that point onward would be to champion the cause of equal rights for all. Considering how best to achieve his desired results, he decided that the very unfairness and violence he abhorred would not be used as a means to achieve his objectives. Non-violence would be his vehicle for his fight for freedom and equality. No one could have predicted that a frail brown man in a loincloth would bring down a mighty empire without firing a bullet, yet that is exactly what he achieved.

There are other noteworthy aspects of Gandhi’s story. One: Gandhi had no position, title, or formal authority over anyone. He never held any political or military office, did not possess any material wealth, and could not boast of any scientific achievement or extraordinary abilities. Yet millions followed him, were ready to lay down their lives for his cause. Two: Living the way he did was neither comfortable nor glamorous. If he wanted material success and comfort, he would have been much better off as an attorney. He regularly made himself very unpopular, was jailed several times, and was often physically attacked, including the final gunshot that killed him in 1948. Was Gandhi unaware of the dangers involved? Did he do what he did for fame, fortune, and glory? More importantly, how did he manage to achieve the results he wanted without any formal authority or control of resources?

Contrast Gandhi’s story with the modern-day manager in the corporate world. In asking bosses all over the world why it is so hard to be a good and effective leader, I have heard a host of reasons, largely due to the increasing complexity of business today. In the good old days, they tell me, the life of a business leader was reasonably straightforward. You had a set of agreed-upon business objectives, a set of direct reports, and the rest of your organization below your direct reports. All the people and resources needed to achieve business objectives were under your control. Aligning people in the pursuit of common goals was straightforward—you controlled both the carrots and the sticks.

They go on to talk about how difficult life in business is today by contrast, and why it is almost impossible to be an effective leader. Below is a sampling of actual quotes from the mouths of surprisingly senior bosses:

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  “I live in a highly complicated matrix structure and have long given up trying to make sense of it.”
  
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  “I am responsible for achieving results, but have little or no authority over people and resources that are critical for success.”
  
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  “I am accountable to three managers.”
  
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  “I am responsible for leading the business (P&L, compliance, operations, technology) as well as for leading people (pay, performance, morale). One person cannot possibly do all of it effectively.”
  
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  “I have limited control over either carrot or stick.”
  
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  “My bonus depends on my 360-degree feedback scores, so I cannot afford to rub too many people the wrong way.”
  
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  “The head office, the control department, the strategic planning group, and many other corporate functions make huge demands on my time, leaving me very little time to do my day job.”
  
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  “‘Continuous change’ is the mantra, and lots of management processes (fads) are introduced regularly to supposedly make our lives easier.”
  
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  “My people are constantly looking toward me for answers I simply don’t have.”
  

In short, life, according to our current bosses, is a constant struggle to get results without having adequate authority. Isn’t it draining just to read their comments?

“Of all the bosses you’ve had in your career, how many would you call truly great leaders? For the purpose of this question, a great leader is someone who inspired you to show up every morning and do your best possible work, someone who made you believe in yourself, someone who genuinely cared about your success, and someone whom you wanted to follow willingly.”

As a leadership and management consultant and educator, I have asked this question of thousands of business executives in every continent across a wide range of industries. I have asked groups of senior folks at the twilight of their careers, as well as upcoming middle managers. Regardless of context, geography, or cultural differences, the average answer in any group lies somewhere between zero and two. Given the abundance of research and literature on the subject, and the sums invested by companies every year on leadership development, this low average is baffling. Unlike molecular computing or the study of AIDS, leadership is not an evolving science. In fact, the definition of good leadership hasn’t changed since the time of Alexander the Great. Why, then, is the average answer so low?

In good economic times (unlike the recession at the time of this writing), one might be tempted to think, “How does it matter? In spite of this low average, companies around the world seem to be doing fairly well.” When the going is good, bad leadership often goes undetected. However, consider the next question, which I have asked over the past twenty years, mostly through good times:

“On a one-to-ten scale where ten is at peak potential and one is significantly below potential, how would you rate your organization’s current performance in the marketplace?”

Again, I have asked this of a very large number of leaders and teams across the globe. I typically ask this one when I have an entire senior leadership team in a room for a workshop or team meeting. The average answer to this question is roughly 6.5. In other words, barring a few exceptions, the business world, by its own estimate, is operating at 65 percent of its potential. Whichever way you look at it, there is a huge performance void, arguably caused by a leadership void.

According to the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), U.S. corporations alone spend $134.39 billion every year on employee training. And companies spend an average of 24 percent to 30 percent of their training budgets on...