Amplifiers. Tom Finegan
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was that when it was time to sign off on a case from the civil rights department, the section leader would present, and Patrick would go around the table and ask everyone for input. Even if a paralegal was there, he'd ask them what ideas they had. It wasn't something they were accustomed to. But he was constantly learning and got so much more out of the team by engaging each of them that he magnified their impact. Patrick had the humility to be a good leader, to subordinate his ego and pull ideas out of the team. He railed at the “imperial CEO,” whose feet never touched the ground, everything was looked after for them, and they lost sight of the implications of the decisions and impact to stakeholders because they were shielded from reality.
Quadrant B is an interesting quadrant insofar as it is composed of strong followers who lack leadership skills. For teams that report to executives in Quadrant B, true Amplifiers are critically important. The followers need to shore up the leadership gaps of their bosses in order to lead the team to achieve its mission and purpose. Organizations can be incredibly successful, even lack the institutional leadership, if they have followership en masse. I've seen firsthand over the years some very successful companies with great brands or products that have had marginal leaders at the top but have had outstanding key lieutenant followers in executive positions. These organizations, or functions within an organization, outlive the titled executive or boss. Followers and true Amplifiers can coexist with bosses or non-leaders in a particular function, but they are motivated and motivate others for a variety of reasons. In some cases, it's the higher purpose of the company. In other cases, it may be their career aspirations. But over time, they will need to have superiors who are higher on the leadership scale or they will self-select to another area within the company or outside the company altogether.
Quadrant C is much more problematic. However, a number of companies exist with a large employee population in quadrant C. Quadrant C is where incremental progress occurs. Many companies can still be effective in the short run. This quadrant is full of low-profile companies operating at a baseline level of performance. In some cases, they operate in product or service sectors that are fully mature. These companies are rich acquisition targets due to their lack of revenue growth, operating performance, and steady cash flows. Alternatively, companies that exist in this quadrant were once high-flyers and have grown significantly but have evolved into a style of incremental management. They are too big to be acquired or too far beyond the ability to affect positive change. They have become large zombie companies.
Quadrant D is the most precarious. In this quadrant, there is strong leadership, potentially flash leadership in an organization filled with individuals who will carry out the tasks. Think of the individuals at Tyco in the procurement or accounts payable department who were responsible for buying and paying the bill for CEO Dennis Kozlowski's gold toilet seat or the toga party for his wife's birthday. In this example, there is a strong cultlike personality at the top job of the company. He had enough leadership, at least temporarily, to influence subordinates to engage in his outrageous behavior.
Another example is the GE travel team who allowed Jeffrey Immelt to have a backup jet available on each of his travel visits so that he would not be delayed. The enablement of these cultlike celebrity CEOs is the antithesis of good followership. Quadrant D is littered with bankrupt companies or companies that have fallen from grace. It is in this quadrant where more shareholder, employee, and societal damage occurs than anywhere else. Other traps in this quadrant consist of serial acquisitions with marginal payoffs. With this strategy, CEOs are often heralded in the media as rock stars because of the growth of the companies they have been tasked to manage. But debt and goodwill swells resulting in a magnified risk in the balance sheet. In a low-interest-rate environment, the strategy can be pursued for some time. Inevitably though, companies that pursue this strategy run out of runway and they crash and burn. One disastrous example was the strategic pursuit of Valeant Pharmaceuticals from 2008 to 2016 under the direction of CEO Michael Pearson. His rampant buying spree was a terrible long-term strategy, although his methods artificially propped up the stock price for a short and unsustainable period of time.
Obviously, it's not as simple as individuals existing in a particular quadrant for all the roles they play within the company. Most of what we do needs to interoperate among the many hats we wear when executing our jobs. For example, an executive vice president in an organization clearly needs to have strong leadership skills and strong followership skills. They may be responsible for leading geographic regions, strategic business units, or major operational functions. Despite these clear responsibilities, they are also a subordinate follower to their leaders. This dynamic highlights how closely aligned leadership and followership are and, when combined, can produce extraordinary results.
Simply because an individual or company exists in a particular quadrant does not mean they will stay there indefinitely. We've seen companies drift or change over time. It is usually the case when there is a major change in strategic direction, market conditions, shareholder activism, or CEO succession. This leads us to dig deeper to understand what the characteristics are for individuals in each of the quadrants. It also leads us to understand leading indicators that may demonstrate movement between the quadrants.
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1 1. Definition from Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=what+are+the+dictionaries&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS795US796&oq=what+are+the+dictionaries&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j0i22i30l2j0i10i22i30j0i22i30l5.12572j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#dobs=leader.
2 Leaders Versus Titled Executives: Leadership Differs from Management
Leadership and management are not the same. Amazingly, people often get this wrong. Bosses are frequently confused with leaders, and subordinates are confused with followers. That said, a boss may very well be a leader, but it is not a foregone conclusion. Just because a boss has the title or power in the relationship, doesn't mean that boss is a leader. We have all seen these bosses in action—the titled executive or manager who oversees a large team but has no followers. Some employees do as they are instructed by the boss, but not because they are being led or because those employees are drawn to follow, but rather because they fear the boss's reprisals. This is not leadership.
Sometimes we see this demonstrated in nonbusiness settings, such as politics. All too frequently, we find ourselves governed by a politician who, although they were voted into office, they are not an actual leader. These individuals may not even have the credentials to be qualified for the role. Although they certainly have the position, they do not garner a broad following.
My favorite book on explaining the differences between leadership and management is A Force for Change by John Kotter. We confuse leadership with people in managerial functions. Kotter lays out the stark differences between mobilizing groups of people in a common direction (leadership) and organizing a group of people to accomplish a task or run a function (management). Kotter makes a special point to parse leadership from the commonly misused title of someone who sits atop a business function or organization, what we call in this book, a titled executive.
Kotter rightly argues that simply by virtue of holding a position at the top of a team, department, or an entire organization doesn't imply that the person is actually providing leadership. Despite the book having been written in 1990, we continue to imbue the elements of leadership unwittingly onto these managers and titled executives.
What is amazing, though, is when these teams or departments produce extraordinary results despite the lack of leadership at the top. How is it that teams can function despite this lack of leadership at the top? In some cases, it's momentum from a previous manager. In other cases, the product carries itself. But more commonly, success is driven by followership in action. Professionals who are not in the top spot are able to step up to fill the leadership void by wielding influence among their peers.
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