McKelvey-Grant professor of organisational behaviour at Cornell University, and co-founder of the Bacharach Leadership Group (BLG), Prof. Bacharach is considered an authority on leadership development and leadership training. He has authored more than 20 books and over 100 academic articles.
Q. How would you describe your style of leadership?
A. For the last 15 years, I have concerned myself with one issue of leadership – execution. The Bacharach Leadership Group focuses on leadership with a small ‘l’. I believe leadership is not about some grandiose gesture or charisma. I believe it is about the nuts and bolts of execution, which translates into a core set of competencies in a series of specific skills – skills that can be taught and learned through practice. My leadership style is learned and focuses on the key issue of moving agenda in organisations. If you cannot move an agenda, if you cannot work with people and if you cannot implement change, then who cares if you have charisma or not. Leadership is not about having a vision, it is about having tactical political and managerial skills. That is what every great leader has in common.
Q. Why do leaders fail? Can you give some real world examples?
A. To a large degree, I think leaders fail for five reasons:
1.They are so consumed by what is good for them and what they need to get done that they tend to ignore everything else.
2.They surround themselves with ‘yes’ men and women.
3. Rather than focusing on tactics, they are obsessed with their vision and are blinded by it.
4.The problem of over-delegation or under-delegation.
5. Inability to make corrections or adjustments at right time.
Q. When your credibility is compromised, what steps do you take to restore it?
A. Credibility is not a monolithic word. It depends on what type of credibility one is talking about.
If you talk about credibility based on expertise or knowledge, anyone can fluff that, and people will be fairly forgiving. If you are talking about moral credibility – if you let someone down, if you do not do what was expected of you, or you do not stay behind your team or stick to your word – for that, leaders are rarely forgiven as their credibility is badly hurt.
Q. What are you: a dreamer or a realist?
A. What a choice if life were so simple. Realists who do not dream live in a mundane world. Dreamers who are not realistic are frustrated. So you ask me if I prefer to be mundane or frustrated. It is a challenge that all organisational leaders face. How to reach for the stars and get there step by step. Whenever we train individuals at BLG on leadership, we train them on their capacity to strike this balance.
One of the biggest failures of leadership is dreaming too big on the one hand and getting caught up in details on the other hand. We try to give people the skills to move beyond this.
Q. How should a leader ensure accountability without seriously stifling innovation?
A. This is at the heart of what leaders need to know when they actually manage. We at BLG believe that a major challenge in leading a team is giving individuals total autonomy on the one hand and overwhelming individuals with accountability and bureaucratic expectations on the other. This balance between accountability and autonomy is related to the challenge of implementing innovation. Give people autonomy and they will become innovative. Research also suggests that autonomy may lead to lack of implementation – great ideas that land nowhere. My concern at BLG is to make sure we teach team leaders how to strike this balance so that there is enough autonomy and accountability to innovate.
Q. ‘Transformational leadership’ is a bzuzword today. Can you simplify the term for us?
A. Transformational leadership is a kind of leadership that brings about major change – getting people see things differently and view problems and solutions in a completely new way. Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolution talks about ‘paradigmatic changes’, which is about changes with major implications. Transformational leadership implies changing the essence of a phenomenon or a relationship. While I know this idea has been played a lot, I am not a big subscriber to it. I believe that true transformation is achieved by incrementalism – a leader’s ability to be transactional and move ahead one step at a time rather than trying to overreach.
Q. There is a general perception that managers deal with complexity and leaders deal with change. Do you agree?
A. This distinction between managers and leaders is the most ridiculous knee-jerk reaction I know. I am an academic, and I love distinctions, but who wants a leader who cannot manage or a manager who cannot lead. This is a ridiculous distinction and the time has come to stop making it, especially in a world where we are trying to train good leaders. The idea that managers deal with complexity and leaders deal with change is not based on facts. Leaders deal with complex change and manage it to completion.
Q. Leadership is seen as a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. What is your take?
A. The question assumes some aspire to lead and others aspire to follow. Embedded in this question is the problem with every leadership programme that I know. I do not see sense in this argument. In our lives, we all lead in one capacity, and we all follow in other capacities. We all take charge and move things along.
At any point the relationship between those that follow and those that lead should be based on the answer to one question – is the right person in charge? Am I following the right individual? The litmus test here is one of execution – can this person get something done? When the litmus test is the personality of the leader – that is, I follow the leader because he is charismatic or appealing, then you are going on dangerous ground, where the follower is always submissive to the hypnotic ability of the leader. That is not the world I want to be in. In my world, the question is – is the person I am following competent enough that he or she deserves my support?
Q. How does one attract the best talent and what kind of people should one avoid hiring?
A. I have been concerned about how best to retain top talent, and one thing for sure is that they might come for money or they might produce the money, but they will commit themselves only if they feel they are in an organisation that is worthy of putting in the maximum amount of effort. The question is not about getting the best talent, but getting the most of the best talent once you get them on board. In this sense, it is critical to train leaders for talent retention. In the final analysis, one of the best predictors of retention is the talent of the individual.
Q. What have been some of your most creative ideas?
A. My most creative idea was the insight into leadership that led to the formation of BLG. It is not a particularly profound idea, but it is one that fundamentally changed how I thought about leadership training. Coming from a strong academic organisational behaviour background, I found that leadership can be broken down into micro-behavioural skills that can be taught. It became clear to me that leadership is about two fundamental things – mobilising teams; that is, getting others on your side – and sustaining team momentum; that is, keeping them on your side. The more I studied the more I realised that if I could break these two competencies into specific skills, such as coaching, negotiation, and communication, then this would be a real breakthrough.
This very simple insight led to the formation of BLG and the work we have done over the last number of years. It is not rocket science but sometimes simple insight is all it takes. Simple insight is what most organisations build their future on. How often do we really see the world from a totally different perspective. Not that often, so I am happy with the world that builds on simple insights or incremental creativity.
Q. What is the biggest mistake that businesses make?
A. To think only about business and cast everything else as ‘soft’ people skills. Without these ‘soft’ skills – the behavioural skills of leadership – most businesses go nowhere. True leaders build organisations because they understand what it means to work with teams and people, not because they had a great idea or a great economic model.
Q. What is the one important advice you would give to someone who is assuming a leadership position for the first time?
A. Every morning remember that you cannot do it alone. That would be my most important advise
