What is your vision of effective leadership?
In our research, we have looked at the best possible way to map this diversity. Specifically, we have found that the 131 most prominent leadership approaches today can be captured in the circumplex described below.
For ease, we call this the ‘Four Ps of Leadership’. Extending the triple bottom line (planet, people, and profit), we argue that effective leadership focuses on performance, people, progress, and principles (with further subdifferentiation).
Interestingly, these ‘Four Ps’ align with major value preferences. To be more exact, these approaches roughly map onto the main political parties in the European Union (performance-liberal, people-socialist, progress-progressive, and principle-conservative). These political preferences highlight how leadership is a value-driven enterprise.
What often happens is that people will align their perception of effective leadership and choose the program that best fits with their own ideological preference as reflected through their perception of what effective leadership is. Do you like connecting with people? You are more likely to define inclusive leadership as key to effective management – and to find that inclusive leadership is needed in your organization. As a result, you will seek out programs that focus on developing it. But is that the best path toward your or your organization’s development?
We find that executives often choose a trajectory that they already know well and love, rather than challenge themselves and seek development in areas that might not come so naturally to them. However, the real benefit may be in getting out of your comfort zone.
Consider this: If you believe in leadership that promotes benevolence and sustainability, perhaps a course on power and politics would serve you best, as it will target areas that you have not worked on. The goal is not to change your own value preferences but to give insight into areas you do not engage with often. In this example, we can imagine that if you are someone who prefers benevolence and sustainability, the political games played out in an organization will be the furthest removed from your thought pattern, and so a development program that focuses on those aspects of leadership might offer a unique viewpoint and new skillsets that can ultimately help you advance the goals you cherish. Indeed, we have found that those who seek social and sustainable development goals benefit from understanding how they can increase their strategic capacity and tactics to better influence their stakeholders and fulfill their social ambitions.
Below we offer two resources to help you think counter-ideologically in terms of leadership.
On the one hand, Figure 1 highlights different approaches to leadership – the ‘Four Ps’ we mentioned earlier – but also further differentiating in terms of the 8 central values that are recurring for leadership. These represent high-level ideologies of what leaders can strive for in influencing stakeholders in the organization and beyond. For each, we give a concrete example of the type of leadership approach that follows. For instance, a preference for self-direction would encapsulate leadership approaches like empowering, participative, or democratic leadership.
In addition, we include Table 1, which presents the four common preferences for leadership and the counter-ideological option that might maximize your development.