From man-olithicto authentic leadershi

We often think of leadership as an unyielding entity, but various theories that seek to define it today make it a living concept that highlights the idea of authenticity. Fabien Seraidarian, Director of Development and Global Executive MBA Director, SKEMA Business School, sheds light on its evolution.

Fabien Seraidarian
Director of Knowledge Transfer and of SKEMA Global Executive MBA, SKEMA Business School

Businesses are complex: nothing can be taken for granted, and nothing is ever identical. In the business world, the myth of Icarus tells us that yesterday’s successes, leading to excesses, are very often tomorrow’s failures. Organisations aim to be global, and are made and unmade in response to strategic choices, regulatory requirements or a series of crises. From now on, for their impact to be assessed, companies will need to find their place in their ecosystem and sector, and be part of society. So how can anyone run a business in an environment that is now so chaotic? How can anyone find their bearings when it becomes meaningless to make assumptions, set objectives and give meaning? How is it possible to overcome paradoxical injunctions and plan for the long term? Our times are calling leadership into question.

In this context, we need to distinguish between two necessary positions, which are often combined within organisations: that of the manager, which is more formal and has status, and that of a leader who can take on significant responsibility and whose influence within the company is a form of recognition. Managers have teams they rely on to exercise their responsibilities, giving them the authority to organise projects, carry them out and achieve objectives. Leaders derive their power from the relationships they build with their stakeholders: so they are focused on individuals, at the centre of a group that recognises their informal authority through their proposals and ability to influence people, and unite them around a shared vision.

One leadership; which leaderships?

For over 60 years, the focus on leadership has involved pinpointing the qualities, knowledge, experience and skills needed to set a course, steer operations and lead a company. Over the last decade or so, greater gender diversity in corporate governance has also raised questions about female leadership. Women’s recruitment and career development is becoming a major aspect in actions fostering diversity and inclusion initiatives. There is much debate on the question of gender in leadership, but no consensus, because the innate and the acquired are so intermingled. The women interviewed had different views on the importance of asserting their intrinsic qualities, while others no longer wished to view leadership in terms of gender.

But before taking a closer look at women’s leadership styles, we first need to look back at the main landmarks in the development of leadership. Definitions abound, but leadership always involves an ability to coordinate a social group or several organisations in order to achieve goals in line with an ambition and a raison d’être. Research focuses on the characteristics – i.e. skills, values, behaviours or beliefs – of leaders, meaning individuals who exercise responsibilities that are often symbolic in organisations. The analysis of roles and positions is just as significant: guidance, assistance, support for participation and involvement, encouragement to excel, and so on.

Beyond the characteristics, many typologies seek to polarise leadership practices. There is a contrast between formal leadership and a more informal style – within peer groups, for instance. One continuum distinguishes between autocratic and democratic leaders, where everyone is consulted or participates. Another typology considers two approaches – an interest in people vs. the tasks or results to be accomplished – and identifies five leadership styles: social, inclusive, non-interventionist, autocratic and based on compromise. Differentiating between transactional and transformational leadership is equally important: a transactional leader stimulates their subordinates by clarifying their roles and tasks, pushing them to achieve the objectives assigned, and giving them “rewards”. This transactional rationale can be complemented by transformational leadership, which encourages employees to transcend their personal interests to help the company develop, and has an inspiring influence on them.

These perspectives can be grouped under “personalistic” approaches, which seek the specific personality variables that determine successful leadership. Whether these variables are acquired or innate, the focus is on the individual, all the more so as the conditions for exercising leadership are demanding. “Situationist approaches” attribute effective leadership first and foremost to contingency factors, i.e. the particularities of both the internal and external contexts. This makes it difficult to generalise: certain behaviour may be appropriate in one situation but not necessarily in another. Contingency factors may concern the nature of the tasks, the company’s development and maturity in its sector, the characteristics of the organisation, the corporate culture (values/attitudes/beliefs, skills, degree of group cohesion, etc.), technologies, international presence, the influence of social structures and networks, and so on.

What is leadership all about?

Approaches that focus on leaders’ personalities often result from a positivist rationale that seeks to generalise or instrumentalise practices, and are increasingly being questioned. Determining a leadership style without taking account of the situations to be dealt with (strategic challenges, crisis management, etc.), out of context and independently of the culture in which a leader exercises their leadership, seems unconvincing, even if there are major points in common (qualities, the level of qualification, etc.) and trends (career paths, sociology, etc.) that reflect the “zeitgeist”. The activity sector, as demonstrated by the various interviews conducted, is a major contingency factor when it comes to characterising leadership practices, as witness Caudalie, where 85% of the workforce is female and where the culture is one of collaboration and a group dynamic.

A leader’s authenticity comes from their ability to act according to the situation.

Fabien Seraidarian, SKEMA Business School

The national culture is also a major contingency factor, as the various interviews also reveal. Whether the international experience of the women interviewed is involved, or the way diversity and inclusion policies are implemented, the territorial dimension is a structuring factor: objectives and approaches are often contextualised with regard to the national culture. In 1980, Geert Hofstede conducted large-scale studies on the impact of power (or hierarchical) distance on leadership practices:

A country and a culture with a high power distance index see leaders as individuals with authority, charisma and a strong personality similar to the Fayol model, whose roles in terms of planning, organisation, management and control suggest an autocratic or paternalistic stance.
Conversely, a country and a culture with a low power distance index will place greater value on skills like delegation, empowerment, participation and negotiation, which implies transformational leadership and activities involving facilitation, motivatio and the awarding and delegation of responsibility.

National cultures can also highlight individualism or the collective. Leaders will then be autonomous and independent, and rewards individual, or, in contrast, a leader will be transformational and the group will play a major role, underlining the importance of having a shared vision.

These theoretical approaches demonstrate the need to understand leadership in its cultural and economic context, which reflects the influence on individuals and what is played out on a more intimate level. Over the last decade, the scientific community has worked on defining the concept of authentic leadership, attempting to combine the two main approaches that emerge from research on leadership. A leader’s authenticity comes from their ability to act according to the situation. This is the existentialist concept: the individual is authentic in a given framework, according to their choices and through their interpersonal relationships. But authenticity also involves identity: the authentic individual acts in accordance with their convictions and values. They are thus at ease with themselves and what they say reflects their thoughts and feelings, even if this makes them vulnerable at times. To achieve this, leaders need to be able to read the situations confronting them and draw on their own personal experience, with reference to their own thoughts, emotions, preferences or convictions.