Maximum performance a practical guide to leading and managing people at work

TeAm YYePG
Digitally signed by TeAm YYePG
DN: cn=TeAm YYePG, c=US, o=TeAm YYePG, ou=TeAm
YYePG, email=
Reason: I attest to the accuracy and integrity of this
document
Date: 2005.05.11 15:13:52 +08'00'
MAXIMUM
PERFORMANCE
This book is dedicated to the visionary pioneers who
created the world we now live in; and to those who are
creating the world we will inhabit in the future.
MAXIMUM
PERFORMANCE
A practical guide to
leading and managing
people at work
Nick Forster
Professor at The Graduate School of Management, University of
Western Australia
Edward Elgar
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Nick Forster 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or
photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Published by
Edward Elgar Publishing Limited
Glensanda House
Montpellier Parade

Cheltenham
Glos GL50 1UA
UK
Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.
136 West Street
Suite 202
Northampton
Massachusetts 01060
USA
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 1 84542 000 4 (cased)
Typeset by Cambrian Typesetters, Frimley, Surrey
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Acclaim for Maximum Performance
‘In my experience a major shortcoming of most “how to” books on leadership
and management is that they purport to offer “Silver Bullets” – magical solu-
tions that, once revealed, will enrich and transform the reader and his or her
organisation. Regrettably, business life is not that simple. Rather, it is charac-
terised by uncertainty and lack of precedent and complicated by the different
wants, needs and motivations of people. Nick Forster’s practical book,
grounded in many years of leadership and management development and
MBA education, recognises this complexity and the folly of “one-size-fits-all”
solutions. It is a valuable source book, packed full of useful ideas for current
and aspiring business leaders.’
– Mr Michael Chaney, Australian Businessman of the Year 2003 and
former CEO of Wesfarmers – the Australian Financial Review’s
Company of the Year 2002. Mr Chaney becomes Chairman of the
National Australia Bank in June 2005.
‘Maximum Performance delivers what it promises. It is practical, useful and well

grounded in up-to-date research findings from across the globe. Nick Forster
writes well, with a lively voice and has peppered the text with rich examples
and case studies. The diagnostic skill exercises and inventories offered
throughout are especially helpful. The book meets the needs of both managers
and students alike, across a wide span of experiences. Well worth the invest-
ment.’
– Professor Barry Posner, Dean of the Business Faculty at Santa Clara
University, California and co-author, with James Kouzes,
of The Leadership Challenge
‘Maximum Performance is an essential read for all business owners, managers,
consultants and key decision makers. It is an outstanding and comprehensive
insight into the broad range of managerial and leadership issues which
confront business people today. It is practical and littered with excellent case
study examples and illustrations. Its unique style is easy to read, thought
provoking and demystifies concepts that are easily misunderstood outside an
MBA course. Grasp and digest this book quickly because it’s the smart thing to
do.’
– Barry Smith, Managing Director, the General Management
Consulting Group
‘Nick’s book is an energetic and down-to-earth exploration of the many dimen-
sions of this enigmatic thing we call leadership. It is a distillation of much
knowledge, experience and insightful observation. There is refreshing and
satisfying clarity of discussion; with comment on many management theories,
explanations of evidence and research and the consequences of their applica-
tions in organisations. The pages are brimming with examples, keeping the
messages real, practical and always interesting. Maximum Performance is
thought provoking, and the reader is constantly challenged to assess his or her
own knowledge, experience, attributes, perceptions and behaviour. It is a
wonderful resource for those beginning their endeavours, introducing them to
the complexities of leading people, and a delightful summary of instantly

recognisable experience to those who are well on the journey. It is hugely valu-
able to all, whether for new knowledge or a welcome refresher. And, there is
just a touch of irreverence, adding an enjoyable balance to a serious subject.’
– Dr Penny Flett, CEO of the Brightwater Care Group and
Telstra Australian Business Woman of the Year, 1998
v
‘We all seem to know when we are receiving good or bad leadership, yet for
many of us being a good leader seems to be so elusive. Why is this so? The fact
that we are human and sometimes trapped by our wants, needs and motiva-
tions inevitably gets in the way, and leadership within Local Government is
fraught with complex problems and competing forces both internally and
externally. Maximum Performance will be an extremely useful aid for all who are
looking for a practical, sensible and thought provoking insight into manage-
ment and leadership issues. Nick provides an excellent insight into the myster-
ies of management and leadership with this very practical and useful book that
I am sure will be a great resource for current and emerging leaders.’
– Ricky Burgess, CEO of the Western Australian Local Government
Association and the Australian Institute of Management
Business Woman of the Year, 1997
‘As consultants working with small to medium sized businesses, we are
always searching for practical resources to recommend to our clients that can
help them put their activities into a broader perspective, and help raise their
understanding and expectations of what their businesses and employees are
capable of. Maximum Performance is such a resource. Not only does it demon-
strate the true value of good leadership, people management skills and the role
of organizational culture in developing, motivating and retaining good staff, it
also juxtaposes these with broader issues such as managing change, creativity
and innovation, managing employee knowledge and intellectual capital, and
the impact that emerging technologies will have on business and organizations
in the near future.’

– Philip Watson, Director and Principal Consultant,
the General Management Consulting Group
vi
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Contents
List of figures viii
List of tables ix
The author x
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
1 The foundations of leadership and
people management 1
2 Personal performance and stress
management 57
3 Communication at work 92
4 Employee motivation, empowerment
and performance 160
5 Leading and managing teams 201
6 Doing it differently? The emergence of
women leaders 224
7 Managing power, politics and conflict 276
8 Leading organizational and cultural
change 298
9 Innovation and organizational learning 347
10 Managing employee knowledge and
intellectual capital 396
11 Leadership and people management in
high-tech, networked and
virtual organizations 429
12 Leadership and business ethics 487

Conclusion: leading and managing people
at work 536
Appendix 1 The business case for emotional
intelligence 548
Appendix 2 The benefits of health and wellness
programmes 551
Bibliography 556
Index 576
vii
Figures
1.1 Would you invest in this company? 38
3.1 The spider 131
4.1 Content theories of motivation
compared 166
6.1 Male and female brains 237
6.2 Masculinity and femininity 248
8.1 Kolb’s learning cycle 316
9.1 Picture puzzles 356
11.1 The exponential growth of computing,
1900–1998 434
11.2 The exponential growth of computing,
1900–2100 434
viii
Tables
1.1 The origins of our ideas and beliefs
about leadership 21
1.2 Desired leadership qualities compared 45
3.1 Communicating with the whole mind 133
4.1 The satisfaction–dissatisfaction
process 171

4.2 Semco: tore up the rulebook in the
1980s 196
5.1 Team rules 220
6.1 Confidence in women 244
7.1 The two faces of power and politics 280
9.1 Linear and lateral thinking 352
10.1 Knowledge assets 408
11.1 Out with the old and in with the new 454
12.1 Perceptions of occupations’ ethical
standards 507
12.2 Top five performing ethical
investment trusts in Australia, 2001–2 508
12.3 Transparency International corruption
perceptions index, 2003 523
ix
The author
Professor Nick Forster is based at the Graduate School of Management
(GSM), The University of Western Australia. He has been involved in
postgraduate management education since 1991 in the UK, Australia
and Singapore. At the GSM, he has taught on the Organizational
Behaviour, Management of Organizations, and Social, Ethical and
Environmental Issues in Organizations units on the MBA programme,
and the Managing Strategic Change unit on the Executive MBA. He
has also received ten MBA-nominated commendations and awards for
teaching, and was chosen by his peers as a nominee for the 2000
Australian Universities’ National Teaching Awards ceremony in
Canberra, attended by the Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
He has published four books, written more than 70 articles in a variety
of international academic and professional journals, and has produced
several research and consulting reports for organizations in Australia

and the UK. He has been a regular contributor to WA Business News,
and was also a guest management columnist for Corporate Relocation
News, the biggest selling corporate relocation magazine in the USA,
from 2000 to 2002. Outside the GSM, Nick has been involved with the
Australian Institute of Management (AIM) Leadership Centre in the
delivery of leadership and management training workshops to several
of WA’s largest companies and public sector organizations, including
the Office of the Premier and Cabinet and the City of Perth Executive.
From October 2003 to March 2004, he was a Principal Facilitator for
WesTrac and the Water Corporation in AIM’s Action Learning
Programs, run in conjunction with the Harvard Business School. He
has also collaborated in numerous research and consultancy projects
with UK and Australian companies, and was on the national judging
panel for the 2003 and 2004 Australian Human Resource Management
Awards (for further information, see www.wamcg.com.au).
Nick has lived in several countries and worked in a variety of other jobs
in his younger days, as a barman, waiter, house-renovator, safari park
warden, professional musician, music studio engineer and part-time ski
instructor. His leisure interests include alpine skiing, mountain biking,
scuba diving, white-water rafting and, occasionally, bungee jumping.
x
Acknowledgments
I’d like first to express my gratitude to all those people, past and
present, who have helped to shape my understanding of leadership
and people management in contemporary organizations. These are, in
no particular order, Alistair Mant, Barry Posner, Jay Conger, Edgar
Schein, Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Penny Flett, Ricky
Burges, Michael Chaney, Fons Trompenaars, Daniel Goleman, Nelson
Mandela, Confucius, Tsung Tzu, James Kouzes, David Carnegie,
Martin Luther King Jnr, Ray Kurzweil, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard,

Ricardo Semler, Richard Teerlink, Charles O’Reilly, Tom Peters,
William McKnight, Germaine Greer, Joan Kirner, Moira Rayner, Jack
Welch, Winston Churchill, Scott Adams, Paul Robeson, Henry
Mintzberg, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Edward de Bono,
Andy Groves, Herb Kelleher, Gordon Bethune, James Collins, Jerry
Porras, Fiona Wilson, Charles Handy, Amanda Sinclair, Peter Drucker,
Gary Hamel, Nicolò de Machiavelli, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Anita
Roddick, Peter Senge, Ari de Geus and last, but not least, John Cleese
in his Video Arts days. Their insights about effective leadership and
people management can be found throughout this book.
During an academic career spanning 16 years, I’ve been privileged to
be involved with hundreds of able, motivated and creative MBA and
Executive MBA students in the UK, Australia and Singapore. The
contents of this book have been influenced by their anecdotes and
stories about the leaders and managers they have worked under, as
well as their personal experiences of leading and managing others. All
the materials, exercises and self-evaluation exercises contained in this
book have been extensively ‘road-tested’ with well over a thousand of
these men and women and many other groups of professionals and
managers, so their contribution to this has been significant. I’ve also
had a number of high-profile guest speakers on MBA programmes in
recent years. They too have shaped my understanding of what success-
ful leadership and people management is really all about. I’d like to
thank both groups for their influence and inputs to the book.
I’d also like to thank Fenman Limited, the Financial Times and Prentice-
Hall, MCB University Press, McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Alan
and Barbara Pease and Ray Kurzweil, for their permission to make use
of the following materials.
xi
Chapter 3: N. Forster, S. Majteles, A. Mathur, R. Morgan, J. Preuss, V.

Tiwari, and D. Wilkinson (1999), ‘The role of storytelling in leadership’,
Leadership and Organization Development Journal, 20(1), 11–18, and N.
Forster (2000), Managing Staff on International Assignments: A Strategic
Guide (pp. 47–9).
Chapter 6: ‘The Brain Wiring Test’ from A. Pease and B. Pease (1998),
Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps (pp. 64–72).
Chapter 8: N. Forster (2002), ‘Managing excellence through corporate
culture: the H-P way’, The Management Case Study Journal, 2(1), May,
23–40.
Chapter 10: ‘Does your organization have a knowledge management
culture?’ and ‘The Knowledge Network’, from B. Bagshaw and P.
Philips (2000), Knowledge Management.
Chapter 11: N. Forster (2000), ‘The potential impact of third-wave tech-
nologies on organizations’, Leadership and Organization Development
Journal, 21(5), 254–63; ‘The exponential growth of computing
1900–1998’; ‘The exponential growth of computing 1900–2100’, from R.
Kurzweil (1999), The Age of Spiritual Machines.
Conclusion: N. Forster (2000), Managing Staff on International
Assignments: A Strategic Guide (pp. 153–4).
Last, but not least, I’d particularly like to thank Edward Elgar for his
belief in this book’s potential, Francine O’Sullivan, Joanne Betteridge,
Karen McCarthy and Caroline McLin for their patient guidance and
assistance throughout the editing and formatting process and the
submission of the manuscripts for the book, and Madeline Tan for her
help with the graphics and diagrams.
Nick Forster
Perth, Western Australia, September 2004
xii
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
Preface

Walk into a large bookstore in any city of the world, stroll through the
bookshops at international airports, visit university libraries or browse
e-booksellers’ websites and you will find dozens of books on leader-
ship and people management. These will range from highbrow acade-
mic discourses to books written by management consultants, from the
autobiographies of well known political and business leaders to satiri-
cal works on modern organizational life, like those of Scott Adams or
Dennis Pratt. What can one more book add to this extensive and wide-
ranging literature?
First, all of the materials, self-evaluation exercises and questionnaires
contained in this book have been extensively ‘road tested’ in the UK,
Singapore and Australia, over a ten-year period, with more than one
thousand Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Executive
MBA students, on multi-award winning postgraduate management
courses. They have also been tried and tested in dozens of leadership
and management development courses over the last decade. Only those
materials and exercises that have worked for busy managers and profes-
sionals, or have passed ‘The MBA Test’, are included in this book.
Hence it is particularly suited to people enrolled on MBA programmes,
as well as those who may want to update their leadership/people
management skills but are unable to take time off work to attend expen-
sive (and often ineffective) ‘management training’ courses.
Second, many publications overlook essential elements of present-day
leadership and management, particularly those relating to self-aware-
ness and integrity, personal values, personal performance and stress
management, and vision and creativity. This book is comprehensive in
its coverage of all the elements of leadership and people management
that professionals now need to be aware of. This includes traditional
topics, such as employee motivation and performance, communication
skills and leading and managing change, as well as more modern

issues, such as business ethics in a global economy and leadership in
high-tech and virtual organizations. It also looks at how leaders and
managers can create cultures that promote essential modern organiza-
tional competencies such as innovation, the effective dissemination
and use of knowledge and intellectual capital, and creating systemic
intelligent learning capabilities amongst employees.
xiii
Third, this book integrates several perspectives on leadership and
people management, including those of real-life leaders, business
commentators, management consultants and academics – with a fourth
dimension: what we’ve already known about effective leadership and people
management throughout the ages, and yet seem to have to ‘reinvent’ with each
new generation. The book also synthesizes materials from more than 700
books, articles, professional journals, newspapers and websites. What
appears here represents a distillation of the best practical ideas about
leadership and people management of recent times, condensed into a
form that busy managers and professionals can assimilate and make
immediate use of at work, in large, medium-sized or small organiza-
tions, and in the public or private sector.
Fourth, the book demystifies leadership and people management. It
highlights not only the ‘hard-wired’ traits we may inherit at birth, but
also the ‘soft-wiring’, that is the kinds of leadership competencies and
people management skills that we can all learn to develop and improve
throughout our working lives, given self-belief, time and commitment.
To this end, the book will systematically review the attributes, skills,
qualities and competencies that are most often associated with success-
ful leadership and people management, and how these can be devel-
oped and enhanced. These include the following:
• self-awareness and self-discipline,
•competence and credibility,

•a mixture of several kinds of intelligence,
• great self-motivation and the capacity for hard work, combined with
a good understanding of their physical and psychological limita-
tions,
• exceptional two-way communication skills, combined with an abil-
ity to lead, direct and focus dialogues with others,
• the ability to engage with the minds and hearts of others and, as a
result, a capacity to motivate and inspire their followers,
• the capacity to question ‘common-sense’ ways of doing things
combined with the ability to make fast practical day-to-day deci-
sions with incomplete information or knowledge,
• an ability to learn and unlearn quickly, while not discarding good
leadership and people management practices that have stood the
test of time,
•the ability to use power effectively, based on an understanding of
the art of organizational politics,
• increasingly, a hybrid blend of what have been traditionally regarded
as ‘male’ and ‘female’ leadership and people management styles,
• self-confidence and resolve in adverse or uncertain situations, with-
out resorting to autocratic or domineering behaviour,
xiv
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
• the ability to think beyond the present and envision the future,
• the capacity to initiate, lead and manage the complex processes of
perpetual organizational change, innovation and learning, without
becoming reactive ‘fad-surfers’,
• an appreciation of the role that employee knowledge and intellec-
tual capital now play as key drivers of organizational success and
profitability,
• an understanding of both the potential and the limitations of new

and emergent technologies in organizations, and an awareness of
the profound impacts these will have on the management of organi-
zations during the first two decades of the 21st century,
• high ethical standards, combined with a pragmatic understanding
of doing business in the real world.
Fifth, the book takes into account the fast-changing worlds that leaders
and managers now work in, and the new skills and qualities that are
required to succeed in these often chaotic environments. The last two
decades of the 20th century were characterized by rapid change and
this period was variously described as ‘The Age of Surprises’, ‘The Age
of Uncertainty’, ‘The Age of Chaos’ and ‘The Age of Blur’. These
surprises and uncertainties included the challenges of globalization,
political upheavals, the threat of global terrorism, regional economic
instabilities, corporate rationalization and downsizing, merger-mania,
the breathtaking pace of technological innovation, a number of spec-
tacular corporate collapses, the end of ‘jobs for life’ for almost all
employees, the continuing redefinition and realignment of the roles
and activities of organizations, employers, trades unions and employ-
ees throughout the world, and growing ethical and ecological chal-
lenges for organizations operating in the global economy.
The first two decades of the 21st century will be characterized by even
greater change and uncertainty. Global economic forces, new technolo-
gies and the information revolution are driving the fastest period of
change in human history and in the world of business. ‘Future shock’,
‘chaos’ and ‘blur’ are now permanent features of life in many organiza-
tions. Corporate longevity is getting shorter each year, with the average
life expectancy of a typical large or medium-sized company falling in
every decade since World War II. The domination of traditional large
bureaucratic organizations, since the dawn of industrial capitalism in
the early 19th century, is being challenged as new Third-Wave organi-

zations emerge. These developments mean that all organizations have
to think faster and smarter just to keep up with the competition.
Individually, we walk faster, talk faster, sleep less, consume more infor-
mation and work more than ever before. We may have three or four
different part-time jobs or be employed on a succession of short-term
PREFACE
xv
contracts. Jobs for life are rare and job insecurity is a fact of life for
many professionals. Employees can now expect to work for between
five and ten employers in a lifetime. But, as the industrial age’s hege-
mony is challenged, there are also opportunities for entrepreneurs and
for anyone who is willing to challenge conventional management
thinking and embrace, as Tom Peters suggested in the early 1990s,
‘Crazy Ways for Crazy Days’. In the information age (if we have good
ideas, knowledge, energy and persistence) we can become business
pioneers (and, maybe, millionaires) overnight.
The ability to manage the uncertainties that arise from these changes,
developments and trends is now an integral part of the repertoire of
successful modern business professionals, and this book is designed
for leaders and managers working in this demanding, complex, stress-
ful and fast-changing world. As intellectual capital, continuous inno-
vation, organizational learning and new technologies become the main
drivers of organizational success, leader/managers must not only be
able to understand these, they must also find new and more effective
ways of enabling their followers to cope with these new organizational
realities, help them perform to their maximum potential and to aspire
continually to ever-higher levels of performance and achievement.
Getting the most out of this guide to leadership
and people management
Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.

(Old Chinese saying)
This may appear to be a very strange thing to say at this point, but I
don’t believe that leadership and people management skills can be
learnt from books. You might now be thinking, ‘What’s the point of
buying this one then?’ Well, books – particularly the right kind – do
play a vital supporting role in the learning process. When learning
anything new, there is no substitute for a supportive mentor or an
inspirational teacher, but they may be hard to find or may not always
be available for help and advice. Even then, in any organizational,
work or educational setting, they only form part of the learning equa-
tion. The main part is what you bring into these. This includes
•your personal aptitudes, abilities and experience,
• the leadership and people management skills you already possess,
• an awareness of your existing strengths and limitations, and
• knowing what you want, and how you are going to achieve this in
the future.
xvi
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
The purpose of this book is to support your side of the learning equa-
tion, and it does this on three levels: the theoretical, the practical and
the personal. Because you are reading this book, either you are going
to become a manager/leader in the future, or you may already have a
lot of work experience but want to learn about alternative ways of lead-
ing and managing people at work. Either way, you’re interested in
personal growth and improving your skills, and open to new ideas and
change. You care about your career and want to equip yourself for the
challenges of the future. In order to develop these skills further, this
book can also be used as a guide to your personal development and
learning, and will show how quite simple changes to the way we all
‘manage’ people can help us to become more effective leaders and

managers of others. Throughout the book, there are a series of optional
questionnaires and self-evaluation exercises that will help you to
develop a unique leadership/management style, and enhance the way
you lead and manage your people at work.
However, it is important to emphasize that this is not a book that sells
instant ‘fads’ or ‘quick-fix’ solutions. Those who claim that you can
become a better leader/manager in just a few days or weeks are
misleading you, or want to sell more copies of their books, or get more
bums on seats at their training workshops. If anyone tells you that you
can become a really successful and effective leader or manager in a
short period of time they are being dishonest. This requires self-belief,
time and commitment. This means that you’ll need to spend some time
working through this book, perhaps try out the self-evaluation exer-
cises, actively reflect on your own leadership and people management
practices, be prepared to unlearn old habits and beliefs and, maybe,
learn some new ones. This is not a ‘self-help book’; it is a guide to
personal lifelong learning and self-development.
By the end of the book, you should have acquired a comprehensive
‘tool-kit’ that you can dip into as and when needed, regardless of the
circumstances that you find yourself in, the quality of the people you
are leading, or the type of problems you are dealing with at work. Of
equal importance, you will be in a better position to decide if you need
to discard old or redundant leadership and people management prac-
tices that no longer work effectively. You will be able to evaluate what
does and does not work for you at present, and decide which new
skills you may need to acquire to enable you to become an even more
effective and successful leader/manager in the future.
This book also contains hundreds of suggestions and opinions, from
business and political leaders, consultants and academics, about how
leadership and people management skills can be developed and

PREFACE
xvii
enhanced. However, that is all they are and you should not view this
as a one-way process, whereby ‘the experts’ tell you what you ought to
be doing with your life. Treat this as an active, two-way process that
allows you to reflect on your current practices. In addition, some of the
suggestions in this book may not be directly applicable to your partic-
ular occupation, work setting or organization at the moment. And, if
you know ways of leading and managing people that are better, or
work more effectively, then use these instead (and, if you have time,
please send me an email to let me know what they are!).
The only way to really improve as a leader/manager is to embrace
active self-learning and development. While ‘training’, in a generic
sense, may have its uses, it all too often falls victim to the well-docu-
mented ‘halo effect’, where people may emerge re-energized and
refreshed from leadership or management development programmes,
only to find that newly acquired knowledge and insights fade away
over time, as they find themselves falling back into old and ineffective
patterns of behaviour at work. And, as has often been pointed out,
‘training’ is for circus animals and dogs, not human beings. In effect,
this means that none of the ‘experts’ in this book can teach you
anything. Unless you are motivated and committed to learn how to
become an even more effective leader/manager, little will be gained
from this book. Self-directed learning and learning-by-doing are now
becoming the dominant modes of personal improvement and profes-
sional development. This is because lifelong learning is now the name
of the game, not possessing pieces of paper with ‘BA’ or ‘MBA’
stamped on them (Botsman, 2002). This means that you can only
improve your leadership and people management practices by
• actively reflecting on what you currently do as a leader/manager,

• comparing this knowledge with the supermarket of information and
ideas in this book, and identifying areas where changes or improve-
ments might be made,
• developing strategies to improve your leadership and people
management skills on a weekly and monthly basis,
• putting these into practice at work, by treating this environment as
the principal ‘training ground’ for your development as a
leader/manager.
There are two ways to approach this book. The first is on a need-to-
know basis, where you simply dip into it and have a look at areas of
interest, or review topics that you would like to discover more about.
The second and more rigorous method is to start and maintain a
personal diary. In this, you can reflect on your understanding and
practice of leadership and people management, and compare what you
xviii
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
do now with the many insights and suggestions contained in this book.
Included in each chapter are a number of optional exercises that can be
photocopied and included in this diary. A loose-leaf folder or file is
ideal for this. Simply reading about leadership and management is
only the starting point because, as Albert Einstein once observed, ‘All
knowledge should be translated into action.’
There may be a temptation to try and rush through this process. Please
resist this temptation. Work though each chapter gradually, and allow
time for different ideas and new information to sink in, because some
preconceived notions and common-sense assumptions about leading
and managing people in organizations are questioned and challenged
in this book. Make a conscious effort to ‘bridge’ the materials that we
will cover together with your work situation, and think about how you
can apply what you learn in the future. Be open and receptive to new

ideas and concepts, try them out and then wait to see what happens. If
you are willing to challenge your preconceptions and assumptions
about leadership and people management, they will challenge you in
surprising and unexpected ways.
You’ll need to commit some time over the coming months to read
through and reflect on each chapter of the book. The amount of time
you’ll require does of course depend on how much work experience
you have, the level of professional/managerial seniority you have
reached and your current understanding of leadership and people
management. If you can work through one chapter a week, you’ll be
able to get through the whole book in less than three months. This may
sound like a major commitment, but represents only a tiny fraction of
a typical 40-year professional or managerial career. Alternatively, you
may already have quite a lot of leadership and people management
experience and choose to just dip into a selection of chapters, in order
to reflect on or fine-tune the things you already do well.
Either way, your personal journey starts here, and I hope that you will
find it a stimulating, rewarding and enjoyable one.
PREFACE
xix

1 The foundations of
leadership and people
management
Objectives
To define leadership, management and organization (before reading
through this chapter you may want to spend a few minutes writing
down your own definitions of these concepts).
To resolve the important question, ‘Are leaders born or made?’
To describe briefly the roles and responsibilities of leaders and

managers, and how organizational contexts can influence leadership
styles.
To show how followers shape and influence the performance of their
leaders and managers.
To show where our beliefs about leadership come from and how these
influence the way we lead and manage other people.
To look at the roles that coaching and mentoring now play in leader-
ship and people management.
To examine the roles that transformational abilities, charisma and
vision play in leadership and people management.
To explore the dark side of leadership.
To identify the qualities and attributes of leaders you admire and
would willingly follow, now and in the future.
To identify the qualities, attributes, skills and competencies of the
leader/managers that most employees (men or women) want to work
for, and to look at the important role that humour can play in leader-
ship and people management.
1
This opening chapter also acts as the foundation for the remainder of
the book, by summarizing the most relevant and salient aspects of the
20th century literature on organizational leadership and people
management.
Introduction
Of the many decisions an executive makes, none are as important as the
decisions they make about people because they, above all else, determine
the performance capacity of the organization.
(Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, 1966)
One thing that can be said with confidence about leadership and
people management is that there have been enough books and articles
written on these topics over the last 20 years to bemuse, perplex and

confuse anyone looking for either clarity or new insights into these
often mysterious and complex fusions of personal qualities, attributes,
characteristics, skills and competencies. Indeed, one of the first things
to strike anyone who has studied these for some time is how confusing
they can be, and how critical some commentators have been about
these concepts in the past. For example,
Leadership, as a concept at least, has failed us. Despite the earnest efforts of
business leaders and management writers to ennoble and dignify it, under-
standings of leadership have become cheapened by overuse. Leadership has
been rendered impotent to deliver its promises.
(Sinclair, 1998: 1)
Even in the wayward, spluttering world of management theory, no subject
has produced more waffle than leadership [ ] The value of academic
research to the complexities of the chaotic situations that most business
leaders and managers find themselves in today is practically zero.
(Micklethwaite and Woolridge, 1997: 11)
Leadership is an intangible quality with no clear definition. That’s probably
a good thing, because if the people being led knew the definition, they
would hunt down their leaders and kill them. Some cynics might say that a
leader is someone who gets people to do things that benefit the leader. But
that can’t be a good definition because there are so many exceptions, as you
well know.
(Adams, 1997: 287)
[No] unequivocal understanding exists as to what distinguishes leaders
from non-leaders . . . Never have so many laboured so long to say so little.
(Bennis and Nanus, 1985: 4)
Leadership is the worst defined and least understood personal attribute
sometimes possessed by human beings [ ] There are as many definitions of
leadership as there are writers on the subject.
(Lippitt, 1982: 395)

2
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE
So, how can we move forward from this somewhat inauspicious start?
At the beginning of our journey, let’s look at some definitions. In the
opening to this chapter, you were asked to think about your under-
standing of three concepts that will be used many times throughout
this book: ‘leadership’, ‘management’ and ‘organization’. Please
compare your definitions with these:
Leadership in English-speaking countries is derived from an old Anglo-
Saxon word, loedan, meaning a way, road, path or journey. This ancient
definition of leadership is used throughout the book.
Management is derived from the Italian manaeggio (a riding school),
originating in the Latin word for hand, manus. So, to manufacture
something means, literally, to make things by hand, and in the 19th
century workers were employed by manufactories. Both management
and manufacture may already be outdated terms that should be
replaced by mentoring, mentofacturing or technofacturing. It has been
suggested that these words better reflect the realities of the current
transition from bureaucratic industrial capitalism: from an era when
we did indeed make many things by hand, to a new world where
knowledge management, intellectual capital, innovation and new tech-
nologies are fast becoming the primary drivers of organizational
performance and success.
Organization is derived from the Greek word organon, meaning a tool or
device. So an organization can be viewed simply as a device for getting
things done as efficiently and effectively as possible. However, this is a
static definition. As we will see throughout this book, the leaders of the
most successful companies of the 20th and early 21st centuries under-
stand a basic, but extremely important principle: all organizations are
works in progress. Hence an organization is defined simply as an evolu-

tionary device for achieving complex tasks as efficiently and effectively
as possible. This broad definition encompasses all small, medium and
large businesses and companies, as well as organizations in the public
and not-for-profit sectors.
Why bother with definitions? More than 2400 years ago, the Greek
philosopher Socrates observed that ‘The beginning of wisdom lies in
the definition of terms’. For Socrates, great leadership was not possible
without wisdom, and he regarded this as the foundation of all knowl-
edge and philosophical thinking (from the Greek, philosophia, meaning
‘love of wisdom’). Clarity of definitions is important because many
commentators on leadership and management routinely provide
complex and lengthy definitions of what these things ‘are’. A principle
underlying this book is that such definitions are of little practical use
THE FOUNDATIONS OF LEADERSHIP AND PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
3