Insight : Watch for a New Style in the Workplace--’Linking Leadership’

Theories about leadership are plentiful. Corporate executives continually seek leadership models to help make their organizations more effective and profitable. Implicit in many of these theories is the notion that successful leaders exhibit a set of traits such as vision, drive, commitment, charisma and intelligence.

These traits are often confused with leadership or management styles that describe the way traits are manifested in everyday actions. This confusion is understandable, because until recently it was agreed that the style most executives used--the traditional top-down or command-and-control decision-making style--worked well.

However, when a different, “Japanese” management style began to attract the attention of U.S. executives--and when research showed that many female executives tended to use a power-sharing, consensus-building style similar to the Japanese--attention shifted from leadership traits to leadership styles.

Because possessing leadership traits these days is thought to be necessary but not sufficient to ensuring success (however defined), an examination of leadership styles seems warranted.

The visibility given to the leadership style change undergone by Jack Welch at General Electric--from command-and-control to a more interactive, consensus-oriented approach--is an indication of this shift. The question today is whether advances in technology, demographic changes, international competition and the rapidity of change are resulting in a new type of leadership. I think they do. I have labeled it “linking leadership.” It is a style that recognizes that leaders have to manage non-traditional linkages and must think horizontally and diagonally as well as vertically.

Linking leaders use the structural power inherent in the command-and-control style at the same time they use the personal, informal power associated with interactive leaders. They employ traditional top-down decision-making while also using a bottom-up, participatory decision process. They base their decisions on objective analysis but are also comfortable with ambiguity and reliance on subjective observations and qualitative data.

In other words, this type of leader links traditional management styles in new ways. Just as important, these leaders link ideas from customers, suppliers, competitors, employees and academics. They also link organizations, markets, functions, customers, suppliers and competitors in working businesses and coalitions.

“In order to remain competitive, it is necessary to know with whom to link, when to link and how best to link,” says Alan King, president and CEO of Tustin-based Silicon Systems, a $320-million (revenues) manufacturer of semiconductors that specializes in mixed-signal integrated circuits.

King characterizes Silicon Systems as a specialty firm whose engineering and marketing departments are linked with customers in innovative configurations. Customers become partners with Silicon Systems in a corporate relationship referred to as “customer partnering.” Such working relationships require leadership skills quite different from those of former times--skills that King feels are described by the linking-leadership style.

Another corporate executive who operates as a linking leader is Cathy Wood, president of Positive Productions, which develops multimedia point-of-sale kiosks.

Through stock ownership and revenue sharing, a wide variety of employees are linked together in the Newport Beach firm’s wins and losses. In turn, says Wood, employees’ professional, financial and personal goals are linked to the company’s goals and values. For example, those who wish to work four-day weeks so they can spend more time with their families can do so. Those who prefer to work longer hours can do that. It is part of the firm’s culture to match employee lifestyle preferences to company requirements.

This kind of organization is quite different, Wood says, from the multimillion-dollar retail loan portfolio she used to manage at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh. She has moved away from the more traditional leadership style she previously used--one in which control and evaluation were based on numbers of hours worked, direct supervision, fitting in and top-down decision making.

At Positive Production, employees are treated as partners rather than workers. Wood has less direct control, but she is confident that evaluating performance in terms of contribution--not time--works.

If Alan King and Kathy Wood are representative of other executives, it seems likely we will be hearing more about the linking-leadership style. Admittedly, putting labels on the way leaders lead provides an avenue for thought at best. All leaders demonstrate their leadership traits in a multiplicity of ways depending on a myriad of factors.

The message, then, is that managing linkages--be they the result of how organizations are structured or the values that drive a firm--requires leaders to control, motivate and evaluate performance in new ways. It also means sharing responsibility and revenues so that there are multiple winners. For executives most familiar with competition as a zero-sum game, becoming a linking leader may pose a significant challenge.