To work in metaphors is the essence not of childishness, but of maturity, and it is fundamental to our appreciation of the world because it enables us to see the invisible relationship between things, ideas and processes. Metaphor is essentially dynamic – precisely what leadership is. If we wish to capture the essence of the dynamism of leadership we will use a metaphor in order to 'grasp' it; if we wish to compartmentalize leadership and exhibit essentially static models we will use competency boxes. Both models have their uses, but the former is far more exciting, and far more likely to inspire than the latter. Once we can do that, then we may be able to break the metaphor down into helpful components.
First, then, let us see leadership as a performing art. A stage is the model for its process. Consider three main ways in which leadership is theatre:
1. leadership is a performance. Every leader addressing staff will vouch for that; and so will their managers chairing departmental meetings. There is an 'up-front-ness' about leadership, which is undeniable even in the most retiring leaders. The performance we must remember is essentially task-orientated: the purpose is to do the performance, and that before an audience. Thus, a good leader must be outcome orientated, since audiences are always evaluating what we do.
2. leadership is intrinsically connected to teamwork. Yes, the star on stage may well be the leader, but the play – the performance – can only be as good as the weakest member of the cast. Unless rehearsals involve everybody, performance – no matter how 'strong' the leader – will be weak. A strong personality who does not pay attention to his staff proves a weak leader, and clearly is exercising 'personality' at everyone else expense.
3. leadership is about 'play' – theatre is a play in both senses of the word. There is a recreation/re-creation in the activity. It is what we all complain we have lost. As children our 'work' was our 'play', and thoroughly enjoyable it was too! We didn't want anyone to send us to bed. Now, we find we collapse only too readily in bed, exhausted by work – a work that is devoid of 'play'. This is a vital thing about our leadership activity we need to re-discover: that work should and must be a form of play, and if it is not then we are heading for trouble. Overtime – overwork – has no psychological meaning when we 'play' (are being creative), since the only limits are those that the task itself defines for us, and which we readily accept.
If one can accept the sense of the above metaphor, see its aptness, then one is already a long way from the scientific approach – the tick box approach – which demands certain outcomes if only highly specified procedures are followed. One sees that every performance of the play is different, that the unexpected is more than likely, but that preparation, planning, practice, too, have a fundamental role in this. There are principles of acting, as there are of leadership, but the mechanical application of them leads to the most wooden performances. We politely applaud the by-the-book performance that imprints its faultless execution upon our consciousness, whilst creating a boring, empty and 'right' world; and we love the heart-warming theatre of conviction where all the idiosyncrasies of person, time and place dazzle us with their razzmatazz.
It is important to realise here that we are not substituting warm, fuzzy, touchy-feely (and so ineffective) pictures for hard-edged, hard-nosed, realistic (and so effective) competencies: the working out of the implications of a performance is every bit as 'hard' – as any theatre director knows – as defining a competence in ever greater unit or elemental detail.
For example, if we take point 1, performance, we might consider what this means in terms of presentational knowledge/skills/attitudes at one end of the spectrum, and what it means in terms of problem-solving and decision-making at the other. But the essential difference between the two approaches is that competency presents a reductive approach to human endeavour, a mechanistic, dissection-al, feel-bad effect; whereas metaphorical interpretation presents an achievement approach – a live-up-to, how-good-can-we-make-this-performance, holistic feel-good effect.
The 'feel-bad' derives from the inevitable failure of everyone to meet all the competencies, a shortfall which assessment always establishes; the 'feel-good' derives from the awareness that the show is on the road, it's going to be fun, we're aiming for brilliance, but whatever the result, there will be a show – there is no failure in this. Nevertheless, it must be recognised that for some, the 'safety' of ticking the right boxes will far outweigh any desire they have to 'perform'. The ease with which bureaucracy is established even within some small organisations is testimony to that. Be that as it may, leadership remains a performance. Some will prefer the competency approach precisely because it offers 'all-inclusive', 'quality-assured' solutions; metaphors will not do this.
The Mapping Motivation Series 