PART ONE
Presenting a New Paradigm for Leadership: Leaderful Practice

JAMIE WATERS, CURRENTLY THE DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AT A well-known technology company, almost left the company seventeen years ago. Though she held a Ph.D. from Stanford, her first job was with a supervisor who simply refused to listen to her ideas or act on any of her suggestions. Discouraged to the point of looking for a job elsewhere, Jamie was rescued by a research fellow who used a different form of leadership on his team. Rather than insist that the group follow his lead, this manager let people, in his words, “follow their heart.” Team members worked on projects that energized them yet simultaneously contributed to the mission of the group. They decided together not only how to create but also how to serve their mission and how to contribute to the greater good of the company and its markets. They worked in sync yet their collaboration seemed effortless.

Jamie adopted this style of leadership and advanced to the directorship she holds today. Through her encouragement, many of her teams now operate just like that second experience of hers, which saved her for the company. Whenever new employees now ask her how she creates such leaderless groups, she’s quick to point out that these teams “are not leaderless. They’re leaderful.” They’re not deprived of leadership; they’re full of leadership. Everyone shares the experience of serving as a leader all together and at the same time!

Let’s keep in mind, though, that this company nearly lost Jamie forever. That she stayed is in no small measure a reason for the company’s continuing success. Jamie’s case (based on a reallife example) represents a starting point for understanding why we need a new brand of leadership in our corporate, public, and civic environments today. One obvious reason is that without people like Jamie or her former research fellow, we’ll lose countless talented employees.

Besides retaining good people, what pressures face those in management positions? A close look across the organizational landscape reveals people in large measure overwhelmed, uncertain, and on the run. We’ve entered an age of lean operations, of doing more with less. Managers are pushed to use complicated technology to replace supervisory systems and labor. A lot of work is now assigned to teams that manage themselves. The expanding value chain leads in some cases to more work being outsourced on a product than completed in-house. Meanwhile, companies are entering markets and providing services that may not have existed at the start of the manager’s career. At the same time, more sophisticated consumers and clients demand increased customization to meet their needs. It is no wonder that managers find themselves torn in many directions. How can they control an operation producing a dizzying array of special features, and using specialized technologies that they aren’t even versed in?

Meanwhile, employees, like Jamie in our introductory example, don’t find life any easier. Oftentimes, they’re given assignments that are nearly impossible to accomplish in a specified time by managers who have far less understanding of the problem than they do. They feel undervalued, under-utilized, and often overwhelmed with “busy” work (work that requires them to be busy, not necessarily productive or challenged).

If these predicaments sound familiar to you, then you might agree that leadership is potentially the most desperate problem we face in organizational life today. Yet, conceived in a different way, it may also represent the very solution to the ills of work in our current era.

This is what this book is about. I intend to cast leadership in a new light, to potentially change your entire way of viewing it. As your thinking changes, I hope in turn that your practice of leadership—and, as you will see, you can practice leadership whether you’re an employee or a manager—may also change for the better.