The Leadership Context

Abstract

In the previous chapter we explored developments in our thinking about the nature of leadership and the way in which we can develop leadership that will be effective in achieving key organisational goals. We alluded to the changing context in which leadership is enacted. In this chapter we explore in more detail the context facing organisations today and the related impact this has on leadership. We propose that our thinking about leadership needs to be set within a context of complexity, commitment and change.

1 Introduction

In the previous chapter we explored developments in our thinking about the nature of leadership and the way in which we can develop leadership that will be effective in achieving key organisational goals. In doing this we alluded to the changing context in which leadership is enacted. Indeed, in a recent review of the leadership literature Higgs (2022) highlighted a significant gap, in terms of research failing to take sufficient account of the impact of context on leadership. Therefore, in this chapter we explore in more detail the context facing organisations today and the related impact this has on leadership.

It is widely agreed that the context in which most organisations operate today is one of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). Indeed, the rate of change in the context facing organisations appears to be accelerating. Furthermore, the type of change is increasingly disruptive. For example, the discussions around the impact of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) indicate the extent to which its widespread introduction could impact on established business models.

To respond to this it is recognised that our models of organisation need to change. For many decades, the dominant way in which we saw organisations was through the metaphor of the organisation as a machine. This underpinned our approach to organising work and structuring the organisation. Within the manufacturing sector, we saw the dominance of practices of mass production that were dominated by the concepts associated with ‘Taylorism’ (and what has been referred to as ‘Fordism’). This resulted in the pervasive use of the production line. This mind-set was taken up in the design and structuring of all types of work. We saw the introduction of techniques such as work measurement into the realm of ‘white collar’ work. Within this view of organisations, there is an emphasis on control. However, over the past few decades the ability to engineer an organisation as a machine has created significant problems in relation to the ability to compete successfully and to adapt to changing circumstances. To operate effectively in the VUCA context it is proposed that organisations need to develop three core capabilities. These are; (1) adaptive capacity, the capacity to reconfigure resources to meet the demands of changing contexts; (2) Agility, the capability to rapidly change strategies and operations rapidly to meet changing circumstances; and (3) Resilience, the capability to withstand difficult operating conditions and continue to pursue chosen strategies.

Both organisations and researchers now realise that to operate in this new context requires rethinking our organisational metaphor. Organisations are now increasingly being viewed through the metaphor of the organisation as a living organism. There is a realisation that organisations are, in reality, complex adaptive systems. Given this view there is a move from a focus on control to one of facilitating the system to achieve required outcomes.

It is evident that these shifts in the context within which organisations operate have significant implications in terms of the role, practices and behaviours of leaders.

The major issues to consider in understanding the leadership context in more detail are:

• Complexity: The need to consider strategies that will work within an increasingly complex environment.

• Employee commitment and engagement: In moving away from a control dominated and ‘engineering’ mind-set to a facilitating one that requires employees to be fully engaged with, and committed to, their work and the organisation.

• Change: In a VUCA context organisations face an increasing need to change and develop the capability to be agile and resilient.

Taken together these contextual shifts give rise to a need for leaders to be able to enable organisations to respond to and implement change effectively. Therefore, we do need to consider what is required of effective change leaders.

We will now consider each of these contextual factors in more detail.

1.1 Complexity

In considering organisations as complex adaptive systems it is inevitable that change will be a constant. Indeed, it is evident that there is a growing realisation that change in itself is a complex process. More recent research into organisations and change has considered the emerging field of complexity theory and the associated development of the ‘new sciences’ as a source of understanding of organisational behaviour and change. A number of authors recognise the difficulties of constructing structured approaches to the management of organisations and argue that using evolutionary theory may lead to greater insight into organisational realities and developments. In applying evolutionary theory to organisations, it is important to distinguish between complicated systems and complex systems. Complicated systems are rich in detail whereas complex systems are rich in structure. Reflecting on this distinction it can be argued that the root of many of the challenges and difficulties faced by organisations is that leaders are trained to solve complicated problems rather than complex ones. Thus, leaders view change, in particular, as a problem that can be analysed and then solved in a linear or sequential manner. However, complex problems require leaders to cope with dilemmas in the system rather than to arrive at definitive solutions.

In applying evolutionary theory to organisations and the changes that they face, there are three models of evolution: natural selection, probability and complexity.

• Natural selection: The fittest or most adapted to the environment are selected; there is a gradual steady rate of change that is only visible over a long period of time; variation occurs by chance, not intent.

• Probability: Change results from historic contingency; change may be seen as punctuated equilibrium; sources of change are external.

• Complexity: Organisations are self-organising; organisations are in a process of continual adaptation; change is influenced by sensitivity to initial conditions; change is non-linear; there are increasing returns from changes; change is notable for the emergence of novelty.

The natural selection and probability views of evolution are most closely associated with the ‘traditional’ approaches to the development and management of organisations and associated approaches to dealing with change. However, the complexity view of evolution appears to be the most relevant to today’s context. If the organisation views its evolution in the light of the complexity view, then transformations or developments are effected when the knowledge required for a new form is embodied in a community of practice and is operated by individuals, groups, structures, policies and programmes or networks. In line with this, Blackmore (1998) argues that evolution and change in organisations is a process of displacement where older, less well-adapted technologies or ‘strategic memes’ are replaced by newer forms.

From the above it is evident that the way in which we view organisations needs to move to a complexity view if they are to develop in the VUCA environment in which they now operate. It is equally clear that this shift in mind-set and related practices have significant implications for leaders in today’s organisations. Given the need to embed changes and developments in groups and individuals, it can be argued that we need to build people’s commitment to the developments and engage them with the organisation and the changes that are required in order to evolve and cope with complexity.

2 Employee Commitment and Engagement

There is an enormous growth of interest in how employees engage with their organisations. In part, this results from the changes in the context in which organisations now operate. In today’s environment, there has been a recognition that high levels of employee commitment and engagement (these terms tend to be used interchangeably) are important to the achievement of high levels of performance. Indicative of this is the extent to which organisations undertake annual employee engagement or commitment surveys and use this data to inform organisational and leadership behaviours, policies and practices.

In order to understand what is behind this belief in the importance of this development it is useful to explore the concept of employee commitment in more detail. Far from being a new concept, organisational commitment is one of the most enduring and widely researched concepts in the field of organisational behaviour and leadership. It has tended to characterise the relationship between an individual and an organisation since the 1980s, and along with the job satisfaction, organisational commitment has emerged as a powerful attitudinal predictor of performance outcomes. More recently the construct has been linked to that of employee engagement and has been seen as a component of engagement. Research into the link between organisational policies and practices (specifically those that impact employees) and organisational performance has shown that the leaders play an important, if neglected, role in this link and can have a strong impact on employee attitudes such as organisational commitment. Such findings are consistent with research from the leadership literature (e.g., leader–member exchange and transformational leadership) that shows that the relationship between a leader and follower may be related to outcomes at the individual and organisational levels, including organisational commitment.

Although some studies have tested models of relationships between various antecedents of organisational commitment, these have often focused on the impact of the leader. Whilst job characteristics such as task significance and personal characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy) have also been studied, to date there has been limited investigation of the relative impact of a range of different antecedents on organisational commitment.

Organisational commitment is, typically, seen as a multidimensional construct. An early and influential view was that organisational commitment is ‘the relative strength of an individual’s identification with, and involvement in, a particular organisation’. It is underpinned by three factors: a strong belief in, and acceptance of, the organisation’s goal and values; a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organisation; and a strong desire to retain membership in the organisation. More recently, Allen and Meyer’s (1990) three-component model has become the dominant conceptualisation of commitment. This proposes three types of commitment, which are different in terms of the nature of the relationship that maintains the individual’s membership in the organisation. These are:

• 1. Affective commitment: the employees’ emotional attachment to, identification with, and involvement in, the organisation;

• 2. Normative commitment: based on feelings of loyalty and obligation; and

• 3. Continuance commitment: the commitment based on the costs that employees associate with leaving the organisation.

Many studies of organisational commitment have focused on affective commitment—although the broader term organisational commitment is often employed. Affective commitment has been demonstrated to have a strong correlation with job satisfaction that, in turn, is related to performance. Affective commitment is seen as a specific reflection of an underlying overall job attitude and as a component of ‘state engagement’.

In terms of affective commitment, its importance lies in its relationship to outcomes at both the individual and organisational levels. It has been linked to attendance, performance, organisational citizenship behaviour and, negatively, to absenteeism and turnover. Affective commitment has shown stronger correlations with outcomes than either normative or continuance commitment. A wide range of personal and situational factors have been identified as antecedents of affective commitment. Personal characteristics include age, gender, organisational tenure, education, person-organisation fit and self-efficacy. Situational characteristics include job and organisational characteristics as well as work experiences. The most researched situational characteristics in terms of affective commitment are job characteristics and leadership (particularly in terms of involvement and participative decision-making). While leadership has been seen to have an impact on the broad construct of organisational commitment, there seems to have been inadequate research that has focused specifically on the relationship of the leader and affective commitment. However, some research in this area has shown that perceptions of leadership behaviour have been demonstrated to be significantly related to organisational commitment, as well as to aspects of the job experience including job autonomy, sense of achievement and to job challenge as well as to outcomes including discretionary effort. Accordingly, leaders are critical for the implementation of policies and practices that impact employees’ practices and their behaviours are critical for employee satisfaction with them and with outcomes at the individual and organisational levels. Improving the capabilities of leaders in people management is thus an important task for organisations.

In exploring the development of commitment and the leader’s role it is worth noting that the literature on transformational leadership and on leader–member exchange provides additional support for the potential impact of leaders on organisational commitment. It is notable that these findings relate to leadership theories that are engaging and facilitating rather than overly leader-centric. Within the broader view of leadership as a distributed and relational process there is increasing evidence that an engaging approach to leadership is positively associated with work attitudes and behaviours at an individual and organisational level. Such leaders transform and enable their followers to realise their aspirations, encourage them to achieve their full potential and provide meaning in the work and challenge, thereby enhancing followers’ level of self-efficacy, confidence, sense of meaning and self-determination and their greater sense of empowerment.

Whilst leader behaviours are a clear antecedent of affective commitment, Higgs and McBain (2009) found that there were two further important factors, which had a positive impact on commitment. These were.

2.1 Nature of Work

It was noted above that perceptions of the leader are related to aspects of job experience since the leader has a critical role in setting the context for performance. However, in this study the nature of work that has emerged is a very important facet of the job and an important situational influence on employee attitudes. The research suggested that the nature of the work employees undertake possesses intrinsically motivating characteristics, with five core dimensions: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. The inclusion of high levels of these characteristics produced higher levels of motivation, work performance, job satisfaction and organisational commitment.

2.2 Autonomy and Control

Within the literature on the nature of work, autonomy has been identified as one of the core dimensions of jobs or work roles. In addition to such situational factors, the Higgs and McBain (2009) study indicated the importance of personal characteristics and the interaction of these with the work context as antecedents of organisational commitment. One finding that is relevant in this context is that of the importance of self-efficacy or a person’s judgement of their capabilities to organise and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances. Self-efficacy was shown to be correlated with organisational commitment. It was also found that a sense of empowerment was an important component of autonomy. In particular, it was empowerment that enabled individual freedom to contribute to the way in which they performed their job roles that was important. The extent to which employees have belief in having the resources to carry out work tasks and roles successfully and the extent to which they are empowered to do so have implications for individual motivation and impact on commitment. Furthermore, it seems that it is the creation of conditions that lead to autonomous motivation that has the most significant impact on the development of positive organisational commitment. It appeared that autonomous motivation resulted from a combination of: the nature and design of the work itself; the behaviour of the leader in creating a climate that enhances the possibilities for an individual to realise a sense of autonomy; and related motivation that leads to a higher level of organisational commitment. The element of autonomy raises questions around trust. In particular, the trust that a leader displays, in terms of allowing followers freedom to act. This in turn leads to debates around what has been termed New Ways of Working. For some time there have been debates around allowing employees greater flexibility in terms of where and when they work. This has become manifest in terms of the introduction of remote working and flexible working hours. There has been considerable debate around issues of productivity and performance relating to the introduction of New Ways of Working. Whilst many employers have resisted the introduction of greater flexibility (due to a belief in the need for control), there has been a growth of evidence that the use of flexibility around remote working can lead to improved performance, productivity and engagement. This appears to be particularly the case when there is a mix between remote working and attendance at the place of work.

The nature of this debate changed considerably with the COVID pandemic. During the period of the pandemic there was little alternative to the use of remote working. However, the consequences of this provided further evidence of productivity gains and also, to the surprise of many organisations, higher levels of engagement. The increased flexibility implemented during the pandemic has now become much more of a mainstream way of working for organisations; representing a change to the leadership context that appears to be here to stay.

Reviewing the above summary of commitment and engagement, and its importance to organisations in today’s context, it is evident that leaders need to adopt a more involving and engaging style and to focus on developing a climate that enables employees to contribute and perform effectively.

3 The Challenge of Change

According to many authors, up to 70% of change initiatives fail (e.g., Higgs & Rowland, 2024; Kotter, 1995). However, there is a growing need for organisations to implement major changes in order to be able to respond in a business environment that is becoming increasingly volatile and complex. So what are the reasons for consistent failure and what leads to success?

The problem of failing to manage change is illustrated by Buchanan and Boddy (1992). They report the results of a survey that showed that managers have neither the expertise, nor capacity, to implement change successfully and that managing change according to textbook theory is difficult. A further reason for the failure of change is argued to be that the prevailing theoretical paradigms are based on assumptions that: (1) managers can choose successful mutations in advance of environmental changes; (2) change is a linear process; and (3) organisations are systems tending to states of stable equilibrium. This paradigm has a long history, perhaps beginning with Lewin (1951) who proposed the classic three-stage model of the change process. These three stages are:

• Unfreeze: This stage is about creating the case for change and ensuring that there is dissatisfaction with the status quo.

• Mobilise: Mobilising focuses on identifying and mobilising the resources required to effect the change

• Refreeze: This phase focuses on embedding new ways of working in the organisation.

The centrality of this ‘mental model’ is illustrated by Kotter’s (1995) study of the reasons for failure of major transformational initiatives. The key causes he identified were:

• Allowing too much complacency: Failing to create a compelling case for the change and allowing people to believe that the status quo is tenable.

• Failing to develop a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition: Not paying sufficient attention to building a coalition of key influencers and champions of the change.

• Underestimating the power of vision: Failing to develop a compelling and tangible vision of the desired future state.

• Insufficient communication of the vision: Over-reliance on initial communication of the vision and failing to embed the communication of the vision in the day-to-day conversations that occur in the organisation.

• Allowing obstacles to block the implementation of the vision: Giving up the change implementation if significant obstacles to the change arise.

• Failure to create short-term wins: Transformational change takes place over an extended period. It is important to secure short-term results that indicate that the change is moving forward.

• Declaring victory too soon: Failure can arise if the change is declared to have succeeded before it has been fully implemented.

• Neglecting to anchor the change in the organisational culture: Unless new practices and behaviours are embedded in the culture of the organisation then the change will fail to ‘stick’.

These causes of failure identified by Kotter can readily be mapped onto Lewin’s three-stage model. These views of change encompass assumptions that change, because of its linearity, is a relatively straightforward process and that it can (and should) be driven from the top of the organisation and be implemented uniformly according to a detailed change plan. However, subsequent interpretation of Lewin’s work challenges this simplistic view. In particular, a number of authors challenge the assumption of linearity and suggest that change may in reality be a more complex process. This view is shared by others, whose approaches entail educating managers in a range of change theories, and involving them more actively in the change process by equipping them with practical tools Although seeing change as a more complex process this ‘school’ retains the assumption that change can be implanted uniformly throughout the organisation. However, this assumption of such a ‘one-look’ approach is widely challenged and empirical research has demonstrated that strategic-intent led change programmes often have unpredictable outcomes generated by interactions within the organisation. Similarly, a number of authors present empirical evidence demonstrating the failure of top-down change and the impact of unexpected or unintended outcomes resulting from interactions throughout the system.

Some have responded to these challenges to change models by proposing an approach that, while retaining the assumption of linearity, recognises the need for a more distributed view of the nature of changes. Within this ‘school’ the general seat of change is set at the top of the organisation and agents throughout the organisation are equipped with a range of ‘change tools’ that they can determine how to use in pursuit of the overall direction.

In exploring the developments in arguments relating to change failure and approaches that overcome the challenges, there appear to be two distinct schools of thought. These are:

• Programmatic change: this school of thought sees change as being a process of punctuated equilibrium; an organisation goes from one steady state, through a period of disruptive change and arrives at a new steady state. The characteristics of this approach tend to be:

  • Change is driven from the top and implemented uniformly throughout the organisation.

  • The approach to change is guided by linear thinking.

  • There is an assumption that there is inertia within the organisation and that people need to be encouraged to behave and think differently.

  • The role of the change leader is interventionist and needs to drive the change through the organisation.

  • The only goal of the change is one of enhancing economic value.

• Emergent change: this school of thought sees change as a natural part of the development and evolution of an organisation and views the organisation as a complex adaptive system. The characteristics of this approach tend to be:

  • Change is underpinned by systems thinking.

  • Change can start anywhere in the organisation; particularly at the edge or boundaries of the organisation.

  • There is an assumption that people are naturally self-organising and will readily take the initiative in identifying the need for change and implement new ways of working given the right conditions.

  • The role of the leader is one of facilitator and enabler of sensemaking in the organisation.

  • Whilst the goal of the change contains an element of enhancing economic value it also includes one of building organisational capability.

Although these two worldviews are understood, in practice we have found that the programmatic approach tends to remain fairly dominant (particularly in relation to large-scale change). Overall change continues to be dominated by practice that embodies the following assumptions:

• change needs to be driven from the top of the organisation;

• approaches need to be carefully managed to deliver results; and

• clear, and relatively straightforward, programmes of action need to be established.

It has been argued that much of the research into change and its success fails to consider different elements of change. These can be seen as being: context, content, and process. In more detail these are:

• Context: factors that relate to the organisation’s external and internal environments such as changing competitive environments or the institutionalisation of a public organisation.

• Content: focuses on the content of the change that includes the organisation’s strategies, structures and systems.

• Process: this element describes the interventions and processes that are involved in the implementation of change.

In broad terms most authors in the field tend to look at change from a relatively high level and both authors and researchers tend to pay limited attention to the process element of change. Furthermore, there is often little distinction between types of change that organisations face. There does appear to be an assumption that all types of change can be managed in the same way, or by applying a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model. However, it is clear that different types or scales of change entail different challenges and considerations. Kuipers and colleagues propose a useful typology that identifies different orders of change (Kuipers et al., 2014). These are:

• First-order change: This is change that impacts a sub-system in the organisation (e.g., a department, division). It tends to entail the adaptation of systems or structures and to be incremental and, often not overly disruptive.

• Second-order change: This order tends to impact a number of systems within the organisation. It often entails organisation-wide change and is frequently transformational in nature. As such it tends to be more disruptive than first order change.

• Third-order change: Change that goes across a number of organisations is referred to as third-order change. Often such change impacts all organisations within a sector. We tend to see many examples of such change within the public sector. In the private sector we tend to see change driven by new regulations or disruptive innovation within sub-sectors. In broad terms such change entails significant disruption; even total transformation of a sector.

From this categorisation of change, it is evident that the challenges will differ between different types of change being experienced.

In researching change there has been a dearth of studies that explore the process in detail. A. notable exception to this has been the studies by Higgs and Rowland (2011, 2024) who set out to examine what processes and practices are encountered when organisations engage in change. They interviewed leaders from 20 organisations and each leader provided two change stories. In total they gathered around 100 such stories and subsequently analysed them. Leaders either saw change as:

• Straightforward, linear and predictable or complex and unpredictable.

• Something to be implemented in a consistent way throughout the organisation or something to be implemented in different ways in different parts of the organisation.

By analysing the stories in each category they identified four distinct approaches to implementing change. The characteristics of each approach, which appear to be related to the underlying mind-set informing the change approach, were:

• ‘Directive’ Change (mind-set: ‘I can manage change.’)

  • What has to be done is set top down and tightly controlled.

  • In terms of the ‘how’ of the change, people have to follow prescribed steps and recipes.

  • People are provided with the same messages from the centre.

  • Change is driven through separate projects.

  • There is little, if any, investment in building change skills.

  • There is a requirement for 100% alignment—‘you’re in or you’re out’.

  • Leaders say—‘keep it simple, just go do it’.

  • People are engaged by informing them with the aim of getting ‘buy in’.

• ‘Self-Assembly’ Change (mind-set: ‘Launch enough initiatives and something will stick.’)

  • There is centralised direction, with detail and accountability left to local management.

  • Standard tools and templates are handed out to the field for local implementation.

  • There is the adoption of a ‘Pick ‘n mix’ approach— people can select what they need to do at local level.

  • The content of the change is defined; the process is up to local leaders.

  • Support teams and ‘help desks’ are set up to provide advice on how to implement the change.

• ‘Master’ Change (mind-set: ‘I trust people to solve things with us’.)

  • What has to be done is set top down, tested with others, and open to adjustment.

  • Change is guided by a common plan, agreed projects and consistent language.

  • People are involved to sense what’s going on and build their responsibility for figuring things out.

  • Effort is invested in building skills in leading change, including how to help people through it.

  • Networks are set up to build connections across the organisation.

  • Effort is made to understand who is important for the change and to identify how to get and keep them on board.

• ‘Emergent’ Change (mind-set: ‘I can only create the conditions for change to happen’.)

  • Within an overall purpose, the direction is adjusted as people make sense of what is needed.

  • Leaders establish a few ‘big rules’ that guide what people can do.

  • People can then get on with things as they see fit.

  • Initiatives start in a small way and build up from there

  • Informal networks are used to build understanding and energy.

  • People work step by step; there is no need to figure out the whole plan in advance

  • Leaders go to the ‘hot spots’ where things are bubbling up and draw people’s attention to them.

Within this framework, they found that Directive change tended only to succeed where the change was internally driven and was, essentially, first-order change. Self-Assembly change was not found to be successful in any context. Master and Emergent change seemed to be successful across a range of contexts and, in particular, were successful in implementing second-order change. They drew this together in terms of understanding change in the context of complexity and asserted that:

• Change approaches that tend to be programmatic and rooted in a viewpoint, that see change initiatives as linear, sequential, and, consequently, predictable tended to fail in most contexts.

• Approaches that recognise change as a complex responsive process and embed this recognition within the overall change process tend to be successful across most contexts.

Overall, they concluded that:

Doing change to people (i.e., Directive and Self Assembly) is likely to be unsuccessful, whereas doing change with people (i.e., Master and Emergent) is more likely to lead to successful implementation.

Once again, this highlights an increasing need to develop leadership that adopts an engaging and facilitating style as well as taking account of the context.

4 Follower Commitment to Change

The high level of rates of change failure are rarely attributed to technical issues alone, more often they are asserted to result from human dynamics. Indeed, research on change management has often been criticised for neglecting the human dynamics of change. It has been argued that organisational failure to create readiness for change is one of the core reasons for the lack of success of many organisational change programmes. Hence, researchers have emphasised the importance of employees’ reaction to change and their willingness to engage in the change as key success factors. Many see this as being related to the considerations of employee commitment. With this in mind more recent research has shifted towards investigating how employees’ intentions to support and engage in organisational change initiatives are formed. In line with these arguments there is a case for integrating research into employee reactions to change and how these reactions impact on behaviour and commitment to the change.

The concept of commitment to change has been derived from the broader organisational commitment literature (outlined above). Research into the link between leadership and organisational performance has shown that the leader plays an important role in this link and can have a strong impact on employee attitudes such as organisational commitment. Accordingly, leaders are critical for the implementation of change, and their behaviours are critical for employee satisfaction with them and with outcomes at the individual and organisational levels.

Until recently, little attention has been paid to the experiences and behaviours of leaders in the change process, and the impact of these behaviours on the success or failure of change. These studies have tended to explore both leader behaviours and change outcomes at the meso and micro levels. The relatively few studies that examine leadership impact on change have tended to examine the role and behaviours of top/senior leaders. However, within the broader leadership literature there is an increasing view that leadership is a more distributed function and that managers at all levels in the organisation can play a significant leadership role in change implementation. It is also suggested that the behaviours of leaders in change implementation will impact the behaviours and commitment of followers to the change. In particular, it has been pointed out that the framing of issues by leaders provides a structure that guides follower sensemaking. In a similar vein, the concept of authentic leadership is positioned as enabling followers to develop commitment to goals through the clarity and frame provided by the leader. This is seen to enable followers to develop their potential and contribute to goal achievement that, in turn, builds commitment to the change. It is evident that the principles of involvement and engagement, considered in the earlier broader discussion of employee commitment, apply even more significantly within the context of change. Furthermore, research has demonstrated that achieving high levels of employee commitment to change is essential for effective change implementation.

Given the emerging focus on the leaders’ roles and behaviours in change, as a significant antecedent of success, we now turn to considering the area of leadership and change.

5 Leadership and Change

In exploring the leadership context we have suggested that there is a growing realisation that a major issue facing organisations is that of managing continuous change. Increasingly, organisations are facing the reality that the future is not one of incremental improvement or adjustment, but rather one of radical change or reinvention of the business. However, the evidence of organisations’ ability to cope effectively with radical change is somewhat limited. To lead an organisation through such a change process takes considerable skill, ability and personal commitment.

Although much of the change literature examines the processual issues surrounding change implementation, there is a growing interest in the role of leadership in successful change implementation. Whilst the area of change leadership is really at its early stages of development, there is clear and growing evidence that the role of leaders in the change process does significantly affect the success of change. In the general leadership literature the beliefs and mind-sets of leaders have been shown to influence their orientation of choices and approaches to problem solving. Thus, it may be implied that leaders’ behaviours will influence their approach to change and its implementation. However, it has been asserted that the role and behaviours of leaders in a change context per se has been an area that is lacking in empirical research. The transformational leadership model (Bass, 1990) has been one that has been the subject of much empirical investigation (as discussed above). This stream of research does demonstrate clear linkages between leader behaviours and a variety of ‘follower’ behaviours and performance measures. However, this research generally fails to link directly with the change literature. Within the leadership literature, there have been criticisms that the predominantly quantitative approach fails to provide insights into the actual behaviours of leaders.

Perhaps the most dominant model of change leadership to date has been that proposed by Kotter (1995) who developed this from his work on causes of change failure. He proposed the following components of successful change leadership:

• 1. Establishing a sense of urgency. In essence, making the case for change and the need to act quickly.

• 2. Forming a powerful coalition. Ensuring that key players are working together to lead the change effort.

• 3. Creating a vision. Ensuring that a clear picture of the desired and possible future is established and an overall means of realising this vision is established.

• 4. Communicating the vision. Working actively to ensure that everyone in the organisation understands the new vision and the strategies for achieving it.

• 5. Empowering others to act on the vision. Having established and communicated the vision, working to enable others to contribute to its realisation and removing barriers to change. This entails encouraging new ways of behaving and rewarding those who respond to the challenge.

• 6. Planning for creating short-term wins. Ensuring that the results of actions that are in line with the vision are clearly visible and are planned to result in performance improvements. In addition ensuring that such actions and their results are publicised and visibly acknowledged.

• 7. Consolidating improvements and producing still more change. Building on the ‘early wins’ and their value to encourage greater effort to pursue the change goals. Publicly acknowledging and promoting those who are contributing to the new vision and to securing significant changes.

• 8. Institutionalising new approaches. Ensuring that all are aware of the relationship between new behaviours and the success of the organisation. Actively working to develop and promote those with the skills and abilities to engage others in the change process.

However, many have suggested that this view of change leadership remains at a relatively high descriptive level. This seems to be typical of studies and models that examine the leader’s role and behaviour in the change process. Few studies have moved beyond generic descriptions. Exceptions to these are the studies reported by Higgs and Rowland who have specifically linked leadership behaviours to activities involved in implementing change. In an early study they identified five broad areas of leadership competency associated with successful change implementation:

• 1. Creating the case for change: Effectively engaging others in recognising the business need for change;

• 2. Creating structural change: Ensuring that the change is based on depth of understanding of the issues and supported with a consistent set of tools and processes;

• 3. Engaging others in the whole change process and building commitment;

• 4. Implementing and sustaining changes: Developing effective plans and ensuring good monitoring and review practices are developed; and

• 5. Facilitating and developing capability: Ensuring that people are challenged to find their own answers and that they are supported in doing this.

Furthermore, they found very strong linkages between these capabilities and elements of EI (discussed in earlier chapters). In exploring this work further, Higgs and Rowland (2005) studied specific leadership behaviours within some 70 change stories and their impact on change success in differing contexts. Their analyses identified three broad sets of leadership behaviour, which they categorised as:

• 1. Shaping behaviour: The communication and actions of leaders related directly to the change: ‘making others accountable’, ‘thinking about change’, and ‘using an individual focus’;

• 2. Framing change: Establishing starting points for change: ‘designing and managing the journey’ and ‘communicating guiding principles in the organisation’; and

• 3. Creating capacity: Creating individual and organisational capabilities and communication and making connections.

From their analyses, they demonstrated that leader-centric behaviours (i.e., shaping) had a negative impact on change success in all the contexts examined. This finding tends to endorse the broader critique of the ‘heroic’ and leader-centric models that have dominated research in the leadership field. On the other hand, the more relational group- and systemic-focused behaviours (i.e., framing and creating) were related positively to change success in most of the contexts they examined. These findings tend to align with developments in the broader area of leadership studies. For example, Bartunek (1984) points out that the framing of issues by leaders provides a structure that guides follower sensemaking. In a similar vein, the concept of authentic leadership is positioned as enabling followers to develop commitment to goals through the clarity and frame provided by the leader. This is seen to enable followers to develop their potentiality and contribute to goal achievement. Furthermore, when Higgs and Rowland (2005) examined the relationship between leadership behaviours and change approaches, they found that ‘shaping’ behaviours tended to be more widely encountered within the more programmatic approaches to implementing change, whereas ‘framing’ and ‘creating’ were predominant behaviour sets in approaches that were based on the recognition of change as a complex phenomenon. Furthermore, they identified that leaders who had a notable combination of the ‘framing’ and ‘creating’ behavioural sets appeared to be particularly successful in implementing change across most of the contexts examined.

In a follow-up study with leaders in 33 organisations Higgs and Rowland (2005) used interviews to explore leadership behaviours and practices in more detail. These interview transcripts were coded employing a coding frame based on a combination of:

• 1. The broad categories of leadership behaviour identified in their earlier studies; and

• 2. A review of the emerging models from the leadership literature (see above) and the change leadership literature.

Based on this approach, the final coding frame encompassed their original leadership behaviour sets (i.e., shaping, framing and creating) together with four new categories that appeared to capture behaviours exhibited by leaders combining framing and creating. These new behaviour sets were described as being:

• Attractor: Creates a magnetic energy force in the organisation to pull it toward its purpose. The leaders pull people toward what the organisation is trying to do, not toward them.

• Edge and tension: The leader tests and challenges the organisation; amplifies the disturbance generated by the change process by helping people see the repeating and unhelpful patterns of behaviour in the culture while at the same time staying firm to keep the change process on course.

• Container: The leader holds and channels energy, which in unnerving times of change, provides calm, confident and affirming signals that allow people to find positive meaning and sense in an anxious situation.

• Transforming space: The leader creates change in the ‘here and now’ based on the assumption that the only thing you can change is the present moment.

In addition, they found continued presence of shaping behaviour.

When they analysed the impact of these new behaviours and practices on change success they found that leaders who exhibited all four of the new behaviours at a high level and minimal shaping behaviours were successful in implementing change across a broad range of contexts. They found that such a pattern of leadership behaviours and practices accounted for 50% of the variation in change success. Thus, once again we see that leadership of change requires a move away from a heroic model to one of engaging and facilitating styles and behaviours.

6 Summary and Conclusion

In this chapter we have seen that our thinking about leadership needs to be set within a context of:

• complexity,

• commitment, and

• change.

The environment and context are one of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). The ‘traditional’ heroic leadership model is ill-fitted for this environment. There is a clear need for leaders to focus on developing a climate that engages employees and enables them to contribute and realise their potential. The need for this shift in focus is particularly critical in the arena of implementing change. Unless the shift happens then we will continue to face a situation in which 70% of change initiatives fail.

We have seen evidence that this ‘new Leadership’ is underpinned by the EI of the leaders. However, it is hopefully clear that leaders also need the cognitive competencies to deal with the complex environment and the managerial competencies to assist in delivering results. Once again we propose that effective leadership (that builds follower commitment) requires:

$$ IQ+ EQ+ MQ $$

Perhaps we can best describe this as being Emotionally Intelligent Leadership. We will explore this idea in more detail in Chap. 8.