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Growing the Organization's Leadership Capacity: Beyond "Leader Development"
- B Optimal Team
- Dec 5, 2023
- 13 min read
Updated: Dec 2, 2024
Janine A. Bower, Tim Bower
Overview
Many organizations are finding the “leader development” approach to leadership and change management is doing little to help the organization achieve its strategic objectives. In this article, the authors frame leadership as a collective capacity, and draw implications for a more comprehensive, multi-level approach to developing organizational capacity for leadership and effectuating the kinds of higher-level impacts and outcomes envisioned for leadership development efforts.
What's the Issue?: Leadership is a Collective Capacity
Many organizations are finding leadership development has a pervasive challenge that consistently comes to the forefront – the conventional paradigm, predominantly fixated on individual leader growth, falls short of achieving organizational strategic objectives. The existing approach, encapsulated in most leadership development programs, envisions impacting higher-level goals by cultivating the skills and mindset of individual leaders. However, the resultant transformation often remains confined to personal effectiveness rather than radiating across the broader organizational landscape.
Consider, for instance, the prevalent strategy of enhancing team effectiveness by training appointed and emerging leaders. This approach typically involves developing complex competencies such as empathy, conflict management, and communication, with the expectation that these skills will cascade, or at least trickle into improved team dynamics and, ultimately, organizational success. Yet, the tangible impact on higher-level objectives remains elusive, prompting a critical examination of the underlying assumptions guiding leadership development initiatives.
The heart of the issue lies in the intrinsic limitations of perceiving leadership as an individual-level capacity. While these programs successfully nurture personal leadership attributes, they inadvertently sidestep the collective capacities required for organizations to thrive. This myopic focus results in a significant gap between individual leadership prowess and the transformative outcomes envisaged at the organizational level.
To compound this, the leadership development landscape predominantly overlooks the sociology-backed understanding that leadership is inherently a social process embedded within group dynamics. The consequence is an overly simplistic and unsuccessful approach to organizational change, where individual attitudinal and behavioral shifts are expected to single-handedly reshape complex social structures. Early initiatives, such as those aimed at preventing bullying, vividly illustrate the futility of relying solely on individual change in environments where broader cultural and systemic support is lacking.
In essence, the issue is not merely a misalignment between individual leadership development and organizational goals; it extends to the overarching design of programs that perpetuate an individual-centric narrative.
Developing the leadership capacity of a team or organization requires a different way of thinking about leadership and where it is located and “lives” in the social system; a shift in focus from individual to collective, from roles to relationships, from mindsets and behaviors to social processes and dynamics.
The realization that leadership is a collective capacity, intricately woven into the social fabric of organizations, calls for a paradigm shift. It prompts a reevaluation of the strategies and interventions needed to bridge the gap between individual leadership growth and the holistic, organization-wide transformation we aspire to achieve.
Leadership Is a Process
One way to shift our thinking to understand leadership as a collective capacity is to consider how leadership is commonly defined in the first place. While there is no single agreed-upon definition, leadership is generally understood as a social process that occurs within the context of a group and influences others to attain shared goals. For instance, "Leadership" has been defined as:
“The process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives” (Yukl, 2006, p. 8) [click to expand]
“A process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (Northouse, 2010, p. 3).
“A process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal” (Kruse, 2013).
"Leadership is a process of giving purpose (meaningful direction) to collective effort, and causing willing effort to be expended to achieve purpose” (Jacobs & Jaques, 1990, p. 281).
"Leadership is an attempt at influencing the activities of followers through the communication process and toward the attainment of some goal or goals” (Donelly, Ivancevich, & Gibson, 1985 p. 362).
"Leadership is an influence process that enables managers to get their people to do willingly what must be done, do well what ought to be done” (Cribbin, 1981).
"Leadership is defined as the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement” (Rauch & Behling, 1984).
"Leadership is a process of influence between a leader and those who are followers” (Hollander, 1978).
Even when leadership is defined in terms of behavior, its primary function is still to influence and facilitate collective processes and outcomes. McKinsey & Company, for instance, refers to leadership as “a set of behaviors used to help people align their collective direction, to execute strategic plans, and to continually renew an organization” (emphasis added).
Taken together, these conceptualizations suggest that a quality definition of leadership includes the following logically interrelated attributes:
Leadership is a process.
Leadership involves influencing others.
Leadership happens within the context of a group.
Leadership involves goal attainment; and
These goals are shared by individual leaders and those they are leading.
Leadership Is a Collective Capacity
It’s clear, then, that even though the individual may possess a set of skills, mindsets, and habits for these essential influential behaviors, the behavior that manifests isn’t considered “leadership” unless activated and used in conjunction with other people, and for certain kinds of collective goals and action. Though the individual may embody behaviors for effective leadership and even occupy social positions and roles where leadership behaviors are expected, leadership itself is not an attribute of the individual. Rather, leadership is located in the relationships connecting individuals.
This is evidenced in empirical and theoretical research and in stories of appointed and emerging leaders who–despite their own highly developed competencies, personal attributes, and behaviors to lead others effectively– aren’t achieving the results that they (and others) hoped for in terms of the impact of their “leadership” on the effectiveness and outcomes of their teams, departments, reports, and ultimately the organization.
In the quest for organizational change and improved social dynamics, many initiatives have fallen into the trap of oversimplified approaches and missed the mark. Take, for instance, early endeavors to tackle bullying and other forms of interpersonal violence by enhancing bystander behavior in workplaces and educational settings. These attempts heavily relied on changing individual attitudes and behaviors, overlooking the crucial role of organizational culture and social dynamics. Unsurprisingly, these programs proved unsuccessful, highlighting a fundamental flaw in their design. Individual willingness and capabilities can only flourish in environments where the overall culture and systems support such changes – a factor often overlooked in these well-intended but misguided efforts.
Now, shifting our thinking about leadership as existing in the connections and networks of people shifts our focus from the individual and their personal set of skills and mindsets to the pattern of connections and network of the organization; the teams, mentoring connections, and other dynamic, patterned and enduring relationships.
In terms of “leader development”, this shift focuses our attention on the “social capital that collects around certain individuals” (Balkundi and Kilduff, 2006, p. 421, emphasis added). This includes not only social ties and networks, but also normative capital, like trust and norms of reciprocity, and cognitive capital, like shared vision, purpose, and goals.
“Working through people to achieve a higher goal isn’t the same as working with people to achieve a collective goal.” (J. Bower, 2023).
In terms of “leadership development”, our focus is on the social capital of the collective - not of a single individual. In a team, for example, these resources enable the group to develop a shared perspective on reality and establish common goals and collective intentions. They shape how people see themselves in relation to the team, enable them to perceive the perspectives of their teammates, and empower them to collaborate effectively and contribute to the group’s interests and outcomes.
This is not to say that individual skills and mindsets are unimportant for leadership, or that efforts to promote individual competencies and growth are misguided. Indeed, an individual’s capacity to build, activate, and leverage social capital around them is impacted by “the acuity of their social perceptions and the structure of their social ties” (Van De Valk, 2008).
It is to say that much of what organizations need in terms of “leadership capacity” is not found within individuals but in their dynamic relationships with one another. Moreover, collective capacity for leadership is more than the sum of individuals and their own personal capacities, so training individuals to be “leaders” will not bring about the kinds of higher-level impact and outcomes that developing collective capacities will afford.
The term leadership development “more correctly refers to programs designed to improve the collective leadership ability of a group, organization, or community.” (Van De Valk, 2008).
For many, this is a fundamental shift in the way leadership and its development is understood, treated, and assessed in the context of organizations; from individual to collective, from personal behaviors to group processes. This shift can be seen in research on leadership; whereas earlier leadership theories (e.g. transactional and transformational leadership theory) tended to emphasize those attributes possessed by the individual leader, more contemporary leadership research is focused on the relationships between individuals (Van De Valk, 2008).
By adapting our ideas on and approach to leadership in this way, we acknowledge the team’s capacity for leadership in its own right and these are not equivalent to, nor a sum of, individual-level capacities. We are also better equipped to differentiate between individual and collective capacities for leadership and how they may be cultivated given the level of intervention needed and outcomes desired. And, we gain insight into the nuanced interplay between an individual's capacity to engage the collective and the group’s own capacity for collective action, both essential to working together to achieve shared goals.
So What?: Moving Beyond "Leader Development"
The prevailing approach in the majority of leadership development initiatives centers around defining leadership primarily in terms of developing individual capacity and behavior.
Based on our understanding of leadership as a collective capacity, “programs that address only individual skills and abilities should be referred to as leader development programs. Programs that develop the collective leadership capacity of groups, [even] without addressing individual skills and abilities, should be considered leadership development programs” (Van De Valk, 2008)
A more holistic approach to cultivating organizational leadership capacity necessitates a dual focus on individual and group levels. This comprehensive approach integrates various strategies and programs to develop, enable, access, leverage, and sustain a set of group-level capacities essential for collective action. The benefits of this approach include:
Clearer Distinction: A more evident separation between individual and collective capacities for leadership emerges, facilitating a nuanced understanding of their components, intricacies, and interplay.
Guided Development: Organizations and their support networks, including consultants and coaches, gain guidance on developing, activating, and capitalizing on group-level capacities for leadership embedded in workplace cultures, structures, and social dynamics.
Realistic Expectations: The approach enables organizations and individuals to establish pragmatic, meaningful, and measurable expectations for the impact of "leader development" programs on both individual and group-level performance and outcomes.
Challenges Illuminated: By highlighting the challenges faced by skilled individuals attempting to execute leadership behaviors in organizations that treat leadership predominantly as an individual capacity, the approach underscores the limitations of such myopic perspectives.
Now What? Growing Organizational Capacity for Leadership
Enhancing the leadership capabilities at the group level necessitates a nuanced yet pivotal shift in the conceptualization, design, and implementation of leadership development within the organization, guided by its appointed leaders. Drawing insights from research on collective action and social capital provides a valuable foundation for understanding the normative, cognitive, and structural resources required at the group level. These include, but are not necessarily limited to:
Collective Intention: Establishing a shared commitment to working collaboratively towards common objectives.
Self-Organizing Dynamic Systems: Fostering adaptive, dynamic structures that allow the group to self-organize efficiently.
Clear, Transparent, Well-Trained Roles: Defining roles with clarity, and transparency, and ensuring individuals are equipped with the necessary training to fulfill their responsibilities.
Ability to Make Sense Together: Developing a shared understanding that enables the group to collectively interpret information and situations. (Thonhauser & Weichold, 2021).
The table below shows how these concepts can be translated into tangible objectives for developing the organization’s leadership capacity at both individual and group levels. The table provides examples of individual and collective capacities for leadership, their differentiation and interconnectedness across three essential functions of organizational leadership: 1) creating a common purpose, 2) collaborating to achieve common goals, and 3) communicating effectively.
Table: Examples of Individual and Collective Capacities for Leadership
Individual Capacities | Collective Capacities |
|---|---|
Skills Knowledge Mindsets Competencies Behaviors Individual Connections & Networks | Workplace Culture (e.g. Norms, Values, Stories) Structures Processes Group Connections & Networks |
Creating Common Purpose | |
Able to think strategically and analytically. Has a clear and aligned sense of purpose and direction and understands how their own work contributes to higher-level goals and objectives. Can set clear and achievable standards, goals, and expectations and assess progress. Can inspire and motivate others. | Shared vision and goals. Shared objectives that give meaning to the group’s work and are aligned with those of the organization. Shared understanding of key steps towards achieving goals and how progress is measured. |
Collaboration to Achieve Common Goals | |
Understands critical skills and knowledge required to do the job effectively and contribute to the success of others and the team. Enables others to understand their roles and how they contribute to higher goals. Employs personal strengths, knowledge, and talents to complement those of others. Acts with accountability to self, others, and the organization. Embraces development opportunities and seeks out feedback for self-improvement. Operates with a growth-oriented mindset. | Clear, transparent, and dynamic roles and responsibilities, and areas and levels of autonomy of the team. Clear pathways and relevant, accessible resources for continuous learning, development, innovation, and adaptation. Structural strategies for collective success, such as role sharing and cross-training. Norms for collective success, such as diffuse reciprocity and help-seeking. |
Effective Communication | |
Employs active listening, persuasion, and influencing skills. Communicates in a clear and organized manner so that others can understand. Seeks out and gives constructive feedback. Frames communication with respect to diversity of learning and communication styles and cultural differences. | Communication structures and norms that facilitate effective and efficient communication, interaction, and relationship building. Internal and external feedback loops. |
Integrating this more holistic approach to leadership development into practice involves empowering an organization's teams, mentoring connections, and other relationships with the autonomy, guidance and support, and resources and tools to build and sustain the collective capacity to achieve common goals. This is in addition to developing individuals and their capacity to influence others toward goal achievement, whether or not they are appointed and emergent leaders.
Programs aimed at developing the organization or group’s leadership capacity must move beyond “leader development” to integrate approaches, strategies, and activities that are group-oriented and designed to impact group-level capabilities and outcomes. Resources, in the form of learning materials, job tools, guidance, and support, should enable, encourage, empower, and engage the organization's groups - its teams, mentoring connections, departments, and other networks - to collectively:
facilitate shared vision, purpose, and goals and their alignment;
define the work needed and resources required and available to successfully meet goals and objectives;
have clear and transparent norms, roles, areas and levels of autonomy, and expectations among team members;
develop effective communication practices and strategically built-in loops for constructive feedback;
establish group norms that guide individual and collective action, from giving respectful peer feedback to making tough decisions and dealing with conflict.
Conclusion
In synthesizing insights from sociology, management, and related disciplines, we advocate for a more comprehensive approach to leadership and its development. By defining leadership as a collective capacity and illustrating its differentiation and connection to the individual capacity to lead, we provide organizations with a nuanced perspective. This shift, when integrated into existing leadership development approaches, empowers organizations to adopt a more informed and holistic stance towards leadership in teams and organizations.
This exploration underscores the limitations of traditional "leader development" approaches, which predominantly concentrate on individual skills. We contend that true leadership effectiveness transcends individual competence, residing instead in the collective capacities of teams and organizations. This reframing is pivotal for organizations seeking higher-level impacts and outcomes from their leadership development efforts.
As organizations grapple with the challenges of the modern corporate landscape, understanding and embracing leadership as a collective endeavor becomes paramount. By acknowledging the social nature of leadership and focusing on group-level capacities, organizations can forge a path toward resilience, adaptability, and sustained success. The implications of this paradigm shift extend beyond individual skill enhancement to the broader realm of organizational dynamics, shaping the very fabric of leadership within teams and across the entire organization.
In conclusion, there is a need for a paradigmatic shift in how leadership is perceived, developed, and implemented. By recognizing leadership as a collective capacity, organizations can embark on a transformative journey that aligns individual and group-level efforts, realizing the true potential of their teams and fostering a culture of collaborative and impactful leadership.
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Janine Bower is an organizational sociologist and celebrated experiential educator. As an Organizational Learning & Design Consultant and co-founder of B Optimal Consulting, LLC, Janine is driven by a commitment to fostering healthy work and learning environments by helping organizations build cultures for better collaboration and teamwork, mentoring, and leadership. Follow Janine on LinkedIn.
Tim Bower is an Empowerment Architect and the key designer behind the 7-HTL framework. As part of a dedicated team of outfitters, he specializes in equipping coaches, mentors, and people developers with the insights, strategies, and tools necessary to inspire transformational leadership. Tim is passionate about empowering others to unlock their potential and create impactful change within their organizations B Optimal
Follow Tim on LinkedIn
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