IJCM Vol.

16 (1), 2006

SEVEN LEADERSHIP ROLES

Farid A. Muna

In 1973, Henry Mintzberg examined what managers really do in his classic book The Nature of
Managerial Work. His research debunked some of the myths surrounding managerial tasks at
that time (1). Thirty two years have passed since he described the following ten managerial roles
under three categories:

Interpersonal roles: Figurehead, Leader, Liaison

Informational roles: Monitor, Disseminator, Spokesman
Decisional roles: Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator, Negotiator.

Today, we know much more about managers and leaders, and the roles they play to carry out
their responsibilities. There are probably over twenty leadership roles described in current
management literature. Acknowledging my own bias, I have selected for this article seven roles
which I believe are essential for effective leaders in today’s global business environment. While
one can easily justify writing an entire book on each role, I shall briefly describe these roles
using seven metaphors.

1. LEADER AS GARDENER

Gardeners have four main tasks: they prepare the soil; select the seeds; take care of the
garden; and harvest. And so do leaders when cultivating human resources (2).
Preparing the soil in organizations means laying down the infrastructure such as creating
the right corporate culture, establishing effective policies, systems and practices for HR, and
linking technical and human competencies to strategy. Selecting the seeds means recruitment and
selection of talented and self-motivated people. This is probably the most critical task which a
leader is involved in; otherwise, one ends up with the problem of GIGO: garbage in, garbage out.
Taking care of the garden includes watering and fertilizing (compensation, training, and career
development), pruning and weeding (succession planning, evaluating performance, coaching,
and terminating the employment of problem employees). Harvesting is celebrating success with
good rewards, promotions; as well as seeing better quality, higher customer loyalty, increased
market share, and superior return on equity.
In the final analysis, leaders reap what they sow.

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2. LEADER AS CANADA GOOSE

There are three lessons that leaders can learn from Canada geese (3).

Work as a team
These birds migrate long distances flying in V formation. This formation results in lesser
wind resistance, which allows the whole flock to add around 70 per cent greater flying range
than if each bird flew alone. Any bird that leaves the formation risks punishment from the wind
or from its colleagues. Geese find out quickly that it pays handsomely to be team players.

Wise leadership
When the leader at the apex of the V gets tired, he is relieved by another goose. Leaders
rotate, empower, delegate, and even step down when it’s in the best interest of the team. How
often do we see this taking place among organizational leaders? Wise leaders ensure that their
followers are well trained and developed in order to achieve true empowerment and smooth
succession processes.

Humane behavior
If a goose drops to the ground when it gets hurt or sick, two of its
colleagues go down with it to take care of it until it either gets healthier or dies. Unfortunately, in
this fast-paced and competitive age, we seldom see managers going out of their way to help
colleagues who are in trouble. Finally, Canada geese display other caring behavior: they are
family-oriented; they mate for life, and are very protective of their goslings. In organizations,
morale, productivity, and loyalty increase when employees are treated humanely.

3. LEADER AS ABACUS

The ancient talent of handling numbers with a Chinese abacus is a must for today’s
business leaders. In a recent interview with Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins of Dell Computers,
which appeared in Harvard Business Review (4), they emphasized that, as a general manager at
Dell, “You’re in trouble if you don’t understand the P&L (profit and loss statement).” This
advice is straightforward and accurate—effective leaders have to be finance-oriented, in addition
to their areas of strength whether it is marketing, manufacturing, strategy, and so on. Arguably, a
few of the leaders caught up in recent corporate scandals simply did not have a firm grip of their
company’s true financial picture.
Wise leadership is about increasing the long-term value of the organization by containing
overhead and operating expenses while at the same time increasing growth and profit margins.
Undoubtedly, this role cannot be abdicated or totally delegated to the chief financial officer.
Leaders must understand at least the basics of finance and budgeting; de-mystifying corporate
finance and its jargon is not nearly as difficult as one would expect. Like anything else, it simply
takes a wise leader who works hard, surrounds himself with competent people, and is able and
willing to ask hard questions.

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4. LEADER AS CAPTAIN

Leaders are like captains. Captains certainly know their destination and how to get there.
Similarly, effective leaders set the direction and the strategy for their organizations. They also
create a culture of accountability and a disciplined execution of strategy. Other leaders, on the
other hand, are more akin to explorers. Explorers are visionaries who thoughtfully challenge
uncharted routes, uncontested territories, and often employ innovative approaches and creative
methods (5). They, too, are skilled at strategy execution.
Whether captains or explorers, a leader’s role is to articulate the purpose/vision of the
organization. A leader must also be able to design a “bridge” to use for the journey towards the
desired future (6). Moreover, a leader builds this bridge with the core ideology and values of the
organization in mind. He or she takes into account the unique competitive advantages, utilizing
the existing capabilities and competencies and creating new ones in order to deliver future
products and services. But more than anything else, leaders (like captains) have the crucial role
of communicating the vision and values of their organizations; they have to reinforce the vision
and values by “walking the talk,” and by continually measuring progress on key metrics. Only
then are they able to inspire and motivate their followers to work smart and hard towards the
goals of the organization.

5. LEADER AS WORLDLY MIND-SET

Culture, according to most definitions, is the way people and societies behave based on
their beliefs, values, norms, customs, and attitudes; which are usually rooted in their geography,
history, religion and philosophy. In brief, culture is a way of life. Worldly leaders are those that
can manage with relative ease across cultural boundaries, be they departmental, corporate, or
country cultures. The term “worldly mind-set’ is borrowed from Mintzberg (7); it is rather
different than “global mind-set” in that it accepts, understands, and respects cultural differences.
Global mind-set, on the other hand, implies convergence over time towards a common culture.
Although the technological revolution, the Web, and the internet have shrunk the world, cultural
differences seem to endure. In short, a leader’s worldly mind-set requires:

a. The ability to use the helicopter view, that is, the ability to see the big picture, the overall
context.

b. Keen awareness and respect for different cultures: inter-organizational (departmental), the
total organization, industry, regions, nations, multinational or multicultural.

c. Bridging various cultures: the skills of empathy and cross-cultural communication.

d. Developing business strategies: taking into account local needs and product/service
preferences; and viewing the whole world as an assortment of diverse marketplaces.

e. Formulating strategies for developing next-generation worldly managers and leaders.

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6. LEADER AS NEGOTIATOR

Every one of us has been negotiating since childhood; we did it with our parents, friends,
and teachers. However, the nature of sports, ranking systems at school, and other competitive
events actively encouraged and rewarded win-lose outcomes. In the business world, where long-
term relationships are required, the difficult (and un-natural) shift to a win-win negotiation style
becomes imperative. The aim is to enlarge the “pie” so that both parties can end up winning.
Creative options and variables are invented so that concessions can be traded whereby both
parties get what they value most. For example, larger quantity will be met with reduced price;
faster delivery or superior service can fetch higher prices or better terms of payments, and so on.
Leaders negotiate with a variety of parties from within their own organizations and from
the outside, from within the same culture and across other national cultures. They negotiate with
employees, customers, suppliers, partners, government officials, just to mention a few.
Incidentally, studies show that national culture is a very important variable which influences the
negotiating style as well as the final outcome. A successful negotiation is one that leads to an
agreement whereby a larger pie is distributed to the parties (8).
Of course, not all negotiations end with win-win outcomes; an astute leader knows when
to walk away from either lose-win or win-lose situations. A leader must also effectively
communicate to his team members that sometimes "no deal" is far better in the long run than a
one-sided or ill-conceived transaction.
Finally, when it comes to strategic decision-making processes in organizations, studies
show that negotiating, bargaining, and coalition building among managers shape the decisions
that an organization makes (9).

7. LEADER AS ACROBAT

There are two sides to this role:

a) Handling multiple tasks in a rapidly-changing business environment; and
b) Balancing work, family, and personal life.

An effective leader is one that has the ability to keep several “balls in the air” and is
keenly aware of the differences between urgent and important tasks. He or she is excellent at
identifying, setting, and communicating business priorities—especially during fast-changing
times. Long-term goals and objectives are always taken into account when setting these
priorities.
Equally important, but possibly much more difficult, is the leader’s ability to balance the
time and energy between one’s career demands, family pleasures and obligations, and personal
life. Try this: draw three circles to represent these areas of your life; the size of each circle
should represent the time and energy you are now spending on each. Are they different sizes? Is
there a large overlap? We know that with age and maturity priorities do change. Ideally, the
circles would be almost the same size for the majority of people who are in mid career, as shown
below.

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Career

Personal Family

When you pause and reflect after reading this article, you will perhaps conclude that the
seven leadership roles described above are not new or surprising in any manner. You are right—
they represent simple lessons that we learned early in our life. But as we grow older and became
more competitive, and as work pressure increases, we tend to overlook the need for applying
these simple lessons at work. Yet despite their simplicity, it is difficult to ignore their
significance for developing effective leadership, whether on the playground or in the board
room.

REFERENCES

Brett, J. (2001). Negotiating globally: How to negotiate deals, resolve disputes, and make
decisions across cultures. Jossey-Bass.
Execution without excuses. (March 2005). An interview with Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins.
Harvard Business Review, 102-111.
Kim, W. C. and Mauborgne, R. (2005). Blue ocean strategy. Harvard Business School Press.
Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. Harper & Row.
Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers not MBAs. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Muna, F. A. (August 2004). Cultivating HR: The leader as gardener. Organizations & People,
11, 3: 18-26.
Muna, F. A. and Mansour, N. (2005). Leadership lessons from Canada geese. Team Performance
Management, 11, 5: 316-326.
Muna, F. A. (2003). Seven metaphors on management: Tools for managers in the Arab world.
Gower Publishing.
Roberto, M. (2005). Why great leaders don’t take yes for an answer. Wharton School Publishing.

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Farid A. Muna (faridmuna@cox.net) is currently Partner and Deputy Chairman of Meirc

Training & Consulting. He studied and worked in both the USA and the Arab world, obtaining
his B.A. in Business from San Diego State University, his MBA from the University of
California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. from the London Business School. Farid wrote several
articles on human resource management, and is the author of The Arab Executive (1980), The
Making of Gulf Managers (1989), and Seven Metaphors on Management (2003). Farid
conducts seminars on HRM, strategy, finance, and leadership in the USA, Europe, the Middle
East, Africa and Japan.

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