reardon.pdf

Leadership Styles for the Five Stages of Radical Change

LEADERSHIP STYLES FOR THE

FIVE STAGES OF RADICAL CHANGE

Dr. Kathleen K. Reardon, Dr. Kevin J. Reardon,

and Dr. Alan J. Rowe

Leadership experts agree that a key challenge facing leaders now and in the

future is responsiveness to radical change. This article continues prior work

on radical change with theory and research on leadership style. The result is a

model of radical change describing the leadership styles best suited to the

successful implementation of each stage in the change process. Using the

Leadership Style Inventory, leaders can determine which stages of radical change

they are equipped to handle. The article explores how individual and group

leadership style limitations can be dealt with to ensure radical change success.

leadership now and in the next cen-

tury is proactive and effective re-

sponsiveness to change. Experts agree that

successful leaders must be flexible and ca-

pable of adapting to new conditions, open

to novel alternatives, and willing to take

greater risks (Kotter, 1990; O’Toole,

1996). Too often leaders and managers

address technical dimensions of change

but fail to consider what it takes at each

stage for leaders to actually carry out that

change (Heifetz and Laurie, 1997a; Rowe

and Mason, 1987; Rowe and Boulgarides,

1992).

Leaders who can do these things are

referred to as Strategic Leaders (Reardon

and Rowe, 1998). Such leaders recognize

that most work now involves integration

rather than fractionation of diverse inter-

ests and skills. Multiple styles of leader-

ship are needed to effectively implement

most forms of organizational change. Stra-

tegic leaders accept that they cannot have

all the answers and they take steps to ob-

tain information that effectively guides

their choices. These leaders rely heavily

on communication and persuasion with

employees to advance their enlightened

strategies. When compared to popular

models of leaders of the past, strategic

leaders are far more inclined to be infor-

mation seekers than information

distributors.

Figure 1 depicts the models of leader-

ship from the early 1900s to today. In the

1900s, leadership was equated with those

individuals who did “great” things. These

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TUTORIAL

T he key component of successful

Acquisition Review Quarterly—Spring 1998

leaders had a “can do” attitude based on

experience and determination. They used

their authority to “command” others. By

the 1950s, attention shifted to determin-

ing leader traits and how they fit the situ-

ations in which they function. In the early

eighties, another change took place. This

time the emphasis was on the “visionary”

leader. These leaders inspired others with

insights and shared authority. Today’s

leaders, confronted with explosive change,

need to be “strategic leaders”: sufficiently

versatile to recognize the need for change,

to seek input for developing creative strat-

egies for change, and to inspire others to

adopt those strategies.

According to Max DePree, author of

Leadership Is an Art, leaders are vulner-

able in their day-to-day-jobs. This vulner-

ability of leaders is currently exacerbated

by the information superhighway afford-

ing access to extraordinary amounts of in-

formation. Leaders are confronted with far

too many choices, as predicted by Alvin

Toffler’s 1980 forecast. He warned that

this would inhibit action, result in greater

anxiety and lead to feelings of exhaustion.

Today’s leaders also work with employ-

ees who are more diverse than those of

their predecessors and customers and sub-

sidiaries spread worldwide. Under such

conditions, no single leader can possibly

have all the answers or all of the styles

required to accomplish the myriad tasks

confronting him or her each day.

To effectively respond to the current

chaotic environment, leaders must recog-

nize their own strengths and weaknesses.

They must understand the extent to which

their leadership styles are suited to the

demands they face and consider the types

of people they need at their side to comple-

ment their styles. This is particularly im-

portant when organizations undergo

Kathleen K. Reardon, Ph.D., is professor of management and organization at the University of

Southern California Marshall School of Business. She is the author of five books, including

Persuasion in Practice (Sage), and They Don’t Get It, Do They? (Little, Brown), and numerous

journal articles on communications, negotiation, persuasion, and leadership. She is a multiple-

time author for The Harvard Business Review and served on their McKinsey Award Panel in

1995. Dr. Reardon has been a consultant and speaker for such organizations as AT&T, Xerox,

ITT, Caregroup, CIGNA, Northrop, ARCO, NASA Jet Propulsion Labs, and Hewlett-Packard.

Kevin J. Reardon, Ph.D., is a 1968 Distinguished Graduate of the United States Naval Acad-

emy. He received an Ph.D. degree in operations research and an M.S. degree in statistics from

Stanford University in 1974. He is a certified Navy nuclear engineer and attended executive

management training at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Dr.

Reardon served in the U.S. Navy as a submarine officer for 27 years, commanded two nuclear

submarines, and retired at the rank of Captain. He is currently director of business strategy for

the Inter-National Research Institute in Reston, VA.

Alan J. Rowe, Ph.D., is emeritus professor of management and organization at the University

of Southern California Marshall School of Business. He has published extensively in such areas

as decision making, artificial intelligence, expert systems, information systems, and strategic

management. He has served on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Review, Man-

agement Science, Journal of Industrial Engineering, and Management Information Systems

Quarterly. Dr. Rowe has served as a consultant to such organizations as General Electric, Hughes

Aircraft, IBM, Kaiser Permanente, and Lockheed Corporation.

130

Leadership Styles for the Five Stages of Radical Change

2000

Strategic

Leader

1950

Visionary

Leader

1900

Great

Leader

Dictates

Motivates

Learns

Figure 1. Models of Leadership

radical change. This article addresses the

styles of leadership needed to accomplish

organizational change and addresses the

question: Can any single leader possess

the styles needed to lead at every point in

the change process?

that it also describes combinations of the

basic styles called “patterns.” These pat-

terns help to describe the complexity be-

hind leader behavior and competence for

radical change.

The commanding style focuses on per-

formance and has a short-term goal ori-

entation. Commanders are highly produc-

tive and results oriented. They can be very

effective when goal achievement is the

primary focus. They learn better by their

own successes and failures than by input

from others.

The logical style pertains to leaders

who insist on covering all alternatives.

They have long-term goals, use analysis

and questioning, and learn by reason-

ing things through. They are particularly

effective when the goal is strategy

development.

The inspirational style is characteris-

tic of those who are able to develop

meaningful visions of the future by fo-

cusing on radically new ideas; they learn

E XPLANATION OF L EADERSHIP S TYLES

The leadership styles shown in Figure 2

were derived from work on the Leader-

ship Style Inventory (LSI) developed by

Rowe, Reardon, and Bennis (1995). The

inventory identifies differences in style

used by leaders that are based on the fol-

lowing two questions: How adaptive are

leaders when dealing with the issues they

face? How do leaders communicate with,

persuade, and energize employees in the

process of change?

The LSI identifies four basic styles:

commanding, logical, inspirational, and

supportive. One of its major strengths is

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Acquisition Review Quarterly—Spring 1998

Leader

Focuses

Persuades

Makes

Learns

style

changes

Commanding

Results

Directing

Rapidly

Doing

Logical

Innovation

Explaining

Carefully

Studying

Inspirational

Opportunities

Creating trust

Radically

Questioning

Supportive

Facilitating work

Involvement

Slowly

Listening

Figure 2. Leadership Styles (LSI)

by experimentation. They show a high

level of concern for assuring cohesiveness

of members of the organization and en-

couraging others to follow the vision.

They are inquisitive, curious, and satis-

fied by finding radically new solutions.

Those leaders who are more concerned

with consensus score high in the support-

ive dimension. They emphasize openness

and operate more as facilitators than di-

rectors. They learn by observing outcomes

and how others react to their decisions.

Most leaders do not possess a single

style, but a combination. These combina-

tions indicate which styles leaders are pre-

disposed to use. Inventory scores indicate

leader style predispositions. 1 A summary

of how each style influences behavior in

critical areas of leadership is discussed in

Figure 2 (Rowe, Reardon, and Bennis,

1995).

American business executives tend to

score high on the commanding style and

low on supportive. Research using the LSI

provides the following means for Ameri-

can executives: commanding, 86; logical,

80; inspirational, 81; supportive, 53. The

means provide an indication of style pre-

dispositions. Style patterns, however, are

not necessarily static. It is possible, even

preferable, for leaders to develop the ca-

pacity to adapt their styles to the demands

of situations, especially when their orga-

nizations are undergoing radical change.

A C ASE FOR L EADER V ERSATILITY

IN THE C HANGE P ROCESS

The strongest case for versatility in

leadership style comes from the recogni-

tion that change is not an event but an ex-

tended process. Each stage of that process

benefits from different leadership orienta-

tions. Strategy researchers have proposed

that change involves at least three stages:

initiation, formulation, and implementa-

tion (Webb and Dawson, 1991; Pettigrew,

1987; Child and Smith, 1987, Rajagopalan

and Spreitzer, 1994. Another model (Rowe

and Mann, 1988) proposed four factors in

the change process: Decision maker’s

1 LSI scores are derived by adding down the four columns of the inventory. The four derived scores (one for

each style) total 300. Means are based on the inventories of hundreds of American executives in the Marshall

School executive MBA program and those in businesses with which we’ve consulted.

132

Leadership Styles for the Five Stages of Radical Change

style, organizational culture, employees’

willingness to change, and acceptance of

change based on a match among values,

culture, and decision style.

John Kotter (1990) proposed that lead-

ing change requires: establishing direc-

tion, aligning people, and motivating and

inspiring. Our model, depicted in Figure

3, draws upon Kotter’s model but adds two

stages described by Kotter but not specifi-

cally stated in his model: launching and

maintaining.

While Kotter implies the existence of

launching in the aligning stage of his

model, we propose that separating it out

is imperative to understanding the pro-

cesses involved in radical change, espe-

cially that of leadership. Small or incre-

mental changes often do not require a for-

mal launch. They can be introduced in

small doses with change hardly being no-

ticed. Radical change, however, demands

that people depart drastically from the

status quo and often that they do so in a

limited period of time. Launching takes

the place of introducing change in dribs

and drabs.

Our reasons for clearly articulating the

existence of a maintenance phase comes

from persuasion theory and practice.

People resist change, especially radical

change. Persuasion research indicates that

choosing to comply, rather than being

forced into it, leads to longer adherence

to change. Radical change requires more

than mere compliance. It requires private

acceptance. This occurs when employees

actually believe in the need for change and

are therefore willing to relinquish old

modes of working in favor of long-term

new ones.

Achieving private acceptance is an

across-phase process from planning the

change through to maintaining it. Over-

looking the maintenance phase is a sig-

nificant oversight in any model of change.

Private acceptance doesn’t assure that a

change will endure; it merely sets the stage

for that result. Employees must be

encouraged to continue the change even in

the face of occasional obstacles. We empha-

size maintenance, especially in a model

of radical change, since perceived failures

can send employees rushing back to prior,

once-mastered ways of doing things.

The primary impetus for this paper is

not so much to expand upon prior models

of change, but to emphasize and develop

an understanding of the role that the lead-

ership style plays at every stage of that

process. Leadership style and organiza-

tional change

theory and re-

search have ex-

isted for de-

cades, but have

rarely con-

joined. The concept of the leader being

suited to the task is found throughout lead-

ership literature as far back as Plato. He

argued that while it’s appropriate to turn

to a physician to solve medical problems,

a philosopher-king is needed to resolve

problems of public policy. Heifetz (1994)

suggests that the same is true today within

organizations. For what Heifetz describes

as adaptive change, “authority must look

beyond authoritative solutions” (p. 87).

To do this requires flexibility in style

within the organization. Launching radi-

cal change, for example, is a substantially

different process than maintaining it. As

such it requires a different leadership style

orientation.

To date, researchers and leadership

experts have discussed the need for

133

“People resist

change, especially

radical change.”

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