"How 'Leading Quietly' Offers Realistic Help with the Difficult, Important Human Problems"
Journal of Organizational Excellence
Summer 2003, pp. 3-16
This unusual article on leadership is written by a Harvard Business School professor who states, "I have observed that the most effective leaders are rarely public heroes. These men and women aren't high-profile champions of causes, and don't want to be. They don't spearhead ethical crusades. They move patiently, carefully and incrementally. They do what is right—for their organizations, for the people around them, and for themselves—inconspicuously and without casualties. I have come to call these people quiet leaders because their modesty and restraint are in large measure responsible for their impressive achievements."
The specific guidelines that quiet leaders often follow are:
- When facing a difficult problem, do not kid yourself about how well you understand the situation or how much you can control.
- In difficult situations, you should expect your motives to be mixed and even confused, but mixed motives can be valuable and useful.
- Count your political capital and spend it carefully.
- If your situation is uncertain or hazardous, find ways to buy time before you do anything.
- Use the time not to moralize or preach, but to drill down into the technical and political aspects of your situation.
- Search hard for imaginative ways to bend the rules.
- Instead of moving aggressively to solve a problem, try to nudge, test, and escalate gradually.
- Finally, don't dismiss compromises as an invaluable practical art and the essence of responsible leadership.
The author gives some cautions, however: "Each of the guidelines for quiet leadership is a two-edged sword, and all of them can become excuses for doing nothing or taking sleazy shortcuts. Hence, each guideline has to be understood fully and examined carefully. The guidelines can also be misleading if they are viewed as the right way to deal with all really hard organizational problems."
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