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3. C P Y E N F O U N D A T I O N
“In Praise of
the Incomplete
Leader”
June 2011
No leader is perfect. The best ones don’t try to be - they stereotypical ways: good & bad guys, victims &
concentrate on honing their strengths and find others who oppressors, marketers & engineers.
can make up for their limitations. 3. Testing conclusions by sharing observations from small
experiments; and look for new ways to articulate
We’ve come to expect a lot from our leaders; they should alternatives and to understand options.
understand immense complexity, inspire commitment to the
right vision, transform strategy into results... but this myth of
the complete leader, the flawless person at the top who’s got it Relating
all figured out (and the accompanying fear of appearing
incompetent), leads many executives to exhaust themselves Many leaders attempting to foster trust, optimism and
and damage their organizations in the process. The consensus reap cynicism and frustration instead because they
“incomplete leader” who understands his/her strengths and have difficultly relating to people who make sense of the
weakness, engages leadership throughout the organizational world differently than they do. Building networks of trusting
hierarchy wherever expertise, vision, new ideas and relationships is a requirement of effective leadership today.
commitment are found. The MIT Leadership Center Three key ways to strengthen our ability to relate are:
developed a model of four capabilities that enable distributed
leadership, they are: 1. Inquiring,
2. Advocating, and
1. Sensemaking: understanding the context in which an 3. Connecting.
organization of people operate.
2. Relating: building relationships within and across Inquiring means listening with the intention of genuinely
organizations. understanding the thoughts and feelings of the speaker. The
listener suspends judgment and genuinely tries to
3. Visioning: creating a compelling picture of the future. comprehend how & why the speaker has moved up the ladder
4. Inventing: developing new ways to achieve the vision. of inference from data to interpretations and generalizations
(read about the Ladder of Inference in the October 2010
These capabilities span the intellectual, interpersonal, newsletter “Learning Organizations/
rational, intuitive, conceptual and creative capacities required
in today’s organizational environment (read the April 2010 Advocating means explaining one’s own point of view. It is
newsletter “Prototypings/ to observe parallels the opposite of inquiring and is how leaders communicate to
between the four capabilities and the U process). Rarely, if others how they reached their interpretations and conclusions.
ever, will someone be equally skilled in all four Good leaders distinguish observations from their opinions
competencies. Incomplete leaders cultivate good judgement and judgments and explain their reasoning without aggression
on how to work with others to build their strengths and offset or defensiveness.
their limitations.
Balancing inquiring and advocating is ultimately about
showing respect, challenging opinions, asking questions and
Sensemaking taking a stand.
Leaders who are strong in Sensemaking quickly capture the Connecting involves cultivating a network of confidants who
complexities of their environment and explain them to others help a leader accomplish a wide range of goals. Leaders
in simple terms. At IDEO, a product design firm, strong in connecting understand that time spent building and
Sensemaking is step #1 for brainstorming a new design; maintaining these connections is an investment in their own
IDEO’s teams act as anthropologists to understand a product leadership skills. Because no one person can even know the
from as many points of view as possible. right questions to ask, it’s crucial that leaders be able to tap
into networks of people who can fill in the gaps.
Sensemaking involves:
Sensemaking and Relating are the enabling conditions of
1. Getting data from multiple sources. leadership motivating and sustaining change. The next two
2. Involving others in your process: saying what you think leadership capabilities - Visioning and Inventing - are creative
you are seeing, and checking with people who have and action oriented, producing the focus and energy needed to
different perspectives from yours. And avoid applying make change happen.
existing frameworks such as describing the world in
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4. Visioning
While Sensemaking maps what is, Visioning maps what
could be & what a leader wants the future to be. It is much
more than pinning a vision statement to the wall. A shared
vision is not static, it’s an ongoing process: dynamic and
collaborative; a process of articulating what the members of
an organization want to create together.
Fundamentally, visioning gives people a sense of meaning in
their work. Leaders who are skilled in this capability have
people excited about their view of the future while inviting
others to crystallize that image. They know that if the vision
is credible and compelling enough, others will generate ideas
to advance it.
Inventing
Even the most compelling vision will lose power if floating
unconnected above the daily reality of organizational life.
Inventing is what moves a business from the abstract world
of ideas to the concrete world of implementation.
To realize a new vision, people can’t keep doing the same
things they’ve been doing. They must conceive, design and
put into practice new ways of interacting and organizing.
Cultivating Invention:
1. Be aware of your assumptions that the way things have
been done is the best way to do them.
2. Experiment with alternative methods for grouping and
linking people. Ask “what other options are possible?”
Balancing the Four Capabilities
Sensemaking, Relating, Visioning and inventing are
interdependent: without Sensemaking there’s no common
view of reality from which to start, without Relating, people
work in isolation or strive toward different aims, without
Visioning, there’s no shared direction. Without Inventing, a
vision remains illusory. No leader will excel at all four
capabilities in equal measure.
It’s the leader’s responsibility to create an environment
where leadership is distributed across multiple people
throughout the organization - complementing one another’s
strengths and weaknesses.
It’s time to put the myth of the “complete leader” to rest, for
the sake of individuals and the health of organizations. Even
the most talented leaders require input and leadership of
others constructively solicited and creatively applied. It’s
time now for a culture shift and to celebrate the incomplete -
human - leader!
This article is adapted from the 2007 Harvard Business
Review publication “In praise of the incomplete leader”
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