Friday, March 5, 2021

Management is not leadership

Being in a management position is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for academic leadership.

Senior managers at Australian universities sometimes wax lyrical about how they are in leadership. When it comes to promotion decisions, they also judge junior academics on whether they show "leadership".  This seems to be equated with the size of one's research group and the number of one's citations. The rise of this fixation on "leadership" in universities was highlighted by a commenter on a recent post.

This misunderstanding is another example of how university management does not actually consider what their own academics in the university may actually know. Leadership is a well-researched topic. If managers talked to faculty in business and history, they might be told something along the following lines.

                                                The cartoon is from here.

Real leadership is characterised by influence. It leads to change. Real leaders can motivate people to change their views and their lives. This is of substance, unlike "change management" which seems to me to be a euphemism for sacking people, changing lines of reporting, and renaming (rebranding) the names of departments and courses.

Real leadership is not about occupying a powerful position that you use to exert control over people. The authority that real leaders have is intellectual or moral authority, not legal authority.

Previously I posted about how humility and listening to others has been found to be a key ingredient of leadership, rather than self-promotion and defensiveness.

Consider Einstein working in the patent office, Douglas Hofstadter unemployed and living with his parents while writing Godel, Escher, Bach, the obscure virus club, Nelson Mandela in prison on Robben Island, and Gandhi on a hunger strike. None held formal positions of authority or commanded large salaries, budgets, or staff. But they were leaders. They influenced people.

Being in a management position or holding a political office does not mean you are a leader. Gorbachev and Brezhnev both held the same position (for 6 and 18 years respectively). Who was the real leader?

My postdoctoral mentor, the late John Wilkins, never held a management position, but he sure was a leader. He was influential for the good of others and for condensed matter physics.

I like the following text

Within minutes they were bickering over who of them would end up the greatest. But Jesus intervened: “Kings like to throw their weight around and people in authority like to give themselves fancy titles. It’s not going to be that way with you. Let the senior among you become like the junior; let the leader act the part of the servant."

3 comments:

  1. This x 1000. It was an enormous mistake to make management an alternative career choice to academics.

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  2. An extract explains all about Katalin Karikó's struggle in academia in the US. .

    "By the mid 1990s, Karikó’s bosses at UPenn had run out of patience. Frustrated with the lack of funding she was generating for her research, they offered the scientist a bleak choice: leave or be demoted. It was a demeaning prospect for someone who had once been on the path to a full professorship. For Karikó’s dreams of using mRNA to create new vaccines and drugs for many chronic illnesses, it seemed to be the end of the road"

    How mRNA went from a scientific backwater to a pandemic crusher

    https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech

    Katalin Karikó's work into mRNA therapeutics was overlooked by her colleagues. Now it's at the heart of the two leading coronavirus vaccines

    This very relevant to you post. She must be a performer and not a leader.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the comment. I did not know that story. Great (but sad) example.

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