Leadership OS by Nik Kinley and Shlomo Ben-Hur - Preview

anywhere. The belief has been that if you get the behaviours, values and internal qualities right, then the performance will come. But this approach is failing. Because the rules do not always work, and performance does not always come. In fact, every single major leadership model has been found not only to not help in some situations, but to actually make things worse and decrease performance. Take what is probably the most famous model – transformational leadership. It describes four things leaders should do: [1]

• Act as a role model and walk the talk • Motivate people with an inspiring goal • Show genuine concern for people • Push people to be creative and challenge accepted thinking.

As a model, it’s a good one. Research has shown that if leaders follow these four rules, it can in many cases help them to improve their team’s performance. Yet it is massively overhyped. Thousands of articles have been written about it, almost all describing it as the best way for leaders to deliver results, without any cautions or caveats. Indeed, reading these articles, you could be forgiven for thinking that transformational leadership is a kind of wonder drug that imbues leaders with amazing powers. Which would be fine, if it did. Except it doesn’t. In fact, there is a growing list of situations in which transformational leadership does not work so well. If a leader’s team members are very goal-oriented, if they have a traditional view of organisational hierarchy or if they do not view the leader as ‘one of them’, then transformational leadership tends not to work so well. [2] There are also question marks over whether it can work in smaller organisations [3] and certain

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