How Managers Have Learnt to Lead

Citation

Kempster, S. (2010), "How Managers Have Learnt to Lead", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2010.04418bae.003

How Managers Have Learnt to Lead

Article Type: Suggested readings From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 18, Issue 2

Steve KempsterPalgrave Macmillan2009ISBN: 9780230220959

Despite the prolific literature and detailed studies on leadership, we still have little agreement on the characteristics of the great leader.

This confusion is, in part, because our image of great leaders tends to be of great historical leaders. However, the modern-day manager has little in common with these historical figures. Where historical leaders might have been driven by a will to conquer, today’s leaders face constraints and complexities that require them to display both strength and sensitivity. A modern-day manager must guide discussion to resolution and also have the good sense and grace not to burden the process with an over-large ego.

When we come to reflect on what modern-day managers actually have to do, it becomes apparent that it is not clear how they learn to do it. How do managers learn to lead?

Steve Kempster’s book examines how to assimilate and distil formal educational training and on-the-job experience into the wisdom needed to guide leadership action in a way appropriate to context.

The author reviews the literature on the subject and uses 40 interviews to draw out comparisons between managers in the public and private sectors, women and men managers and employed and self-employed managers. Taken together, the literature and interviews provide the basis for a contextual explanation of the fundamental processes by which managers learn to lead.

How Managers Have Learnt to Lead makes academic ideas and concepts accessible to the practitioner. It therefore offers the potential to change the way practicing managers view their world and interpret experience. It could even make them better leaders.

The book identifies six intra- and inter-personal influences that guide managers as they learn to lead: observational learning; enactments; situational learning; identity; self-efficacy; and salience.

Observational learning is what happens when you observe different people in different leadership roles. How can you create opportunities to engage with various leaders?

Enactment is associated with the leadership roles you have actually performed. How varied were these roles in terms of activity or contest? Can you create the opportunity to lead a new team or an existing team in a new context?

Situational learning is associated with a rising awareness of the leadership practice around you. Can you identify how this practice is performed?

Identity is associated with how you describe yourself to others. Can you imagine others identifying with you as a capable leader? What form of leader identity do you aspire to have?

Self-efficacy is concerned with personal judgments about how well one can execute a course of action to deal with prospective situations. Self-efficacy judgments influence the activities you believe yourself to be capable of leading, but how do you judge whether you are good at leading?

Salience is associated with the importance of leadership to you. When you watch a group or team working though a problem, do you see those involved in terms of the leadership roles they occupy?

The book helps the reader to see his or her experiences in terms of these influences. In this way, experience is categorized and therefore its implication for leadership practice more easily conceptualized. This process of categorization, conceptualization and reflection facilitates the transformation of experience into learning.

The book captures the essence of what it means to learn to be a better leader. It not only clarifies what you should do when taking leadership action, but also makes clear the development demanded of you if you are to become a better leader.

The approach to leadership learning that the book presents can help you to assimilate and distil formal education and on-the-job experience into the wisdom needed to guide leadership action in a way appropriate to context.

Reviewed by Geoff Sheard, Flakt Woods, Colchester, UK.

A longer version of this review was originally published in Journal of Management Development, Vol. 28 No. 7, 2009.