MANAGEMENT THEORIES
The ultimate leadership equation Let’s conclude with a tentative wrap-up of our three Ambition articles on a leadership equation, leadership intelligence and now the development of a leadership quotient. We hope that our proposals may guide managers in their understanding of what is required in order to lead e ectively nowadays. Furthermore, they are designed to help leaders identify those key areas where their attention should be focused on making a di erence in their new, exciting and sometimes downright scary environments. In conclusion, we suggest that everyone who occupies a leadership position needs to take stock of the following: appraise where you stand regarding the leadership equation of L=HI+NOI, ie leadership equals human intelligence plus non-organic intelligence, and then activate your own leadership intelligence, focusing on valuable and meaningful creation. Reflect on your current level of LQ and see if you are able to use alternative thinking to achieve that added value. Even better, leaders should set up their own leadership instruments, taking into account the situations they find themselves in and create these in cooperation with team members. Such joint reflection could be a powerful way to promote an excellent team spirit within your organisation, making leadership humanistic and highly ethical. Here’s a provocative point to finish on: we wonder sometimes if leadership is still needed. It seems that the answer most likely is yes, but a totally di erent kind of leadership is what is required. Maybe it’s time to create another way of living and working together. It could be beyond the acquisition and use of power. It could be based on some new social values that remain to be invented. This might call for another type of leadership quotient entirely. We know from neurobiology and other brain research that we humans seek dominance, use violence to impose our ideas and enjoy winning all kinds of competitions. The suggestion that we should forget about the so-called ‘power game’ is surely utopian. It is true that as soon as human beings get in the same space at the same time, the fight for power is on. It seems inevitable – and yet…. perhaps we do have a choice after all.
and logic. This mental ability is slow, cautious and necessary to control the risk involved in quick decisions that are mainly based on hunches. The third part of the leadership quotient is related to the ability to negotiate between the intuitive and analytical sides of thinking. Olivier Houdé called this the “mediating process”; it is fundamentally about making choices and is what a leader needs to make good and e ective decisions. It seems that we have reached a time when we must, according to Chilean writer Benjamin Labatut, discover new mental ways to explore the world and contribute to its making. It is also clear that one cannot separate the processes of using fast, slow and mediating thinking. The interplay and balance between them are critical: intuition to make quick decisions and rational thinking to validate intuitive ideas. We can say that the art of balancing and playing with the di erent types of thinking is based on the accumulation of experience, something that has always been a source of learning. The famous ‘trial and error’ approach is still one of our basic human ways of attaining new knowledge. However, we also cannot ignore the need to invent new ways of thinking or producing new concepts and abstract speculations. It means that on top of the three traditional types of thinking, we have to enhance our alternative thinking mode. To put it simply, alternative thinking is about the ability of a leader to manage assumptions properly and e ectively. This means that alternative thinkers are aware of their subjective way of seeing the world and are able to challenge it from time to time. They are open to the idea of getting rid of obsolete assumptions. Such leaders can look at a problem from di erent perspectives and adjust their interpretation to find original solutions to existing challenges. They are open-minded and, thus, enjoy discussions with people who have di erent views. They accept – and even seek out – contradictions and negative
reactions to their thinking. In fact, another of our favourite adages is this: “Do we really think what we want to think?”
BIOGRAPHIES Professor Pierre Casse is the leadership chair at Iedc-Bled School of Management in Slovenia and the author of Leadership without Concessions and Leadership for a New World , as well as the co-author with Paul George Claudel of Leading with Wisdom . Elnura Irmatova is a researcher and DBA candidate at the school
Ambition FEBRUARY 2024 | 33
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