Despite widespread misconceptions, the most effective leadership style involves hardship, not grandiosity, argues Essec Business School’s Fabrice Cavarretta . His research reveals that perspectives on leadership often fail to address the misplaced expectations of practitioners, which tend to revolve around them being unprepared for the gritty and frustrating realities of people management DECONSTRUCTING THE DIMENSIONS OF LEADERSHIP
I hate the word ‘leadership’. I distrust those who use it and I’m glad to hear it so rarely used by those who are capable of doing the right thing. After all, what does the term really mean? Put simply, it involves taking care of human beings and working towards their wellbeing and self-realisation. It could also mean helping people to accomplish a task set for them or to help them achieve one they’ve set for themselves; or even to help them choose the task that will bring them fulfilment. Some people have a distrust of various forms of authority, leading them to dream that our social systems do not require a specific role to guide human activity. Nonetheless, pragmatically speaking, most activities require human beings to do a certain amount of work for other human beings, beyond the technicality of the task and beyond the simple exercise of authority. To be fulfilled, individuals need to be validated, recognised and encouraged to try, to make choices, to make an effort. Humans need other humans to help them achieve their potential. When individuals come together in groups, their functioning requires a similar activity: the establishment and maintenance of a social system enabling them to interact with each other.
Associations, hospitals, political parties, schools, companies, teams, clubs and so on all require humans to devote time to supporting each other in completing their tasks. Individuals’ expectations and demands of the organisations with which they are involved have never been higher – yet, paradoxically, distrust of these same organisations is growing. Troublesome terminology The good news is that the term leadership does not necessarily imply authority, oppression, or exploitation. The generic term is supposed to refer to the idea of guiding human beings beyond authority. Its modern definition – as proposed by political science theorist James MacGregor Burns – is the process of influencing a group of people to pursue a common goal of their own free will. It couldn’t be clearer: in theory, this term excludes the imposition of an external will on the individual. Nevertheless, therein lies the problem: in many contexts where human beings need to be supported and guided, the very word leadership is suspect. It exudes grandiloquence and seems to conceal a manipulative managerial hierarchy. In fact, at many NGOs, as well as
44 Ambition • ISSUE 2 • 2025
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