Managers seem to be looking for a holy grail of management – the one tip, technique, method, or style that will finally make leadership and management easy – at least for them. But could this search be a source of dissatisfaction and unhappiness?
I am in the midst of preparing my upcoming MBA class on management. It is the core class in the Working Professional Program, so all the students are working full time. As part of my preparation, I am searching for new material that gets me, and hopefully the students, thinking about new things or old things in new ways. In my pursuit, I have come across two videos I think you might find of interest.
The first is of Malcolm Gladwell giving a TED talk on what turns out to be the folly of pursuing universal truths (I recommend the 20 minutes it takes to watch it). Many managers seem to believe there is “the” tip, technique, method, style, etc., which if they learned it, would make them really successful. I call this the holy grail of management – the belief in a perfect and universal form of leadership. It doesn’t exist. Gladwell gives a very compelling argument, based on the diversity of consumer products, why such a search is in vain. Rather than look for universals, he proposes we settle in to dealing with the diversity we actually confront.
The second video is by Barry Schwartz giving a TED talk on the paradox of choice (another 20 minutes of your life). What I find interesting about this video is he challenges the belief that more freedom means more choices, and more choices means more satisfaction and happiness. One implication of Gladwell’s video is we need myriad choices for effectively leading and managing the diversity we confront. But Schwartz argues the more options we have, the less satisfied and happy we are. So, if we are to be happy, we need fewer choices, not more.
So, there you have it. The more we look for a holy grail of management, the more options (tips, techniques, etc) we discover there are for leading and managing, and the more dissatisfied and discontent we become. What’s the solution? Well, there is no “the” solution (another holy grail?). However, one of the things I get from the two videos is that there is no need to keep looking for the “perfect form of leadership” as there are many forms that work really well. Rather, you may be better off finding a few that work really well for you and then continue to develop those through concerted practice (but that’s another book).
