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Chapter 9 ■ Leadership in practice
unable and unwilling or insecure to take responsibility. A ‘selling’ style is recom-
mended for those who, though willing to take responsibility, are unable to do so.
By ‘selling’, Hersey and Blanchard seem to mean providing direction combined
with explanation, support and feedback to maintain motivation. A ‘participating’
style, described as appropriate for those with ‘high readiness’, they suggest is
appropriate for able people whose motivation and commitment might be
increased by involvement in decision making. Finally, a ‘delegating’ style leaves
‘high-readiness’ followers to take responsibility for what needs to be done.
The approach has powerful intuitive appeal. It is a development of various situ-
ational models but still lacks credible research support. Yet the author is aware of a
number of major international companies which use this approach within internal
management development programmes to good effect, at least as far as the reac-
tions of the managers of the programmes are concerned. However, the model con-
siders only the situation ‘below’ the manager, relating it to leader behaviour and
effectiveness. What of the context within which the manager operates? At whatever
level of management, managers are often concerned about crises, problems and
opportunities in other units, divisions and organizations. Thus the divisional man-
ager is concerned about what happens at group level; the managing director is con-
cerned about what happens in client companies or in government. For example, I
spoke recently to a senior manager of a major manufacturer of precision machin-
ery. This company had never sold equipment to a major potential user in its own
country. It had always bid but had always been beaten by competitors. In the pre-
ceding year it had decided to change this position. It ‘targeted’ key managers
within the company concerned and other key ‘players’ in government and con-
sulting firms used by that company. It identified major upcoming projects and ana-
lyzed its own strengths and weakness vis-à-vis those projects and its own
competitors. Thus it attempted to deal with the problem of not having worked for
a major potential purchaser by creating and working with networks of people and
organizations. This it followed by managing the uncertainty through competitive
analysis to identify the most appropriate targets to bid for – and while bidding for
all projects across the board the bid effect was more effectively targeted and coor-
dinated to be successful in target projects. Managers operate within real constraints,

which they work with to create new business, organization change, and so on.

The context of leadership

The real context of leaders thus involves much more than their ‘followers’. Leaders
find themselves in complex and often changing networks of people, institutions,
opportunities and problems. Thus if we are to understand or even assess top man-
agers as leaders we need to view their actions in context. What can they do? What
can they not do, at least immediately, or even in a longer-term perspective?
We have examined this question in some detail. If the context within which
leaders work is pretty unsuitable in the short term, what actions can they take?
The following five sets of actions appear to be open to them:

1 Set values.
2 Support problem solving and risk.
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