WEEK 3:

module 3: Leadership in a Complex World

This module explores the leadership challenges of our complex, volatile
and globalised world.

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Leadership in a VUCA world

 What new capabilities are required?

3.3 Leadership and creativity

 Enabling creativity - lessons for leadership

 Graphene@Manchester - a creativity and innovation case study

3.4 Leadership in a Globalised world

 The Social Construction of Leadership

 Culture, management and leadership

3.5 Inclusive leadership

 Understanding inclusive leadership

3.6 Conclusions

3.2 Leadership in a VUCA world

“What will it take to be a great leader in the future? In five years, ten

years, even fifteen years?”

Dillon & Bourke, 2016

The world we live in is increasingly, volatile, uncertain, complex, and
ambiguous - or 'VUCA'. In this chapter we’ll consider the implications for
leaders and for leadership of our VUCA world, in which predicting the future
with precision is a risky business (Dillon & Bourke, 2016).

The acronym ‘VUCA’ was first coined by the US Army War College in 1987,
after the end of the Cold War (US Army Heritage and Education Centre).
The term has since found its way into the wider world, most notably into the
business lexicon and leadership literature, to characterize the speed,
intensity, and frequency of change in the world and the leadership required
to navigate it successfully (Giles, 2018). For example, a quick search for
‘VUCA’ on the US business Magazine ‘Forbes’ website brings up reams of
articles commenting on the skills and attributes leaders need to thrive in a
VUCA world.

Researchers such as Bennett & Lemoine (2014) stress that the four
components of the VUCA acronym have unique meanings that
demonstrate the need for leaders of organisations to embed agility,
information gathering, restructuring and experimentation into how they do
business.

VUCA
Volatility

Defintition: Rapid, unexpected, drastic and frequent shifts leading to

continuous change. Volatility implies instability and can be of uncertain
duration, even if the situation is not hard to understand.

Examples:

 The developments of digital currencies

 terrorist attacks affecting business’ financial stability and international
trade
 commodity pricing
  negative interest rates changing some fundamental bank and
business models
 global pandemics

Uncertainty

Defintition: Unpredictability of the extent to which a change or event will

have meaningful ramifications; cause and effect may be understood, but it
is unknown if an event will create significant change.

Examples:

 Anti-terrorism initatives because, while the many causes of terrorism

might be understood, it is hard to predict how and when they might
lead to attacks.
 The unexpected impacts of new technologies (e.g. when texting was
originally developed, mobile phone companies never expected it
would become more popular than making phone calls)

Complexity

Defintition: Many interconnected parts forming an elaborate network of

information and procedures; often multiform and convoluted, but not
necessarily involving change. They are, collectively, difficult to understand
or process, either because of their nature or volume or because of both.

Example:

 The supply chains and operations of Multinational Corporations

(MNCs) across countries and societies with diverse institutional,
political, cultural and regulatory environments.

Ambiguity

Defintition: A lack of knowledge as to ‘the basic rules of the game’; cause

and effect are not understood and there is no precedent for making
predictions as to what to expect. The ubiquitous availability of information
can add to ambiguity making it difficult to find clarity.

Examples:

 The emergence of digital and social media.

 Companies entering new, emerging or immature markets unexplored
in relation to their products or services.
 The increasing focus by businesses on the challenges of a VUCA
world has resulted in calls for new approaches to leadership. For
example, writing from a business perspective, Dillon and Bourke
(2016), characterise the new contexts emerging from our VUCA
world around four global mega-trends: Diversity of markets, diversity
of customers, diversity of ideas, and diversity of talent. They argue
that:

 “These simultaneous shifts are the new context. For leaders

who have perfected their craft in a more homogenous

environment, rapid adjustment is in order.”

 Dillon & Bourke, 2016
 And, of course, the challenges of a VUCA world are not just faced by
businesses but by all sectors, especially those committed to tackling
the grand societal challenges of our time, e.g. poverty and inequality,
climate change and sustainability.

 “In a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world,

characterised by wicked problems defined by their scale,

complexity and incomprehensibility, the actions needed

require complex and systematic change that crosses

traditional institutional boundaries, and requires new

leadership capabilities.”Harrison & Kaesehage, 2019

- What new capabilities are required?

Grint (2005, 2010) argues in relation to wicked problems that, the more
uncertainty there is about what needs to be done to resolve a problem, the
more decision-makers should seek a collective response.

All this chimes with the consensus that emerges from the leadership
literature. Leaders in a VUCA world need to:

 respond speedily and have strong collaborative networks and

innovation
 engage in seeking out new perspectives
 be willing to work flexibly and collaboratively
 be a good listener and engage in divergent thinking
 create new ideas and engage their teams in new beginnings

(e.g. Sarker 2016, Chalwla & Lenka 2018, Mendenhall, et al 2020 and Kali
2010).

3.3 Leadership and creativity

“How to solve the wicked problem is a wicked problem in itself so

we have no fixed recipe, no roadmap leading to our destination. We

need to venture into the unknown territories of design thinking and

social innovation.”Kennisland, 2014

What is creativity? What is innovation?

“Creativity is the capacity to develop ideas.... to solve problems and

take advantage of opportunities, whereas innovation is the

application of creativity.... that leads to new and useful concepts,

products, services or processes.”

Batey, 2019

Because innovation leads to new products and services it is relatively easy

to identify. Think of the smartphone revolution, the advent of web streaming
services, or the bicycle rental schemes that have sprung up in cities around
the world in the last decade or more. New concepts are more intangible
and might include, for example, a new vision for an organisation or a new
set of values for an organisation.However, creativity, the process that leads
to such innovation, can be harder to pin down. In the film that follows Sir
Ken Robinson provides his definition of creativity, what it requires and how
it might be facilitated. Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 inquiry into
the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy.

Sir Ken Robinson argues that:

 Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

 Creativity requires 'divergent thinking', which is the ability to:
o see lots of ways to interpret a question
o see lots of possible answers to a question
o think laterally
o see multiple answers, not just one
 To facilitate creative thinking, we need to:
o think differently about human capacity
o move away from the academic/non-academic thinking
distinction
o recognise that most great learning happens in groups
o understand that collaboration is the 'stuff of growth'

A good creative leader:

  encourages individual creativity in their followers.
 sets the conditions and approaches for teams to work effectively in a
creative manner to come up with new ideas.
 sets the organisational context & culture to support that.

A bad model of creative leadership is one in which:

 all the focus is on the leader being clever & creative.

 the leader is seen as the source of creativity.
 the leader doesn't create conditions for other people to be creative.

The important point to note here is that the leader doesn't necessarily need
to be creative, but rather they should create the conditions in which
creativity can exist and flourish.

 Enabling creativity - lessons for leadership

“Generative ideas emerge from joint thinking, from significant

conversations, and from sustained struggles to achieve new insights

by partners in thought.”

Vera John-Steiner, 2000

We’ve established that creativity is important for innovation and that to

achieve this a leader needs to create opportunities for people to be
creative. In this section we’ll look at how leaders might set the conditions
for creative thinking with a group.

Mark Batey has distilled the literature on creativity and innovation into five
key concepts that underpin how we, as individuals, think and how a team or
organisation works when they are being creative. These are:

 making connections
 enabling chain reactions
  recognising strength in diversity
 recognising that your greatest strength will (almost) always be the
source of your greatest weakness
 applying a creative problem-solving process

(Batey 2019)

Enabling creativity requires giving time and space to make such

connections. However, our brains like to be quick and simple in the
connections we make. If you were asked, for example, to play a word
association game and, when you hear a word to shout out the first word
that come to mind - it's likely that when you hear, ‘dog’, you’ll think ‘cat;
‘night’ you’ll think ‘day’, and so on.

Creative ideas almost always take longer to come together so, if you want
to be creative, don’t stop with your first ideas. Take the time to let the ideas
flow (and capture them).

Enabling chain reactions

Chain reactions happen when we work in a group or a team and we feel

ideas bouncing around, when we’re making connections. An important part
of the creative problem solving process is allowing these chain reactions to
occur - to enable lots of different ideas to be generated.

Recognising there is strength in diversity

If the first principle of creative thinking is making connections between

unusual knowledge then diversity of experience and outlook will lead to
more creativity (e.g product or functional silos).

The more diverse a team or organisation the more creative it will be. Many
studies indicate that businesses that are more diverse are also more
profitable (e.g.Dillon & Bourke, 2016). Therefore, an
organisational/leadership challenge is to find ways for people from different
parts of an organisation to create cross functional project teams - an
approach used by many highly creative companies.

We’ll explore some practical approaches to facilitating diverse and cross-

functional team working and creativity later in this module.

Recognising that your greatest strength will (almost) always be

the source of your greatest weakness

Being creative and coming up with lots of new ideas is a strength.

However, doing it all the time means nothing ever gets done - you just keep
coming up with more and more options.

Similarly, innovative people or organisations, who are good at figuring out

how to make creative ideas work, might jump to the solution (e.g. how an
idea might be implemented or paid for), before the group has finished
sharing their creative ideas.

Accumulation, Generation and Evaluation

Starting with Accumulation, read the steps to learn more about what’s
involved in each of them.

Step 1: Accumulation

This stage is about gathering and accumulating insight and wisdom. It's
about asking:

 What is the problem exactly?

 Why is it a problem?

Rushing into solving a problem is very tempting (it's the fun part after all).
However, if you don’t understand the nature of the problem you’re trying to
solve, its causes and impacts, what is unsatisfactory about the current
situation, then it’s likely you will expend a lot of time and energy trying to
solve the wrong problem.
This is part of, but goes beyond, understanding a problem sufficient to
categorise it as, for example, tame, critical or wicked. Before taking action
it's important to get to grips with the causes of a problem and to understand
its impacts. Incorporating diverse perspectives on a problem is, as we will
see later in this module and in the modules that follow, vital.

Step 2: Generation

In this stage, Mark suggests, the emphasis is on volume - generate as

many ideas and options as possible. Let the chain reaction happen and
give yourself, or the group, time to generate lots and lots of suggestions.
No matter how preposterous. There are lots of different ways of doing this.

One example is attribute listing which is an approach that encourages

free association and uncensored sharing of observations and ideas.

It's a great activity to do as a group (as long as you avoid the negative
behaviours you identified earlier in this chapter). The key things are to
resist the temptation to evaluate or to worry about whether you are right or
not. It's also important to move beyond your first connections and to use
the diversity in the group. p>

You can find out more about attribute listing and some examples in the
Further Study box below.

Step 3: Evaluate

Mark stresses that you shouldn’t evaluate in the early stages. You defer
evaluation until the final stage of the creative problem solving process
when you decide, as a group, which of the ideas you want to take forward.

But evaluation still needs to be an inclusive activity.

One way of doing this is to use a voting methodology - e.g. ask everyone to
vote for their top 3 ideas. Votes should be based on clearly
articulated/agreed criteria, and might take place multiple times with different
criteria.
A fourth stage, or process, which sits between the first three stages,
is incubation. This is a period of reflection when, if time allows, you give
yourself and others time to consider the problem and its parameters and
allow your thoughts time to meander and make those all-important
connections.

The one place, according to Mark Batey (2019), where people are unlikely
to have good ideas is at work. Most incubation happens when we’re busy
doing other things: in the shower, washing up, walking, driving, relaxing
with friends when you’re falling asleep or waking up - in a ‘hypnogogic
state’. Professor Margaret Boden, cognitive psychologist, calls this the
‘bed, bath bus syndrome’ (Boden 2004). The challenge we face is recalling
these ideas when the time comes to share them with others because such
ideas emerge from a series of loose, poorly formed connections. The best,
and simplest way to offset this challenge is to write ideas down - so keep a
notepad by your bed or in your pocket for when inspiration strikes!

Understanding a problem also helps us to identify whether we should, and

are able to, spend time on incubation. The Incubation Matrix, allegedly first
developed by General Dwight D Eisenhower, and popularised by Stephen
Covey in his book ‘ The 7 habits of highly successful people’ (1989), the
matrix provides a mechanism for deciding when, and when not, to
incubate. 
 Description

Diagram showing four quadrants arranged around a cross, denoting two

axes. The left right x-axis denotes low to high urgency, the up-down y-axis
denotes importance. The quadrant in the bottom left of the diagram, where
low importance and low urgency intersect, is labelled ‘Ignore’.

The quadrant in the top left of the diagram, where low importance and high
urgency intersect, is labelled ‘quickly’. To the top right quadrant, where high
importance and high urgency intersect, is a box labelled ‘do it now’. The
bottom right quadrant, where high importance and low urgency intersect, is
a box labelled ‘incubate'.

Ultimately, therefore, when to go about generating and capturing creative

ideas and deciding on which you’re going to try out, depends on how long
you’ve got before you need to act or to deliver. Leadership which enables
creativity to flourish gives time and space to these processes and creates
the conditions for everyone to contribute.
3.4 Leadership in a Globalised world

“Taking the lead has always required talent, skill, preparation, and

practice. When the complexities and vagaries of a different culture

are added to the mix, the leader must expand his or her leadership

repertoire.”

Anne W. Perkins, 2009

At the end of Module 2 we concluded that, just as there is no one best way
of leading, so it's not possible to say whether one theory is better than
another and there's little evidence to prove, or disprove, many leadership
theories (Batey 2012). We also touched on the theory of socially
constructed leadership, whereby each person has their own mental model
of what a leader is and should be. Social constructionism is a theoretical
approach which argues that each person’s self and identity is created and
sustained through their social, historical, cultural and temporal relations
(Burr, 2003) and shared language. This implies that what is considered to
be “real" is the result of a social consensus regarding its “reality.” (Fine
2015).

- The Social Construction of Leadership

When applied to leadership, a social constructionist perspective suggests

that leadership is the process of being perceived by others as a leader
(Northouse 2019, 455). In other words, a social constructionist model of
leadership suggests that it is the perceptions of followers that decide if you
are a leader, not your appointed role or job title.

In our increasingly globalised and interconnected world, in which the

biggest companies are no longer national firms but multinational
corporations with subsidiaries in many countries, business leaders at all
levels increasingly have to deal with a multitude of stakeholders with
multiple agendas and diverse, and frequently conflicting, values,
perspective and expectations (Mendenhall et al 2020). Consequently, an
approach to leadership that works in one culture might be a lot less
effective in another. It’s probably no surprise, therefore, that most of the
research into global, or cross-cultural, leadership has focussed on the
business context.

Culture, management and leadership

“If leadership is a process involving collaboration with others

toward a goal (Peck & Dickinson, 2009; Rost, 1991), then awareness

of the “others” with whom leaders work is becoming increasingly

important.”

Fine, 2015

Geert Hofstede was the first researcher to systematically analyse the

effects of a society's culture on the values of its members, and how these
values relate to behaviours and, by extension, their preferences in relation
to the behaviours of leaders and managers. In the 1970s, Hofstede was
given access to a database of over 100,000 questionnaires about values
and related sentiments completed by employees of IBM from over 50
countries. From the data, he identified country level commonalities that
summarize the way people cope with common problems (Hofstede 2011).
His analysis revealed significant patterning by groups of countries and
resulted in a framework for cross-cultural understanding and
communication. It is based on understanding cultural preferences in
relation to six cultural dimensions, as set out in the Figure below.
 Diagram showing six interconnected
cultural dimensions, which are: Power Distance, Individualism versus
collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long
versus short term orientation, and indulgence versus restraint.

More recently, The GLOBE Study, conducted by House et al, in 2004,

expanded and refined the implications of culture for leadership. It surveyed
over 17,000 managers from 951 organisations in 62 societies via focus
groups, questionnaires, and interviews and concluded that societal values
were the most important influence on desired leadership within
organisations. From their results they identified 10 cultural clusters with
broadly shared values, ideas, beliefs and conceptions of effective
leadership (Perkins 2009, House et al 2004).

A more challenging outcome of research like that conducted for the GLOBE
study, is that effective leadership might require changing one’s leadership
style to meet the societal demands of different cultures (Perkins 2009).

Erin Meyer’s model in the Harvard Business Review film above, and Mark’s
suggestion that leaders or managers should adapt their leadership style
and behaviour depending on the context and the expectations of co-
workers, is very similar to Hersey & Blanchard’s situational leadership
model.

Of course, individuals don’t automatically fit neatly into the cultural clusters
set out in the models we’ve explored here and, as we’ll consider in the next
chapter, people’s self and identity are shaped by more than just their
nationality. However, incorporating an understanding of some of the broad
cultural dimensions into one’s approach to leadership can only help
improve one’s engagement with, and leadership of others.

“Ethical, caring multicultural leadership advocates for the

recognition of diverse people and the incorporation of their

viewpoints.”Leigh, 2015

3.5 Inclusive leadership

“Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to

dance.”Verna Myers

“A father and son were involved in a car accident in which the father

was killed and the son was seriously injured. The father was

pronounced dead at the scene of the accident and his body was

taken to a local morgue. The son was taken by ambulance to a

nearby hospital and was immediately wheeled into an emergency

operating room. A surgeon was called. Upon arrival and seeing the

patient, the attending surgeon exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s my

son!’”Penry, Driscoll & Field, 2010

This scenario, adapted by organisational psychologists Pendry, Driscoll &

Field (2010, after Hofstadter 1985) has been given to hundreds of diversity

training participants. They found that in about 40% of cases people did not

think of the most plausible answer. Instead they invent a wide range of

elaborate and convoluted explanations, from suggesting the boy was

adopted and the surgeon was his natural father or that the ‘father’ in the car

was a Catholic priest. The researchers reported that participants who

jumped to the wrong conclusion weren’t so much surprised to think of a

surgeon being a woman than they were shocked at the power of their own

unconsciously activated association between surgeon and maleness (Ibid).

As such, the exercise illustrates the powerful pull of automatic, stereotyped

‘implicit associations’ and how they can interfere with problem-solving and

making accurate judgments.

We all rely on stereotypes rooted in our cultural backgrounds and lived

experiences, which lead to explicit, conscious biases and also to
unconscious bias. However, because we each construct our reality based
on our experiences, it follows that a lack of diversity in the people in
positions of power and leadership will limit our ability to recognise and
value diverse examples of leadership. Think back to Module 2 and the traits
that organisations use to design leader recruitment, training &
development. As Northouse explains, (2022, 42), while they might provide
for some a handy set of benchmarks for organisations to use when
recruiting ‘future leaders’, their major flaw is that identification of such traits
can be highly subjective and, as a consequence, open to bias.

For example, in 2019, the American business magazine Forbes ran a story
on research into the essential leadership qualities of top founders and
CEOs. Their research sample was the 100 people they judged the top
founders and CEOs with a media reputation for innovation, social
connections, and track records for value creation. Only one was a woman.

In fact, organisational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argues that

we are actually incredibly bad at judging qualities that make people better
leaders. In his TEDx Talk ‘Why do so many incompetent men become
leaders? (and how to fix it)’, which draws on his 2019 book of the same
title, Chamorro-Premuzic argues that we’re not very good at distinguishing
between confidence and competence, we highly value charismatic
entertaining individuals despite the fact that the best leaders are humble to
the point of being boring, and we find it very difficult to resist the allure of
narcissistic individuals with grandiose visions that tap into our own
narcissism.

“There is a pathological mismatch between the attributes that

seduce us in a leader and those that are needed to be an effective

leader. If we want to improve the performance of our leaders, we

should focus on the right traits. Instead of falling for people who are

confident, narcissistic and charismatic, we should promote people

because of competence, humility and integrity. Incidentally, this

would also lead to a higher proportion of female than male

leaders…”

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, 2019.

Consequently, a challenge for leaders who want to create inclusive

organisations which encourage and enable inclusive collaboration is to be
aware of their own biases in order to challenge them, and to engage their
followers in the same process:
“Progress starts with each and every one of us. If we want to

improve the competence level of our leaders, we should first

improve our own competence for judging and selecting leaders,

especially when they are men.”

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, 2019.

- Understanding inclusive leadership

At the start of this module, we considered the VUCA nature of the world in
which we live and the need for leadership that draws on diverse
perspectives both to understand the wicked nature of such problems, and
which facilitates collaborative, creative and innovative solutions. The
example of pervasive gender inequalities explored in the last section has
provided an insight into just one of the wicked problems we face as a
society and also how such inequalities shape our perceptions of leaders
and leadership. Inclusive leadership demands we take proactive steps to
overcome such biases and to change the status quo. In this section we’ll
consider some general approaches to overcoming such biases and
practising inclusive leadership.

“Practising inclusive leadership can contribute towards solving both

small and big challenges in our complex world today. Inclusive

leaders appreciate everybody’s contribution and inspire innovation

by involving people at risk of being excluded from society. They are

prepared to give up power, share responsibility and tap into the

wisdom of the group in order to benefit everyone - the leader, the

follower and the society.”

Bortini et al, 2018 Inclusive Leadership: Theoretical Framework.

Dr Rachel Cowen, Senior Lecturer in Medical Education, and co-Academic
Lead for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Manchester,
gives her definition of inclusive leadership. Rachel argues that inclusive
leadership involves:

 Creating an atmosphere of trust

 Recognising that diversity in groups and organisations will drive
creativity and innovation, which leads to greater innovation and
productivity
 Working on one’s blind spots and biases
 Avoiding snap judgments
 Taking the time to listen and ensure everyone’s voice is heard
 Acknowledging privilege and supporting people with less privilege
than themselves

Challenging deeply ingrained beliefs and established ways of doing things

which (as we saw in the example given by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
above) can foster homogeneity within organisations. Rachel argues above
that inclusive leaders are also courageous leaders. Rachel highlights that
one of the challenges of inclusive leadership, of creating truly inclusive
organisations or societies, is that people in predominant groups can feel
threatened by inclusivity initiatives because they fear losing their privilege
(maybe even if they agree with the principles behind it). Think, for example,
of the White Lives Matters groups that sprang up in response to the BLM
movement.

“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like

oppression.”

(Attribution unknown)

Many of the other challenges of inclusive leadership that Rachel identifies

can be seen or are captured in the ‘Six Signature Traits of Effective
Leaders’ identified by the multinational professional services network,
Deloitte.

Six signature traits of inclusive leaders

Read about eac of the six signature traits of inclusive leaders.

Cognizance of bias

Because bias is a leader’s achilles heel. Highly inclusive leaders are

mindful of personal and organizational blind spots and self-regulate to help
ensure “fair play.”

Curiosity

Because different ideas and experiences enable growth. Highly inclusive

leaders have an open mindset, a desire to understand how others view and
experience the world, and a tolerance for ambiguity.

Cultural intelligence

Because not everyone sees the world through the same cultural frame:
Highly inclusive leaders are confident and effective in cross-cultural
interactions.

Collaboration

Because a diverse thinking team is greater than the sum of its parts. Highly
inclusive leaders empower individuals as well as create and leverage the
thinking of diverse groups.

Commitment

Because staying the course is hard. Highly inclusive leaders are committed
to diversity and inclusion because these objectives align with their personal
values and because they believe in the business case.
Courage

Because talking about imperfections involves personal risk taking. Highly

inclusive leaders speak up and challenge the status quo, and they are
humble about their strengths and weaknesses.