I’m not sure of anyone that has written on the subject of leadership more than Warren Bennis. In his book “Organizing Genius,” Bennis discussed leadership from a different perspective — one the had a creative collaboration. He spoke of a team of leaders that he referred to as “Great Groups.” He we look at his list of 15 characteristics of Great Groups.Asked who will have the most influence on their global organizations in the next ten years, 61 percent responded “teams of leaders”; 14 percent said “one leader.” That does not mean, however, that we no longer need leaders. Instead, we have to recognize a new paradigm: not great leaders alone, but great leaders who exist in a fertile relations with a Great Group. In these creative alliances, the leader and the team are able to achieve something together that neither could achieve alone. The leader finds greatness in the group. And he or she helps the members find it in themselves.
Life in Great Groups is different from much of real life It’s better. Bambi veteran Jules Engel recalls that the great Disney animators couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and get back to their drawing boards.
There are the fifteen top take-home lessons of Great Groups:
1. Greatness starts with superb people.
Recruiting the most talented people possible is the first task of anyone who hopes to create a Great Group. The people who can achieve something truly unprecedented have more than enormous talent and intelligence. They have original minds. They see things differently.
2. Great Groups and great leaders create each other.
The heads of Great Groups have to act decisively, but never arbitrarily. They have to make decisions without limiting the perceived autonomy of the other participants. Devising and maintaining an atmosphere in which others can put a dent in the universe is the leader’s creative act.
3. Every Great Group has a strong leader.
Great Groups are made up of people with rare gifts working together as equals. Yet, in virtually every one there is one person who acts as maestro, organizing the genius of others.
4. The leaders of Great Groups love talent and know where to find it.
Great Groups are headed by people confident enough to recruit people better than themselves. They revel in the talent of others.
5. Great Groups are full of talented people who can work together.
Certain tasks can only be performed collaboratively, and it is madness to recruit people, however gifted, who are incapable of working side by side toward a common goal.
6. Great Groups think they are on a mission from God.
People in Great Groups often have the zeal of converts, people who have come only recently to see some great truth and follow it wherever it leads.
7. Every Great Group is an island — but an island with a bridge to the mainland. Great Groups become their own worlds. They also tend to be physically remoeved from the world around them.
8. Great Groups see themselves as winning underdogs.
Must of the gleeful energy of Great Groups seems to stem from this view of themselves as upstarts who will snatch the prize from the fumbling hands of a bigger but less wily competitor.
9. Great Groups always have an enemy.
When there is no enemy, you have to make one up. Whether the enemy occurs in nature or is manufactured, it serves the same purpose. It raises the stakes of the competition, it helps your group rally and define itself and it also frees you to be spurred by that time-honored motivator — self-righteous hatred. (I would like to state that I personally disagree with this one — it is not necessary to hate or have an enemy to compete at your highest level).
10. People in Great Groups have blinders on.
The project is all they see. In Great Groups, you don’t find people who are distracted by peripheral concerns, including such perfectly laudable ones as professional advancement and the quality of their private lives.
11. Great Groups are optimistic, not realistic.
People in Great Groups believe they can do things no one has ever done before. Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
12. In Great Groups the right person has the right job.
The failure to find the right niche for people — or to let them find their own perfect niches — is a major reason that so many workplaces are mediocre, even toxic, in spite of the presence of talent.
13. The leaders of Great Groups give them what they need and free them from the rest.
Great Groups are never places where memos are the primary form of communication. They aren’t places where anything is filed in triplicate. Time that can go into thinking and making is never wasted on activities, such as writing reports, that serve only some bureaucratic or corporate function outside the group.
14. Great Groups ship.
Successful collaborations with deadlines. Be definition, Great Groups continue to struggle until the project is brought to a successful conclusion.
15. Great work is its own reward.
Great Groups are engaged in solving hard, meaningful problems. Paradoxically, that process is difficult but exhilarating as well. The payoff is not money, or even glory. The reward is the creative process itself.
