Leader limits

By Harvard Business Review Sunday, 01 April 2007

Incomplete leaders know where their strengths lie and where they need support to compensate for their limitations.

Further Reading

There are four leadership capabilities in this model: understanding the context in which a company and its staff operate ('sensemaking'); developing relationships within and across organisations ('relating'); drawing up a powerful image of the future ('visioning'); and constructing new ways to achieve this vision ('inventing').

Good 'sensemaking' leaders know that they must continually draw on their observations, data, experiences, conversations and analyses to understand the environment that the organisation needs to travel through. They should be able to reduce complexities to simple messages.

Those who develop effective relating skills will be able to listen to others, put forward their own views in a clear way and build a network of confidantes through whom they can develop ideas and carry out initiatives. Visionary leaders see a future scenario and are able to communicate it to others.

In praise of the incomplete leader
Deborah Ancona, Thomas W Malone, Wanda J Orlikowski and Peter M Senge
Harvard Business Review, February 2007

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