What business leaders can learn from politics and sports
By Folkert Mulder and Steffen Giessner
Next week, parliamentary elections will be held in the Netherlands. The results will form the basis for a new coalition for the next four years. In the polls, Mark Rutte’s centre-right liberal party has a lead of more than twelve virtual seats in parliament over the far-right party of Geert Wilders, with the Christian Democrats, led by Wopke Hoekstra, in third place. If the polls are correct, the current Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, will need to form a coalition and the basis for a strong leadership team for the years ahead. His challenge will be to work on two leadership dimensions, the quality of direction and the quality of interaction. In terms of the quality of direction, he will need to provide a clear purpose for what the coalition wants to accomplish, translated into a clear plan of action. This direction, combined with the quality of interaction, will enable him to build trusting relationships between coalition leaders and members of the different collation parties in order to lead the country collectively. We call this form of leadership ‘intergroup leadership’, which can be defined as leadership of collaborative project of different groups or organisations.
As part of a research project at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, on the topic of intergroup leadership (i.e., leading more than one team/party) in politics, we focus on the question of how to build a leadership structure that enables the leadership of more than one team – namely a coalition of parties forming the government. Here are some of our first insights:
First, concerns the way of working in coalitions in terms of the daily and weekly routine of meetings. This includes such things as who talks to whom to prepare for decision making. This can be defined as the infrastructure and rituals for collaboration, a system that has been in place for decades, with some room for manoeuvre of course. If we take a closer look at this phenomenon, it is not that strange considering that coalitions are in place for a maximum of four years, and often shorter if they don’t succeed to complete their full term. Having a stable infrastructure and rituals to collaborate effectively, makes it easier for coalitions to become a high-performance team – independent of who is in the coalition. Also given the fact that they have a maximum of four years to make an impact.
It is not without reason that we also see similar set-ups in sports and business. For example, the All Blacks (the New Zealand rugby team) have clear rituals, which form the infrastructure for a high-performance team. This infrastructure is mainly based on rituals such as Sweep the Sheds: “Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done, such as cleaning the sheds by the most senior players, in order to lead by example.” And Pass the Ball – “Leaders create leaders” – to empower the players to take the lead in a team, which helps to create an inclusive environment. An example of this is the fact that the players choose the team captain, which is a form of granted leadership. Another ritual is having No Dickheads. This last one is perhaps the most important lesson. The All Blacks learn that no one is bigger than the team itself and that the strength of a wolf is the pack. In other words, it’s the team that makes a difference, not the individual. This infrastructure, based on rituals, is the most important guide for the All Blacks to stay a high-performance team over time, no matter the composition of the team.
We see the same in the corporate world, where businesses often stick to standard ways of working, but often without the necessary rituals to empower the ‘infrastructure’ to create high performance teams, like for example the All Blacks do. As an example, I once talked to a CEO who left a media company after it had been bought by an investment company. Coincidentally, the former owner bought the company back and reinstalled the CEO. Back in his old company, nothing had changed – not the ways of working, not even his office, creating a setting in which the CEO wondered whether he had ever left the company. Although the infrastructure was still in place, making it easy to step in as the CEO, art of the rituals were gone, which made it complicated to again perform as a team. The main message that the infrastructure and rituals we have in coalitions, sports teams and business, are one way, enabling us to lead various teams in an effective way. It is therefore not all about the leader’s way of leading alone – the structures institutionalized over time and the rituals within a team or organisation also have a strong impact on enabling intergroup leadership.
A second insight is the emergence of ‘trust’ and ‘granting leadership’ within a coalition. In a coalition’s weekly routine, as described above, the prime minister has a primus inter pares position to lead the coalition. The better he fulfils this role, the more willing the cabinet ministers will be to grant the prime minister his leadership position. If the prime minister plays this role constructively, it will empower him to own his role as first among equals and this will have a positive impact on the coalition as a whole.
In a business context we see a similar picture, and although leaders are appointed here, they still need to earn the trust of the various teams they actually lead. This is a delicate process, especially in organisations in which a leadership team needs to lead many teams. Examples are the management boards of professional service firms who are selected by their fellow partners. These firms are organised by so-called practices, which can be seen as teams within the wider team and whereby the power is granted by the individual partners of these practices. Other examples are holding companies who need to manage different business teams. You also see this phenomenon in stand-alone companies, in which a management board needs to manage different teams such as operations, finance and marketing teams. And although in this example, the leadership is appointed by the supervisory board, you still need to ‘earn’ your position for managers to follow you and to become an outperforming team. New forms of granted leadership are emerging where the leadership is granted by the teams. The most well-known case from as far back as the 1980s is the ‘Semco Way’ of Ricardo Semler, which presented a movement that has been further reinforced by technology and digitalisation and is now also seen in other companies like Spotify and Netflix and has been adopted by blue chip companies such as ING and BNP Paribas.
The third insight flows from the first two. Based on an infrastructure for collaboration and the prime minister’s leadership position granted by the cabinet ministers, the authority gained can be transformed into the power to actually lead the coalition. We also see this process in a business context, except that CEOs and Management Boards have mandates. At the end of the day, if a company performs well, more (implicit) power is given to its leadership, and the more comfortable employees will be in following the leadership based on earned trust.
So if you are a business leader, use these elections and the forming of a new coalition as a lesson on how to further build your teams, on the emergence of trust, and on granted leadership. And perhaps the All Blacks will give you that sparkle to come to the tipping point of outperformance.
