Leadership Coaching: Developing braver leaders by Mike McLaughlin & Elaine Cox

Author:Mike McLaughlin & Elaine Cox
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2015-07-29T14:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 7.2 Classification of problems facing leaders

For coaches of leaders facing wicked problems it is useful to understand the differences in authority in relation to the problems being faced so that they may help the leader identify the nature of the problem. Grint explains how “the social construction of the problem legitimizes the deployment of a particular form of authority” (Grint, 2008, p.14). His typology suggests there are three forms of authority: command, management and leadership, which in turn deal with problems in different ways: answers, processes, questions. Some “critical” problems, such as those that confront military leaders on active service, have to be responded to quickly: answers have to be forthcoming. By contrast, “tame” problems that face managers in the everyday running of an organization can usually be solved through implementation of appropriate processes. Wicked problems, such as those tackled most frequently by leaders, however, can only be dealt with by asking the right questions and gathering enough information to set up a series of improvisations, taskforces or other multi-pronged strategies that might help provide a solution. Leadership is often perceived by others as the ability to act decisively and resolve problems, but as Grint points out, “we cannot know how to solve Wicked Problems, and therefore we need to be very wary of acting decisively precisely because we cannot know what will happen. If we knew what to do it would be a Tame Problem not a Wicked Problem” (ibid., p.4).

Following a similar unambiguous/ambiguous trajectory, the outcome of Fulop and Mark’s (2013) work is to introduce a further quadrant model. This model suggests that problems are both knowable and ordered (simple or complicated), or they have patterns and interactions that are unordered (complex and chaotic). However, an important difference in this construction is the inclusion of an element of disorder that these authors suggest infiltrates all quadrants, applying when there is lack of clarity about which of the other four contexts predominates. Disorder suggests that “multiple perspectives jostle for prominence, factional leaders argue with one another, and cacophony rules” (ibid., p.260).

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