CMI Asks Philip Whiteley

Philip is an author and journalist, specialising in the working environment and business performance.

Philip Whiteley Answers

Peter Hughes: How do I go from being one of the boys to being the boss?

Philip Whiteley: This is a great question, on which there is a fair amount of published information. First of all, it does depend on the context: some companies reward the more obviously ambitious and driven individuals, whereas others would look to see ambition and drive tempered by aspects of emotional intelligence: ability to hold one’s temper, be a coach as well as a task-master, and so on. It’s interesting that you use the phrase ‘one of the boys’ – as I’m sure that many women with ambition would point to extra difficulties of being promoted when you’re female. Here, the fine line to tread between being assertive and being too pushy is even harder to find, because of cultural biases.

Most reputable employers now, I would like to think, do prefer to see more rounded individuals promoted, rather than the most power-hungry. One of the most heartening interviews I have done was a couple of years ago with a manager at Lloyds Bank who said he couldn’t be promoted until he had tempered his ‘just do it’ style and become a more engaging manager. A story Sue Bloch and I related in Complete Leadership concerned an individual arriving for an interview who lost his temper horribly over a trivial matter in the lobby of the company. This was noted by the receptionist. He didn’t get the job.

Marshall Goldsmith wrote What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There and included in his advice is valuing the art of listening: ‘good listeners regard this as a highly active process’.

Obviously though, you have to get results to be noticed; but ideally get them in a sustainable way. Think of every company meeting as being like a mini-interview: practise, listen well, present well. The six leadership styles of Daniel Goleman have stood the test of time: Authoritative, Coaching, Democratic, Affiliative, Pace-Setting and Coercive – the point being that an accomplished manager can switch between these, depending on the context.

Piers Cain: What will your next book be about?

Philip Whiteley: The first draft is already finished. The working title is New Normal, Radical Shift, and I am co-authoring it with Neela Bettridge of Article13. It’s a bit of a new departure for me, as it tackles some big themes such as social responsibility and sustainability. Article13 advises major employers on socially responsible strategies, and we include case studies on how organisations can identify ‘win-win’ strategies – for example, increasing pay while boosting productivity to help textile workers in Bangladesh out of poverty, for example.

We address politics, and in particular the limitations of seeing things in ‘left-right’ terms. If you look at the banks, or the NHS, to take two examples, it isn’t the structure or the degree of regulation that matter, it’s the leadership style, the climate and the culture.

Kelly Young: Why are so many workplaces still so fixated on you putting in 8 hours a day and how can the focus shift to output rather than input?

Philip Whiteley: I am pleased to have this question – it neatly summarises the puzzle that drew me into this line of work; pretty much my whole career is concerned with trying to tease out answers to this puzzle and some closely related ones. All the evidence shows that the more highly engaged workforces, with high levels of trust, outperform others. In this climate, you don’t need to monitor everyone’s activity minute by minute – which is a wasteful way of managers spending their day. Despite this, there still seems to be cultural preference for micro-management, measurement of activity, strict rules on use of the internet and physical presence in the office. 

In years of considering this question, I have identified two culprits: one is economic theory, in which ‘the firm’ is taken to be an inanimate entity, and its activity taken to be a set of functions delivered by cost units. We even use an inanimate description ‘the human resource’ to describe the people. This is a hopelessly inaccurate metaphor. The other main culprit, which I explore in Meet the New Boss, is the influence of culture. This is subliminal. Dozens of influential writers and song-writers, from Charles Dickens to Ricky Gervais, have portrayed the role of the boss as being one who maximises the business interest by demeaning the workers. These archetypes have a huge influence, in my opinion.

However, creating a trust-based workplace isn’t easy. Sometimes, there has been a breach of trust. So there do have to be some rules. These should be fair, and as few as possible; but an ‘anything goes’ culture is not acceptable. Also, it’s not responsible for workers simply to make demands based on their convenience, and not care about business performance.

To help the transition, many employers find that an employee opinion survey is a good start. If you track this against business results, there will typically be a correlation; and measures can be made more sophisticated to elicit which types of engagement are more effective at delivering results. Once managers start to have confidence in these metrics, you can manage around performance and outputs, rather than presenteeism.

John Milburn: Which is your favourite management and leadership book and why?

Philip Whiteley: There probably isn’t a single favourite one. The Human Equation by Jeffrey Pfeffer, is very good at the evidence of the high-performing workplace; it usefully includes some discussion of why we are not sufficiently evidence-based. I still think that Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman is as good a guide to personal leadership/management as any. I know he’s controversial, but the critics are straining at gnats while swallowing camels: the huge cultural pressures to be emotionally unintelligent (caused by economic theory and popular culture – see answer to earlier question!) mean that a substantial shift towards more rounded leadership styles is a positive good, even if you could find errors with the analysis by being pedantic enough. Hot Spots by Lynda Gratton provides some useful contemporary case studies on how we operate in teams, and how the best companies understand this.

For an intellectual explanation as to why we over-value measurement and under-value leadership and management style, I would strongly recommend Making Social Science Matter, by Bent Flyvbjerg, published around a decade ago by Cambridge University Press. Strictly speaking, it’s not a management book, as it covers all the social sciences, but it is breathtakingly brilliant and ought to be more influential than it is. The restoration of Aristotle’s ‘practical wisdom’ (similar to Marshall Goldsmith’s, Daniel Goleman’s advice on listening, understanding context etc) is inspired, and shows that these principles have stood the test of time.