Side by Side Leadership

Ron Romig

Defining a New Model of Leadership

Having plowed through thousands of research write-ups and absorbed the significance of the relatively few that had a scientific basis, I felt I had gathered enough information to answer my original question: “What leadership practices and skills could be taught to people that would make a positive difference?” In fact, I could even identify the simple, unifying idea that underlay the most successful of the leadership practices. The problem was I didn’t know what to call my discovery. “Mutual” leadership? That was close, but it didn’t have the right ring to it.

Around this time, I attended a training session at the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in Washington, D.C., to learn more about natural systems theory. One evening I went to dinner with a friend and colleague, Dr. Paul Radde. As friends will do, we took turns telling each other our problems and ideas.

In the good spirit of the evening, I threw my terminology problem out to Paul. What would be a good name for mutual leadership that wouldn’t sound like behavioral science jargon? Paul listened politely. He agreed with me that I needed to draw a distinction from “top-down” and “bottom-up” leadership.

Immediately my mind filled with images of great leaders in world history who had led “side by side.”

I thought of Martin Luther King Jr. leading his famous march for desegregation in Birmingham, Alabama, walking alongside women and men from all races and all walks of life. King’s Side by Side Leadership conformed to the vision to which he gave his life, a future America in which all races could live and work together in peace and equality.

I remembered reading that George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, visited with each of his cabinet members to ask their advice before he made any important decision; that Mohandas Gandhi, the revered liberator of India, walked side by side with the other leaders of the independence movement to the Indian Ocean to protest the British monopoly on the sale of table salt. I also recalled the little-known fact that Albert Einstein, the twentieth century’s most famous physicist, developed his theories of relativity working with two close colleagues around dining room tables and on walks.

As I prepared an overview of Side by Side Leadership for Community of Christ leaders prior to the 2002 World Conference, I envisioned other images of leading side by side. Jesus traveled the roads of Galilee with the disciples at his side. There was DaVinci’s depiction of the Last Supper with Jesus in the center. I have seen the lineage of first presidencies with three presidents in the Community of Christ sharing leadership.

In 1989, one congregation selected a newly ordained elder to serve as its pastor. This woman, while having served her congregation as Sunday school teacher and in many other branch offices, had never been a priesthood member. To assist her and her two counselors (both ordained teachers), she selected a high priest to mentor her. The high priest came to the pastor’s monthly planning sessions and provided counsel and experience.

When people walk side by side, they are journeying in the same direction together. When people work and plan side by side, they also face the same direction—their shared vision of the future.

A New Definition

Side by Side Leadership: what comes to your mind when you read this term? When I mention it to organizational leaders, many of them grasp the main idea immediately. Almost spontaneously, they begin to work side by side with others to set goals, plan work, solve problems, evaluate performance, draw up budgets, and create new ventures. They get out from behind their desks and join others around conference tables. They go where the work is being done. They ask contributors for ideas, listen to workers, and sometimes roll up their sleeves and go to work alongside them.

If we are to begin the process of achieving a new model of leadership, we must get beyond thinking of leadership as a one-way process. One-way processes leave little room for actively involved contributors. I propose the following definition:

Leadership is facilitating Side by Side relationships in pursuit of shared goals.

When I present this new definition to old-style, top-down bosses, their immediate reaction is often, “But my workers act like children! They have to be told what to do, and how to do it!”

"I agree with you,” I respond. “That is exactly the problem we propose to solve with Side by Side Leadership.”

The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family, in Washington, D.C., discovered that family and other close interpersonal relationships form natural systems. According to natural systems theory, as taught by Drs. Micheal Kerr and Daniel Papero, current leaders of the interdisciplinary center, leader/follower or leader/contributor relationships are reciprocal. In the old, top-down model, the followers adapt to being told what to do at work and stop thinking for themselves. Often they resist; sometimes they rebel.

Natural systems theory predicts that if workers are treated as fully equal contributors in leadership processes, they will behave as such and work performance will improve. The hard-data research we have seen supports this prediction. Followers, when allowed or invited to participate in making decisions, invest themselves in the work and become contributors.

There are other conclusions we can draw from natural systems theory:

1. Leadership is an interactive process.
2. The kind of leadership that achieves dramatically improved performance is a two-way street.
3. Often the most effective way for leaders to influence subordinates is to change their own behavior.
4. Contributors have a greater positive impact on results than followers.

Natural systems theory also proposes that relationships inside the organization are influenced by what happens both outside and inside. The effective Side by Side leader is aware of all these influences on the team and organization and knows that front-line people—the employees who are in daily contact with customers and suppliers—are often the first to discover new opportunities and threats to the organization. By maintaining a two-way dialogue, Side by Side leaders and their contributors can respond quickly to changes without losing sight of their goals.

Leadership vs. Management

We have traditionally expected people in management positions to be leaders as well. However, the statistics tell us that being a manager does not equate to being a leader. They also show that people who have no position in the organizational hierarchy can be leaders.

What is the difference between a manager and a leader?

• Managers influence results from their position at the top of the organizational hierarchy; leaders can affect results anywhere in the organization.
• Managers make their presence known by boxes on an organization chart; leaders, by their breakthrough results and their facilitating presence throughout the organization.
• Managers utilize existing resources; leaders create new resources.
• Managers improve efficiency; leaders improve effectiveness.

Many executives state that they want everyone in the organization to act as a leader—to use initiative, take responsibility, and be accountable. This means that everyone is expected to be on the alert for trends in new products and services, as well as for competitive risks. At Intel, for example, anyone could e-mail CEO Andy Grove with a problem, an insight, or a trend. Grove knew that people at the edges of the organization would spot early trends before he or any other headquarters executive became aware of them. The spectacular success of his company speaks for Grove’s leadership skills.

The Evolving Organization

Adapting the rapidly changing national and global business environments, organizations have changed both in form and in function. Global companies, not tied to any particular country or region, can form anywhere, gather the necessary resources, and coordinate production and marketing across oceans. Corporations lease or rent workers, rather than hiring them directly, and organize everyone into self-managed and shared-management teams. The stable, long-term, hierarchical corporate structure has been replaced by highly flexible organizations like Dell Computer, which reorganizes several times a year to meet changing needs.

The traditional pattern of horizontal or vertical integration, with subsidiaries owned or controlled by the core company, is being supplanted by the virtual corporation, consisting of joint ventures and partnerships. In this system, the partners in the extended enterprise are as important as the core in achieving the company’s business goals. The business is only as successful as the weakest link in the chain that runs from its suppliers to its customers.

In this new business environment, the old vertical, hierarchical leadership models do not work. The organization or the future must be highly interactive; it must work horizontally with its customers, suppliers, research organizations, and alliance partners.

Of all the organizational innovations of the past ten years, shared-management teams are the most likely to endure. In terms of their effectiveness at improving performance, they have been compared to the invention of the assembly line. Some groups of employees, it has been shown, can manage themselves better than the managers who used to direct them.

Side by Side Leadership is the key to maximizing the effectiveness of empowered workers and shared-management teams. With the rise of knowledge workers and increased availability of knowledge, more and more organizations are finding that top-down leadership simply no longer works. How can a manager order her subordinates to do a job in a particular way when they know how to do the work better than she does? Leaders must learn and practice Side by Side behaviors that promote productivity in themselves and their workers.

In the jigsaw puzzle formed by rapid changes in the business environment, more teamwork, greater worker empowerment, and increased worker knowledge, Side by Side Leadership fits with all the other pieces to promote outstanding performance by all.

Excerpted from pages 41–47 of Side by Side Leadership: Achieving Outstanding Results Together by Dennis Romig (ISBN 1-8851-6751-2). Romig and his wife, Laurie, head up Performance Resources, Inc., a management consulting firm in Austin, Texas. They are active members in the newly created Bluebonnet Mission Center in Texas. To order your copy of Side by Side Leadership, call Herald House at 1-800-767-8181 or visit them on-line at www.HeraldHouse.org . The book can also be ordered through your local bookstore.

Editorial Comment

Testimony by Roy Schaefer

(2003)