Recent research in the US, UK and m

Recent research in the US, UK and more widely, has pointed to the
significant impact of an engaging style of leadership on organisational
performance among a wide range of medium to large-size companies.
Research conducted in the NHS and local government in the UK, (and
replicated in FTSE 100 companies) that was inclusive of gender,
ethnicity, and level, has provided a robust metric, of proven validity, for
assessing this kind of leadership behaviour.
8. Another important conclusion was that transformational or engaging
leadership behaviours cannot be assessed as if they were some kind
of ‘add on’ to an existing ‘competency framework’.
The reasons for this stem in part from the criticism that competency
frameworks provide an overly ‘reductionist’, fragmented account of
leadership behaviour. As two American writers recently put it,
“What matters is not a person’s sum score on a set of
competencies, but how well [or as we would put it, in what way]
a person uses what talents he or she has to get the job done.”
(Hollenbeck et al. 2006).
Two similes are relevant here. Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe
(2005) suggested that anyone could paint a Monet if one could
deconstruct a beautiful painting into a ‘painting by numbers’ exercise.
Bolden and Gosling (2006) offered a musical simile:
“a competency framework could be considered like sheet music,
a diagrammatic representation of the melody. It is only in the
arrangement, playing and performance, however, that the piece
truly comes to life.”
9. To paraphrase an expression used by Neil Kinnock,1 when properly
constructed, leadership competencies can be likened to Brighton Pier,
very fine in their own way, but not a good way of getting to France.
The conclusion drawn here can be summarised as follows: neither
competent nor engaging leadership should be seen as superior to the
other; rather, they should be seen as complementary, with the
suggestion that leaders should lead competently, in a transformational
or engaging way.
10. Increasingly, organisations concerned with the need to build internal
leadership capacity, are moving towards the notion that it is not so
much about a what leader does but rather a process that engenders
leadership behaviours in others’. Indeed, this purpose is a central
feature of the nature of ‘engaging leadership’.