Backstage Leadership
The leader's role is primarily critical behind the scenes, to conceive and orchestrate the strategic processes that are necessary for the strategy to be sucessful.
Author(s): Charles Galunic
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Date of publication: 2020
Manageris opinion
In recent years, the figure of the charismatic and inspiring leader has been the subject of great attention: a providential profile, able to enlist and galvanize their troops against winds and tides through their communications. For Charles Galunic, this facet of leadership is nothing more than a façade masking the leader’s essential role: the conception and orchestration of strategic processes that will allow the company to remain in sync with its external environment. He thus intends to rehabilitate this “behind the scenes leadership”, highly invisibilized but oh-so-necessary.
To that end, he offers valuable advice to leaders seeking to improve their mastery of the internal processes vital to any strategy’s success. Illustrating his point with solutions implemented by real leaders, he helps managers and executives to reinforce their ability to scan and conceptualize a complex environment, to better manage the political process required to create engagement around their strategy, and to find a dynamic balance between the contradictory forces at play within any organization. Beyond the purely strategic aspect, he also helps leaders to analyze their companies’ culture and to ensure themselves that it is in phase with the organization’s goals.
