The comic strip, Hagar the Horrible, depicts the stories of a hard-drinking Viking chief (Hagar), his overbearing wife and his improbable but all too human adventures. The 2/16/09 episode has the clerk asking Hagar’s crew, including the hapless Lucky Eddy, “How did Hagar get to be your leader?” Lucky responds loyally, “He’s by far the bravest and smartest Viking!” In the last frame, on walks Hagar in his normal attire, and Lucky adds, “Plus he’s the only one who owns a hat with horns on it!”
Cartoonist Chris Browne has humorously summed up the basic findings of current leadership research and theory.
We know a leader when we see one. (That’s Hagar). The reader knows Hagar is the leader of his men; even the incredulous clerk knows that. Researchers into the nature of leadership begin empirically with the known: there are leaders and they can be identified. The study of leaders and leadership is always looking backwards to identify traits like “bravest” and “smartest,” but with the hope of projecting these forward or at least informing the present.
Reading: James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner. Leadership the Challenge. Jossey-Bass.2003.
Modern leaders maintain their position through inspiration rather than enforcement. (Lucky’s admiration). This is not charisma; there is no hero worship, but there is genuine admiration. Every crew member agrees happily with Lucky’s assessment. They need their leader to be brave and smart – and so he becomes brave and smart in their eyes. The experienced reader, however, reads the sarcastic subtext beneath the clerk’s seemingly innocent question. Inspiration is in the eye of the follower.
Reading: Barbara Kellerman. Followership. Harvard Business Press; 2008.
Leaders are identified within a context. (This band of fighting Vikings) People live in communities, sometimes more than one. Hagar interacts with at least three different groups: his steadfast lads; his family and the king’s bureaucrats. Allegorically he is the universal man. What troubles him troubles most of us: securing a well paying job, defining our own community image, gaining self respect, keeping the ship afloat, paying our bills, and ensuring that the “wife’ is happy. Hagar is both leader and follower, depending on his context. Regular readers know that Hagar’s daring courage when out despoiling distant castles fades quickly at the thought of his mother-in-law visiting.
Reading: Peter Block. Community: The Structure of Belonging. Berrett-Koehler Publishers; 2008.
Leadership might also have to do with luck (horned hat). Kings come and go, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" (Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II); it is not just the title (or hat) that makes the leader. Kouzes and Posner stress that leadership is learned – and therefore learnable. But, thousands upon thousands of years say otherwise. Moses, Joshua, Achilles, Beowulf, King Arthur and, more recently, Harry Potter lead because of their divinely or magically derived powers. Today, would we call these heroic qualities genetics?
Reading: the seminal work by: Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, 1841.
Leadership is power. (Bravest, smartest) Hagar possesses superlatives, some power that keeps him at the helm. Perhaps it is the power of his personality, savvy or valor. Perhaps only he takes the initiative to own both hat and boat. His followers could, in theory, choose another leader; it is not force of arms, but something else very special that holds this band together with their leader, Hagar, at the center.
Readings: Robert Greene. The 48 Laws of Power. Penguin Books: 2000. Margaret J. Weatley. Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World. Berrett-Koehler; 1999.
You can’t see the forest when you’re one of the trees. (It’s the clerk who asks.). Lucky answers the question about leadership as an insider, but it takes the outsider, like today’s university professor, to raise the question. Leaders who develop a reflective habit of climbing to the balcony in order to look down on what is happening inform their decisions from the vantage point of leadership research and theory. Like other skills, leaders can refine their trial-and-error knowledge by studying the findings of others.
Reading: Ronald A Heifetz and Marty Linsky. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading. Harvard Business School Press; 2002.
Caution: If I were writing a prescriptive reading list for a hypothetical introductory university course on leadership theory, these seven books would form the core of my syllabus. However, as with all prescriptions, this label comes with warnings. DO NOT SWALLOW IF YOU ARE WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS. Most of this research and thinking has been done with adults, not teen agers. You can roll these pills around on your tongue, but do not swallow them whole.
Kudos: The Pulitzer for the Most Efficient Treatise on Leadership goes to Chris Browne who accomplished in eleven square inches what these excellent professors took over 2000 pages to explain.
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Additions to the Hagar Cannon since the original posting
Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon. Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility. Jossey-Bass, 2009. See posting for August 9, 2010.
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