The Leadership Puzzle
Posted by Carl Harshman on July 18th, 2026.
When commenting decades ago on the volumes of research and publication on leadership Warren Bennis and Bert Nanus wrote in Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge: "Never have so many labored so long to say so little."
But that doesn't stop us from trying to understand leadership and how to predict who will be effective leaders and who will not.
This short essay won't solve the issue. Our goal is to shed a little light on (a) what makes understanding leadership so difficult and (b) some things to consider as we continue the search.
What Makes Understanding Effective Leadership So Difficult?
It is no revelation that "one-size-does-not-fit-all" in leadership.
As Management Research Group, publisher of the leadership behavior and effectiveness tools we use, says the job of the leader is to create specific outcomes in a specific environment with access to specific resources. Further, MRG's premise is that leadership effectiveness is best understood when we view it through four filters:
- The Organization
- The Role of the Leader
- The Situation
- The Individual
No wonder leadership is so difficult to understand. All of those variables are at play all the time. And each of them can shift or change including the "Individual" characteristics and behaviors of the individual.
How Do We Manage the Complexity of Leadership?
The starting point is being clear about expectations for the individual in a role. When we're involved in a hiring or selection process, we try to encourage the client to use the organization's mission, vision, values, and role (job) description to construct a table that lists:
- Expectations (these often go beyond a job description)
- Characteristics (Values, Motivation, Personality Traits, etc.)
- Competencies (Knowledge and Abilities)
- Sources of Data for Characteristics and Competencies (How will you know?)
The last item in the list, Sources of Data, identifies what information you will use to assess the specific factor and how will you gather that information. Note: resumes have become questionable given the role of AI in producing so many. At the same time, the popular "interview" does not necessarily provide the most accurate information about the individual.
There is the part where the person being interviewed projects what they want you to see or hear. This may or may not be the authentic person behind the words. At the same time, as interviewers we bring our filters to the process. As one hiring manager once said: "My biggest limitation is that I keep looking for people who are like me and that's not what is often needed."
Good insight.
This process is a lot of work. It also takes a lot of resources (mostly time, but time is money in an organization).
However, the investment is nothing like the real cost of a poor choice in hiring or promotion. I'm not just referring to what we might pay them to go away. That's just one cost. The other costs, mostly hidden or not in the financial statement, are:
- Lost productivity
- Lost current customers/clients
- Lost opportunities (e.g., potential customers/clients or improvements)
- Lost talent: people who left because they did not like working for this person
I have difficulty thinking of a scenario when the investment is not worth it.
So What?
In our Organizational Effectiveness framework, leadership is the linchpin between Strategy and Culture.
Ram Charan, the eminent consultant, once said that companies don't usually fail because they don't have a good strategy, they fail because they don't execute the strategy. Good leaders are good at both developing strategy and overseeing successful execution.
Edgar Schein established decades ago the direct link between leadership and organizational culture. How often during the promotion or selection process do we ask the explicit question: How is this individual likely to influence the culture and to reinforce the elements of culture we consider essential?
We'll always have leaders. The questions are:
- Will we have effective leaders?
- If so, how will we be able to predict it ahead of time and manage it along the way?
The ball, as always, is in your court.