Martin Oduor, The Humanized Leader
If you only read one book about leadership in the coming months, let it be The Humanized Leader by Dr Martin Oduor-Otieno. For Martin – please allow me to call him that as he and I have worked together in many ways over many years – writes so well about this leadership subject. The book’s not too long; the point size isn’t too small; the language is straightforward, and the flow is very smooth. It all comes from his own leadership experience, and it is this that he takes us through, bringing in many real-life examples.
Let me get straight to helping you understand what he means by “humanized”, and for this I turn to Robert Blake and Jane Mouton, who in the 1960s devised their Management Grid. I wrote an article about it here in 2009, explaining that their grid consisted of nine-point horizontal and vertical axes. The horizontal axis represented concern for tasks and production, where 9 showed high concern and 1 low concern; and the vertical axis represented concern for people, similarly calibrated.
You can imagine the management styles associated with various points within the grid. 9,1 managers are dictators who give clear, firm instructions, and merely expect subordinates to listen and comply. These “Bulldozers” don’t have time to worry about people issues, about building relationships, so focused are they on results. They talk about leadership not being a popularity contest, and don’t “waste” time consulting, for they and only they have the answers. All very efficient? Well yes, except for the frustration and resentment they’ll cause, and the dreadful consequences thereof: suppressed creativity and ownership, and demotivation.
How about the 1,9 manager, who so wants to be liked that production suffers? Warm friendly souls, these “Country Club” managers try hard to keep the workers happy, are embarrassed by conflict and fail to stretch their people. Then the 9,9 manager, who understands how to work the synergy between the people and the production… the one Martin is, and the one he helps others become… the “Humanized” manager – or leader, as we now tend to call them.
Two aspects of the book particularly appealed to me, and firstly Martin’s reference to Ubuntu – the “I am because we are” approach to life. What’s so nice about this is that it assumes people will work together towards win-win rather than win-lose outcomes.
The other aspect is the significance of coaching, where Martin became highly qualified, through the International Coaching Federation. He offers us several examples of leaders he has coached, laying out the purpose, style and outcomes. Through this we get such a clear picture of what coaching is all about at these higher levels, and how one goes about engaging: much through just listening and asking questions.
He’s a fan of the GROW model, where the acronym lists the Goal of the coaching relative to the present Reality, then the need to explore the Options available to achieve the goal, and finally the Will to achieve the goal. Through this sequence one engages with the coachee to move them from their present challenges to fulfilling their potential.
Much of what the humanized leader must pay attention to is the culture of their organisation, and not surprisingly Martin quotes Peter Drucker’s “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. I’ve never really liked that line, as for me there must be a culture strategy, one that integrates into the overall strategy. I’m sure Martin agrees with me.
In 2012 Martin published his autobiography, Beyond the Shadows of My Dream, about which I also wrote here at the time. And there as in his new book he wrote about his time as PS in the Ministry of Finance and Planning as a member of the Dream Team in the late 1990s. I mention this because when he was appointed I offered to support his efforts to transform the culture of the Treasury, and we worked together throughout his time there, flattening the organisational pyramid and having the energy stop flowing inward and upward but rather downward and outward towards the citizens. I wrote at some length in my earlier article about that engagement, so here let me just applaud Martin for how he did such a wonderful job humanizing the Treasury then.
Finally, let me refer to Martin’s reference to when he was one of the facilitators of the Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communication’s Transformative Leadership programme, run in partnership with the Harvard Kennedy School. I was his partner there, so I really related to his blasting of the Harvard professors for their non-collaborative approach to us, a totally disconnected and non-humanized one!
There’s so much more I’d love to write about this book, but hopefully I’ve captured enough to make you want to read it.
