Mant on Frogs

More recently, we came across Alistair Mant and his book “Intelligent Leadership”. (ISBN 1 86508 052 7). In it he argues that good leadership requires:

• a focus on a goal, purpose or ideal to which people can attach, other than (or in addition to) simple self interest;
• high intelligence, not measured simply by IQ, but in terms of Howard Gardner's 'multiple intelligences'; see Frames of Mind, The Theory of multiple Intelligences 1993.
• an ability to see and think in terms of whole systems (which he links directly to judgment); and
• for healthy rather than pathological leadership, a fairly high degree of psychological health - or at least a lack of crippling psychological damage

To discuss systems thinking, he uses the metaphor of the bicycle (which one can take apart and put together again and generally tinker with, and which is passive) and the frog (which ceases to be a frog beyond a certain level of interference and which is likely to try to resist).

Our experience of many organisations with which we have been involved is that they tend towards the frog, but frequently are taken to pieces by people who think they are a bicycle!