CASE-STUDY

CASE INCIDENT 1 Sharing Is Performing Replacing Nicholas Dirks as the chancellor of University other em of California at Berkeley. Carol T. Christ is taking on a involved. strategy that her predecessors did not utilize: sharing it is also leadership. Notably, the prior chancellor and provost not abot would not consult other decision makers and stakehold- nate ane ers at the university when they proposed to dissolve com- collectiv pletely the College of Chemistry. Christ, on the other Rece hand, met with Frances MeGinley, the student vice presi- ship st dent of academic affairs, reaching out to "get a beat on tive at what [student government] was doing and how [she] behavi could help." This move was unusual because McGinley matio would often have to track down the other administrators to even get a meeting (or would be merely delegated work). Another such arrangement between jiil Martin and David Barrs at a high school in Essex, England, designates special interest areas where each takes the lcad, and they both share an educational philosophy, meet daily, have the authority to make decisions on the spot, 12-1 and challenge one another. As Declan Fitzsimons suggests in a Harvard Business Review article, the twenty-first century moves too quickly and is too dynamic to be handled by one person. By sharing leadership among multiple individuals, the organization can respond more adaptively to challenges, share disparate but complementary perspectives, and ease the burden experienced by the traditional charismatic leader figurehead. However, sharing leadership leads to its own issues and obstacles, which are apparent in the multiple clationships between team members, subordinates, and mitk(whildiet prate of the research on shared leader. the at timproving team performance, attitudes, and the waters, especially when the leadership is transfor. mational of charismatic and when the team tasks are comples. Questions 12.13. What kind of obstacles can you foresee in taking a chared leadership approach? How might they (or can they) be solved? 12-14. How would you implement a shared leadership initiative in a company where you were the CEO ? What elements of job design and redesign might you draw on to increase the effectiveness of the shared leadership initiative? 12.15. Can you think of any instances in which nonshared, traditional approaches to leadership would be preferable to a shared leadership approach? What are they, and how are they preferable? What sort of situational or individual factors lead to the Iraditional approach being more effective in these instances