Month: May 2020

This blog post, of which this is the second of three parts, emerges from my talk for the workshop “Mythology and Education 2020” at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, on 18 February. This work falls within my research for the OMC project. I draw inspiration from my current job as Classical Art Historian at the University of Roehampton, but also from my previous studies at the Saïd Business School and employment in the IT and oil industries. In the first part, I introduced the books about the Classical past and my argument about connective leadership. In this second part, I discuss leadership styles borrowing models from management, especially those of business guru Charles Handy. In the third part, I will examine more books and how their mythic and historic leaders lead through teamwork.

Acknowledgements

I am hugely grateful, first and foremost, to Professor Amy C. Smith, as well as to Professors Susan Deacy, Nathan Harter, and Katarzyna Marciniak for reading and commenting on earlier versions. My thanks extend to Eirini Dermitzaki of Papadopoulos Publishing for permission to publish images of front covers and of the head offices, as well as to Olga Strycharczyk for putting together the web version so wonderfully.

Part 2: Management Today: Models from Greek Myth

In the first part of this blog, I noted that Philippos Mandilaras’ and Natalia Kapatsoulia’s books about the Classical past present connecting leaders that care for others and encourage teamwork. Here I discuss leadership in large corporations.

Leadership is a quality that is highly valued in corporate management. Companies hire university graduates and experienced hires usually when they restructure from a barrel-shaped structure to a pyramid structure (Fig. 1). A barrel structure has too much weight in the middle: in business this means too many middle managers. They need to go because they are expensive. From a financial perspective a pyramid is good: it is wide at the bottom, with newcomers who are not as expensive.

The barrel and the pyramid also describe how the top relates to the bottom. In the barrel, the middle management acts as a buffer zone. New hires do not communicate with the top. In the pyramid, smart university graduates with leadership qualities attract attention from top managers. If the graduates are good with words, as are many who have degrees in Classics, they are cherry picked by the board. Top managers want fewer managers and more leaders. They want leaders who stay always positive and find a way out of a crisis. But what exactly is leadership?

Leadership is the ability to make a difference to the organization and move things forward. Are leaders born or trained? We might address this matter by thinking about personality types. Three basic categories of personality types are tough battlers, logical thinkers, and friendly helpers.[1] Employers try to recruit individuals with each of these personality types when they put together project teams.

Tough battlers always find a way forward. They are the born leaders and usually the project managers. Logical thinkers think carefully and in a structured manner and therefore help tough battlers with decisions. Friendly helpers support tough battlers and logical thinkers. They appear to be the weakest list, as they tend to be remunerated and promoted less. Actually, friendly helpers are the strongest links because they hold teams and projects together.

In his influential book Gods of Management. How They Work and Why They Will Fail, first published in 1978,[2] social philosopher and management thinker Charles Handy used the gods – Zeus, Apollo, Athena and Dionysos – as metaphors for four types of organizations, each of which encourages different leadership styles.

Zeus is a top-down organization (Fig. 2). People relate to the charismatic leader at the top through emotions, flattery, and loyalty. You need to get into the leader’s mind to succeed.

Apollo is an organization based on roles: everyone has a sense of duty (Fig. 3). Each person is an expert in their field, driven by their role.

Athena is a project-based organization, for which teamwork is particularly important (Fig. 4). Different experts come together to voice their ideas. They are driven by the project.

Dionysos is an organization that needs the artistic genius (Fig. 5). Such creative individuals work well on their own, but not in teams.

As I see it, Handy’s model captures the importance of connective leadership and friendly helpers within Apollo and Athena organizational cultures. These two cultures give more space to women, who are valued for their professional expertise and for contributing to teamwork. And it is these two cultures that are emphasized in Mandilaras’ and Kapatsoulia’s books.

In The Twelve Gods of Olympus, there is a clear-cut division of roles between the different Olympians, as with an Apollo culture. Zeus is far from authoritarian. He is caring and rescues his siblings from Cronus’ stomach. As they emerge from the stomach they seem to make a team with their diverse personalities. Yet Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades reach consensus in dividing the world. They are working on the same project, as in an Athena culture.

In Odysseus’ Journey, Odysseus cares for his team (Fig. 6). He kills Polyphemos and forces Kirke to turn his comrades from pigs back to men. He is a tough battler, a logical thinker, and a friendly helper: a leader who stays always positive. In the end, his comrades do not listen to him, yet with fatal consequences. The book may communicate a warning. A leader cannot lead if the team is not on board: connective leadership is required.

In the next and final part of this blog, I analyse more books about Greek gods, heroes and historical figures. I argue that these mythic and historic leaders appear to operate mostly within Handy’s Athena context. This allows them to act with consideration for others and to lead through teamwork.

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[1] See Maureen Guirdham, Interpersonal Skills at Work, New York and London: Prentice Hall, 1990.

[2] Charles Handy, Gods of Management. How They Work and Why They Will Fail, London: Souvenir, 1978.

Post by Katerina Volioti, placed by Olga Strycharczyk in coll. with Dorota Rejter.

You can read her other posts here.

This blog post, of which this is the first of three parts, emerges from my talk for the workshop Mythology and Education 2020 at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, on 18 February. This work falls within my research for the Our Mythical Childhood Project. I draw inspiration from my current job as Classical Art Historian at the University of Roehampton, but also from my previous studies at the Saïd Business School and employment in the IT and oil industries. In this first part, I introduce the books about the Classical past and my argument about connective leadership. In the second part, I will discuss leadership styles borrowing models from management, especially those of business guru Charles Handy. In the third part, I will examine more books and how their mythic and historic leaders lead through teamwork.

Acknowledgements

I am hugely grateful, first and foremost, to Professor Amy C. Smith, as well as to Professors Susan Deacy, Nathan Harter, and Katarzyna Marciniak for reading and commenting on earlier versions. My thanks extend to Eirini Dermitzaki of Papadopoulos Publishing for permission to publish images of front covers and of the head offices, as well as to Olga Strycharczyk for putting together the web version so wonderfully.

Part 1: Connective Leadership

A set of illustrated books on ancient Greek myths, recently published in Greece, aim to educate children as young as four about who is who in Classical Antiquity and to prepare them for primary-school education (Fig. 1).

In addition to imparting knowledge of the myths, the books help children develop interpersonal skills, including leadership qualities. They emphasize a particular style of leadership, known as connective leadership,[1] which encourages collaboration and values the unique contributions of each and every member of a team.

All books I discuss here are by Papadopoulos Publishing, an Athens-based house specializing in children’s literature (Fig. 2).

The texts by Philippos Mandilaras, who is a well-known author of children’s and young adults’ books in Greece, are illustrated by Natalia Kapatsoulia, a freelance illustrator of children’s books. I note Kapatsoulia’s vivid colours, open spaces (landscapes and seascapes), and simple human forms that take cues mostly from comics. Mandilaras’ and Kapatsoulia’s books form a best-selling series about the Classical past, and they have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian (Fig. 3). The books target an international audience, potentially shaping tomorrow’s global citizens.

We live in a fast-changing world and the new generation will need to solve difficult social, economic, and environmental problems. The Climate Crisis, for example, is a complex global problem, with multiple dimensions, including psychology, science, ecology, politics, and education. As the current coronavirus pandemic has revealed, what is required from the current and future generations is experts in different fields to come together and work effectively as a team.

I find that Mandilaras and Kapatsoulia’s books convey a recent shift in leadership styles, from leaders who act alone to leaders who value collaborative relationships.

A traditional understanding of leadership tends to describe leaders with considerable charisma, perhaps recalling Max Weber’s charismatic leaders who influence the masses and thereby change the world. Such leaders are usually white men in western societies. They are either highly educated or highly ambitious or both. Connective leadership, by contrast, refers to leaders that involve others, including women, in the decision-making process and value diversity as a source of creativity.

In Classical Antiquity we have stereotypes of strong individuals. The Greek gods and heroes are super strong and super mobile, as if they are flying around all the time. Historical figures, such as Leonidas and Pericles, also have strong personalities.

Mandilaras and Kapatsoulia’s books take us beyond such stereotypes of strong personas from the deep past. The books foreground caring and responsible leaders, who listen to others with respect and are good problem-solvers. There is a clear emphasis on connective leadership.

In Pericles and the Golden Age, Pericles is a connecting leader par excellence (Fig. 4). This may not be because of Pericles’ qualities alone, but also because of the people all around him. Pericles operates within an Athenian context that has multiple teams in place. The city is egalitarian and there are teams of Democrats and Oligarchs. Pericles works with sculptors and architects to rebuild the Acropolis. Pericles consults his wife Aspasia for advice. Apparently, Pericles leads by involving others. Mandilaras concludes that Pericles wanted to be a servant to the people [my translation, «…ο ηγέτης…που του λαού του θέλησε να είναι υπηρέτης», in Greek].

I discuss examples of these mythic and historic “connective leadership” paradigms presented through these books to young kids in the third part of this post. In the next part, however, I consider leaders in the business world, with reference to organizational restructuring, personality types, and Charles Handy’s Gods of Management.

 

[1]  For connective leadership, I draw inspiration from Nathan W. Harter and Sean M. Heuvel, “New Perspectives on Heroic/Post-Heroic Leadership and on Heroic Followership”, International Leadership Journal 12, 2020, pp. 8-25. Available here.

 

Post by Katerina Volioti, placed by Olga Strycharczyk

 

Dr. Katerina Volioti, University of Roehampton, was educated at the Universities of Cambridge (BA in Archaeology & Anthropology), Oxford (MSc in Management), Humboldt (MA in Politics), and Reading (PhD in Classics), and she is a passionate educator. You can read her other posts here.