First among Equals: ‘T-R-E-A-T’ Leadership for ‘L-E-A-P’ in a Knowledge-Based World

By Vishal Gupta

How do you lead, motivate and inspire individuals who are as knowledgeable as you are?
How do you lead individuals who are knowledge creators (innovators, scientists, academicians, entrepreneurs, etc.) and whose core task is to create something new?

While we live in a world that is becoming increasingly automated, humans will continue to dominate one significant kind of work-knowledge work. Knowledge workers can be found in professions like education, consulting, engineering, architecture, design, art and R&D. First among Equals describes the 'T-R-E-A-T' framework of leadership that is a combination of five behavioural traits-task-orientation, relation-orientation, empowering, authenticity and team-building. By presenting real-life examples of leaders from India, the book describes how the 'T-R-E-A-T' leadership affects the 'L-E-A-P' (learning, enjoyment, autonomy and performance) of knowledge workers and impacts their perceptions of fairness, creating positive psychological capacities and generating autonomous motivation. Leaders of knowledge workers have to consider themselves as 'first among equals' in order to be effective in a knowledge work context.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9789387471207

Book preview

First among Equals is an excellent book on leadership that is relevant to all leaders across the world, and, particularly, India and Asian countries, which are growing their knowledge economy. This book has a lot of practical wisdom, case studies and experiences which are well documented, researched and presented in a simple and practical way. This book presents a number of useful ‘to-do’ things in a simple, highly readable and practical way. I congratulate Prof. Vishal Gupta for this contribution. The T-R-E-A-T model is very appropriate and is in tune with my own work and experiences of leadership in various settings.

T.V. Rao, Chairman, TVRLS; Founder President, National HRD Network

This is a sensitive, practical and insightful book that I am sure will be useful to both managers and academics. The new T-R-E-A-T model draws on thoughtful consideration of the business environment, an appreciation of the motivations of modern knowledge workers, and careful analysis of the links between leadership and performance. The model sets a high standard for leadership, but is one that is within the reach of anyone who takes the responsibility of the role seriously and is prepared to work at it.

Jonathan Gosling, Emeritus Professor of Leadership, University of Exeter, United Kingdom; Director of Pelumbra.com

Knowledge workers are key to economic growth in India. This insightful book highlights the importance of leadership in this domain and presents a nuanced view of leadership behaviours that may be utilised to motivate and bring out the best in knowledge workers. Prof. Gupta uses illustrative quotes from extensive interviews with R&D scientists to flesh out his model and provide guidance to readers who supervise knowledge workers. This book will be useful to managers and researchers working with knowledge work.

Prithviraj Chattopadhyay, Professor of Management, University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand

The book presents an empirically tested T-R-E-A-T model of leadership in knowledge context for inspiring learning, enjoyment, autonomy and creative performance. The book is also full of several inspiring and highly readable leadership and culture-building case studies and stories to explain what works and what doesn’t work with knowledge workers. It is a must-read book on leadership and creative performance.

Shailendra Singh, Professor and Director, IIM Ranchi

This is a superb book and a must-read for managers in professional, knowledge-based organisations everywhere. It is written in a very simple and lucid style. The main premise is that the traditional, bureaucratic and hierarchical approach of micromanaging employees by monitoring and controlling their behaviours closely is ill-suited to getting the most out of knowledge workers. With the help of a large data set from R&D laboratories in India and extensive research, this book develops a comprehensive T-R-E-A-T leadership framework for knowledge workers.

Naresh Khatri, Professor of Strategic HRM and Transformational Leadership, University of Missouri,

United States

This is truly a wonderful and insightful book on leadership and what it takes to succeed as a leader in the new, ever-changing world, especially of knowledge workers. Given the complexities of changing job profiles, workforce demographics and workplace dynamics, this book offers a lot of insights and learnings to navigate the corporate world today.

Vasuta Agarwal, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, InMobi

First among Equals is one-of-a-kind book that lays down an innovative and relevant framework of leadership effectiveness. It describes the T-R-E-A-T framework of leadership that helps to understand how leadership works, and how to improve it to lead knowledge workforce in the contemporary world. This fact-filled book explores the concept effectively and provides framework for the leaders to follow. The work around contemporary workforce and how to lead them will surely make this a must-read. Highly recommended!

Amit Kumar Das, Vice-President—HR, JSW

A vivid and authentic description as to how a leader must approach his leadership behaviour for inspired performance of the team. The ‘T-R-E-A-T for L-E-A-P’ leadership framework comprehensively envisions the core issues needed for targeted leadership competencies for ‘creative behaviour’. The framework and principles elucidated in the book, though is contexed for ‘knowledge workers’, however, are fully applicable to leadership in all types of work. The inspiring and simple language of the book flows through the heart and mind of the reader. A unique and must-possess book on leadership.

Brigadier Jayant Tiwari, Shaurya Chakra awardee; Leadership and Life Skills Coach

Everyone knows that inspiring others is difficult, but seldom do we realise that inspiring knowledge workers is a humungous task. The T-R-E-A-T framework will rest your anxiety and equip you with a tool to motivate and lead today’s younger generation effectively. This well-researched book, First among Equals, is loaded with pragmatic approaches that are supported with plenty of corporate case studies to help you become a better and effective leader. Prof. Vishal Gupta has brought out a master stroke in his maiden attempt, and I am sure it will be a ‘treat’ to read for all. Well done Prof. Gupta!

Kapil Bijani, CHRO and President—IT, Hitachi Hi-Rel Power Electronics Pvt. Ltd.

Written by an extremely erudite researcher and passionate teacher, Prof. Vishal’s First among Equals is an amazing book. The book will surely add immense value to both aspiring and accomplished leaders to make a mark in a knowledge-driven world. I find the ‘T-R-E-A-T and L-E-A-P’ framework extremely powerful. It provides pertinent steps to help leaders lead, motivate and inspire knowledge workers in pragmatic and authentic ways. I could relate to Vishal’s anecdotes and examples. His lucid style and brilliant exposition makes the book a must-read.

Swatee Sarangi, Global Head, Learning, Leadership and Organisational Development, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories

Superb! A research-based book relevant to the future of business. Business organisations are becoming increasingly dependent on knowledge workers but are being managed by traditional leaders using traditional methods. Prof. Vishal Gupta has filled this void through the practical leadership framework, ‘T-R-E-A-T for leaders’. Giving equal weightage not only to performance but also to learning, autonomy and how to make the process enjoyable is very well presented in the ‘L-E-A-P’ quadrangle. So relevant and interesting!

Vinay Bassi, Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO),

Arvind Limited

First among Equals is indeed a seminal work on the ‘leadership’ traits often sought in knowledge-driven organisations, more so for the ones that are in scientific domain. Contextual and sometimes anecdotal, the book builds a seamless narrative around individuals who pursue research and their desired leadership traits. Prof. Gupta has given us the ‘T-R-E-A-T’ leadership framework that is organically linked with ‘L-E-A-P’ by using empirical evidences gathered from the laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)—one among the large, publicly funded, scientific R&D organisations globally. A must-read for all those who often seek clarity, wisdom and way forward on how to lead institutions that are knowledge-driven.

Dr. Naresh Kumar, Former Outstanding Scientist and Head, Human Resource Training Centre and R&D Planning, CSIR

FIRST AMONG EQUALS

FIRST AMONG EQUALS

‘T-R-E-A-T’ Leadership for ‘L-E-A-P’ in a Knowledge-Based World

VISHAL GUPTA

BLOOMSBURY INDIA

Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd

Second Floor, LSC Building No. 4, DDA Complex, Pocket C – 6 & 7,

Vasant Kunj New Delhi 110070

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY INDIA and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in India 2020

This edition published in 2020

Copyright © Vishal Gupta 2020

Illustration © Vishal Gupta 2020

Vishal Gupta has asserted his right under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Author of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing from the publishers

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes

ISBN: TPB: 978-9-3874-5782-9; eBook: 978-9-3874-7120-7

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Created by Manipal Digital Systems

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc makes every effort to ensure that the papers used in the manufacture of our books are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. Our manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters

To all knowledge workers whose constant efforts make our world a better place to live in

CONTENTS

List of Tables

List of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgements

1 Knowledge Work: A Level-Playing Field

Knowledge-Based World

Implications for Leaders

First among Equals: The Research Journey

‘First among Equals’ Framework

Why ‘First among Equals’?

2 Leading Knowledge Workers

T-R-E-A-T Leader Behaviours

The L-E-A-P Quadrilateral

T-R-E-A-T for L-E-A-P

The T-R-E-A-T Toolset

Looking Forward

3 Fostering Fairness at Workplace

T-R-E-A-T Leader Behaviours and Workplace Fairness

Fairness and Employee Creative Performance

Empirical Test of Relationships

Importance of Fairness

4 Developing Positive Psychological Capital

T-R-E-A-T Leader Behaviours and Psychological Capital

Psychological Capital and Employee Creative Performance

Empirical Test of the Relationships

Power of Positivity

5 Internalisation of Work Values and Development of Autonomous Motivation

T-R-E-A-T Leadership and Autonomous Motivation

Autonomous Motivation and Employee Creative Performance

Empirical Test of the Relationships

Importance of Internalisation

6 Espousing a Better Future

First among Equals

T-R-E-A-T Leadership and L-E-A-P

Process of Leader Effectiveness

Putting It All Together

Appendix A: Phase 1 of ‘First among Equals’ Research Study

Appendix B: Phase 2 of ‘First among Equals’ Study

Appendix C: T-R-E-A-T Leader Behaviours

References

Index

About the Author

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF FIGURES

PREFACE

My first degree was a Bachelor in Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. I graduated as an electronics engineer in 2005 and joined a multinational firm located in Noida, India, that was into designing application-specific integrated circuits. I joined the company as an enthusiastic engineer with a resolve to establish myself in electronics—my ‘core’ discipline of engineering. My work dealt with the designing of very large-scale integrated circuits. The circuits had to be designed, developed, fabricated, tested and then shipped to the customers. The work involved a lot of creativity, was an iterative process and was accompanied by uncertainty and high risk of failures.

The first year of the job went in learning technical details and in understanding the projects that my team was engaged in. While my focus always remained on the technical side of things, I could not help noticing the actions of leaders (supervisors and managers) who were managing the work, and of the engineers who worked under their supervision. There was often a very negative image of the leaders, and the negative talk ranged from the leader being insensitive to the subordinates’ demands and being indifferent to their needs, to being incompetent engineers themselves and being arrogant individuals. The negativity would often trouble all of us working as junior engineers in the teams and I would wonder why this was so.

After about three years of sticking around with the organisation, I left the organisation and joined the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow, as a doctoral student in the Human Resource Management group. The three years I spent in the organisation changed my interest from being an engineer to a management student wanting to understand how leaders influence and inspire subordinates who are working in knowledge-intensive organisations. The time I spent in the organisation made me wonder what a waste of talents and everyone’s energies were being made by leading and managing the way we were in these organisations. Even though I had written the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and had applied to universities abroad for higher studies in electronics, I dropped my plan and decided to study management instead. My years at this organisation had created within me a lot of interest in studying people-related issues in organisations engaged in knowledge-based work. I could better relate to the issues being faced by these organisations as I had myself worked in one such organisation.

Employees and teams that are actively involved in the design and development of new products, processes, services and technologies enable their organisations to achieve superior performance. Enabling such employees and teams have become one of the key drivers of growth, performance and valuation in organisations today. Knowledge work is defined as any work where the acquisition and exploitation of knowledge are central to its successful completion. Today, knowledge workers can be found everywhere—programmers, healthcare professionals, academics, scientists, engineers, consultants, management practitioners, businessmen—and in any other sphere where employees ‘think for a living’. Due to the ambiguous, unique and inherently uncertain processes of knowledge work, professionals engaged in knowledge-based work must be managed quite differently from other work units where the work is routine and repetitive. The outputs and performance measures of such individuals and groups are usually quite different than those used in other organisations. Moreover, knowledge-based work often has a time-lagged, sporadic and non-market nature to its outputs. For example, new innovations may take years before they are transformed from know-how into outputs (products or processes).

The times we live in are changing rapidly. The last 15 years or so (from about 2005 onwards) have been radical in terms of the advancement of technology, evolution of our workplaces and changes in the demographics of the workforce. All these factors are converting and making our workplaces increasingly knowledge-based. Today, it is not important what you know, but rather how fast you can unlearn what you know and relearn the new things. The knowledge is becoming obsolete so quickly that it is important to know how and where to look for newer information rather than just what you know. Also, with the advancement of technology, the concept of workplaces is becoming increasingly hazy. Today’s workplaces are becoming increasingly porous and organisations now are interested in the knowledge that their employees generate rather than from where they do so. Technology, such as artificial intelligence, is impacting the way jobs are being created. The routine jobs are likely to be taken over by machines and repetitive tasks are going to be automated.

Also, there is a change in the composition of workforce. The newer generation of people, the millennials, are more open to new experiences and like to be treated with respect, care and concern. They are no more comfortable with hierarchy and traditional ways of doing business. They demand and expect openness at workplace and collaboration rather than command and control. The new generation is not married to an organisation; rather they are married to a cause. As long as the organisation delivers them that cause, or as far as they see the cause-alignment, they will likely work for that organisation. The moment they do not see this alignment, they will not work for the organisation.

Leadership is the process of influencing an individual or a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. One of the most critical aspects of the success of any organisation is the quality of the leadership it has. Leadership—leaders—exist at all levels. All supervisors are leaders for their subordinates. In this book, I use the term ‘leaders’ to refer to all supervisors who have subordinates working under them and who report to them for day-to-day work, and who are responsible for conducting appraisals for their subordinates. While it is true that the type of organisation that one works for plays a big role in determining whether the employees will stay in it or not, the quality of supervisors (referred to as leaders from here onwards) make a difference to the organisations if everything else is equal. In order to be effective as a leader, one has to be able to get work done by being able to understand his/her people, their feelings, desires and then work towards aligning those feelings and desires with the work he/she has in mind for them. Leaders of knowledge workers are often selected as much for their technical expertise as for their leadership skills. Although, leading knowledge workers require leaders to possess certain skills in addition to technical expertise, skills in handling interpersonal problems among members of knowledge-based project teams are not something for which these leaders have been formally trained. Most of our understanding of the management of knowledge workers comes from anecdotes with very few systematic studies linking leadership to creativity of such teams. The apparent differences between the leadership requirements of traditional (routine work) and empowered (knowledge-based work) environments suggest that traditional theories of leadership may not be applicable to empowered work environments.

As I was identifying the topic for my doctoral dissertation at IIM Lucknow, I decided to take up the study of the relationship between knowledge workers and the leadership in these organisations. For this purpose, I chose to look at Research and Development (R&D) organisations and examine the attributes of leadership that would be needed to inspire creative performance behaviours (a set of behaviours that promote generation of ideas as well as their implementation) in the employees of these organisations. R&D work was something that I was engaged in when I worked for the organisation in Noida. As mentioned earlier, while conducting this study, I looked at the leadership that existed at all the levels.

The ideas presented in this book are grounded in two fundamental principles: 1. Everyone can be a leader (leaders exist at all levels) and 2. A leader is both a leader as well as a follower. It is extremely important for successful organisations to recognise that leaders exist at all levels and that these leaders need to be trained and educated for them to be effective in dealing with their subordinates. Also, it is important for all leaders to understand that they exist in a hierarchy and while they lead individuals below them, they are also supposed to follow leaders above them in the hierarchy. As I conducted the study, I explored the behaviours that leaders at all levels exhibit (should exhibit) in order to inspire creative performance from their subordinates. Also, I explored the mechanism (ways) through which leaders can promote creativity in their subordinates. I focused on creativity (creative performance behaviours) as the outcome variable because as times go by, creativity (i.e., ability to come up with novel and viable ideas) of the employees will become more and more critical for organisations. The creativity of employees will become important in the development of better products and services, in the ability to market those solutions to customers and also in the management of organisations.

My research led me to the identification of five leader behaviours, namely, task-orientation (T), relation-orientation (R), empowering (E), authenticity (A) and team-building (T). I call this the T-R-E-A-T model of leadership and this book presents a simple and easy-to-remember framework for leaders of knowledge workers. Next, I present in this book three mechanisms (ways) through which leaders can impact subordinates’ behaviours. These mechanisms are: developing fairness at workplace, developing positive psychological capacities (such as hope, optimism, self-confidence and resilience) and developing autonomous motivation (a combination of intrinsic motivation and integrated