Leadership by the Book
By Renée Hanson, University Consulting Alliance Manager
Boundary Spanning Leadership: Six Practices for Solving Problems, Driving Innovation, and Transforming Organizations by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobot-Mason
Published in October 2010, Boundary Spanning Leadership provides key practices for some of today's most difficult leadership challenges: leading across silos and differences, leading in an environment where cross-functional collaboration, matrix structures, and mergers are increasingly commonplace, and leading at a time when groups must move beyond an “us versus them” mindset.
Boundary Spanning Leadership is based on ten years of research across six world regions and is co-authored by Chris Ernst, senior faculty member and researcher at the Center for Creative Leadership, and Donna Chrobot-Mason, professor, researcher, and director of the Center for Organizational Leadership at the University of Cincinnati.
At the heart of the book are the six practices identified by Ernst and Chrobot-Mason that assist a leader in building bridges between groups. In addition, the authors offer practical examples, tools, and tips to enable leaders to identify their boundary challenges and the current state of the groups they lead, as well as to plan for the next steps they need to take.
A study by the Center for Creative Leadership illustrates why a book like Boundary Spanning Leadership is vital. In that study, leaders indicated five boundaries they need to lead across in order to be successful in creating direction, alignment, and commitment between groups and achieve critical outcomes: vertical (hierarchical levels), horizontal (between functions), stakeholder, demographic (diversity), and geographic (distance). And yet only 7% of those same leaders believed they are effective at doing so.
Nick Barker, Ph.D., director of the Asian Pacific Leadership Center, offers this praise for Boundary Spanning Leadership: “Leading difference is one of the most important cross-sector challenges that leaders encounter. Through hands-on practical advice, illustrated by compelling stories of success, Ernst and Chrobot-Mason have fashioned a multidimensional framework for spanning boundaries and leading across groups.” I agree with Barker's assessment and personally have found this work very helpful. As I have been working with the SLP Level 2 Leadership Agility Series, I've come to understand that leading across boundaries is one of the most difficult and important skills for agile leaders.
