Coalitional Leadership

The article describes coalitional leadership as one of the most effective leadership models for transforming an organization. What is it? it is about winning coalition of support for your vision. To craft the right strategy for an organization, the first thing that the leader needs to work on is to gather information on the people, strategy and culture which can be accomplished by finding a well-networked insider to guide the early steps, develop informal relationships with employees, open door policy to allow free flowing of the information, conduct open ended discussion and interviews to get a clear sense of challenges and opportunities, schedule early visit to customers and stakeholders to obtain highly informative critique.

Now we will look into how to build the winning coalition, the leader needs to identify the potential supporters and blocking coalitions as successful transformation can't be achieved without critical mass of support. The leader needs to develop an approach to deal with the blocking coalition. Listening to the influential parties and thought leaders, showing respect helps to maintain morale and focus. Over the time, silos develop in the organization. Promoting cooperation among these silos by carefully selecting committee members, cultivating a habit of shared credit. Finally, strengthening the core values, emphasizing in values and principles in conversations and decisions will energize the winning coalition. Now I will ask Jesse to expand on this further How Goldman Sachs put these tools and tactics to work?

For some leaders, achieving goals means following the conventional best practices of change management. A less appreciated catalyst for change is coalitional leadership, which involves building a sufficient and sustainable "winning coalition" of support for a vision.

Being an effective coalitional leader requires shoring up bases of support for change. An example of coalitional leadership can be found in the case of Goldman Sachs during the 1980s and early 1990s. In the mid-80s, Goldman formed several strategic planning committees staffed by the most creative people in the firm. A radical proposal emerged at one of the committees to make a significant move into junk bond underwriting, which ultimately generated substantial profits.

Next, the company moved into private equity. Early support was lukewarm, but by the early 1990s financial results became positive, and hearts were won over. In both cases, coalitional leadership was used to protect and nurture the iconoclasts, champion the concepts and gain acceptance for the evolving ideas.

Effective coalitional leadership calls for a continual flow of useful information. In order to craft the right strategy and built the requisite support to execute it, leaders should:

Find a local "anthropologist;"

Avoid encouraging a