Molly Loonam

Remember to lean in—not just to your career, but to empathy, resilience, and the opportunities to create lasting change.

Leadership Lessons You Can Lean On

Martin Luther King Jr. was many things, but few would see him as a great model for business leaders.King exemplifies two types of organizational leadership vital to today’s business environment, according to Christopher Neck, associate professor of management at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business, and his colleague Jeffrey Godwin of Saint Vincent College. They argue that King was a transformational and servant leader, and enterprises today would benefit greatly from adopting his techniques.When Neck and Godwin started using King as an example of leadership in class, their categorizations differed—Neck saw him as a servant leader, and Godwin saw him as a transformational leader.Transformational leaders articulate a vision, while servant leaders believe in empowering and developing people on an individual level. Both types of leaders aim to empower employees and improve performance, but the transformational leader focuses more on the organization as a whole, while the servant leader focuses more on individuals. Both paths lead to the same goal, and in the end, the two types have more commonalities than differences, Neck says. “If you care about employees first, they will work harder, and their performance will improve. At the end of the day, it’s all about the organization.”In his research on King, Neck found examples of both types of leadership. King had a vision and set a model for followers to emulate. His expectations were high, and he challenged people about their assumptions. But he was also patient, advocating nonviolence and cooperation. He promoted equality and fairness and helped individuals believe in themselves, realizing that personal motivation was the key to social change.In research published in the Journal of Leadership and Management, Neck and Godwin examined a particular phase of King’s career: the “Chicago Campaign” of 1966. To end housing discrimination in the area, King moved into an apartment in the city’s west-side slums and began working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO).In August 1966, King led about 700 people in a protest march through all-white neighborhoods in Chicago. Angry residents gathered, but King was not deterred. Working with the SCLC and the CCCO, he planned another march, this time in the white, middle-class suburb of Cicero. Worried town leaders met with King and other civil rights leaders to discuss the march. The civil rights groups agreed to cancel the march, and in exchange, the city promised to guarantee accessible housing to African Americans.City leaders, for the most part, failed to follow through on the pact. King, though bitterly disappointed and angry, was not a short-term thinker.“It was one cog in his strategy to bring attention to his vision,” Neck says. “Even if the organizational outcome failed, he didn’t fail from a servant leader perspective. He helped people believe in themselves. He brought people together and brought attention to achieving equal education and facilities.”Though the business world has changed tremendously since King’s day, his leadership style is more relevant than ever.In the past, workers often stayed with a company for 20 or 30 years, and authoritarian leadership was the norm. In today’s fast-paced business environment, “it would be hard for an autocratic, top-down leader to survive,” Neck says. The pension carrot is gone. Frequent job change is the norm, and employers have a tough time finding and retaining skilled workers. Routine tasks are automated, and high-performance expectations are the norm. Employees accept the pressure, but only if they feel their work is valued and has meaning.A transformational leader provides a vision that inspires workers to come together and rise to challenges. A servant leader empowers them to use their best skills and make independent decisions that ultimately benefit the entire company.

Martin Luther King Jr.: A Leader to Inspire Businesses

Workplace intrusions—when one co-worker stops by another’s desk for social or work reasons, interrupting their task—are often seen as distracting, momentum-killing, and taking time away from work. But if done correctly, some intrusions are beneficial and even energizing.“We read in the news and books about how bad workplace intrusions are, with co-workers portrayed as ‘time thieves’,” says Mike Baer, an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. “But as authors and researchers, we started to look at our experience. We could think of many situations in which intrusions led to interesting research projects and energized us throughout the rest of the day. So, we questioned whether it was true that intrusions are always bad.”Baer co-authored a research paper, “To What Do I Owe This Visit? The Drawbacks and Benefits of In-Role and Non-Role Intrusions,” with ASU Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship David Welsh, to investigate the dynamics of various types of workplace intrusions. Their results suggest that intrusions may lead to beneficial employee outcomes in addition to the adverse outcomes previously demonstrated in the literature. Specifically, what Baer and Welsh call “in-role” intrusions—when a co-worker comes by to ask about a project or to hand off a task—reengage employees and sometimes lead to enhanced collaboration, while non-role intrusions, like asking about weekend plans, require greater mental energy to switch between and are more important to limit.As organizations navigate the transition to hybrid or fully remote work environments, understanding how in-role intrusions can positively influence engagement and productivity is more important than ever. Here are some tips for mindfully leveraging workplace intrusions:Be aware that trying to avoid all intrusions may cause you to miss out on meaningful benefits. The pandemic has given rise to remote work and situations that are designed to reduce intrusions in many ways, but Baer cautions organizations against policies that cause employees to miss out on the benefits that come from in-person interactions like collaboration and increased engagement.Think of work-related intrusions as challenges that motivate you to work harder rather than as an unnecessary distraction. Challenge stressors—things like time pressure or workload—require people to expand their capabilities to overcome challenges. In-role intrusions can act as challenge stressors and motivate employees to push harder and be more engaged in their work throughout the day.Harness the opportunity that intrusions provide to share information and bounce ideas off your co-workers. The benefits of engagement, collaboration, and helping behaviors are often hidden. Baer’s research found that stopping by a coworker’s desk with an in-role intrusion can become an opportunity for positive collaboration between employees.If you’re a leader, consider implementing work arrangements that facilitate the work-related intrusions that can energize employees and foster collaboration. Seating employees near one another or implementing hybrid work schedules to encourage employees to work in the same spaces can encourage impromptu encounters and feedback that act as challenges to reenergize and focus employees while providing opportunities for natural collaboration.If you’re intruding on others, save your non-work topics for breaks rather than dropping by your co-workers’ desks unannounced. “I would counsel employees to be aware of when and for what reason they are intruding on their co-workers throughout the day,” says Baer. While discussing things like family or extracurricular activities helps build and maintain relationships, they typically have a negative effect on employees’ immediate job performance and should instead be held during a break. 

Molly Loonam

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