Robert J. Steinberg
Sergio Caredda
Sternberg, R.J. (2003). WICS: a Model of Leadership in Organizations. Academy of Management Learning & Education, [online] 2(4), pp.386–401. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40214219 [Accessed 20 Sep. 2024].
Description:
The WICS Model of Organizational Leadership is a prescriptive framework developed by Robert J. Sternberg, professor of psychology at Cornell University.
WICS is an acronym for Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity, Synthesized. The WICS theory of leadership states that good and effective leaders possess a crucial set of developed characteristics: (1) the creativity to generate novel and useful ideas for leadership; (2) the analytical intelligence to ascertain whether these ideas are good ideas; (3) the practical intelligence to implement these ideas and to persuade others of their value; and (4) the wisdom to ensure the ideas help to achieve a common good through the infusion of positive ethical values.
The Components
In the center of the approach is intelligence, traditionally defined as the ability to adapt to the environment. According to the approach used here, successful intelligence is one's ability to attain one's goals in life, given one's sociocultural context, by adapting to, shaping, and selecting environments, through a balance of analytical, creative, and practical skills.
Creativity is the ability to formulate and solve problems so as to produce solutions that are relatively novel and high in quality. Creativity involves creative intelligence in the generation of ideas, but it also involves more, in particular, knowledge; a desire to think in novel ways; personality attributes such as tolerance of ambiguity, propensity to sensible risk taking, and willingness to surmount obstacles; intrinsic, task-focused motivation; and an environment that supports creativity.
Wisdom is the ability to use one's successful intelligence, creativity, and knowledge toward a common good by balancing one's own (intrapersonal) interests, other people's (interpersonal) interests, and larger (extrapersonal) interests, over the short and long terms, through the infusion of positive values, to adapt to, shape, and select environments. Thus, wisdom involves both intelligence and creativity, but as they are applied not just to serve one's own ends, but also, the ends of other people and of larger interests as well.
Intelligence, wisdom, and creativity build on each other. One can be intelligent without being creative or wise. To be creative, one must be intelligent at some level, using one's creative intelligence to formulate good problems, one's analytical intelligence to ensure that the solutions to the problems are good, and one's practical intelligence to persuade other people of the value of one's creative ideas; but one need not be wise. To be wise, one must be both intelligent and creative, because wisdom draws upon intelligence and creativity in the formulation of solutions to problems that take into account all stakeholder interests over the short and long terms.
Leadership Failures
According to WICS, leadership is in large part a decision. People are not born for leadership, but rather decide for leadership. How good and effective they will be, after making this decision, will depend on the extent to which they embody the characteristics of WICS. WICS suggests that leaders can fail in a number of ways.
- One way for leaders to fail is to lack creative ideas. They simply repeat what others are done or do what they perceive to be safe. Their leadership is pedestrian and much of what they do amounts to their trying to figure out how they best can preserve their position of leadership without rocking the boat too much.
- A second way for leaders to fail is through lack of analytical intelligence (i.e., sufficient IQ). The leaders cannot distinguish good from not so good ideas, or workable ideas from ones that are merely pie in the sky. Moreover, a leader needs to ascertain what his or her competition is doing, and analyze how to compete effectively in attracting people to his or her rather than other organizational or other entities.
- A third way for leaders to fail is through lack of practical intelligence or common sense—that is, they may have good ideas but they are unable effectively to implement them or to convince other people of the value of these ideas. Leaders also need to show their constituents their passion for accomplishing their goals.
- A fourth way for leaders to fail is through lack of wisdom—the leader seeks only to advance the cause of certain subgroups for whom he or she is responsible rather than seeking a common good. Or the leader may be unethical, perhaps even seeking a common good but through means that are unethical and thus that, in the end, result in poor outcomes. A leader who is not ethical may be effective in achieving his or her agenda, but he or she cannot be a “good” leader. As a result of unwise or unethical leadership, the disfavored suffer poorer outcomes and may, effectively, revolt.
- A fifth way for leaders to fail is through being unable to synthesize the various elements of wisdom, intelligence, and creativity. These processes need to interact with each other, not merely act on their own.
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