LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF QUALITY MANAGERS <-click here for presentation

ASQ1509 - January 22, 2009

Richard E. Biehl, CSSBB, CSQE 

SYNOPSIS: 

Quality managers need to be effective leaders precisely because the thing they're trying to manage

isn't directly within their control.  Effective leadership for quality requires influencing others to exhibit

behaviors and expend resources in ways that can seem contrary to their own short-term self-interests.

This requires that quality managers not only have knowledge of the organization's people and processes,

but also higher-level knowledge of the dynamics that drive the behaviors of those people in those

processes: meta-knowledge, or Deming’s profound knowledge.

The traditional study of leadership traits as a way of understanding leadership has given way to a more

dynamic view of leadership as an emergent phenomenon that occurs outside of an organization's traditional

management structure. The quality manager must not only try to be an effective leader in the midst of

these changes, but also work to encourage the conditions where leadership emergence can take place

throughout the organization.  This requires an appreciation of the dynamics that drive such emergence;

the self-organizing behaviors best explained by a high-level review of the underlying systems theories of

complexity and chaos.  The quality manager is part of the formal management structure, but succeeds or