Snowball Management

11/02/2011

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.
Doris Kearns Goodwin, biographer and journalist

In their work with over 10,000 managers on four continents, Peter Fuda and Richard Badham found that the best way to elicit deep and broad discussions of management challenges was through the use of metaphors. In their Harvard Business Review article (November 2011) they introduced the "snowball" metaphor, which describes a manager moving from calling all the shots to getting more and more people involved in leadership:

"The snowball represents a cycle of mutual accountability that creates momentum for change. It starts rolling when a leader opens himself up to the scrutiny of subordinates and asks for their support. This act of humility is seen as courageous and inspires others to follow suit. As more members of the team join the process (and those causing drag are removed), the snowball becomes more tightly compacted and almost impossible to stop."

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