A distinguished academic leader remarked to me that there was more rubbish talked about leadership than any other subject. I can’t agree completely, bearing in mind the kinds of nonsense talked about wine and art, for example, but there is an important point. The answers to the question of what makes a good leader are shifting and elusive and depend on circumstances including, of course, the nature of the followers.

Another distinguished person, this time a scientist, remarked to me that any academic worth his salt (I’m pretty sure he said, “worth his salt”) would want to run his own department. Well not me, mate: I never looked at the heads of colleges and departments I was in and thought, “I want to be like that – I could do it well”. I was lucky enough to have been taught by people who had written books that had been read all over the world and some were also good teachers and I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be left alone to write books and articles and devise courses. In sporting terms I wanted to be a player, not a coach or a manager. Many people in my generation felt the same: when the University of Warwick democratised in 1970 after a series of demonstrations and occupations the position of head of department became an elected one. Several departments struggled to find anyone to do it. They were staffed by relatively young people whose ambitions lay in different directions. It seemed that nobody wanted to do that which everyone worth their salt should want to do.

The natural sciences are different, of course, because they have large multi-person research projects. Also, there is a basic game theory which applies to leadership: in neo-anarchic conditions where it is possible to get on with your own life it can be rational to avoid leadership roles. But where there is a power structure which prevents this it becomes rational to want power. The original department I joined was neo-anarchic even before democratisation because the elderly chairman regarded his job as the smooth running of that which we did collectively and the keeping down of costs. He had no interest in whether members of his department published or not and privately opined that too much was being written these days and most of it was stuff that nobody in his right mind would want to read. In retrospect I think of his version of an academic institution as being like a modern food hall (the one in the old market in Florence, for example). The various stalls sell different foods; they are to some extent in competition with each other, but they are also much better off under the same roof and do have to make some collective decisions. As it happens the deputy chairman took a very different view: he was a man of the future who talked about “research strategies” and took an active interest in the publishing achievements of his colleagues.

In considering the difference between the two approaches I would always resort to the core doctrine of a book I had read at an early age which was Harold Lasswell’s Psychopathology and Politics (1930). I can’t call it a classic because Lasswell’s neo-Freudian approach to politics had little influence on the development of the subject and he himself did not pursue it, but I still find it persuasive. It argues that the “normal”, mentally healthy state of humans is that they seek autonomy. But there is a deviant type which, because of early and fundamental deprivations, craves power over other people. Of course people who want power over others say they want it in order to do good. They would, wouldn’t they?

At this point I have to defend myself from a potential accusation of hypocrisy. I have in my time been a president, a director, a captain and numerous chairmen, but in every case it was a voluntary organisation which anyone could walk away from at any time without disciplinary proceedings or loss of income – and that’s the way I liked it. The most suspicious-looking was that I was director of a research centre, the Warwick Centre for the Study of Sport in Society. But this was a club consisting of equal members of several different departments who had sport as one of their academic interests. Nobody was paid extra and nobody’s career depended on my approval.

Though I favour these neo-anarchic arrangements and was lucky enough to work within them for some years I am not an anarchist and recognise that leadership and authority are necessary in most circumstances. I am also fascinated by the issues of leadership in two different contexts: sport where I have a lot of experience and war where I have none. There are many interesting broad questions: Are there “natural leaders”? Are there any general precepts which leaders should observe? Was Machiavelli right to claim that fear is a much more reliable foundation for leadership than love? And what is special about academic leadership given that academics (some of them, anyway) are clever? They can produce arguments for anything and against anything. The moves outlined in Francis Cornford’s 1908 book about academic politics, Microcosmographia Academica are still used and still work.

I think there is a remarkable insight to be gained from a recent phenomenon in football (by which I mean something that has become more noticeable in the last decade) which is the hero-to-zero manager. I won’t list the details – football fans will know them anyway – but there are several instances of managers being extremely successful and then very unsuccessful when they change leagues or divisions. People often say that “You don’t become a bad (whatever) overnight”, but actually you do. The general lesson is that what works in one context may well fail in another; the more specific reflection is that managing anything when you have more resources than your competitors is entirely different from the situation in which they are better equipped than you are.

The historical model for all hero-to-zero figures is, of course, Napoleon Buonaparte. The great general, the master of the co-ordination of all branches of an army, the epitome of boldness, the victor of the “battle of the nations” at Austerlitz in 1807 was also the perpetrator of one of the greatest military disasters in history (the 1812 invasion of Russia) and on the end of one of the most decisive defeats in history at Waterloo in 1815. The Duke of Wellington who defeated him was in many ways his opposite as well as his nemesis. Buonaparte succeeded with fabulous resources; in fact Wellington never commanded an army even one tenth the size of the French grande armée of 1812. He learned to husband resources, to defend, to retreat and to avoid confrontations he might lose.

I am often chided for comparing football managers (and vice-chancellors) with Wellington and Napoleon, but I think the same psychological and structural dynamics are at work. Whatever the job you should beware of the candidate who turns up preening themselves on their successes, priding themselves on their “method”, convinced of their infallibility. Russia is not Austria, Central Lancashire is not Lancaster and Tottenham is not Celtic. The real virtues of leadership are clarity about reality, flexibility and a degree of humility. There’s a certain manager of my acquaintance who likes to say, “It is what it is”. I’ve heard it said that this is a silly cliché, but at least it’s true and its truth is forgotten surprisingly often.

Sadly I think that Machiavelli was mainly right about the two contexts other than academic life which I have been talking about. I think all serious football fans and serious military historians know that there are successful leaders who have succeeded with much fear and little love. But there are some respects in which kindness is necessary. While eschewing pretensions to leadership I have to admit that I was a cricket captain for thirty years. Many people’s gospel on this subject is The Art of Captaincy (1985) by Mike Brearley, former England captain and former university lecturer. My 2001 edition has an introduction by Sam Mendes, theatre and film director, who acknowledges the similarities between his kind of leadership and cricket captaincy. One of the common strands that I was very aware of was that you want to put people under your leadership in roles which are suited to them and (not quite the same thing) which they believe to be suited to them. This must always be followed by the ryder as far as possible because I was once in the position of captaining a cricket team in which seven of the eleven players were best suited to opening the batting. Academic analogies are easily imagined. But good management in this simple sense doesn’t always happen and I’ve known people in every field who are not good at acknowledging what other people are good (or bad) at and even some who take an almost unconscious sadistic delight in casting people out of role.

But human affairs are massively mysterious and complicated and love can work. Anyway, it’s a good thing in itself. I felt about my first chairman when I was a young lecturer that he was always on my side. His name was Wilfrid (sic) Harrison and he seemed like a very benign great-uncle – he was more than forty years older than me. Actually, I think we all felt like that about him and it made the conduct of business and the resolution of disputes much easier. Only later did I learn that such relationships are usually fouled by egos and hidden agendas and unspoken hostilities. His real achievement is not necessarily that the department became large and successful because he was only around for the first of its six decades of existence. The real achievement is that the half dozen surviving members of the department he recruited and led are all good friends and in regular contact with each other half a century later.

Yet even before that I knew a master of academic leadership, a man who had manipulated presidents and prime ministers. As a seventeen-year-old undergraduate I was walking across a quadrangle when I met the Master of University College coming the other way. Sir John Maud (later Lord Redcliffe-Maud): benign, patrician, silver haired and as smooth as silk. “Lincoln” he exclaimed cheerfully, “How are you? Are you having a good time?” He knew my name! Of course he then had to engage in a rather longer conversation than he had planned; he had, after all, asked me two questions, but he handled it well as he handled everything. He appeared to be the natural head of a deeply conservative institution, liked and respected in equal measure, but he was transforming it almost imperceptibly, easing out “dead wood” among the fellows, transforming admissions from nepotism to competition and even preparing for co-education while defending the virtues of a single-sex institution. One story about him told of an undergraduate “sent down” (expelled) for making no effort in the academic direction. George (we shall call him) put on his best bib and tucker and went to see John (as he insisted on being called) to plead for a last chance. “George,” said John, “you’ve come to say goodbye. What a splendid gesture – I would have expected no less”. They shook hands and George went on his way feeling strangely good about himself.

That, as they say, is the iron hand in the velvet glove.

Lincoln Allison April 2025

(An edited version of this article was published in Times Higher Education in May 2025.)