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Leadership Configurations

Definition

Each leader naturally develops strengths in some frames while remaining weak in others. If you plotted each leader's strength in structural, human resource, political, and symbolic thinking on a four-dimensional chart, you'd get a distinctive shape—sometimes lopsided, sometimes more balanced. The book calls this shape a leader's "kite." Success depends not on having a perfectly symmetrical kite, but on recognizing your configuration and aligning it with the challenges you face, or complementing your weaknesses by working with others who excel where you don't.

In the Book

Chapter 11 profiles four iconic leaders with radically different configurations:

  • Jeff Bezos (Amazon): High structural and symbolic (metrics-driven culture), low human resource. His obsessive focus on customer metrics and system optimization works for online retail where customer experience is mediated by technology, but contributes to critical HR weaknesses—Amazon has repeatedly faced criticism for harsh employee treatment.

  • Tony Hsieh (Zappos): High symbolic and human resource, low structural. His passion for culture and people created a customer-service phenomenon and a place people wanted to work, but it required relentless attention to cultural fit and values.

  • Ursula Burns (Xerox): Balanced across structural and human resource, lower on political. Her engineering background gave her structural confidence and the HR skills to build teams, but mentors had to help her develop political savvy to navigate executive infighting.

  • Steve Jobs (Apple): Dominated by symbolic frame. His mastery of drama and meaning-making transformed Apple, but his low human resource orientation made him notoriously harsh with people. He compensated by surrounding himself with brilliant collaborators he deeply respected.

The book emphasizes that Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook succeeded precisely because he recognized his own configuration—strong on technology and ideas, weak on management and presence—and complemented himself by elevating Sheryl Sandberg as COO.

Why It Matters

This concept prevents the trap of leaders assuming everyone should lead like they do. It clarifies that a lopsided kite isn't inherently wrong—Amazon and Apple both succeeded with highly distinctive profiles. What matters is alignment between your configuration and your situation, or intentional collaboration with others who cover your blind spots. The concept also suggests that versatility isn't about becoming equally strong in all frames, but about developing enough flexibility to recognize when you're in the wrong frame for the situation.