TABLE 3-1: SUMMARY OF WORK AT THREE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS
The previous section described the ways in which leadership has been distinguished at different
organizational levels. The identification of differences however, does not imply that skills and
functions dominant for one level are unimportant for the next level. One may assume that top-level
managers were middle managers one day, and on an earlier day they fulfilled the role of lower-level
manager. Hence, the question arises, how should the movement up the corporate ladder evolve in
terms of leadership behavior, i.e. discontinuously in terms of unlearning skills that were useful for a
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functions.
3.3 DISCONTINUITY PERSPECTIVE
Popular books like The Leadership Pipeline (Charan et al., 2001) and What Got You Here Won’t Get
You There (Goldsmith & Reiter, 2007) DQGHDUOLHUWKHRULHVOLNH$UWKXU)UHHGPDQ¶V (1998) pathways
and crossroads model of managerial careers have emphasized how the competencies and skills
needed, change as managers climb the corporate ladder. This has been termed the discontinuity
perspective (De Meuse et al., 2011). Freedman (1998) noted that, each upward transition in the
organizational hierarchy, presents discontinuous and unprecedented changes for the transitioning
individual. At each passage, people are faced by a dual challenge: taking up new perspectives and