Revolution 2008

“Leadership” is big business. Google brings up over 171 million results for the word. There’s principle-centred leadership, spiritual leadership, post-modern leadership. Some experts pair leadership with ethics, gender, trust, even Santa Claus. All are undoubtedly clever people, if only for finding endless ways to milk the same, teat-chaffed, cash cow.

And one can understand why. In Roffey Park’s Management Agenda 2007 survey, 70 per cent of its senior-level respondents identified leadership as the most pressing business issue they faced. The survey shows organisations that develop leaders are twice as likely to over-perform against financial expectations as those that don’t, so it’s little wonder that, according to the CIPD’s 2008 Learning and Development survey, 90 per cent of HR professionals believe their organisations need to focus on developing leadership skills to meet their business objectives in the next two years.

But, first, one must choose one’s definition. So what exactly does leadership mean to you? Depending on your guru de jour, managers maintain the status quo, while leaders challenge it; managers are efficient, leaders effective; managers work within an organisation, leaders work on it; managers do things right, leaders do the right things.
Although it has the makings of a wonderful Cole Porter number, this is a specious argument, a combination of semantics, smoke and mirrors. Isn’t it possible, indeed desirable, to do the right things right?

Rather than “either/or”, surely management and leadership form a continuum? A successful firm needs people who are capable of being both transactional and transformational, with the precise blend and balance dependent on the business requirements.

Too many companies confuse leadership with seniority or long service. One has to act, think and feel like a leader and, most important, be seen as one.

If true leaders are born, can you thrust leadership upon others, or at least train them in it? First, question how many leaders your organisation needs, and at what levels. Hank McKinnell, former CEO of Pfizer, once said he wanted a company of 85,000 leaders. In the sense that everyone has some unique talent that should be developed, all are indeed leaders. However, how many chefs does one kitchen need before the broth is spoilt?

As for whether leadership can be learnt, I believe that while unconscious qualities – vision, inspiration, courage – can’t, leadership skills, such as visioning, empowerment and conflict management, can and should. Leadership development has to go beyond training to more informal, unstructured means of learning: mentoring, coaching, secondments, sabbaticals and action learning.

Leaders need to be responsible not only for their own development but also for enabling others to grow. The way they are developed will have a critical effect on how they motivate and engage their own staff.

However, if only 6 per cent are rewarded for developing skills, according to the CIPD’s 2007 Learning and Development survey, it’s scant surprise if 94 per cent have other priorities. Alas, as this wasn’t probed in the 2008 survey, we can’t tell if the situation has improved since. Everyone, whether they are leaders or not, should be measured and incentivised not only on what they achieve, but how they do so. What message does an organisation that allegedly “listens to its people” send if its leaders combine permanently closed doors with never-shut mouths?