Leadership means being inspirational
Company managers must be pragmatic and trustworthy if they are to win the confidence of their employees, writes Neil Runcieman

To become a leader is one of the greatest aspirations of all young and developing managers. Yet the question remains: can leader be made, or can they only be born? Photo : Bloomberg

There are only two aspects about leadership on which most analysts, commentators and self-proclaimed management gurus agree – it is hard to define and we all know it when we see it.

To become a leader is one of the greatest ambitions of all young and developing managers. Yet the question remains: can leaders be made, or are they born to lead?

The two schools of thought are easy to break down. Those who are striving to become leaders believe that leaders can be made, while those who are already in leadership positions believe that they are born to lead – even if they had a little coaching help to get there themselves.

Leadership, after all, tends to preclude self-doubt – or at least any public acknowledgement of it.

Reading through the textbooks, business school prospectuses and self-help guides, the characteristics that define the transition from “follower” to “leader” tend to focus on decision-making and communication skills, with a mixture of vision, responsibility and technical proficiency.

Successful leadership, at least in the free world, is defined not by the leader, but by the followers. Therefore leaders must inspire trust in those who have to follow them.

A 2004 study by global management consultant firm Hay Group found that trust and confidence in top leadership were rated the single most reliable predictors of employee satisfaction in an organization.

The key to winning that trust and confidence was effective communication in three areas: helping employees understand the company's overall business strategy; helping employees understand how they contributed to achieving crucial business objectives; and sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee's own division is doing – relative to business objectives. In principle, these are relatively easy tricks to teach.

Learn how to communicate and become a great leader. But if that were the case, the world would be led by journalists and advertising executives.

However, vision and strategy are required before you can communicate it.

The problem with defining leadership is that the model used has to aspire to an ideal that mostly defines realistic expectation: the perfect leader must be pragmatic in converting strategy into results, but with absolute moral integrity.

This may be a blueprint for perfect leadership, but it is not the lesson of history.

There were ruthless dictators in the past who considered themselves as successful leaders. They had followers, not to mention vision, mastery of communication and some breathtaking decision-making skills. Mercifully, they are not role models.

Even a universally acknowledged successful leader, such as Winston Churchill, hardly conforms to the ideal.

No one denies his pivotal role in the second world war, but his peacetime record as a leader was marked by failure and unpopularity. When single-mindedness, motivational bullheadedness and a polarized opinion were required, there was none better. When moderation, diplomacy and a balanced view were appropriate, there were few worse.

This is the central dilemma of leadership and all who aspire to it: how to be all things to all people at all times.

The perfect leader must be decisive but reflective; have a strong vision but always listen to others; be ruthless when necessary but always compassionate; communicate goals persuasively to all parties but manage by consensus; switch instantly between defensive and offensive strategies yet maintain overall directions: have an indomitable will to achieve power and leadership but the humility and modesty to exercise it with discretion; and match generosity of spirit alongside the financial instincts of a bazaar-stall haggler. And the leader must deploy all of these attributes with as sense of timing that would defy an atomic clock.

Which brings us back to the fundamental question: can you make a leader? Of all the attributes above, most are skills that can be taught, such as communication techniques, financial management, team dynamics and human resources. Knowing which ones to use and in what precise measure to deploy them during the heat if the battle us a different matter.

The business schools acknowledge this by their use if the case-study based teaching methodology. It is the only way they have of putting the skills they teach into context and simulating that most essential and unteachable of attributes: experience.

Education alone may not make a leader, but it can teach you the difference between Apple's Steve Jobs, who is nimble, perspective, technically brilliant, a highly skilled communicator and universally admired, and a Rick Wagoner, the former chief executive of General Motors, who infamously took a private jet to Washington to plead for more money to save his company.

But even the best-equipped, most rounded and skillful of leaders must ultimately benefit from one quality over which they have little or no control. In the oft-quoted words of one legendary leader, Napoleon, when he was asked for in the leaders of his armies, he replied, “give me lucky generals”.

SCMP
29th April, 2009

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