Leaders, Leaders, Wherefore Art Thou?

 Leaders, Leaders – Wherefore Art Thou

There are many theories on the key priorities and attributes of effective leadership. For me, when you boil it down, to be any kind of leader you have to have followers, more specifically, willing followers. This following tends to but should never be regarded as a given. The priority for consistently effective leadership is therefore about understanding people, their motivations, reactions, requirements, aspirations and expectations in order to achieve operational effectiveness and optimal long term performance. Key, indeed primary leadership characteristics and attributes are therefore about communicating, persuading, listening, coaxing, clarifying, and coordinating. Sure, you have to be dynamic, decisive, and analytical, see the big and small picture, long and short term, and practise organisational ambidexterity, exhibit technical insight to be credible and all sorts of other wonderful, exciting things.

However, it is when the chips are down, when the organisation has hit a bump in the road and you have marshalled your capital, you have revamped your technology, products, costs, clarified policies and objectives, communicated a new vision and you say OK, follow me, that you look around and realise that there is no one there, physically and/or mentally, that you realise that there may be something missing in your leadership tool bag to fill in or bridge the black hole which represents sub-optimal organisational performance or impending collapse and failure. That critical tool is understanding that organisational success is based upon acknowledging, understanding and taking day to day decisions on the basis of the importance, the centrality of people rather than products, processes, profits, projects in order to resolve issues and optimise performance. This is recognised as logical to some of those who have responsibility for achieving organisational goals; to others it is soft headed and a nice to have, since only a primary focus on the priority of policy, product, price, project, process and procedure will consistently achieve these goals.

The importance of people leadership capabilities is a point increasingly and more strenuously made  over the last ten to twenty years, as the requirements of the knowledge economy have been considered and the age and therefore priority of the principles, perspectives and priorities of mass production management have been found wanting in respect of operational effectiveness and organisational performance. My experience indicates that people focussed leaders do exist in most organisations. Regrettably it is also my experience, with only few exceptions, that the senior echelons of the majority of organisations, those who define business policy and organisational culture, tend not to be populated by individuals with people focused perspectives and attributes.  I have this belief, based upon my experience managing and leading within a range of organisations that not only existing senior executives but the next couple of generations consider that and indeed have been effectively inculcated in the belief that to rise to the top in an organisation it is not considered a requirement to be a great or even good people leader, merely to be a proficient manager in terms of technical skills and routines important in that specific organisation, self-confidence, with a certain cunning and astuteness for what is required at that moment in time to satisfy key stakeholder groups.

This perspective is admittedly a little cynical and Machiavellian but will I think resonate with the reality as accepted by those who are long in the tooth organisational practitioners. This may be a little confusing; it is like saying that the captain of a ship who decides on the direction and destination is not the leader. This is indeed the case; it is the person(s) who organises the capabilities of the ship, particularly the people, to reach the destination, who is the leader within that entity. Those whose role requires core perspectives and attributes which allow them to effectively direct, motivate, coax, persuade and coordinate a diverse range of individual characters within the daily working environment in order to consistently achieve operational effectiveness and achieve business deliverables and strategic objectives. Without such individuals the captain stands on the bridge, merely monitoring the dashboard, in control of nothing, fundamentally unable to control speed or direction. Captains (whether of ships or industry) can take as many policy decisions and set objectives as they wish. Unless the real leaders (of people) understand and support them they will either not be achieved or will be sub-optimally achieved. This is fundamentally the reason why so many annual targets and goals and long term objectives are consistently not achieved. This is why Alexander was in reality not so Great; he conquered but did not have the leadership perspectives and attributes to reign; to motivate and energise, to satisfy personal aspirations, requirements and expectations over the long term. Like so many lauded merger and acquisition experts, once the deal was done he lacked the leadership perspectives, insight, judgment and attributes to take the key resources, the people, with them to optimally realise the benefits of the transaction over the long term. Many empires, be they societal or business, have declined and ultimately collapsed due to this leadership deficiency.

The operational result of limited (people) leadership perspectives, priority, attributes and capabilities within the decision making cadre is consistently debilitating to operational effectiveness and organisational performance in respect of decision making and issue resolution. Allow me to provide an example. Whilst working in the Arabian Gulf I was requested to interview a number of candidates in the Indian sub-continent for the position of Head of Islamic Banking and thereafter provide written feedback to those who would ultimately take the recruitment decision. Upon my return I found that the candidate selected had been the one who undoubtedly had the technical qualifications but whom I had counselled against recruiting because I considered that he lacked people leadership skills, was egotistical, self-important and self-serving. To make matters worse, it had been decided that whilst from a strategy development perspective he would report to the Deputy Group Chief Executive, for operational day to day reporting he would report to me. This was the ideal situation for someone who wished to create his own empire. He smiled, nodded and agreed but out of earshot proceeded with his personal agenda and during orientation discussions with functional heads stated that he should in fact report to the Group Chief Executive because of his expertise and the importance of Islamic banking to the organisation. The result was disruption, confusion and conflict across large parts of the bank which were involved in the coordination of Islamic Banking initiatives, as subordinates and peers sought guidance on who was ultimately taking the decisions. Whilst there was a realisation within a few weeks if not days that a major blunder had been made in the recruitment process and the reporting lines, the organisation stood still on a major business initiative for six months until the individual’s services were dispensed with.  

This is a direct reflection of the importance of people leadership attributes in the minds of senior executives as a key capability to be engendered throughout the organisational leadership cadre Where individuals lack a people and organisational community perspective, perceiving an emphasis on technical skills as the critical factor for progression, this fosters a less principled, indeed unethical approach to decision making and issue resolution. There are countless other examples which I could provide of recruitment primarily based upon technical capabilities rather than allied to embedded people leadership capabilities and the substantially detrimental impact upon operational effectiveness and organisational performance that such a perspective and priority can and does have  (I am sure that many readers could also recount similar instances).                  

My solution to this critical issue of acknowledging and understanding the requirement to engender true leadership perspectives, priorities and practices?

•  Laud less those who “conquer” or undertake mergers/acquisitions and more those who have led an organisation to sustained optimal performance over an extended period.
• When making policy decisions such as merger, acquisition, market penetration or significant change in organisational direction the primary senior executive focus should be less on the numbers (enhanced cost efficiency, capital strength, ROI, market share, revenue enhancement), processes and projects to complete the transaction and more on evidence of the people leadership capabilities to effectively deliver on initial changes in perspectives and structures but most of all to achieve the benefits of the transaction over the long term.
• Senior decision makers must be selected less for their technical skills and more for their people leadership perspectives, attributes and capabilities.
• If this is not possible/acceptable then senior decision makers must accept that in operational terms they are not the leaders within the organisation and delegate responsibility and authority accordingly, putting aside issues in relation to ego. 
• It is the role of the dominant coalition within the business organisation to develop a culture which encourages and facilitates the development of people leadership skills equally if not more than technical capability since this is what delivers consistent operational effectiveness and long term performance. Once this cultural transformation is largely in place leadership should be left to those with the required perspectives, priorities and attributes in those roles within the organisation where they are required to optimise organisational performance through an ability to lead people    

So, look not upwards for true leadership; look rather to those areas of the organisation where operational coordination, motivation, energising, persuasion and direction of a broad range of individuals with a swathe of varying requirements, aspirations and expectations is required in order to achieve operational effectiveness and long term organisational performance. Admittedly this is a big ask, to change the embedded dominant organisational logic, the inculcated principles, perspectives, priorities and practices amongst the present and future senior executive and leadership cadres. In this respect perhaps the prevailing economic and financial services sector crisis is an ideal stimulus to spur the required change in logic. One merely needs to compare the dominant logic and priorities of the dominant coalition of many of the financial services organisations which failed with those which survived comparatively unscathed to understand the primacy of (people) leadership for performance and long term survival and the benefit of a dominant logic which continued to motivate and energise and engender confidence and loyalty amongst stakeholders. Long term operational effectiveness and performance is based upon senior executives creating an environment and culture which allows the real leaders within the organisation to persuade, motivate and energise those key resources which deliver, people. This is the hard-headed, pragmatic but soft hearted leadership perspective for long term “success” in the twenty first century