Follow My Lead - June 2005
By Jean-Paul Pelosi

Former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, once said of leadership: "The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been." In essence, this is the role of a corporate leader - to improve employees beyond their current standard and help the company achieve results not previously achieved.

But who are the real leaders in a company? Are they managing or are they actually leading? Employees can be organised and influenced by people not necessarily capable of drawing on their staff's full potential. This affects the company's overall performance and undermines its ability to provide future leaders.

Calling all leaders

Finding candidates to lead within the workplace is half the battle and implementing leadership development processes can make the task easier. Deborah Homewood, vice president of Asia Netcom for Australia, New Zealand and strategic markets, says that a program or process for finding leaders is necessary for all companies today, even if time and budget are against them. Homewood explains that while training in sales, finance or tax may be priorities, a budget should be assigned to leadership coaching.

"It's very difficult," says Homewood. "The focus [in business] is fairly short-term, shareholders expect a return, there's a lot of pressure on margins in our business. It's far more difficult finding a budget for a LEAD leadership identification program, so I think this is something where managers may have to do some of it themselves."

Managing partner of Talent 2 Consult, Peter George, acknowledges the difficulty in prioritising leadership development. George says while most companies have an understanding of leadership's significance, they don't usually address it in a proactive way. "They see it as an issue but it's a little tight to manage in the day-to-day hurly burly of getting results, making budgets, etc. Long-term programs like developing leaders are generally not done well in most organisations."

For Paul Bardon, general manager for Honeywell Building Solutions, Pacific, detecting leadership potential begins with graduates and is an ongoing exercise as they progress through the company.

"Here at Honeywell we try to identify them early," he says. "We've got a fairly strong program for graduates and apprentices each year, so we tend to try and treat them a bit specially. We try to keep an eye on them to see whether they improve their leadership skills as they get more experience."

George notes that large multi-nationals make stronger attempts at implementing leadership programs than companies with an Australian head office. "Large multi-nationals in general seem to have centralised processes, often not developed in Australia, that have a whole range of things about performance management, leadership development and progression through the company and opportunities for leadership development."

What makes a great leader?

Leaders are everywhere and appear in all facets of life, but pinpointing the qualities that make a great leader is not as easy as recognising one.

"I think it's a combination of great character, a willingness to listen and learn, and then to effectively influence others," says Rowena Beresford, general manager of the Australian Centre for Leadership Studies. "It's important to be able to empower your staff to do their very best - set them up for success." Beresford says that effective leadership involves influencing another person to achieve a desired result, while respecting them as a person at the same time. "The most effective way to build leaders is to begin early in their career," she says. "This can be done across an organisation to build a culture of effective influence."

Perhaps the influence of leaders is best achieved by what senior consultant for Training Link, Mark Oliver, terms as a "connection". "Before you can lead someone, you have to connect with them in some way," says Oliver. "You can symbolise that by forming a bridge. If you don't have that bridge you can think you're leading, but at best you're managing."

The idea that a connection is critical for successful workplace leaders has been well supported by a recent leadership survey, which noted that listening to and respecting staff input are the most important characteristics of a good manager. According to the 2005 Leadership Employment and Direction survey, conducted by Leadership Management Australia, business leaders, senior managers and employees all agree on this point. Giving honest feedback also ranked highly across the three groups, while help with planning work was agreed to be one of the least important characteristics.

** source IBM BCS

Nature or nurture?

It's an age-old question; are leaders born or made?

There are leaders with an unattainable gift for capturing the attention and imagination of the masses, such as great orators like Martin Luther King or Adolf Hitler. For good or bad, such men could influence people with far greater success than most. Then there are natural thinkers or innovators who led by example and whose genius could not be acquired, like Albert Einstein or Henry Ford.

Leaders in the workplace are also difficult to pigeonhole. "I think it's a skill that can be taught," says Homewood. "I believe it should be looked at that way." Homewood says that just as being a nurse or a mechanic requires training, skills in leadership can be acquired. She does suggest that certain people are better suited to training, however. "In my view, there are people who have a more natural inclination towards some of these [leadership] skills," she says. "But without training, understanding these skills and fine tuning them, they will probably never take advantage of their leadership potential to become a true leader."

Bardon agrees that the personal tools necessary in good leaders can be acquired. "I don't know if taught is the right word but I think experience [is] - people gain experience through their working lives and through their general lives and for some that's what they need to develop into a leader," he says. "I think there are people that are innately well-suited to leadership, but I have also noticed that people who don't have obvious up-front type leadership skills can also be extremely good leaders because of other qualities."

In a recent compilation of leadership reflections entitled Leadership Revelations: An Australian Perspective, Yasmine Allen, non-executive director at IAG, says identifying your strengths is the key to becoming a good leader. "In my view, leadership can be learned," she writes. "The first step is to have confidence in your ability and the second is to have the drive to 'step up'." Allen's belief that leadership is a state of mind implies that anyone can adapt their mindset and further their learning to become a successful leader.

HR expert and coordinating author of the book, Avril Henry, says an appetite for coaching others is the key to being a good leader. "I actually think developing one-on-one skills within people through coaching is probably one of the most valuable things a leader can do," says Henry. This philosophy suggests that leaders are not born but defined by a need to improve others. "Business is actually several decades behind sport," she says. "If you take someone like Tiger Woods, one of the best golfers in the world, he still has a coach. You take someone like Lleyton Hewitt, one of the top tennis players in the world, he still has a coach." Henry says the theme of developing others - clearly a skill that can be learned itself - was a constant throughout most of the contributions.

Manager or leader?

Many discussions around leadership focus on whether a manager and a leader are one and the same. An appropriate analogy might be found in observing a football manager such as Sir Alex Ferguson. Ferguson is the ultimate manager; he has the respect of his employees, the players, and organises them with passion and care. He also, as his success has proven, leads Manchester United Football Club on every level. He leads the team at games, in front of the media and inspires high performance overall. Nobody dislikes failure more than Fergie In this way, Ferguson connects with his 'staff' directly, guides their spirit and drives them towards success.

"Managers often appear hard and tough but if there's no connection, you can't lead anybody," says Oliver. "You can force somebody to do something but you can only release 10% of their potential." Oliver explains that while such a leadership style may have sufficed 10 or 20 years ago, it's no longer effective in today's competitive business environment.

"It's a more complex world in a number of ways, but because this model of leadership is held up and is not real leadership, people are looking in the wrong places," he says.

George agrees that the best leaders inspire workers to their full potential and therefore produce even greater business results. "Good leaders get people engaged with the company and get additional discretionary effort that means additional financial results," he says. "Accountants may not be able to measure it but at the end of the day, it's real."

How to spot a good leader

There are five key leadership qualities that can be developed, according to Nick Greenhalgh, co-founder of career management company Career Innovations.

1. See the whole picture and not just parts of it. Many executives are derailed by becoming bogged down in daily tasks, and need to focus on gaining a sense of bigpicture perspective.

2. Deal well with uncertainty. Good leaders have developed the courage and the will to act decisively in complex or stressful situations.

3. Display learning agility. The ability to know when and how to adapt to different situations is vital, given the changing nature of organisations.

4.Foster - and show - integrity and trust. The key is understanding the impact your actions and behaviour as a leader will have on people.

5.Cleverly build organisational relationships. The biggest lesson we impart to leadership hopefuls is to resist the tendency to play off one person or one unit against another. Good leaders look for common ground rather than fostering turf wars or playing office politics.