Charisma vs Character: Style vs Substance : What Kind of Leaders Do We Need in 2010?

The stock market seems slowly on its way to recovering from the financial crisis, but a deep scar from the recession remains.

In the USA, many Americans lack confidence in the nation's leadership to address the challenges the country currently faces. The Harvard Center for Public Leadership's 2009 National Leadership Index reveals that 69% of Americans think there is a leadership crisis in the country. 67% believe that "unless we get better leaders, the United States will decline as a nation."

At the bottom of the index's ranking of confidence in leadership are Wall Street leaders, closely followed by news media, Congressional, and business leaders. It is tempting for leaders to view these dismal results as a public relations issue emanating from the economic downturn. But this is not a PR problem: It's a leadership problem.

We opened this decade with a wave of appalling leadership failures. Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling of Enron, Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, Joseph Nacchio of Qwest, and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco blatantly disregarded the ethical and legal responsibilities entrusted to them by their shareholders. We are closing the decade with another wave of leadership failures. Dick Fuld of Lehman, Alan Schwartz of Bear Stearns, Angelo Mozillo of Countrywide Financial, and Chuck Prince of Citigroup (C) sacrificed financial prudence for the possibility of extraordinary short-term gains. Their decisions obliterated billions of dollars of economic wealth and almost destroyed the world's financial system.

This crisis won't be over until a new generation of leaders emerges that understands that long-term institutional stewardship and maintaining public trust are the two imperatives of 21st century leadership.

Far too many leaders fell into the trap of believing that the purpose of business is to maximise shareholder value and reap personal rewards, rather than serve customers and the society they operate in. However, those that focus primarily on maximising shareholder value—usually with a short-term focus—are more likely to wind up destroying the value they create.

Bill George is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. In this speech he discusses the kind of leaders we need in 2010:




In this conversation with The Washington Post (Embed link), he explains why leaders should be "vulnerable" with followers, even at the risk of losing their jobs and why integrity ('doing the right thing') really matters in business today.

Bill George is the author of Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis (JB Warren Bennis Series)

Charisma vs Character: Style vs Substance : What Kind of Leaders Do We Need in 2010?