Positive Leadership Limited is a strategic leadership and corporate finance advisory firm. We use our considerable experience to provide unique perspectives and innovative solutions which help corporate leaders unlock maximum value from complex business challenges. There is no dress rehearsal for delivering answers to critical business challenges. When you are under intense pressure to succeed, we help deliver the vitally important marginal gains which let your business excel and win.
What's the secret sauce of Silicon Valley? Failure, reports Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
To develop more successes, she urges, entrepreneurs have got to take a risk, and this is the notion behind every deal in the entire ecosystem. Venture capitalists fund risk and, by association, failure, in order to find the "hits" in the haystack. Failure is a perfectly acceptable part of the entrepreneurial process, provided that the smart entrepreneur learns from their errors along the way.
There are some lessons for leaders in what Tina has to say:
'The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it. Vision will ignite the fire of passion that fuels our commitment to do whatever it takes to achieve excellence. Only vision allows us to transform dreams of greatness into the reality of achievement through human action. Vision has no boundaries and knows no limits. Our vision is what we become in life.' Tony Dungy, former coach of Super Bowl XLI winners, the Indianapolis Colts
Behaviour is as important as message: employees observe their leaders and take their cues from how their leaders are behaving.
2. Tell it like it is
Tell the truth, and tell it fast. Get the bad news out there, and try and avoid drip-feeding.
3. Be clear
If you have clarity and strength of purpose, people will follow. Uniting behind a common cause raises spirits and makes people feel anything is possible.
4. Stick to your guns
Know your long-term strategic plan and stand by it. Don’t be panicked into sudden measure or announcements.
5. Be tough
Well-run businesses become more efficient; more objective about poor performance, more selective about costs, more prudent in decision-making.
6. Use confidence to create confidence
Show that you are in control, and not simply at the mercy of events. Get people engaged, and use their skills to help you. Optimism is vital.
7. Focus on opportunities
Leadership development is about accumulating experience, and times of crisis deliver new experiences by the truck-load.
8. Balance youth and age
A fresh approach is a great asset, but in tough times, so is sector knowledge – it’s the best way of assessing risk. People with experience have a huge coaching role to play.
9. Beware of creating a talent gap
If you don’t develop your human resource, you don’t have a future. Now is the time to stimulate innovation and creativity.
10. Learn the importance of unknowns
There’s a tendency to focus on what we understand, and ignore what we don’t. Seismic changes demand us to be less linear, to create a culture of wider thinking.
In fact, the book’s scope and ambition are greater than that description would suggest. All the same, this is the moment CSR campaigners have been waiting for. Their cause has been given high-powered, if qualified, academic approval. Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s credentials are not in doubt. For the past three years she has been researching this, her 18th book, which is substantial and carefully argued.
Kanter might reject an association with the CSR tag, which does not in fact appear anywhere in her text. She is writing about what she calls “vanguard companies”, which are “ahead of the pack and potentially the wave of the future”.
What qualifies them for vanguard status? These are companies that aspire to be “big but human, efficient but innovative, global but concerned about local communities”, she writes. “The best have business prowess and clout with partners and governments, but try to use their power and influence to develop solutions to problems the public cares about . . . The leaders of a vanguard company espouse positive values and encourage their employees to embrace and act on them.”
This is a savvy summary. It is CSR-plus, or successful business with a moral purpose. Which companies in particular is Kanter taking about? They are the global powerhouses IBM, Procter and Gamble, Publicis, Cemex and Diageo, among others.
What are they getting right? Vanguard companies understand that the early 21st century is characterised by uncertainty, volatility and complexity, Kanter says. They have grasped the need for diversity in their organisations. They err on the side of transparency, and take a responsible approach.
Virtue wins its own reward. “Humanistic values and attention to societal needs are a starting point for smart strategy in the global information age,” Kanter says.
This idea is not always an easy sell internally. At IBM, where Kanter clearly enjoys wonderful access, the chief executive, Sam Palmisano, tells her that one board director asked him not so long ago if this approach was not really a bit too much like socialism.
Teamwork is certainly crucial. And a values-based approach is important. “What is the value of values?” Kanter asks. “It is the engagement, the dialogue, the conversation.”
A social purpose is helpful strategically, she argues, because it gives you several advantages. You generate a bigger “ideas pool” as more people get involved. You create better motivation to serve customers. There is more prospect of “open innovation” taking place. You see less internal politics and greater co-operation. And employees are inspired to get on with the job.
“When you bring society inside the organisation, the possibilities increase for success at every point in the innovation process,” Kanter says. “The quest is more meaningful than seeking financial returns alone.”
The developing world offers particularly fertile ground for these ideas to germinate. “The least advantaged places can become the best beta sites for innovation,” she writes.
What this is not, however, is old-style CSR. That is about offering “spare change”, in Kanter’s words. “Corporate social innovation and entrepreneurship combined with corporate diplomacy [represent] a shift from ‘spare change’ to ‘real change’,” she says. It is a mistake, for example, to make “social commitments that do not have an economic logic that sustains the enterprise by attracting resources”.
Nor are vanguard companies interested in mere “charity”. “Their leaders are not soft-hearted do-gooders,” Kanter says. “The companies mount and defend lawsuits, push the limits of their market dominance and pricing power, compete aggressively, and lobby governments for favourable treatment.”
Global business leadership is tough and getting tougher, Kanter argues. It calls for a lot of MBFA – management by flying around. But this serious work provides a handbook for business leaders who are equally serious about making their companies both successful and sustainable.'
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
As one reviewer, Ram Charan, coauthor of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done said of Moss Kanter's work: “Unless your business is also serving a social purpose you miss an opportunity for innovations that bring profits. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, one of our most outstanding scholars, excels in her characteristic manner by taking the lead and developing practical ideas for the leaders of the future.”
At the beginning of Lincoln’s first term, he appointed each of his former Republican rivals—those who had run against him for his party’s nomination—to cabinet posts. The narrative demonstrates his amazing ability to tap into a broad array of perspectives and create alignment among those who often disagreed violently with one another.
Unfortunately, Lincoln’s leadership was not perfect. He occasionally selected men for public service who were unworthy of his trust. One such individual was General George B. McClellan, commander of the “Army of the Potomac” and, eventually, first general-in-chief of the Union Army.
General McClellan had significant character flaws that serve as warning signs to anyone in leadership. Ultimately, these cost him a run for the White House (against Lincoln). Worse, they prolonged the Civil War and cost the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
Here are the five flaws which emerge from Goodwin's book:
Hesitating to take definitive action. McClellan was constantly preparing. According to him, the Army was never quite ready. The troops just needed a little more training. In his procrastination, he refused to engage the enemy, even when he clearly had the advantage. He could just not bring himself to launch an attack. When Lincoln finally relieved him of his duties, he famously said, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”
Complaining about a lack of resources. He constantly complained about the lack of available resources. He didn’t have enough men. His men weren’t paid enough. They didn’t have enough heavy artillery. And on and on he went. The truth is that, as a leader, you never have enough resources. You could always use more of one thing or another. But the successful leaders find a way to get the job done with the resources they have.
Refusing to take responsibility. McClellan was constantly blaming everyone else for his mistakes and for his refusal to act. He even blamed the President. Every time he suffered a defeat or a setback, someone or something was to blame. He was a master finger-pointer. Great leaders don’t do this. They are accountable for the results and accept full responsibility for the outcomes.
Abusing the privileges of leadership. While his troops were struggling in almost unbearable conditions, McClellan lived in near-royal splendour. He spent almost every evening entertaining guests with elaborate dinners and parties. He insisted on the best clothes and accommodations. His lifestyle stood in distinct contrast to General Ulysses S. Grant, his eventual successor, who often traveled with only a toothbrush.
Engaging in acts of insubordination. McClellan openly and continually criticised the President, his boss. He was passive-aggressive. Even when Lincoln gave him a direct order, he found a way to avoid obeying it. In his arrogance, he always knew better than the President and had a ready excuse to rationalise his lack of follow-through.
President Lincoln had the patience of Job. He gave General McClellan numerous opportunities to correct his behavior and redeem himself. But in the end, McClellan either could not or would not do so. He left the President no choice but to relieve him of his duties.
These same character flaws afflict many leaders today. The best safeguard is self-awareness.
Here is an interesting article from today's Daily Telegraph which could equally well apply to business learning from the military:
'Colonel Richard Westley, who was awarded the Military Cross for his service in the Balkan Wars and now leads the Army's Operational Training Advisory Group, addressed leading Olympic coaches and performance directors at UK Sport's World Class Performance Conference on Tuesday. He told them that while the consequences of failure for athletes and soldiers are incomparable, the principles of team-building and the tools used to handle the pressures of life-and-death situations can have applications in sport.
"I believe there are elements that are applicable for the sporting arena," he said. "If you are an athlete who has devoted four or eight years to performing for a matter of minutes in Olympic competition, you are in a high-pressure, high-performance environment.
"They are totally focused on their performance, but the key for the Olympic team could be to try and give them a wider team ethos of Team GB. That is comparable to what we do with team building. Soldiers fight for their mates, for the guys they trained with and drank with, but they also have to fight for Queen and country. The team-building part of that is crucial, and there is a parallel between sport and the military."
Col Westley also pointed to similarities between the effects of pressure on soldiers and athletes. "For both the stakes are high when they are asked to perform at their best. For us it is life-and-death, for an athlete it could mean wasting four years of their life.
"So it is about inculcating a sense of pride, or national pride, team pride and individual pride in the effort. Whether you are fighting in Helmand or attempting to win an Olympic medal you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, 'Did I give it everything?'
"If the answer is no, it could define the rest of your life whether you're an athlete or a soldier. For those preparing for London they have less than 1,000 days to make sure that when they ask that question they can answer yes.
"They will face situations where all your instincts are telling them not to do something. They are fatigued, it is frightening and the pressure is for fight-or-flight, but their reaction in that ultimate moment will define the way they see themselves forever, regardless of whether they win or lose." '
Elite sport is a powerful metaphor for business, and there are some striking parallels.
Here at Positive Leadership, Gavin Hastings (a former captain of The British & Irish Lions rugby team) brings his sporting experience to bear on the work we do for our clients.
Fierce competition, winning by sometimes the smallest margins, achieving goals and targets, establishing long-term and short-term strategies and tactics, hard work, perseverance, determination, teamwork, dealing with success and recovering from failure and setbacks - those are all key challenges in both worlds. Success in sports and business alike relies on the ability to continually move performance to higher levels. What you achieve this year will never be good enough next year. Goals and standards move onward and upward, creating an unrelenting demand to find new means and methods to ensure the delivery of performance curves that can seem tantalisingly, or even impossibly, out of reach. Many of the lessons you can learn from elite athletes can be transferred to business.
The first crucial lesson is that elite athletes are not born but made. Obviously there has to be some inborn natural ability - coordination, flexibility, anatomical and physiological capacity - just as successful senior leaders need to be able to both strategise and relate to people. But the real key to sustained excellence for both elite sports and business leaders is not the ability to swim fast or do quantitative analyses quickly in their heads; rather, it is the development of mental toughness.
The ability to thrive under almost inhuman pressure is perhaps the most defining characteristic of elite athletes. They excel when the heat is turned up. They are able to stay focused on the things that really matter in the face of a multitude of potential distractions. They are able to bounce back from setbacks with a determination and intense desire to succeed. And, most crucially, they are able to maintain their belief in themselves in the most trying circumstances.
For the very best athletes, making it to the top is the result of very careful planning, setting and hitting hundreds of small goals. And if it's hard reaching the top, that's nothing compared to what it takes to stay there. Expectations are enormous, and you become the target and benchmark for every other competitor. You have reached heady heights and have become highly visible and exposed.
It's a marvelous place to be, but it also comes with great potential vulnerability and loneliness if things go wrong. Sustained success in such an environment requires astounding physical ability, but that isn't enough to make you better than all the rest. You need an extraordinary mindset too. The positive and resilient mindsets of the best athletes underpin their drive and ability to reinvent themselves continuously in order to stay ahead of the pack.
Elite athletes also take time to celebrate their victories. It helps remind them why all the hard work and commitment is worthwhile. At a time when survival is a key priority in so many organisations, don't forget to spend time celebrating successes, however small they may be.
There are not too many people who can say they have captained an Ashes winning series in cricket! Michael Vaughan can hold his hand up to being in a very elite group.
Vaughan’s new book, Michael Vaughan: Time to Declare - My Autobiography, charts his ascent to the world's No1 batsman, England captaincy and then the subsequent resignation and retirement. Above all, the book gives an excellent insight into the goldfish bowl of modern sport and will give even non-cricketing fans some real gems to help in all areas.
One of the aspects of performance improvement he mentions in the book is the 1% Solution.
Rather than looking at massive wholesale change, what are the small seemingly insignificant things you can look at which can make a difference to your performance. Whatever it is you want to improve upon, be that your game or your business, just take the time to write out a whole list of 1%'ers you could work on.
Experience with this approach is that the 1% seems manageable to the brain. It seems something that you can get a hold of and work on now. Just having the notion of ‘getting better’ is so vague. Once you have your list then get to work and you will begin to feel that momentum towards your destination is being created. The 1% should not be solely in one area, look at your whole life and as you make all of these seemingly insignificant changes you will look back and see some dramatic results.
assist the leaders of organisations facing change, identify, develop and implement practical strategies designed to maximise the positive financial and human impact of such high pressure events; and
help organisations develop the leaders of today and tomorrow.
Our advisory and consulting services include: leadership advice in the areas of leadership strategy, business strategy, corporate transaction strategy and performing under pressure; and leadership consulting in the areas of mentoring and coaching, leadership development and leadership assessment. We draw extensively on lessons from elite sport in the work we do.
Positive Leadership Limited shares global best practice and thought leadership with its clients and builds the awareness and reach of its client focused 'game plan for winning' through various channels, including its online presence at http://positiveleadershiplimited.blogspot.com/ and http://www.positiveleadership.co.uk/ and through public speaking and writing.
A 360 degree leadership assessment is one of the most effective ways to get feedback from your employees, peers and managers against a set of pre-defined leadership competencies.
Here are 10 suggestions for getting the most value from a 360 degree leadership assessment:
1. Mentally prepare yourself.
You have to go into these things with the right frame of mind. Don’t get all worked up dreading the results and hoping no one says anything bad about you. Instead, go into it with the objective of unlocking the secrets of what you need to do to become a better leader.
2. Don’t try to find all the answers out yourself.
This is critical. Any responsible programme or organisation wouldn’t implement a 360 degree feedback process without offering assistance with making sense of the data. Even though you may know the instrument inside and out, you should still will sit down with a coach, a colleague, or your manager to review the feedback. When you’re too close to the data it’s way too easy to miss something. It’s human nature – we sometimes see what we want to see, are too hard on ourselves, or make assumptions that others would not make. If anything, having someone to talk through it with just provides emotional support.
3. Don’t play detective.
Don’t waste time trying to determine who made a comment or who rated you high or low. Unless it’s your manager’s rating, the reports are designed to protect the raters. Too many managers make assumptions and have been wrong. Just take each comment and rating for what it is – data – and focus your energy on what you’re going to do about it.
4. Holistically or systematically?
There’s two ways to sort through all of the ratings and comments. Some managers take a more holistic approach – they take it all in, let it marinate, and come up with themes, patterns, connections and trends. It’s like an art to them. Other managers prefer to take a more analytical, systematic approach. They focus on the statistically significant differences and their own complex algorithms in order to make sense of it all. There is no right way – they both work. Use whatever method works for you, and don’t let someone force you to use a method that doesn’t fit your style.
Also – while comments are important – don’t get too hung up on a single comment, especially if the ratings and rest of the report don’t support the comment. It’s this tendency to overreact to a single comment that has caused some 360 providers not to use them. Try and find value in them, when taken for what they are – a single data point.
5. Pay attention to and celebrate your strengths!
Some managers completely dismiss what others think are awesome strengths. That’s another reason why it’s better to have someone go through the results with you. Unfortunately, leaders don’t always get to hear about what they are doing right. These strengths can also play a part in finding out how to overcome or work around weaknesses.
6. Look for blind spots and differences.
Blind spots are areas where you’ve rated yourself higher than others have. This could either be due to lack of self-awareness, or a marketing problem. Either way, they may need to be addressed. Differences in ratings between rater groups may mean you’re showing up differently depending on the situation. Perhaps your manager sees you as a great listener and your employees don’t. In this example, it’s not an issue of not knowing how to listen – you’re just choosing who you listen too. It could be more of a respect issue.
7. Absolute vs. relative scores?
If a “4” on a seven point scale is defined as “good”, and your lowest score is a 5.5, does that mean you don’t have any development needs? No, not unless every single one of your other scores is a perfect 7. Anything less means there’s room for improvement. Some organisations or groups of employees tend to rate their managers higher. Focus on your own relative strengths and weaknesses, not what the rating scale says.
8. Find 2-3 things to improve.
When all is said and done, the objective is to find 2-3 leadership behaviours:
where you have the opportunity to get better
that are important to improve, i.e., they will make a difference in your success
you are motivated to improve.
9. Make a plan and take action.
360s are great input to an individual development plan. However, don’t just keep the plan to yourself – share it with others. These two steps – having a written plan and sharing it with others – have proved through research to be the single biggest differentiators of those who have taken a 360 and improved and those that have not improved. Follow-up and thank those that have provided you with feedback and let them know what you’re going to work on to improve your ability as a leader.
10. Follow-up.
If possible, take another assessment 12-18 months later. That’s about how long it’s going to take for people to notice any improvement in behaviour. You don’t have to take the entire assessment again – just the questions relevant to the areas you are trying to improve.
Asking for feedback takes a lot of courage, and requires a big investment of time from many colleagues. Follow this advice and you’ll get the most ROI for the effort.
Five years ago, Donovan McNabb led the Philadelphia Eagles to their first Super Bowl in almost a quarter of a century. Four years ago, he practiced at minicamp just six months removed from reconstructive knee surgery and recovered in time to start the season opener. Last year, McNabb overcame the first benching of his career to lead the 5-6-1 Eagles to four wins in their last five games, into the playoffs and to their fifth conference championship in the quarterback's 10th year.
Still, eight games into the 2009 season, Eagles coach Andy Reid is convinced that his franchise quarterback has taken leadership to a higher level. Many of McNabb's teammates have also praised the veteran quarterback's leadership this season.
McNabb doesn't think he's done anything differently this season than any of his first 10.
"It's really no different than what I've been doing the past couple of years," he said. "I think that at this particular point right now, because those (veteran) guys are gone, that I guess they probably hear my voice a little bit more or pay more attention to what I'm saying.
"Anytime that you have a young group, and when it comes to the core guys of this team, (I'm) talking about myself, (Brian) Westbrook, (David) Akers and probably not even a handful of guys that are still here, you just try to provide confidence to them, first. Secondly, prepare them for what you will be faced with throughout the year. Third, I think it's more or less just going out and making sure that they're having fun and being themselves.
"That's kind of the way I've tried to set the tone for them and just show them by my work ethic, the way that I prepare myself throughout the week, and when I step out on the football field, just to go out and win games."
Born in Glasgow in 1964, Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Here are some of his current thoughts on economic recovery:
Continuing the theme why leadership effectiveness matters in terms of operational performance, US based research (Zenger, Folkman, Edinger) on the bottom line effectiveness of leaders has shown that poor leaders lose money; good leaders make profit and extraordinary leaders more than double profits in comparison to the rest.
In other words, good leaders create more economic value than poor leaders and extraordinary leaders create significantly more economic value than the rest.
In the case of the impact of leadership effectiveness on employee satisfaction and commitment, the bottom 10% of leaders were below the 25th percentile on employee satisfaction/commitment, as compared to employees being at the 75th percentile who had leaders at the 90th to 100th percentile.
Here’s another example from the research of the impact of leadership on operational performance: more than 50% of employees who are “thinking about quitting” their jobs report to leaders in the bottom 10% of the leadership pool versus just slightly more than 15% who “think about quitting” their positions who report to leaders in the top 10%. (It’s worth noting that about half of the people in an organisation who are thinking about quitting actually quit within a year!)
The research also found that there is one pivotal competency that is most powerful in distinguishing the top 10th percentile of leaders from the rest and that is the ability to inspire and motivate others to high performance.
Former All Black captain, Sean Fitzpatrick says that one of the most important things he learned during his time leading the Kiwis was the importance of being an inspirational player himself at all times. As he says about his role as captain;
'It’s not about management, doing things right; nor leadership, doing the right things. It’s about Inspiration;
It seems almost everyone can use a little something extra to help them increase their effectiveness or give them a competitive edge. Those in professional service firms are no exception; however, they do face unique challenges. With so much emphasis on billable hours for accountants and lawyers, how can they find the time to devote to personal development? Could asking for help demonstrate needed initiative or threaten credibility? Despite these challenges, more professionals are seeking mentors.
Contrary to popular belief, mentoring programs are not solely for the young and new in their careers. Even more seasoned professionals find benefit by addressing issues related to personal development, business development, and life/work balance. Mentoring conversations are less about learning the ropes, and more about thinking strategically about goals.
Before you start your search for a mentor, decide what it is you would most want to accomplish through the process. It will help you make the best decision.
Where do you find good mentors? Here are a few places to look:
- Inside your firm. Fortunately, more organisations are identifying ways to help employees create and develop mutually rewarding mentoring relationships. Some offer formal mentoring programmes. Formal mentoring programmes should not be a simple matching game. While it might seem logical to pair a more experienced professional with an individual newer in his career, other issues should be considered first:
The needs and goals of individuals.
An individual’s commitment level to personal growth.
The potential mentor’s commitment level to the process.
The organisation’s top priorities.
If there’s no formal mentoring programme, simply ask someone whose work you admire if they would be willing to spend some time with you over the next few months to help you focus on some goals. You don’t even have to use the word “mentor” which can seem too daunting of a role for some. - Outside your firm. There are some mentor programmes that exist apart from the organisation. They attract individuals from a variety of organisations. Participants in these programmes are assigned a mentor from outside the organisation. These programmes help you foster relations beyond your own internal network and across industries.
Not everyone should be in a mentoring programme. These programmes work best for those who are self-motivated and open to change. Mentoring programmes can be structured a variety of ways. Some include peer coaching or group coaching. Ideally a mentoring programme should be integrated with the strategic objectives of the firm. Determine the specific desired outcomes of the programme and measures of success.
You may also consider working with an external coach. An external coach provides a personalised approach to help you achieve specific goals. Explore the possibility of your organisation sponsoring a coaching engagement; otherwise, consider the process an investment in your own development.
Whether you’re working with a coach or a mentor, here are some tips on how to make the process most successful.
- Determine the outcomes both of you want to achieve first. For example, some may want to learn or hone a skill like presenting or strategic planning. Some may want to gain more knowledge about a particular career path. Some may want support dealing with a particular challenge or opportunity.
- Establish best ways to communicate. Will you meet in person, by phone or both? How frequently will you meet? Meetings need not be time consuming when you’re highly focused.
- Set a goal. Set a specific concrete goal to accomplish during a given time frame. Make sure it’s not too general such as, “I want to be a better leader.” Instead it might be something like, “I want to meet with each person in the practice group within 30 days to get feedback.” Initiate a particular meeting or project that helps you exercise the specific skill you want to develop. Being goal focused helps establish greater accountability for results.
- Debrief. Establish checkpoints along the way to assess how things are going for both of you. Determine what would make the relationship or process even better.
While mentoring relationships can be interesting and enjoyable, they should also be productive. These relationships should provide opportunities for both learning and action. The best relationships have the potential to create value for the employee, the mentor and the firm as a whole.
Every leader is aware of the value of a well-defined business strategy. Few, however, give thought to a leadership strategy.
A leadership strategy connects the business strategy with the capabilities that are required to succeed.Without proper leadership, even the best and boldest strategies die on the vine, their potential never realised. Without a solid leadership strategy, the most sophisticated talent management and development efforts will be weakened or, worse, become a drain on time and money.
Like business strategies, leadership strategies are based on a thorough analysis of the current situation and an informed view of the future. Leadership strategies make explicit the number of leaders that are needed, of what kind, where and with what skills. They go one step further to clarify how leaders need to behave — individually and collectively — to achieve success.
To understand and develop the leadership of an organisation, several factors should be addressed:
•The quantity of leaders needed, as indicated by current and projected formal leadership positions depicted on an organisation chart (i.e. number, level, location, function, business unit, reporting relationships).
•The skills and behaviour that are needed to implement the business strategy and create the desired culture (skills, competencies, knowledge base).
•The collective leadership capabilities of leaders acting together in groups and across boundaries to implement strategies, solve problems, respond to threats, adapt to change and support innovation.
•The desired leadership culture, including the leadership practices in use, such as collaboration across boundaries, engagement of employees, accepting responsibility for outcomes, creating opportunities for others to lead, developing other leaders and learning how to learn.
In much of the work on talent and leadership depth, the focus has been on only the first three of these ways of describing an organisation's leadership. By leaving out collective leadership and leadership culture, we have overlooked what makes leadership come alive in organisations and the factors that often determine whether strategies and plans will actually be achieved.
A good leadership strategy takes all of these factors into account. Very few organisations have an explicit leadership strategy. Is it any wonder that without one, CEOs find that they don't have the leadership talent they require?
To be successful in any field, aspiring leaders require role models and guidance. At some point during your career, you may have considered becoming a mentor but dismissed the idea, thinking it would not be worth the time and energy you put into it. It is time to rethink your decision. Being a mentor is more important than ever-and you will get more out of the relationship than you think.
What is a mentor?
A mentor affects the professional life of a protege by fostering insight, identifying needed knowledge, and expanding growth opportunities. This assistance supplements the coaching an individual already receives from his or her supervisor. Traditionally, the mentoring relationship consists of an experienced executive providing guidance and advice to an associate with less experience. The associate is looking to move up the career ladder, usually by learning from someone who is successful and well respected.
Why become a mentor?
Mentoring gives you the extraordinary opportunity to facilitate a protege's personal and professional growth by sharing knowledge you learned through years of experience. While the primary intent of your mentoring role is to challenge the protege to think in new and different ways, the protege is not the only one who gains from the arrangement. As a mentor, there are various ways you can benefit as well:
Enhance your skills. The experience you gain by mentoring someone can facilitate your own professional growth, making you more of an asset to your organisation. Mentoring allows you to strengthen your coaching and leadership skills by working with individuals from different backgrounds and with different personality types. Your ability to manage people different from you is a valuable skill, especially as the workplace continues to grow more diverse.
Develop and retain talent in your organisation. Your role as a mentor can contribute to the success of your entire organisation. By priming promising employees to become top-performing executives and by providing them with the challenges, support, and commitment needed to keep them in your organisation, your mentoring efforts effectively address issues of succession planning and retention.
Create a legacy. By becoming a mentor, you create a legacy that has a lasting impact on your protege. Not only will you gain the satisfaction of helping to develop future management talent, the knowledge you foster in your protege can inspire new ideas for generations to come. Furthermore, through mentoring, you can help carry on your organisation's legacy by passing on its values and mission to your protege.
Although mentoring can be a truly rewarding experience, becoming a mentor is a big decision and one that should not to be taken lightly. The benefits to you and your organisation, however, are well worth your effort.
Organisations benefit from the opportunity to invite open conversation about leadership, across all levels. If you are not already having such conversations, then perhaps you might start by asking questions like these:
• What does your company value most about its leadership?
• What improvements would you like to see?
• What is your company’s philosophy about leadership?
• What would outstanding leadership enable your company to do better?
• What leadership skills are critical for success?
• What is the impact of your company’s leadership on your employees? Your organisation? Your market? The community?
As you address these kinds of questions, make a commitment to raise the bar on the level of leadership that exists in your organisation. Build your leadership pool, but don’t let potential leaders sit too long. They’re anxious to lead.
Half of workers have resigned because of bad management and a similar number believed they could do a better job than their boss.
A recent survey of 3,000 adults showed that one in two would be prepared to take a pay cut if they could work with a better manager. The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) said UK firms invested less in managers than their competitors — and it showed.
Many bosses described themselves as ‘accidental managers’, with no training and no ambition to manage people at all, said the report. CMI chief executive, Ruth Spellman, said: “The figures reveal the depth of the crisis of confidence in UK management and leadership and the enormous toll bad management is taking on the UK economy and people's wellbeing. If we're going to stay competitive internationally, the Government and employers need to address this worrying skills gap."
The real performance trigger for leaders who know what they are doing is getting ordinary people to deliver extraordinary market performance. And the key to it is inspired leadership.That’s you.
The answer isn’t ‘out there’ in terms of the best talent and your job is to go and get it. The answer is in you. Can you be inspiring enough to get ordinary people to perform out of their skins, and love doing it? That’s what the best organisations do and that’s what will lead your organisation safely through the downturn.
That’s what Captain Mike Abrashoff did when he turned around a poor-performing US naval ship to become the best-performing ship in the Pacific fleet in just a few months.
When he took command of USS Benfold, one of the most technologically advanced ships in the U.S. Navy’s arsenal, Commander Mike Abrashoff inherited a demoralised crew of “order-takers.” He realised that to be an effective commander, he would not only have to completely revamp USS Benfold’s culture, he would have to do so by abandoning the Navy’s traditional “command and control” model. Employing a grassroots leadership model, Abrashoff transformed his crew from order-takers into empowered decision makers, improving morale, increasing retention from 29% to an unprecedented 100%, and yielding $15 million in savings in one year!
He got his sailors to suggest to him ways of saving money. They did the job, he reasoned, so they were best-placed to suggest how to do it better and cheaper. One nineteen-year-old suggested using stainless steel rivets instead of iron ones. Abrashoff used the ship’s credit card to buy them from Home Depot, because the US Navy’s own procurement people couldn’t supply them. The new rivets, and other initiatives suggested by the crew, saved so much money that in his first year in charge, Abrashoff returned to The Pentagon $600,000 of his $2.4 million maintenance budget and $800,000 of his $3 million repair budget. That year he operated on 75% of his allocated budget. And his ship’s performance figures went through the roof.
“We saved money not because we were consciously trying to,” he explained, “but because my sailors were free to question conventional wisdom and dream up better ways to do their jobs.”
His ability to “envision the ship through the eyes of his crew” became a seminal case study for Fast Company magazine and the Harvard Business Review. This is a back-to-the-basics leadership story that begins at the core of an organisation and transforms its culture from the inside out, and from the top down.
Here are some fascinating leadership observations from Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation SKG:
'You cannot surround yourself with the smartest and most talented people and then start looking over your shoulder or behind your back, worried that somebody smarter or better might be on your heels. Big mistake.
Being respectful of people, I think, is the single most important quality in leadership — earning the respect of people who work with you, for you, your customers, your investors. That really to me is what defines successful leadership — earning that respect.
By definition if there’s leadership, it means there are followers, and you’re only as good as the followers. I believe the quality of the followers is in direct correlation to the respect you hold them in. It’s not how much they respect you that is most important. It’s actually how much you respect them. It’s everything.'
said of Moss Kanter's work: “
by Doris Kearns Goodwin is an account of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and his political genius. 
, charts his ascent to the world's No1 batsman, England captaincy and then the subsequent resignation and retirement. Above all, the book gives an excellent insight into the goldfish bowl of modern sport and will give even non-cricketing fans some real gems to help in all areas.
