"Ten Soldiers Wisely Led ....."
Further to my previous posting on succession planning and leadership in professional firms, I thought it would be useful to push the topic of leadership a couple of inches deeper. There is much around on leadership, ranging from pure wisdom to pure hogwash. Everybody from generals to psychologists to coaches to mountain climbers have their bit to say. But there are relatively few resources, I've found, from people that have both practiced and studied leadership deeply and comprehensively.
One such person is John Adair, whose work I first came across several decades ago and who has had a seminal impact on my views on leadership and my own leadership skills too. Adair was largely responsible for the leadership theory taught to this day at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in England. He was also largely responsible for ICI's decision in the early 1980s (at which time the corporation was in a lossmaking turmoil) to focus on developing manager-leaders. Five years later, ICI was the first British company in history to make a billion pounds of profit in one year.
Click through the hyperlink to find an article by Adair titled Developing Tomorrow's Leaders, that makes excellent supplementary reading to Nigel Knowles and David Pester's Less Politics, Clear Rewards.
In this article, Adair lists six principles for developing future leaders. They are:
Principle 1: Develop a Strategy for Leadership Development
The most common error that organizations make, says Adair, is to focus leadership only at the more senior levels. It needs to be embraced at the team level (eg engagement teams, client teams, small offices, smaller practice groups,) the operational level (business units, larger offices, key functional departments) and finally the strategic level (managing partner, CEO, senior partner.)
The leadership development strategy, furthermore, needs to be seen as an integral part of the overall business strategy and should have a five to ten year focus.
Principle 2: Selection
People do vary enormously in terms of their leadership potential. Since it is difficult and expensive to develop good leaders in a firm, it is better to focus on those towards the top end of the scale. It is leaders that will grow your firm rather than just administer it.
There are no psychological questionnaires specifically for assessing leadership that have stood the test of time. But there are some proven group methods that are worth having in your repertoire when selecting team leaders. Most organisations can improve their powers of detecting leadership at more senior levels simply by becoming crystal-clear about the differences between being a leader and a manager, and most would benefit by updating their interviewing and assessment techniques.
Principle 3: Training for Leadership
Specific leadership training needs obviously vary from firm to firm, according to each's specific business needs. But there are some common principles. Any training is going to cost time and money, so it is worth spending a bit of time identifying the best approach.
In my opinion, this would be a multi-faceted strategy that incorporated some carefully selected external training; self-education through mainly through reading and resources like Tal Ben-Shahar's programme at Harvard (downloadable for free) internal mentoring (preferably with some structure and specific goals to it) and coaching which may be either external or internal.
Principle 4: Career Development
There is no substitute for experience. Leaders learn to lead primarily through leading. Finding opportunities for those that have the potential and desire to lead, to stretch their wings, is a key aspect of an effective leadership development strategy.
Principle 5: Line Managers as Leadership Developers
All but the most junior of leaders are "leaders of leaders." Good leaders will use their one-to-one opportunities - formal or informal - to share their knowledge of leadership in a conversational but effective way; and be receptive to learnings coming the other way, too.
Principle 6: Culture
The secret to the success that the armed forces have achieved in leadership development, is that for at least the last two centuries, they have placed a very high value of leadership. Not only that, but leadership through service is very heavily emphasized.
This is in stark contrast to most professional firms where, the Managing Partners Forum study clearly shows, leadership is not directly valued. Firms that are making inroads into this archaic and ineffective approach to leadership will certainly deliver higher performance in todays market than those that are still clinging to the hierarchical fiefdoms of the middle ages!
Principle 7: The CEO
The chief executive of the firm, whatever his or her title, owns the issue of growing and nurturing future leaders in the firm. It cannot be outsourced or delegated to the HR department. Specialists can advise and help with stuff like training, but if the CEO does not drive this process personally, history shows that no real results will be achieved.
Adair concludes that just as we understand the laws of aerodynamics and why they make aeroplanes fly, so too are the principles of leadership development clear and well understood too. They are embodies in the seven principles that he lists. Whether they are applied or not is, of course, another matter entirely.
As always, comments are most welcome and may be posted below.
Great post...thanks for the link to John Adair's articles...they are very interesting.