Md. Abdullah Al Mamoon, PMP
‘Leaders are born, not made’ – has been a widely spoken metaphor for decades. Interestingly, this belief on leadership is still a paradox since think tanks of leadership doctrine in the past and present have neither quashed out nor embraced the idea with spontaneity. However, with the evolutionary research outcomes on the Neuroscience and discovery of much talked-about Emotional Intelligence (EI) in the last decade has been the most encouraging in the belief of leadership development across the world.
Psychological and development research indicates that Emotional Intelligence (EI), which is a must needed and commonly observed leadership ingredient in most of the prominent leaders, can be learned through willful desire and practice. Recent global research and studies on leadership concepts and theories have placed greater emphasis on the resonant leadership developed through embedding emotional intelligence into the leadership style for leading the people in this century and into the evolving future.
Leadership is all about leading the people while having the focus on achieving the objectives of the organization. If there is no followers or people, there is no need of leaders. It is thus equally important to understand the people dynamics along with leadership concepts. There is radical shift in the mindset of workforce from the early 20th Century. People are now much aware about their rights and privileges. With the advent of technology people have unlimited access to the information encompassing latest development across the world and contemporary management knowledge. Hence, managing the informed workforce of this century has demanded significant shift in how organizations structure themselves to do business moving away from traditional hierarchical work structures toward team-based approaches. This change has emphasized more on behavioral dynamics of workforce replacing the traditional way of managing the people. It is now crucial and also the essence of time for the leaders and managers to redefine the mindset and skills of leading and managing people in their workplace. This article is a compilation of published leadership materials encompassing some of the globally recognized and commonly referred leadership concepts and practices that I have been following and strongly believe to be the most effective maxims on leadership development.
Level-5 Leadership
This concept was introduced by Jim Collins in one of his epic publications “Good to Great”. After an extensive research for about 5 years covering 1435 Fortune 500 companies around the world, Jim and his team found that only 11 companies achieved and sustained greatness and Level-5 leaders led all of those great companies. According to Jim, Level-5 leaders blend the paradoxical combination of deep personal humility and an intense professional will as detailed hereunder:
Personal Humility. Demonstrate a compelling modesty; avoid pursuing after public praise and never emphasizes on self. Acts with quiet and calm determination. Looks in the mirror, not out the window to apportion responsibility for poor results, never blaming other people, external factors or bad luck.
Professional Will. Creates superb results, a clear catalyst of transforming from good to great. Demonstrate an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the best long-term results, no matter how difficult. Looks out the window, not in the mirror, to apportion credit for the success of the company – to other people, external factors, and good luck.
There are 4 other levels of leaderships. Individuals don’t need to proceed sequentially through each level of hierarchy to reach at the top, but to be a Level-5 requires the capabilities of all lower levels as described hereunder, plus the special characteristics of Level-5 mentioned earlier.
Level-1: Highly Capable Individual. Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.
Level-2: Contributing Team Member. Contributes to the achievement of group objectives; works effectively with others in a group setting.
Level-3: Competent Manager. Organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.
Level-4: Effective Leader. Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision; stimulates the group to high performance standards.
Level-5: Executive. Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will.
Leadership through Emotional Intelligence
What distinguishes great leaders from merely good leaders is not the IQ or technical skills. It is Emotional Intelligence – a group of skills that enable the leaders to maximize their own and followers’ performance. In a 1996 study of a global food and beverage company, David McClelland found that when senior managers had a critical mass of EI capabilities, their divisions outperformed yearly earning goals by 20%. Meanwhile, division leaders without that critical mass underperformed by almost the same amount. Although there are variations in the doctrine of thoughts, following are the most commonly defined dimensions of EI:
Self-Awareness, perhaps the most essential of the emotional intelligence competencies, is the ability to read your own emotions. It allows people to know their strengths and limitations and feel confident about their self-worth. Resonant leaders use self-awareness to gauge their own moods accurately, and they intuitively know how they are affecting others.
Self-Management is the ability to control your emotions and act with honesty and integrity in reliable and adaptable ways. Resonant leaders don’t let their occasional bad moods seize the day; they use self-management to leave it outside the office or to explain its source to people in a reasonable manner, so they know where it’s coming from and how long it might last.
Social Awareness includes the key capabilities of empathy and organizational intuition. Socially aware executives do more than sensing other people’s emotions - they show that they care. Further, they are experts at reading the currents of office politics. Thus, resonant leaders often keenly understand how their words and actions make others feel, and they are sensitive enough to change them when that impact is negative.
Relationship Management, the last of the emotional intelligence competencies, includes the abilities to communicate clearly and convincingly, disarm conflicts, and build strong personal bonds. Resonant leaders use these skills to spread their enthusiasm and solve disagreements, often with humor and kindness.
Important and Effective Attributes of Leadership
Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. Leadership isn’t mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having only “Charisma” or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment. Some of the best attributes of modern leadership that have been proven to be effective in leading the workforce of 21st Century are delineated as under:
Engage Others Through Shared Meaning/Vision. Having a vision and being able to sell it is an essential task of leadership. The power of shared vision is enormous. To drive the engine of workforce into the effective performance demands to have vision, a common voice for all, which a leader needs to nurture and capitalize, as like as a good storyteller, at all the times. This keeps everyone in sync and everyone delivers coherently which ultimately contribute achieving predefined goals and objectives.
Integrity. Effective leaders strive to keep in balance three elements of integrity: technical competence, determination and a strong moral compass. Without the unshakeable integrity (including a strong sense of values) with positive balance in the Personal Integrity Account, today’s workforce cannot be kept loyal and motivated merely by sitting at the top of the hierarchy.
Adaptive Capacity. This is one of the most demanded leadership attributes or qualities that every effective leader must possess for leading the people in the fast track global economy. Leaders must have the appetite for learning new things coupled with openness to new experiences. Without this quality, leaders can’t connect with the followers.
Mindfulness, Hope and Compassion. Leading through mindfulness, hope and compassion empowers the leaders with superior influencing capability and at the same time helps the leaders in the renewal of energy. Leading people is stressful and stress drains out the effectiveness due to fatigue causing the behavioral attributes of a ‘Toxic Boss’. And people always disregard and avoid a ‘Toxic Boss’ less about being the followers. Remember, people doesn’t leave the organization, they leave a bad boss.
Think and Say “We”. Don’t think and say ‘I’. Think and say ‘We’. Effective leaders know that they have ultimate responsibility, which can be neither shared nor delegated. But they have authority only because they have the trust of the organization and the workforce. This signifies the necessity of thinking about the organization and its people before thinking about own needs and opportunities.
Practice Tough Empathy. This means giving people what they need, not what they want. This is sometimes wrongly conceptualized by emphasizing on the forceful giving against the willingness of the people. Leaders need to convince people with the ultimate benefits of such compulsory giving instead of being tyrannical. This is also part of leading through compassion.
Empowering People to Lead. Authentic leaders recognize that leadership in not about only their success or about getting loyal subordinates to follow them. They believe that the key to leading a successful organization and workforce is having empowered leaders at all levels including those who have no direct reports. They not only inspire those around them, they empower those individuals to step up and lead.
If you have read the above leadership concepts and attributes keenly, I am sure you will agree with me that these are indeed more of ‘Commonsense’ although frustratingly seldom applied. And only reason that I could identify is the denial or suppression of individual ‘Moral Compass – The Inner Judgment (The Real You!)’. I have been an enduring learner of leadership through reading enormous articles, research publications, biographies of the great leaders around the world from the past and present; and through formal and informal interactions with people around my life ecosystem. Deliberately, I have been applying and practicing my gathered knowledge of leadership into my personal, social and professional life. And I have the empirical evidences as the testament of proven results that I have been experiencing through applying appropriate leadership attributes most of which, I have focused in this article.
Leadership Triangle - Ongoing Personal Research
Based on my personal study, harnessed knowledge and experiences of leading the heterogeneous groups of people from home and abroad, I firmly believe that the leadership can be summarized through a ‘Leadership Triangle’ as mentioned below:
I am continuing my personal research to write more in details about the ‘Leadership Triangle’ in future that would also showcase real life examples and case studies on leadership.
‘To born as a gentleman is an accident and to die as a gentleman is an achievement’ - let us leave aside the exceptions of ‘Born Leader’ and nurture the conviction that leadership can be developed if we do honestly pursue the endeavor.
References:
1. Jim Collins, “Good to Great”
2. Daniel Goleman, “What Makes a Leader”, Harvard Business Review
3. Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, “Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance”, Harvard Business Review
4. John P. Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do”, Harvard Business Review
5. Warren G. Bennis, Robert J. Thomas, “Leading for a Lifetime”
6. Richard E. Boyatzis, Melvin L. Smith, Nancy Blaize, “Developing Sustainable Leaders Through Coaching and Compassion”, Academy of Management Learning & Education
7. Peter F. Drucker, “What Makes an Effective Executive”
8. Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones, “Why Should Anyone Be Led By You”, Harvard Business Review
9. Bill George, Peter Sims, Andrew N. McLean and Dianna Mayer, “Discovering Your Authentic Leadership”
10. Richard E. Boyatzis, “Leadership Development From a Complexity Perspective”, Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, American Psychological Association
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