Defining Excellence In Leadership

How do you define excellence in leadership?

I don’t know how many books there must be on leadership and the effectiveness of leaders, but we wouldn’t have time in our lives to read them all; that’s the truth of it. Many of them are very good, but many of them try to simplify what is actually a pretty complex subject. “There are five things you do and then you’re going to be a great leader.” It’s not like that.

You preface this by saying, “Everything I say is conditional on delivering the results.” In other words, you can’t take the few things I’m going to say that differentiates great leaders if you only do those and don’t deliver the results; that will not end well. You need to understand your business, to operate at the highest levels from a purely business point of view. That’s the starting position.

What I’ve observed in terms of the differentiation between good and great is that the really strong leaders have very high self-awareness. They know what they can and can’t do, and they ensure their organisation is built to accommodate those things that either they’re not very good at or they don’t have much interest in because both can apply. That’s the first thing.

The second is a laser focus on people, building a talent pipeline, developing the people that work for them with an intensity akin to driving their business — the same degree of intensity and time they devote to their people. As a micro-example of that, one of the things really good leaders do is when you’re in front of them, you are the most important person. They’re not looking at their phone while they’re still talking to you or pretending to be talking to you. Or worse still, which I’ve seen, pulling out in their PC in an interview. That’s not great leadership.

Great leadership is, “When you’re in front of me, you are the most important person. I’m really listening to what you’re saying.” That would be second, this focus on talent. I think the third differentiator is, they have to be great communicators. The role of the leader is to make sure people understand where we’re going. What’s the trajectory here? What’s the vision? What are the values of this organisation? These are important aspects of any leader’s role, and the more senior you are, the more important they become, and that’s just within the organisation.

Externally, there are all the shareholders, the board, the press, so the role of communicating is very different to someone in a plant. That is a skill that has to be developed, nurtured, and it has to be really good. And it has to be credible. You cannot fool an organisation. I can’t stand up in front of an organisation, lay out the strategy, and say, “We’ve really got to get there,” if I don’t believe it.

If I don’t believe it, organisations are very smart. They will know I don’t fully trust it, and I know that I will not be able to convince them. By the way, that’s not acting; that’s having conviction about what you’re going to do. And that conviction is contagious as well because that’s what builds towards having a very positive culture in the organisation.