Leadership Fundamentals

I’d like to ask you in terms of what’s really mattered to you in your career as a leader and as someone who’s been exposed to a great number of very senior leaders, how would you define excellence and what does that mean to you?

As you already said, you can find about hundreds of books on leadership and what have you. I’ve never really read a book on that one, to be honest. Not that I’m saying it’s a waste of time, but it’s usually something that you experience through your business career in one way or another anyhow. If I would point out a couple of things that I would say is really leadership, as I have been exploring it through my years in business. To be a true leader, one of the first things I would like to mention is you have to lead by example. You have to show your team, you have to show the other people in the management that you really live what you are saying. Between what you are doing and what you are saying, there is no difference. I think one of the other things is that transparency is a very big element of good leadership. You need to be predictable for your people, you need to be predictable as well for the outside, because it’s something with leadership. It’s not something that’s within the company, but as well we have to show that to shareholders and to the outside world customers. One of the things that I would be particularly keen on is to make a few comments on is you have to listen to your people, your team.

I have seen in my life quite a few leaders, unfortunately, when you come to see them in front of their teams, it’s 80 percent of the time they are speaking and 20 percent the members of their team. I think it should be the other way around. Why is that so? The further you go up in your career, the further you go away from where you were a true expert. You still need to make decisions. You need to make decisions on the basis of the information that you gather. Information that you usually get from your people. This does two things. When they see that you listen, when you see that their expertise is valued, then they really work on that. They will give their utmost to really supply the best of expertise to you. If you then at the end of the day after listening to a couple of different experts, still have to decide maybe one or the other situation against some of this expertise. You still have to be transparent. You have to explain why you’re not taking the advice of somebody. That you still value that and that you’ve taken that into account. What this altogether means is it’s very important in exerting leadership that you have the right people around you.

These people, sometimes you get them when you’re put into a certain position, but then over time, you have the opportunity to choose people into certain positions there. That’s probably one of the most important qualifications that you need to have as a top manager, is evaluating people. Getting a good judgement on that. I’m not saying that you will be right 100 percent of all the time, but you should have a high degree of certainty on when you choose a person. That is difficult enough, but it’s one of the things which are really important. Again, you will not know everything yourself. You need your people to be excellent in what they know and then form a decision out of that.

You’ve suggested a number of areas here, from leading by example, the importance of transparency, listening to your people, making room for them to express themselves and to pass on information, selecting great people, evaluating talent, building teams. What do you feel really makes people follow a leader in your experience?

I think what makes them follow is that I wouldn’t really want to add any more characteristics to the ones that I’ve already said and that you’ve correctly mentioned again. When people see what you’re saying is really coming from yourself and that you’re constantly really following your own guidelines and the guidelines that you give to others, I think that creates a trust in you, people will then trust you as a leader. Then even if you do take, which might happen, wrong decisions, but taken back later on and correct then, they will follow you on that one, as well. They have to trust that you will be guiding them in the right direction in the best of your knowledge and taking their advice and their knowledge into account whilst doing that.

How important is authenticity?

I think it’s very important. It really is a nice word to sum up what I’ve tried to say. You need to show that you’re really yourself in what you’re doing. That you’re not playing a role. If you go there and play a role, you will not be able to really manage that all the time. People around you will notice that. Again, you lose your own credibility and people will then, at the end of the day, not trust you and follow you and support you in what you’re doing.