Leadership can unquestionably be regarded as one of the topics which during
the last decade have mostly attracted the interest of HR professionals and
management practitioners. Amongst the different subjects related to leadership,
identifying whether and what differences actually exist between leadership and
management and determining whether leadership is an inborn quality or an
ability which can be learned, definitely represent the arguments most
passionately debated by HR professionals, managers and academics.
Over the years, have indeed been formulated hundreds of leadership definitions;
amongst these, it is particularly interesting and self-explanatory that
articulated by Henry S. Truman, who defined leadership as the “ability to get
others to do what they don’t want to do and like it.” John Adair, who can be
considered the leading British authority on the subject, maintained that “leadership,
like all personal relations, always has something unknown, something mysterious
about it.”
Leadership is indeed widely and unanimously considered as a crucial
factor to long-term organisational success; notwithstanding, it apparently seems
that there is a chronic shortage of this precious quality in the boardrooms of
large and small organisations as well.
As mentioned earlier, leadership has been and can be actually defined in
many different ways; it is indeed sorely likely that the HR professionals and
managers of any organization would be able to provide their own view and
definition of leadership. Despite individuals at large know what good
leadership really is, these are usually unable to identify the origin and
source it stems from. This
is basically why one of the most recurrent questions about leadership is
whether leaders are born or made.
Professor Abraham Zaleznic
(of Harvard University) avers that effective leadership is not preordained and that
it can be thus learned by exposing individuals to a number of relevant
experiences. Albeit recognizing that developing individuals’ leadership abilities
definitely requires and takes time, Zaleznic also suggests that accurate and well-designed
training programmes can actually help individuals to develop their leadership
potential.
According to the CIPD,
people vary in their capacity for leadership: “a few have an inborn capacity
(although even born leaders need to develop their leadership abilities
further), some have none.”
Regardless of the
circumstance that a company already has the right people or needs to recruit
them from the external environment, in order to elicit, nurture and develop
individual leadership abilities employees have to be in any case trained. Adair
identifies seven crucial characteristics of a successful leadership course;
it should be “simple, practical, participative, varied, enjoyable, relevant and
short.”
The first place where to start investigating the reason
for a general lack of
good leadership, especially whether instinctive, natural leadership would not
emerge, should be the learning environment, that is to say where leadership is usually
nurtured and developed. More importantly, it could be particularly interesting also
investigating what leadership courses do not habitually teach individuals about
leadership.
This
paramount quality is clearly not centred on concepts and theories about systems,
measurements, budgets, controls and budgets controls. Notwithstanding, as often
as not leadership courses tend to be indeed concerned with these topics, whereas
paying lip service to the qualities and abilities which are much more tightly
related with leadership and which are as such necessary for an individual to gain
the status of a truly, effective leader and help this to inspire other individuals
by eliciting their motivation and offering them a clear-sighted vision of the
business’ future.
The
debates concerned with the identification of the differences existing between leadership
and management traditionally lead to a number of ideas which can essentially be
grouped into two main classes.
Are
habitually defined leaders those who have followers, offer a vision and set
direction, facilitate decisions, are
charismatic, use their heart, are proactive, influence others by selling, like
striving, take risks and break the rules, use conflict, are concerned about
what it is right, give credit and take the blame. By contrast, managers are
supposed to have subordinates, seek objectives, plan details, make decisions,
use their formal authority and their head, are reactive, persuade by telling,
like action, minimize risks, make and
are compliant to rules, avoid conflict, are concerned of being right, take
credit and blame the others.
Business
leaders are usually trained in logic and analysis, which in general are not obviously
useless capabilities, but an indispensable skill for an effective leader is that
of being capable of applying “emotional intelligence”, that is to say the
ability to discern when things are true or otherwise and to find out when individuals
are truly inspired or are just routinely carrying out their tasks.
Leaders
need to be able to manage their own and others emotions and need to have the
appropriate skills to do it. In these cases, logic and analysis cannot really
provide any help.
Adair
states that managers appeal to people's rational thinking, whereas leaders
appeal to people's emotions.
Indeed, especially within the organizational settings, individuals tend to avoid emotions, or rather, to control and feign these in that expressing emotions is considered “unprofessional” at large. Whereas, by contrast, it is much truer the contrary, that is, it is “unprofessional” to suppress emotion or express it inappropriately.
When
all “this emotion stuff” remains unexplored and unresolved in leadership sessions
and groups, it invariably produces long-term tensions and political battles.
Albeit
it can be unquestionably averred that in many cases leadership emerges as an
inborn and innate quality, it cannot be denied that leadership skills, like
vision and inspiration, can be also learned by individuals. In order to actually
achieve this aim, that is to say help individuals becoming good leader or help
these improving their leadership abilities, leadership courses must be craftily
planned and designed and should also be provided according to a bespoke mode,
rather than be bought off the shelf.
In
many leadership training programmes, models of leadership are firstly discussed
and subsequently followed by practical exercises that logically analyse situations
where things went right and wrong, the so-called “leadership game.” This actually
is a pleasant approach, but more often than not what are habitually taught in
these cases are the elements which underpin leadership, not its essence.
An additional likely effectual
method, arguably the most effective method, is to train good leadership by means
of coaching. A good coach can in fact successfully help individuals to develop the
skills necessary and most appropriate to their work situation and hence help these
to build the competencies which are actually critical to improve their performance.
