A view of Leadership

Most of us as managers get on with our jobs,

• gettingthings done,
• meeting the targets,
• developing teams.

We see ourselves as leaders, we're often called teamleaders; but are we really leaders?

Is being a good,or even a great manager really the same as being a leader?

If we think about who are heroes are, they are oftenleaders, but rarely do we think of a manager as agreat hero.

Nelson Mandela is a hero to many, but hisautobiography shows that in reconstructing the newSouth Africa, Mandela left much of the enormous taskof getting things done to others. He was far moreconcerned with ensuring that people worked togetherand forging bonds between people, a hugely difficulttask given that many of those people had been enemiesfor so long. Mandela has also largely been concernedwith making sure that the external environment was well managed and spent much of his time as President outside of South Africa. Mandela and others who are considered to be greatleaders inspire us. They make us want them to win. They engage our emotions. They involve us in theirstruggle, and make it our struggle.

Leadership styles

Leading others involves a very different set of skillsto many of the attributes that are required foreffective management. In fact many commentators say that leadership is quite different to managing. Leadership is often seen as a set of characteristicsthat some people have and others do not. Leadershiptraits can include:

• Listening
• Seeing the bigger picture
• Focussed on a vision for the future
• Ambitious
• Committed
• Courageous
• Decisive
• Driven
• Positive thinking
• Passionate
• Wise
• High standards of integrity
• Able to take other people with you
• Curious

Although many of these traits are laudable, and perhaps something to aspire to , they are not often things that we can all say that we possess. In fact,we can argue that someone who feels that they encapsulate all of these qualities would automatically exclude themselves from wisdom which can only comefrom humility.

Is leadership a series of traits?

Analysing leadership as a series of traits can be deceptive. Peter Drucker, having considered what the personalities of various effective leaders have incommon, thought that there were no particular traits that stood out and that for each characteristic of oneleader, another who was equally effective had exactlythe opposite attribute. If you feel the need, or are required to lead others, it can be disheartening to feel that you are required to change your personality in order to be a good leader, not to mention the difficulty of doing this.

Others see leadership as a matter of style, rather than personality traits. A contrast can be made between autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire styles of leadership. Research has shown that the democratic style of leadership generally works more effectively at getting things done, particularly if the leader cannot be always there to ensure that people do what they are told to, as is needed under an autocratic leader. However, there are always exceptions to this rule, and many organisations have prospered under auto cratic leadership, although the trend for more highly skilled organisations is undoubtedly away from an autocratic style and towards a more facilitative and democratic style of leadership. Some people see the best leadership style as being determined by the context - at one extreme, helping people escape from a burning building needs someone who can tell people what to do and not worry about allowing them to have their say. At the other extreme, when seeking to reconstruct the office after the fire, and seeing the opportunity to improve on what was there before requires the leader to be able to listen to everyone's point of view, bring out the best inpeople and make a final decision, while inspiring them to work hard to repair the damage.

Conclusion

This leads us to consider leadership as a contextualised set of relationships with other people. Great leaders, in business or in politics, become those leaders both because of the context they were in (Churchill would not have been seen as such a great leader if he had not been British Prime Minister in war time, and in fact was rejected by the electorate after the war) and because people allow them to be leaders. To be a good leader you have to work to ensure that people will follow you in some way. This involves working to build trust, involving people in what's going on (even if it's only keeping people informed)and demonstrating that their cause will be best served by working with you. An alignment of values is required, whether that is persuading people that if they follow you then their jobs will be safe, or demonstrating that your cause reflects the values of your followers political beliefs. Leadership traits can be very varied, and it is almost impossible to change your basic personality to become whatever you think a leader is. Leadership style can be changed, and different style sare appropriate at different times and in different contexts. To be fully aware of what sort of leader you are, or can be, it is necessary to consider both the context and the particular set of relationships you have and can build with the people you lead.