UK Leading the way - Leaders can be taught, says Mr Adair

Business guru John Adair is a leadership evangelist - a purveyor of a faith he believes will empower UK companies to forge a new strength in world commerce.

The author and professor of leadership studies at Essex University says leadership needs to be valued as a skill distinct from, and complementary to, management.

In commercial-speak, managers are people who optimise the established way a company is already run. They make things happen efficiently.

In an economy where competition is largely dictated by cost, the most highly prized management skill is often the ability to wield a hatchet - rationalise and cut costs.

Leadership as a science

Leaders, however, says Professor Adair, are the innovators, the people whose flair lies in being able to visualise the direction a business might take to remain competitive, or to increase its competitiveness.

The notion of leadership as a science is not a new one - particularly in the United States, where more than 250 centres nationwide are dedicated to its study.

Where the professor's convictions stray into the controversial is his belief that anyone can become a leader. He strongly advocates that classes in leadership skills can turn anyone into a corporate visionary.

Professor John Adair warns that the UK must start to train leaders

His colleagues in the world of business theory are not entirely convinced. There is also a strong school of thought that leadership is innate - that leadership qualities can be recognised and encouraged, but not imparted.

But Mr Adair says this line of thinking will lead to companies in the UK being left by the wayside in the surge for prime positions in the global marketplace.

He told BBC News Online: "It's like swimming, everyone can learn to swim. Not everyone becomes an Olympic swimmer, but everyone has the ability to increase their leadership potential.

"Britain has been at the fore of leadership training - I did work with the armed forces 30 years ago that is still effective and applicable now.

"But compared to the energy and resources the United States puts into training its leaders, we look like primary school children."

Although in Mr Adair's estimation, 90% of US energies are largely ineffective, he said their commitment to training had to be applauded.

He said that key to being a leader were the abilities to provide a vision for a company, to inspire colleagues to follow the vision, and to have the energy and stamina to see the vision through.

He said: "We are not teaching people how to do these things. We are teaching people to be good managers instead."

Mr Adair, a former lecturer in military history and advisor on leadership training at Sandhurst, said it had been proved in military circles that leadership could be learned.

And if leadership is not taken seriously and taught, he warned, the UK would have a myriad of perfectly functioning business units, devoid of the creativity needed to make them compete globally.

He said: "We live in the shadow of the Thatcherite model of business, of downsizing and cost cutting. That needs to change."

The Insititute of Directors - where Mr Adair addressed a dinner on Tuesday - said it agreed that UK companies would benefit from enhanced leadership training, and had itself launched a scheme to encourage professional directorship.

But Andrew Kakabadse, professor of international management development at Cranfield University, says the UK has as many fine leaders as the rest of the world.

A proponent of the leaders-are-born school of thinking, Prof Kakabadse said: "Most businesses need good management first and foremost. Most compete in price, therefore you need someone in charge who knows how to keep costs low."

The professor has also compiled "possibly the world's largest" database of leaders, and says that the UK is neither poorer nor richer in leaders than the rest of the developed world.

"We have many fine examples of great business leaders," he said, saying that often the "creative" elements within commerce did not step out into the limelight.

He cited Johnson and Johnson's foray away from the safe ground of talcum powder and baby shampoo into contact lenses as an example.

And he said Vickers' decision to sell Rolls-Royce and invest more heavily in marine engineering displayed top-notch leadership.

He said: "Leadership means dealing with change - sitting down and discussing how to take a business through a period of change, and it is absolutely right that you need the right man or woman for that job.

"But certain qualities make a leader, and you cannot teach qualities."

Can leadership skills be learnt?

To grow any small business you need to be a good leader.

No matter how excellent your product, your business isn't going to expand unless you can inspire your employees and drive your company forward.

But are such leadership qualities something you are born with - or without? Or can they be learnt?

London Business School's Nigel Nicholson takes a closer look at the issue.

QUESTION

Ivano Assenza

Do you think leaders are born or made? And do you think it's possible to create leaders within a company?

ANSWER

Nigel Nicholson, London Business School

This is an evergreen question that is still hotly debated. My position is as follows.
The most important prerequisite is a desire to lead, and there are three kinds of people:

 People who have a strong drive to lead, and often don't care too much what kind of circumstance they lead in.
 People who never want to be leaders - they have other ambitions and interests.
 People who are prepared to be leaders, but only under specific circumstances.

Most of us are in the third group, while the first group is the smallest.

Group two is larger, and actually includes some people who could be quite good leaders if they wanted to.

A lot of the drive to lead is underpinned by inherited genes.

However, the real question you are asking is about effectiveness.

Wanting to lead is not enough - you have to have the capability.

This means being the right person doing the right things in the right place.

The key to effectiveness is:

a) correctly reading the situation you are in and what behaviours it requires

b) being willing and able to do what needs to be done.

Most leaders fail firstly because they don't read the situation well, and especially how it changes; and secondly, because their personality, values, and abilities make them unwilling or unable to do what needs to be done.

Organizational politics often governs point a). But point b) is down to what sort of person you are.

So the answer is, many leadership capabilities are inborn or take a lifetime to develop, but there are many ways of being a leader and most of the key skills can be learned - if you're motivated to do so.

Which brings us back to the beginning. How willing are you to lead?

How to create a 'promise' culture in an organisation

“Donald Sull explores how to encourage people to consistently make good promises and deliver results”

In the final of his three-part podcast series about promise based management, Sull builds upon his previous discussions on execution and how promises go bad and talks about how organisations can create a promise-based culture.

Specifically, Sull explores how a leader or a leadership team can create a culture in an organisation where people consistently make good promises and consistently follow through on them.

Sull explains that in order for promise based management to be executed effectively organisations need to make their people feel compelled and accountable for their promises and make the process as transparent as possible in order to increase accountability.

Leaders and leadership teams also need to be aware of coerced promises. Sull suggested a way to overcome this is by purposely selecting employers who are ambitious, career-orientated and willing to step up and make promises. However, Sull points out the danger that employees begin acting as "lone-rangers" in organisations as it becomes every man or women for themselves. Companies can then overcome this obstacle by explicitly hiring and promoting people who work well in teams, and rewarding teams rather than individuals.

Sull also states that it is important for organisations to build in checks and balances to ensure that people, who are under pressure to deliver results, don't cut corners when performing their tasks.

In conclusion to this three-part series Sull reiterates the power of promises as a method of execution, especially for non-routine activities when you know what you would like but you would like to leave it to another person's discretion and creativity as to how to do it.

Conflict resolution in teams

Randall Peterson looks at the links between conflict type, conflict management strategies and team outcomes

Through his recent research into conflict resolution in teams, Randall Peterson, Professor of Organisational Behaviour, explores the linkages between strategies for managing different types of conflict, and group performance and satisfaction.

The study found generally that successful teams are likely to be proactive in anticipating the need for conflict resolution, realizing that conflict is inevitable and trying to resolve it before it becomes a hot issue. And secondly, developing conflict resolution rules that apply to all group members, rather than creating rules designed to contain a single “difficult” member of the team.

More specifically, this study identified three conflict resolution strategies in groups that tend to improve and/or maintain top performance over time. These tendencies include; 1) focusing on the content of the interpersonal interactions rather than delivery style; 2) explicitly discussing reasons behind any decisions reached in accepting and distributing work assignments, and 3) assigning work to members who have the relevant task expertise, rather than assigning by other common means such as volunteering, default, or convenience.

This study also identified three specific conflict resolution strategies in groups that tend to decrease and/or maintain poor performance over time. Those tendencies include: 1) ignoring or avoiding conflict, including working in sub-groups to avoid personality clashes between members, 2) “giving into” difficult or overly assertive team members, and 3) regularly using majority rule voting to make decisions (i.e. resulting in a very unhappy minority).

Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/default.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3691821.stm
http://www.london.edu/researchnews_13224.html
http://www.london.edu/researchnews.html

Donald Sull's associated paper, Promise-based management: The Essence of Execution," Harvard Business Review April 2007

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Integrantes do Grupo: Juliana Rezende Moura, Themis Cabral Tubino e Bianca Dalla Valle Delfini.