Corporate Life - Leadership 2

I can write reams and reams on leadership, without having read much on the topic. Just by observation one can sense leaders and of course differing types of leadership skills. People put varying emphasis on different types of leadership traits and it is evident that quite often one persons leader is another's follower.

I personally, favor the charismatic motivational leader. The one who can get up on the podium and convince people to do his bidding. Who inspires extraordinary efforts, and hence extraordinary results. I guess, this is a product of having watched a bit too many movies !! I once had the honour, a very long time ago, of being in the same elevator in Bombay House, with Mr Ratan Tata. I can still distinctly remember his aura and personality. He had what is called gravitas !! The natural air of someone in command without having to assert it. I doubt whether anyone having met him, would disagree.

In corporate life, one mostly comes across Positional Leaders, i.e. people put into leadership situations by dint of their position in the Company. Quite often, if not natural, or not adequately trained, they have absolutely no skills to lead. They are probably superb administrators or technocrats, but quite often have been put in that position through seniority in the organisation. A very good friend of mine recently asked me rhetorically whether the best salesman would be promoted to become the General Manager ? The answer is, of course, not. It takes much more than just one skill to be a good leader. But this is a point of view.

In organisations people are put into positions of leadership in exactly this manner. As expected they do significant damage in terms of demotivation and generating sub-par performance from their reportees. You can recognise these people, by their reticence in public, their aversion to public speaking, their ineptitude in social settings and their obvious comfort in minutae. People working for them, given the opportunity, will move. This has a huge cost on the organisation in terms of attrition which is quite often ignored or overlooked.

I have colleagues who, however argue for this process, stating that technical expertise is of utmost importance, and that communication skills and charisma either do not matter, or can be learned. I beg to differ!!

One either has these qualities or does not. All that can be done is hone the skills or polish delivery. Positional leaders are effective up to a certain level of seniority, beyond which they can cause damage. No matter what field one works in, an ability to lead and provide direction differentiates between effective and ineffective leaders. Having worked once with such a "techie" I say with no hesitation, that I would not like to repeat the experience. I recently read an article that stated that when people resign, an overwhelming proportion are leaving their line managers and not their organisations.

By my observation, managers tend to fall into two camps, when it comes to their requirements for top class performance. One set believes that good systems and well defined processes is all that is required to get world beating performance. People then become secondary. The other set believe and insist on having the best people in the right job.
I stand firmly for the second category.

What about you ?