The leadership challenge
A recent debate on leadership, organised by business magazine European Business Forum (EBF), brought together a host of management luminaries. Tim Dickson takes a look at what they had to say.
Managing and developing tomorrow's leaders is a challenge for HR departments, especially in the wake of globalisation, technological change and growing public disgust at corporate greed. So how should leaders be identified and developed?
Leadership scholars suggest 21st century companies will need to develop new styles for them to stand out from their competitors.
Deanne den Hartog
Professor of organisational psychology at the Faculty of Economics and Business
at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The switch from physical to intellectual (and, therefore, more complex) labour, the advent of flat, networked organisations, and the growth of a virtual working environment are particular trends highlighted by Den Hartog. Such challenges, she explains, mean managers "can no longer literally oversee the efforts of subordinates". Indeed, if some scholars are right, leadership responsibility could become 'shared' or 'distributed' - transferred from an individual to whole teams - while leaders themselves may become limited in their scope and duration as people take on temporary roles in some projects but not in others.
Meredith Belbin
International business guru
Best known internationally for his widely acclaimed and widely applied research into team roles, Belbin puts the challenge more starkly. As a species, he acknowledges: "We are stuck with our own genetic legacy, which, as it happens, is shared by all gregarious mammals - the basic principle of organisation being that of alpha-male dominance." However, recent changes and sources of 'disequilibrium' are "taking us away from the top-down hierarchy and towards a looser yet deftly co-ordinated system of dynamic networking", best exemplified in the sophisticated interdependent systems of the social insects. "We may not be able to imitate these insects," Belbin suggests, "yet the balance is now swinging back in the direction of the human species, assisted by the colossal capacity of the laptop computer. Information is coming in from the side instead of from the top-down. Such a switch in information supply is creating pressure on the top. By losing its likely monopoly on leadership, the top can survive with credibility only by empowering the most suitable individuals and teams."
Warren Bennis
Professor at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
Such a democratic and inclusive vision also resonated in the mind of Bennis, one of the world's leading authorities on leadership. "One reason corporate leadership has recently lost its credibility," he says, "was its wholesale failure to create a culture of candour".
"It is not easy to welcome criticism, however honest and tactful. But a willingness to do so is one of the indispensable qualities of authentic leaders. Too often the CEO says he or she wants honest input, but the company's truth-tellers are marginalised, if not driven out. However nettlesome, internal critics are the most valuable employees of all - the ones who keep a company honest and help preserve its most important asset, its good reputation," he says.
Bill George
Professor of leadership and corporate governance at International Institute of
Management Development (IMD)in Switzerland
"Authentic" leadership - people of the highest integrity, with a deep sense of purpose and committed to building enduring organisations - is exactly how George describes the missing ingredient. He goes so far as to say that the future of capitalism, and the ending of "the never-ending string of corporate scandals", depends on it.
Ferdinando 'Nani' Beccalli
President and chief executive of General Electric (GE) Europe,Middle East and
Africa
The debate also included other challenging ideas for encouraging a new approach to leadership. Most contributors felt that ethics and personal integrity were critical, and that the example set by the top would ultimately define the culture and reputation of an organisation. Beccalli, for example, insists that signs of collusion or dishonesty need to be stamped out quickly, a point echoed by Daniel Vasella, chairman and chief executive of the Swiss-based drug giant Novartis. He argues: "In addition to encouraging good behaviour", [people in leadership] have to have a system of reprimanding poor behaviour, for punishing those who live by the letter rather than the spirit of the rules and who are simply looking for the next loophole."
Angel Cabrera
Dean of Instituto de Empresa graduate business school in Madrid
Cabrera further emphasises the need for trust, bemoaning the recent lack of it and urging business students to remember that "no matter what business they are in, their actions and decisions can have a great impact on the lives of their fellow human beings, and that this impact may determine the degree of their success in the long run." The link to success, however, may not be sufficient incentive. Cabrera proposes that, like those of other honourable professions such as medicine and law, business graduates should assume a code of conduct. "Perhaps one day we will see business schools in Europe requiring their students to take the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath on graduation," says Cabrera.
Want to learn more about good leadership? Try the Challenge of Leadership
Conference in Newbury, Berkshire, on 9 March. It will share exclusive research
and the experiences of leaders in top companies. For more information call
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