The Business Exchange Bath & Somerset Issue 10: Winter 2018/19 | Page 27
BUSINESS ADVICE
THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
By Chris Spratling
A few weeks back I was talking with a client. As this business
owner described his woes to me about how he was struggling
with poor leadership skills, he described the performance of
some of his leaders by saying,“With some of our managers,
I swear our employees only follow them out of curiosity!”
The lack of leadership skills, an inability
to engender respect and overall poor
performance was killing his profits.
Unfortunately, while his way of describing
his leaders was a novel one, the existence of
poor leadership is anything but a novelty.
As a business leader for the past 25 years
I’ve witnessed more ineffective leadership
examples than I care to remember. And
nothing impacts the overall health of the
organisation more negatively than bad
leadership!
In all those years, however, I’ve also
noticed a significant trend among companies
where leadership is not an issue.
Over and over again those leaders who
elicit the best from their direct reports, who
achieve higher performance objectives, who
have lower turnover and who’s companies
grow more, all share some basic natural
talents for leadership. They all share
competencies that the under-performing
leaders simply do not possess.
The ability to:
Envision an Outcome i.e. to think
conceptually and see the big-picture.
1. Understand Others – Often called
“Emotional Intelligence” this is the ability
to accurately understand those being lead.
2. Inspire Others – by effectively
communicating the company vision and
achieving buy in.
3. Understand Themselves – the ability
to objectively understand one’s own
strengths and weaknesses.
While many assume these
are traits that can be taught, or acquired, in
reality research has proven that for the most
part they are based on a person’s natural
behavioral style and personality;
Most organisations struggle because they
fail to measure these talents. These traits
remain intangible and therefore, since we
can’t see them, we can’t manage them and
they don’t get factored into the leadership
equation.
There’s an old quote that goes, “Hire for
hard skills –
fire for soft skills.” Basically, this means
that we often hire people based on the
tangible hard skills like experience, their CV,
education etc…..
Conversely, leaders often have to fire
people because they do not possess the
intangible soft traits that so significantly drive
performance as a leader.
The most successful companies do a
much better job of making these intangible
traits tangible, visible and quantified, and use
this knowledge in hiring and developmental
scenarios.
The results: human turnover goes down,
productivity goes up and overall profitability
increases.
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THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2018
27