The Business Exchange Bath & Somerset Issue 7: Spring 2018 | Page 28

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. 28 THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2018 The ability to: 1.Envision an Outcome i.e. to think conceptually and see the big-picture. 2.Understand Others – Often called “Emotional Intelligence” this is the ability to accurately understand those being lead. 3.Inspire Others – by effectively communicating the company vision and achieving buy in. 4.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. 01793 239542 [email protected]