Leadership Rules E-Book

Jo Owen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 132

Beschreibung

From the man behind the bestselling How to series comes more essential business wisdom...and this time, it's nicely broken up into 50 digestible nuggets. This is dip-in, dip-out content - easily read, understood and implemented and complete with engaging illustrations. There are a handful of truly inspired and inspirational leaders in the world - you know who they are... and probably wish you were one of them. But leadership isn't easy - some say it's an innate quality, a natural skill that only a select few demonstrate - but this thinking is nonsense, according Jo Owen. We can all become respected and effective leaders if we just follow some fundamental rules. Jo has studied what makes leaders effective everywhere - from the world's leading banks and management consultancies, to the world's oldest tribes in Africa. And he has distilled his observations into 50 practical rules that we can all follow and use to become the leaders we aspire to be.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

INTRODUCTION

THE QUALITIES OF A LEADER

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 THE LEADERSHIP RIDDLE

CHAPTER 2 ARE YOU LEADING?

CHAPTER 3 ARE YOU GOOD ENOUGH TO LEAD?

CHAPTER 4 THE PERFECT LEADER

CHAPTER 5 THE LEADER AS A ROLE MODEL

CHAPTER 6 THE LEADER’S VALUES

CHAPTER 7 COURAGE AND LEADERSHIP

Emerging leaders

Established leaders

CHAPTER 8 LEARNING COURAGE

CHAPTER 9 RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP

CHAPTER 10 WEAR THE MASK

CHAPTER 11 POPULARITY VERSUS RESPECT

CHAPTER 12 BE POSITIVE

CHAPTER 13 INSPIRATION AND CHARISMA

CHAPTER 14 BE AMBITIOUS AND UNREASONABLE

CHAPTER 15 EARNING RESPECT

CHAPTER 16 WORK–LIFE BALANCE

CHAPTER 17 LUCKY LEADERS

THE SKILLS OF THE LEADER

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 18 TECHNICAL SKILLS VERSUS PEOPLE SKILLS

CHAPTER 19 ABILITY TO MOTIVATE OTHERS

CHAPTER 20 CREATING A VISION

CHAPTER 21 DECISION MAKING

CHAPTER 22 BEYOND HONESTY AND INTEGRITY

CHAPTER 23 DEALING WITH CRISES

CHAPTER 24 DEALING WITH CONFLICT

CHAPTER 25 FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS

CHAPTER 26 ALIGN YOUR TRIBE

CHAPTER 27 HOW TO GET UP IN THE MORNING

CHAPTER 28 KEEPING CONTROL

CHAPTER 29 HOW TO LEARN TO LEAD

LEADING THE ORGANISATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 30 THE ART OF UNFAIR COMPETITION

CHAPTER 31 COMPETITIVE STRATEGY: ASYMMETRIC WARFARE

CHAPTER 32 WHEN TO FIGHT

CHAPTER 33 CHANGE OR DIE

CHAPTER 34 CONTROL YOUR OWN DESTINY, OR SOMEONE ELSE WILL

CHAPTER 35 LEADING CHANGE

CHAPTER 36 INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: GOSSIP VERSUS COMPUTERS

CHAPTER 37 RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 38 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND TRUST

CHAPTER 39 TECHNOLOGY AND PRODUCTIVITY

CHAPTER 40 BEYOND RESPECT FOR THE INDIVIDUAL

WHAT’S NEW ABOUT LEADERSHIP

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 41 LEADERSHIP IS EARNED, NOT GIVEN

CHAPTER 42 LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT PERFORMANCE, NOT POSITION

CHAPTER 43 LEADERSHIP IS A PROFESSION, NOT A CALLING

CHAPTER 44 GLOBALISATION

CHAPTER 45 THE CHALLENGE OF CONTROL

CHAPTER 46 LEAD BY CONSENT

CHAPTER 47 CHOOSE YOUR TEAM

CHAPTER 48 FIND YOUR CONTEXT

CHAPTER 49 LEADERSHIP: NO MORE HEROES

CHAPTER 50 THE LEADERSHIP JOURNEY

This edition first published 2011

© 2011 Jo Owen

Registered office

Capstone Publishing Ltd. (A Wiley Company), The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com.

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

(to follow)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

9780857082381 (paperback)9780857082442 (epdf)9780857082459 (epub)9780857082466 (emobi)

INTRODUCTION

When you next go to the office, try the following exercise. Throw away your mobile phone. Unplug your computer and get rid of any internet connections. Tell all the staff functions that their services are no longer required: out goes IT, HR, finance, accounting and legal services. Get rid of all the consultants. While you are about it, you may as well cut off the electricity and water supply.

Now try leading.

Modern creature comforts go from luxury to necessity faster than ever before. As leaders, we are becoming surrounded by ever more sophisticated corporate life support systems. We cannot imagine how we lived or led without modern technology, support and staff. Leadership has become a gilded cage: the rewards may be great, but we depend more and more on the system to function effectively.

If we want to rediscover the essence of leadership we have to escape the gilded cage and go back to basics. To do this, we have to look at leaders who have led without the benefit of an MBA, PowerPoint and the latest smart phone. Fortunately, we do not need to travel far. We can travel a little way back in history to see how leaders succeeded with far fewer resources than we have today.

Another way of travelling back in time is to visit the remaining traditional societies of the world. At first sight, it may appear that we have nothing to learn from leaders who stick feathers in their hair and bones through their noses. But, for a moment, let’s compare how they have fared compared to the great leaders of the modern business world. If we go back one generation we find that the creation of the FTSE 100. It represented the biggest and best of British business. They were the firms and the leaders we were meant to aspire to become. So how many of these great titans of business are still in the FTSE 100? Just 28. The other 72 have been taken over, overtaken or gone plain bust. A similar story can be told if you look at the S&P 500 in the United States or the Fortune Global 100. For all the brilliance of the great business leaders we read about in articles and autobiographies, they have an astonishing failure rate. A tribe which lasted only one generation would not be very successful. Most of the tribes I studied have lasted hundreds of years: that is, further back than anyone could remember.

So we find that tribes last much longer, in far harsher conditions with far fewer resources than the modern business tribe. Maybe, just maybe, we can learn something from their success. For sure, we need to take a fresh look at leadership. Look at some of the top selling books on business and leadership recently. Good to Great did extensive research to find those firms which had discovered the essence of lasting success. Since then the fate of the 11 American-only firms they studied has been less than stellar. Nucor issued its first profit warning; Gillette got taken over; Fannie Mae got bailed out for over $100 billion; and Circuit City went plain bust. So much for conventional success formulas.

The research for this book is based on seven years of working and living with tribes from Mali to Mongolia, from the Arctic to Australia via Papua New Guinea and beyond to see how they are led. Their survival and success is a small miracle. They have minimal resources. They often live in the most inhospitable areas, from frozen tundra to jungles, and are often surrounded by other hostile tribes. These tribes have survived for hundreds of years.

They show us the essence of leadership through the ages; leadership without all the noise of modern life. Throughout the book, the lessons of traditional leadership stand in contrast to modern leadership practice, observed from working with over 100 of the best, and a few of the worst, organisations on our planet. This is supplemented with original leadership research conducted mainly in the UK, USA and France, but supported by experience of working in most continents and most industries.

This research shows that the nature of leadership changes around the world. Something odd happens to leaders when they cross from Dover to Calais: different assumptions come into play. And if we then go further afield to the Middle East, or Asia, the assumptions change even more. This should stop us and make us take notice. Most leadership books are written on the assumption that the Anglo-Saxon, specifically American, way is the only way. Classic books like In Search of Excellence and Good to Great do not bother to examine non-American ways of leading. Such insularity is not good. Anyone who has cared to go to Beijing or Bangalore will quickly see that there is another world getting ready to take over from the American way. So we need to reach beyond the conventional formulas of Anglo-Saxon leadership if we are to survive, let alone succeed.

Going around the world in search of the essence of leadership was a recipe for dizziness. Even within one country, each leader was very clear about the essence of leadership. But each leader had a completely different formula for success. Across countries and continents, the differences simply grew. The fog of confusion descended. But perhaps the fog teaches us a couple of lessons. First, there is no single formula for success. If there was, you could programme a computer and ask it to lead: perhaps we will get to that stage one day. Each leader makes their own success formula, and they do what it takes to succeed in their unique context. So that leads to a second rule: you have to find the context in which your unique strengths will flourish: Churchill was great in war and useless in peace. The same leader in different contexts achieves different outcomes. The third rule from the fog is that no leader gets ticks in all the boxes. None of the leaders I interviewed was perfect, and they knew it. You do not need to be perfect. But you do need to grow your unique talents and make sure you are in the right place to use them well.

Ultimately, the purpose of working with both tribes and businesses was to discover what, if anything, successful leaders have in common. If certain skills and habits are essential in both the boardroom and the bush, then we can be fairly sure that they are universal traits of leadership. They are not simply an Anglo-Saxon take on leadership. And the positive outcome was that there were common themes, even if there was no single formula for success.

And now for the good news. More or less everything that is expected of a leader can be learned. You do not have to have the right DNA and the right parents to be a good leader. The expectations of a good leader can be grouped into three parts, which represent the first three sections of this book.

First, there are some universal qualities that leaders should have. Tribal societies in particular look at the qualities of the person, not just their technical skills. The importance of this was emphasised by one modern-day CEO who said: “I find I hire most people for their technical skills and fire most for their lack of values or people skills.” Fortunately, most of the qualities of a leader can be learned. Tribes talked about courage being important: modern CEOs also talk about courage to take the tough decisions. In working with the fire service and army, it became clear that even physical courage can be learned.

The second section of the book looks at the skills a leader must master. Again, there is no magic here. Decision making, taking control, managing people are all skills that any leader can learn and every leader must learn. The real challenge is how you learn these skills. Here there was a unanimous verdict from both tribes and businesses: experience is everything. That raises the obvious challenge of how you get the right experience and accelerate your learning from it.

The third section of the book looks at what leaders must do. Again, there is a common theme all the way from Papua New Guinea to Paris. Leaders have to take people where they would not have got by themselves. Managers administer a legacy and keep things running: they are essential in any society. But to lead, you need to do more. The one message that came through loud and clear was: “change or die”. In the business world, this is a rhetorical message. In the tribal world it is a literal message: without change they perish. Living on the edge gives an intensity and purpose to everything. Tribal people are often change masters.

Clearly, the tribal world does not enjoy the luxuries that we take for granted: running water, electricity, food, rule of law and relative peace. Something has stopped them progressing. The fourth section looks at what stops their progress: the problem is not one of leadership. This section is a chance to relish all those things that enable our progress but which we take for granted.

Finally, it would be unrealistic to pretend that nothing has changed about leadership in the last few thousand years. Things have changed. So the fifth and final section of the book looks at what is new about leadership. The results are mixed. The good news is that now anyone can become a leader, and that leadership is no longer about your title. It is about how you perform: you do not need to be a king or CEO before you start leading. The bad news is that many leaders have become very confused about leadership: they are in position, but they are not in power. They are not leading. And in too many cases, they have come to believe that leadership is about how you can help yourself, not how you can help others.

This book does not pretend to be a leadership manual. It simply holds up a mirror to modern leadership practices and invites you to draw your own conclusions. Inevitably, the mirror is a distorting one which makes you see familiar things in a new way. That is how the best insights arise.

As you look into the distorting mirror of the past to examine the present, you will find whatever you want to find. This book does not presume to tell you all the answers: leadership is not so simple that it can be condensed down to a few snappy answers. Instead, it invites you to ask questions, look at your world through a fresh perspective, and to draw your own conclusions.

This book is meant to be a journey of discovery. Hopefully you will enjoy it and, possibly, discover something as well.

THE QUALITIES OF A LEADER

INTRODUCTION

For thousands of years, leaders have got by without having an MBA. If kings and queens needed smart people, they could find plenty of churchmen to provide the brains. And even today, if you look at the planet’s top billionaires, they are largely an MBA-free zone. None of the tribal leaders who feature in this book have MBAs, and many of them cannot read.

So there is something more to leadership than having all the skills that a business school can give you. Those skills are important, but they are not enough.

When looking for a leader, tribes do not look at formal qualifications. They look at the person. They do not look at the person’s DNA: they are not looking for some innate quality such as charisma and inspiration. They are looking for a simpler set of personal qualities which any of us can acquire with enough effort and determination.

By looking at what makes good tribal leaders and historical leaders, we can find the essence of what makes a good leader today. Leadership in the tribal world is leadership stripped bare: it is the leadership without the corporate life support systems that enable us and imprison us at the same time.