20th April 2008
The Malta Independent on Sunday
As the government
seems to be in limbo, the talk of the town remains the leadership contest in
Labour’s fold.
With five confirmed contestants so far and with their exposure on the media gathering momentum, it is inevitable that one starts making judgement on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the personalities involved.
From what I have seen so far, I am gaining the impression that some of the contestants have problems making the distinction between skills of administration, co-ordination and leadership. So I asked myself what the attributes that distinguish true leaders from the rest are.
I tried to brush up on my MBA notes but too much time has passed to keep up with modern management thinking. So I thanked God for Google and accessed some fresher stuff. And after reading through a vast amount of literature I decided to focus on Daniel Coleman’s contribution in the Harvard Business Review 1998 based on his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence.
It is a given that a leader has to have some basic qualities that are traditionally associated with leadership – like intelligence, toughness, determination, vision and technical skills. However, there are many stories of highly intelligent and highly skilled executives who failed miserably when promoted to a leadership position. In contrast, there are many stories of people with quite normal intellectual abilities and technical skills who soared when achieving a leadership position.
Intelligence and technical skills are merely threshold capabilities, entry-level requirements for leadership. In addition to these basic skills, effective leaders must have a high degree of emotional intelligence. What is emotional intelligence?
There are five components that are the building blocks of emotional intelligence.
The first component is self-awareness. It is the person’s ability to recognise and understand his/her moods, emotions and drives, as well as their effect on others. The hallmarks of self-awareness are self-confidence, realistic self-assessment and having a self-deprecating sense of humour.
The second component is self-regulation. It is the ability to control and re-direct disruptive impulses and moods. It is the propensity to suspend judgement and gain time to think before acting. The hallmarks of self-regulation are trustworthiness and integrity, comfort with ambiguity and readiness to embrace change.
The third component is motivation – a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status. Motivation develops a propensity to pursue goals with single-minded purposeness, with energy and persistence. Its hallmarks are a strong drive to achieve, maintenance of optimism even in the face of failure and unwavering organisational commitment.
The fourth component is empathy – the ability to understand the emotional make up of other people by treating them according to their emotional reactions. Its hallmarks are expertise in grooming and retaining talent within the organisation, having cross-cultural sensitivities and showing passion for service to clients.
The last component is social skill – proficiency in managing relationships and building networks. Social skills means having the ability to find common ground and build rapport even while dealing with conflict. Its hallmarks are effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness and expertise in building and leading teams.
If a leader can master all these skills than he/she can be effective in his/her most important function, ie, to lead. This might look very obvious but in reality one often finds people in position of leadership who are not aware that they are meant to lead. Often they mistake their role as that of an administrator or co-ordinator. Such failed leaders think that leadership consists of sitting in the most comfortable chair at the table and registering all views until people are tired enough to come to some sort of consensus, no matter how inadequate it could be, through false compromises. Quite common circumstances like these are very dangerous to the organisation, as the invisible leaders, who have a natural talent to influence decisions and create a situation where authority and responsibility get divorced, often fill the vacuum created by lack of leadership. They would effectively reside in different personalities rather than co-existing in the personality of the leader, as they should be.
The measure of an effective leader comes in the quality of his or her judgement. The CV of a good leader should show how they managed to turn around organisations, to induce motivations and energise subordinates, to get work done through others, to create space for subordinates to perform at the top of their ability without feeling threatened by their superior performance, to communicate their vision with enthusiasm, persuasion and infective passion, to keep themselves accessible, to tolerate, indeed encourage, dissent and internal criticism, and to beware those around them who are too ready to assent without questioning.
If a leader is capable of creating this sort of environment around him/her then he/she can feel confident that not only he/she can generally retain the cool-headedness to make the right decisions but to stand an excellent chance that his/her decisions are executed with promptness, accuracy, passion and dedication without having to waste extra resources in excessive controls to guard against non-compliance or mal-compliance.
There is another quality that distinguishes a good leader, but unfortunately verification is only possible at the end of his/her tenure. A good leader departs when everybody asks why is he/she leaving not when they ask when is he going to leave.
With five confirmed contestants so far and with their exposure on the media gathering momentum, it is inevitable that one starts making judgement on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the personalities involved.
From what I have seen so far, I am gaining the impression that some of the contestants have problems making the distinction between skills of administration, co-ordination and leadership. So I asked myself what the attributes that distinguish true leaders from the rest are.
I tried to brush up on my MBA notes but too much time has passed to keep up with modern management thinking. So I thanked God for Google and accessed some fresher stuff. And after reading through a vast amount of literature I decided to focus on Daniel Coleman’s contribution in the Harvard Business Review 1998 based on his 1995 book Emotional Intelligence.
It is a given that a leader has to have some basic qualities that are traditionally associated with leadership – like intelligence, toughness, determination, vision and technical skills. However, there are many stories of highly intelligent and highly skilled executives who failed miserably when promoted to a leadership position. In contrast, there are many stories of people with quite normal intellectual abilities and technical skills who soared when achieving a leadership position.
Intelligence and technical skills are merely threshold capabilities, entry-level requirements for leadership. In addition to these basic skills, effective leaders must have a high degree of emotional intelligence. What is emotional intelligence?
There are five components that are the building blocks of emotional intelligence.
The first component is self-awareness. It is the person’s ability to recognise and understand his/her moods, emotions and drives, as well as their effect on others. The hallmarks of self-awareness are self-confidence, realistic self-assessment and having a self-deprecating sense of humour.
The second component is self-regulation. It is the ability to control and re-direct disruptive impulses and moods. It is the propensity to suspend judgement and gain time to think before acting. The hallmarks of self-regulation are trustworthiness and integrity, comfort with ambiguity and readiness to embrace change.
The third component is motivation – a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status. Motivation develops a propensity to pursue goals with single-minded purposeness, with energy and persistence. Its hallmarks are a strong drive to achieve, maintenance of optimism even in the face of failure and unwavering organisational commitment.
The fourth component is empathy – the ability to understand the emotional make up of other people by treating them according to their emotional reactions. Its hallmarks are expertise in grooming and retaining talent within the organisation, having cross-cultural sensitivities and showing passion for service to clients.
The last component is social skill – proficiency in managing relationships and building networks. Social skills means having the ability to find common ground and build rapport even while dealing with conflict. Its hallmarks are effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness and expertise in building and leading teams.
If a leader can master all these skills than he/she can be effective in his/her most important function, ie, to lead. This might look very obvious but in reality one often finds people in position of leadership who are not aware that they are meant to lead. Often they mistake their role as that of an administrator or co-ordinator. Such failed leaders think that leadership consists of sitting in the most comfortable chair at the table and registering all views until people are tired enough to come to some sort of consensus, no matter how inadequate it could be, through false compromises. Quite common circumstances like these are very dangerous to the organisation, as the invisible leaders, who have a natural talent to influence decisions and create a situation where authority and responsibility get divorced, often fill the vacuum created by lack of leadership. They would effectively reside in different personalities rather than co-existing in the personality of the leader, as they should be.
The measure of an effective leader comes in the quality of his or her judgement. The CV of a good leader should show how they managed to turn around organisations, to induce motivations and energise subordinates, to get work done through others, to create space for subordinates to perform at the top of their ability without feeling threatened by their superior performance, to communicate their vision with enthusiasm, persuasion and infective passion, to keep themselves accessible, to tolerate, indeed encourage, dissent and internal criticism, and to beware those around them who are too ready to assent without questioning.
If a leader is capable of creating this sort of environment around him/her then he/she can feel confident that not only he/she can generally retain the cool-headedness to make the right decisions but to stand an excellent chance that his/her decisions are executed with promptness, accuracy, passion and dedication without having to waste extra resources in excessive controls to guard against non-compliance or mal-compliance.
There is another quality that distinguishes a good leader, but unfortunately verification is only possible at the end of his/her tenure. A good leader departs when everybody asks why is he/she leaving not when they ask when is he going to leave.
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