Leadership exists in all walks of life and at all levels in organisations. As a leader in any situation you need to understand these basic principles of leadership:
- Successful leaders have the ability to vary their style according to the context
- A more participative style seems to be most effective in most situations
- Real effectiveness depends on each leader creating and developing their own unique style
Learn how to develop these skills on our comprehensive Leadership Skills course.
Here are some comments on leadership from three very individual (and successful) leaders of recent times.
Peter Bakker
Peter Bakker is CEO of TNT, a global business with total operating revenue of £10,060 million in 2006 and 165,000 employees worldwide
Leaders need VISION and MOTIVATION which comes from within and to know how to COMMUNICATE this
Leaders must:
- MOTIVATE, STIMULATE and INSPIRE.
- Create the environment for motivation
- Take honest feedback on themselves from the people around them
- Have an open culture
- LISTEN
How does he do this?
COMMUNICATION: he has developed a cascaded system for communication with three main aspects:
- An annual meeting with 250 people at his base
- He tours the world and visits 15/16 locations a year. Meets again 200/300 people each time. Holds sessions called ‘Burning questions, Straight answers’ where he spends 2/3 hours answering ANY questions his employees put to him (personal as well as business)
- Monthly ‘chat’ session on Internet with 500+ people of all ranks joining in all over the world
Jack Welch
Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric. During his tenure, GE increased its market capitalisation by over $400 billion
Leaders must have PASSION, INTENSITY and COMPASSION
Leaders have to:
- Galvanise people to follow their vision
- Energise
- Make decisions
- Get the job done
His advice for successful leadership?
Take care of the middle 70% of your personnel.
In any organisation you have:
Top 20%
Middle 70%
Bottom 10%
Top 20% – take care of them, give them rewards (more money)
Bottom 10% – they are non-productive so tell them where they stand and they will leave of their own accord; you won’t have to fire them!
Middle 70% – they are the bulk of your workforce doing the bulk of the work. So you must:
- Motivate them
- Train them
- Give them options
Give them the chance to get into the top 20%
Julian Metcalfe
Julian Metcalfe, Co-founder of Pret-a-Manger, UK company voted one of Top 10 best companies to work for in Europe, with a turn over £192m in 2006
Leaders have to care about people and love and believe in what they’re doing.
Leaders must:
- Ask for honest feedback
- Tell staff what is required of them
- Give pride in the business
- Give responsibility to people
Why is his company so successful?
- Staff hire each other
- Management do not control the staff; if people have responsibility they tend to work more
- Staff are trusted. People can’t be trained to care so they have no customer care training; people have to care from within!
- The company promotes from within (over half of the managers are promoted from within)
- They have a lot of bizarre guidelines for example, if someone looks unhappy, give them a coffee and don’t charge them!
What can you learn from these very different leaders?
What do you think of their methods?
Is there anything you can adapt to improve your own leadership?
– by Peter F. Drucker
– by Jack Welch
– by Warren G. Bennis
– by John P. Kotter
- by James Surowiecki
