On Leadership by Harvard Business Review – HBR

A compilation of many years of research, summarized in 10 articles on leadership

What Makes a Leader?

Daniel Coleman argues that what distinguishes great leaders from merely good ones isn’t IQ or technical skills but that is it Emotional Intelligence. He goes further to suggest a group of five skills that enable the best leaders to maximize their own and their follower’s performance including:

1. Self-awareness – knowing one’s strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and impact on others
2. Self-regulation – controlling or redirecting disruptive impulses and moods
3. Motivation – relishing achievement for its own sake
4. Empathy – understanding other people’s emotional makeup
5. Social skills – building rapport with others to move them in desired directions

While we are each born with certain levels of EI skills, we can still strengthen these abilities through persistence, practice, and feedback from colleagues or coaches.

What Makes an Effective Executive?

Peter F. Drucker addresses the fear of not being a leader in a sense of lacking charisma, or the right talents. Leadership isn’t about personality or talent. In fact, the best leaders exhibit wildly different personalities, attitudes, values, and strengths. What they have in common is that they get the right things done, in the right way by following eight simple rules: Ask what needs to be done, Ask what’s right for the enterprise, Develop action plans, Take responsibilities for decisions, Take responsibility for communicating, Focus on opportunities, not problems, Run productive meetings and finally Think and say “We”, not “I”.

By using discipline to apply these rules, you gain the knowledge you need to make smart decisions, convert that knowledge into effective action, and ensure accountability throughout your organization. 

Executives are doers; they execute. Knowledge is useless to executives until it has been translated into deeds. But before springing into action, the executive needs to plan they course. They need to think about desired results, probable restraints, future revisions, check-in points, and implications for how they’ll spend their time. Effective executives also make sure that problems do not overwhelm opportunities.

What Leaders Really Do:

John P. Kotter urges that leadership is different from management, but not for the reason most people think. Leadership isn’t mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having charisma or other exotic personality traits. It is not the privilege of a chosen few. Nor is leading necessarily better that management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. While improving their ability to lead, companies should remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse. The real challenge is to combine strong management and strong leadership and use each to balance the other.

Management is about coping with complexity; it brings order and predictability to a situation. Leadership is about learning how to cope with rapid change. Management involves planning and budgeting. Leadership involves setting direction. Management involves organizing and staffing. Leadership involves aligning people. Management provides control and solves problems. Leadership provides motivation.

Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?

Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that you can’t do anything in leadership without followers, and followers in these empowered times are hard to find. So executives had better know what it takes to lead effectively. They must find ways to engage people and rouse their commitment to company goals. While everyone agrees that leaders need vision, energy, authority, and strategic direction, they show that inspiration leaders also share four unexpected qualities:

1. They selectively show their weaknesses: by exposing some vulnerability, they reveal their approachability and humanity. (Show you are human, selectively revealing weaknesses)
2. They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions: Their ability to collect and interpret soft data helps them know just when and how to act. (Be a sensor, collecting soft people data that lets you rely on intuition)
3. They manage employees with tough empathy: Inspirational leaders empathize passionately and realistically with people and they care intensely about the work the employees do.
4. They reveal their differences: They capitalize on what’s unique about themselves. (Dare to be different, capitalize on your uniqueness)

Crucibles of Leadership

Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas: Why is it that certain people seem to naturally inspire confidence, loyalty, and hard work, while others stumble, again and again? We have come to believe it has something to do with the different ways that people deal with adversity. One of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. The skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that me for extraordinary leaders. Like phoenixes rising from the ashes, extraordinary leaders emerge from adversity stronger, more confident in themselves and their purpose and more committed to work. Such transformative events are called crucibles; a severe test or trial.

Crucibles force leaders into deep self-reflection, where they examine their values, question their assumptions and hone their judgement. Some crucibles are violent and life-threatening, other are more positive, yet profoundly challenging. Whatever the shape, leaders create a narrative telling how they met the challenge and become better for it.

Muhindo Malunga Lusukiro

Reflections on life, humanity, development and leadership

muhindoml@gmail.com | +243 993 401 064

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