I most usually start leadership development training by asking delegates “what is leadership?” or “define leadership” and I record their responses on a flipchart. My aims being to obtain some understanding of delegates’ pre training perspective whilst getting them to begin thinking about the subject matter. The recorded responses become integral to the training as they are referred to at different stages. If you have time and are so inclined try the exercise yourself; recording your responses on a blank piece of paper. On completion of recording the responses I invite delegates to note their responses fall into three broad categories; namely, behaviours, personal attributes and job related skills / knowledge. I then record ‘b’, ‘a’ or ‘s’ beside each response, as appropriate, and often these are not mutually exclusive, especially behaviours and attributes. Without exception to date the majority responses are behaviours with some attributes and an occasional skill or knowledge related response. Similar results are obtained by asking delegates to describe ‘a good leader’. So how does such a list correlate to any text book definitions of leadership? Try the exercise and find out for yourself.

We define leadership simply as the ability to influence and motivate others to perform successfully. ‘Measured’ against this definition the significance and importance of behaviour and personal attributes is immediately apparent, especially when considering leadership at all levels, including peer group and self leadership. This is also a definition of leadership which makes no presumption of authority to lead and acknowledges people are not necessarily motivated best by the application of authority. To understand this more fully I ask you to think about the best leader you have personal experience of in getting the most from you in terms of fulfilling your potential. Then reflect on how he or she achieved this. My guess is it was achieved by more ‘carrot’ less ‘stick’ and a good deal of ‘lead by example’ than anything to do with application of authority. Should you choose to do so, it is likely you will find the converse to be true; that is, your worst leadership experience was most likely very authoritarian and fraught with poor behaviour and bad examples.

Leadership without authority – the ability to influence and motivate others to perform successfully is dependent upon balancing behaviour underpinned by personal attributes with some skills and knowledge. Interestingly, skills and knowledge are rarely raised as significant when considering leadership. The leadership conundrum being we as a society tend to promote our leaders on the basis of having proven their skills and knowledge but their relative success will depend upon their behaviour and attributes. The leadership challenge is the difficulty of dealing with and changing behaviour and behaviour related issues; especially ones own.

One final ‘exercise’ to demonstrate my point. Consider all the high profile ‘bad leadership’ stories in the media at present; what are the common denominators, behaviours, personal attributes or professional skills and knowledge?

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an interesting article in 2009 entitled ‘Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis’ which, in my opinion, remains a worthwhile read and is particularly interesting on two counts.

Firstly, it was published over a year after the time generally acknowledged as the start of our prevailing economic situation. I use the word prevailing rather than current because as we draw to the end of 2011 the current forecasts for 2012 offer little optimism or hope of change for the better. The HBR article refers to ‘the current crisis’ in 2009 and forecasts economic crisis as the future norm existing beyond the recovery from recession. For me, as we enter the fifth consecutive year of ‘current crisis’, this poses the question ‘double dip’ or new economic environment?

Secondly, specialising in leadership, strategy and cohesion; the prevailing economic environment provides opportunities which simply do not exist in a benign situation. As much as regularity, dependability and certainty instil confidence they are the arena of the manager; whereas, irregularity, challenge and uncertainty provide opportunities not otherwise available to a leader. No amount of tweaking of financial mechanisms, directives or policy changes are likely to impact sufficiently on global competition, political instability, energy concerns and climate issues to remove risk and uncertainty.

So what should we do? ‘Batten down the hatches’ and rely on the same old measures and techniques that got us where we are today whilst hoping someone will ‘fix’ something somewhere to make all things good again? Or realise leadership and organisational adaptability are required to overcome the relentless challenges of our ‘new economic environment’? The problem is this, as difficult as the former may be it is undoubtedly a much easier option than the behavioural and organisational change required by the latter. Either way, the outcome is not guaranteed success though one course of action is more likely to succeed than the other.

The message in the HBR article referred to does not appear to have been popular at the time and I doubt it will be today. Perhaps because there is no ‘spoonful of sugar’ offered with the medicinal advice therein. This said, it remains worth reading all the same on http://hbr.org/2009/07/leadership-in-a-permanent-crisis/ar/1

The question is posed in the context of the current economic situation and your business’ approach to ‘dealing’ with this. If your answer is “survive” I would suggest you are likely to be undermining your chances of success by adopting a limiting perspective and attitude. It is possible your thinking will be constraining your business options by the inflexibility of your view of the current situation. My view is success is all about achieving what you set out to do and avoiding failure is something very different. An approach Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, articulated well in his quote, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward…”

Beware of the power of ‘spin’ and guard against it! It was widely reported last week the UK achieved a third quarter growth of 0.5%; furthermore, the global economy grew by about 4.5% during the same period. Yet our economic news was still dominated by a ‘doom and gloom’ perspective. The reality is growth is neither recession nor regression and ‘good news’ does not make good news copy. As an aside, I know of one CEO of a regional chamber of commerce who was unable to get his good news publically aired last week. Given these growth figures and that we enjoy unprecedented access (and support) to the global market place, areas of opportunity must exist to explore and exploit.

‘Niche’ is not always nice and can be a barrier to flexibility. The business ‘We Only Press Green Shirts’ is going to suffer if there are insufficient people who want their green shirts pressing. The skills, assets and resources required to press green shirts are the same as those required to press shirts of all colours, not to mention a vast array of other garments. Overly simple perhaps but my point is clear; if your client base or market share is reducing what is it you do which can be applied in another way to make a profit?

Perception really matters when assessing the future of a business. If the diminishing client base of “We Only Press Green Shirts” is seen as being due to the real term reduction in disposable income available for a discretionary spend service, I suspect conventional thinking would most likely lead to assuming the business is destined to fail. However, if we consider the client base from a different perspective it may be possible to see an opportunity. For example, those who are working in the UK are tending to continue to work long hours and most working families are reported to be struggling to allocate the time needed for domestic work.

So, are you struggling to survive or trying to thrive? Do you possess the flexibility of perspective to recognise opportunity where others see only threat? Do you have the strength of mind and determination to succeed? What is your strategy for succeeding in the current economic situation and will it be sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of a dynamic market place?

How many team building days are no more than what can be at best described as a corporate day out? What is the tangible value or benefit of such events balanced against the corporate price tag and does it really matter anyway? Perhaps strange questions to ask given I have a vested interest in businesses and organisations continuing to invest in team building activities. Or perhaps not, may be just raising awareness of the difference and posing the questions in the context of the current economic situation.

Times are tough commercially and there has seldom been a time where getting as much performance as possible from all elements of a business has been so critical. We are in a time where efficiency and effectiveness are paramount to survival, let alone thriving. Without doubt, a cohesive team working together to achieve collective optimum performance yields the best possible results for an organisation; no matter the business sector or team concerned. Such levels of teamwork and organisational cohesion do not come without considered development and attention – it doesn’t happen by accident it happens by design.

Pat Lencioni’s ‘Five Dysfunctions of a Team’, namely; absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results, are a good place to start in assessing an activity in terms of team building or corporate day out. If the planned activity does not address the dysfunctions in some way it is unlikely to be truly a team building activity. That is to say, teambuilding activities should build trust, facilitate challenging dialogue and encourage commitment and accountability whilst being focused on achieving results. All eminently possible through practical team activities involving objective appraisal and constructive feedback delivered which can be fun and delivered in an unusual environment. Arguably, it would be extremely difficult to address the dysfunctions without using interactive methods and more or less practical activities.

Quad biking, karting, a day at the races, clay pigeon shooting, etc. all fun, practical activities which teams can participate; however, team building? I don’t think so. Committing to participate in a CSR team activity, team challenge day, team competition, team ‘survival skills’ exercise, etc. all generally ‘hit the spot’ in terms of team building. Interestingly enough, both sets of activities are all probably pretty much in the same ‘ball park’ in terms of cost. When all is said and done, it is just a question of what is the real aim of the ‘activity day’. After all, enjoying social, fun activities together brings benefits to the team too, but let’s not call them team building.

During a recent coach mentoring session with a newly appointed production manager in an engineering business the topic of empowerment was raised. This was expected sooner or later as the manager is stereotypically wanting and trying ‘to do it all’ himself; with all the obvious problems and issues resulting. He is clearly over burdened (largely by himself) and experiencing some associated issues and stress. I also know, from other work I am commissioned by the same company to do, he is storing up some less obvious future problems such as alienation of experienced supervisors and uninformed decision making. An apparent solution to his immediate problems and concerns is to include his competent and experienced supervisors in his decision making and delegate accordingly. However, somewhat surprisingly, his proposed solution was to empower his supervisors – an interesting idea to explore, more so in considering the relationship between coaching and mentoring.

My first concern was to ‘calibrate’ our individual perspectives and determine whether the manager understood the meaning of ‘to empower’ and the nuances or differences implied by the two phrases ‘to delegate’ and ‘to empower’. This may seem somewhat pedantic but the significance and impact of perspective and understanding on communication is not lost on me. Interestingly we both did largely agree on what we understood empowerment to be and unsurprisingly for me the differences or nuances between the two were not. My solution was to shift from coach to mentor and talk through and review some training material in relation to his current situation and in so doing using a couple of useful definitions readily available on the www to frame discussion around. Broadly, this is how the session went.

Empowerment is to invest with power or legal authority (source www.thefreedictionary.com). In this respect I draw attention to the specific meanings of individual words within this definition. Namely;

Power is the ability to do something

Authority is the right to do something

Invest is to commit (something value) to gain a return (something of worth)

Empowerment is the practice of sharing information, rewards and power with employees so that they can take initiative and make decisions to solve problems and improve service and performance. Empowerment is based on the idea that giving employees skills, resources, authority, opportunity and motivation as well holding them responsible and accountable for outcomes of their actions will contribute to their competence and satisfaction (source www.BusinessDictionary.com). For me, the ‘acid question’ was; are both you and your team of supervisors in a position to empower and be empowered? His response was a considered and reasoned decision they were not yet and so we moved on to discuss the matter of delegation in the same manner.

Delegation is the granting of authority by one party to another party for agreed purposes (source www.BusinessDirectory.com). The key considerations vis a vis our discussion of empowerment included;

Retention of ultimate accountability – by the manager

Shift of decision making downwards – by involvement / inclusion

Risk versus benefits – understanding what must and needs to be retained

Boundaries – clearly defined to avoid misunderstanding

Expectations – managed both ways from the outset

Support – recognising needs and limitations then addressing them

The result then was for me to shift back to the role of coach and facilitate the manager’s development of an action plan to achieve effective delegation of appropriate tasks whilst concurrently involving his team of supervisors in his decision making. I await the details of his proposed action plan(s) and the results / observations from the implementation of the same with some interest.

What is strategy? The truth is, genuinely few people know, or more precisely my point, not many who should know do. A few days ago a business man informed me of his strategy for managing ‘phone calls. I found the idea of having a strategy for managing ‘phone calls somewhat difficult to grasp be honest. My challenge with what he was telling me lay in my understanding and knowledge of strategy; consider the following definitions:

Strategy – a plan of action or policy to achieve a major or overall aims

Strategy – the art of planning and directing overall operations or movements in war or battle

Clearly, the latter acknowledges the concept of strategy having its origins in military activity; however, the following definition from www.managementstudyguide.com is, in my mind, a good business / general definition well articulated and easily understood.

“A general direction set for the company and its various components to achieve a desired state in the future.”

So what? Clearly, managing the volume of communication we all receive these days may well require some forethought and possibly a degree of minor planning activity though this hardly requires a strategy! That is, unless the major overall business or company activity in the future is managing volume communication. Furthermore, I believe, so long as people pursue the verbal equivalent of ‘power dressing’ in order to impress over correct use and application of language to articulate accurately and precisely what they mean, difficult or challenging concepts to master will remain clouded at best and inaccessible at worst. We frequently deal with clients who desperately need to develop and implement a strategy yet struggle to truly understand what strategy is and even find planning difficult to master.

So did the gentleman in question really mean he has a plan for dealing with the high volume of his phone calls? Consider first the following definitions:

Plan (noun) – a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something

Plan (verb) – decide on and arrange in advance

In fairness he had considered and decided in advance how he was going to arrange and prioritise his return calls and which calls he would answer as they came. So he had planned his intended short term actions though I seriously doubt he went to the trouble of recording a formal plan. In establishing an understanding of the relationship between strategy and planning I believe it would be useful to consider the following definition of a plan from www.businessdictionary.com:

“Written account of intended future course of action (scheme) aimed at achieving specific goal(s) or objective(s) within a specific time frame.”

Strategy is concerned with a more general and overarching position in the long term.

In reality, the gentleman in question had a successful tactical approach for dealing with a lot of ‘phone calls made to him daily. A pedantic statement perhaps, accurate and correct undoubtedly, widely understood – who knows?

My daughter and her partner took over the management of a pub last week and the machinations of their installation were quite incredible to observe, as much from a professional perspective as from a parental one. My primary concerns don’t lie with my confidence in their abilities, neither, believe it or not, with the apparent parlous state of the pub industry but with the pub owning companies or corporations who dominate and generally control the industry.

From what I can gather, the minimum qualification and experience required to obtain both a licence and a pub are quite exasperatingly little when considering the nature of pub management. The challenges of this business include keeping abreast of and complying with ever changing and demanding mandatory and or statutory regulations, staff supervision, customer relations, stock management, buildings management and maintenance, etc. Even the smallest of pubs is, in effect, quite a complex small business operating in an extremely challenging environment. Furthermore, the minimalistic requirements appear to be matched by the apparent support provided by the owning organisations. Without the challenges presented by the current economic climate I believe the existing requirements and provision of support in the pub industry are more inclined to contribute to failure than success  - in any event.

I recently read the current rate of pub closures is around 25 per week, down form around 40 per week last year when about 13000 jobs were lost due to the closure of around 1300 pubs. This is quite grim reading, especially for those embarking on or contemplating a career in the pub industry. This said, I genuinely believe just about every challenge presents an opportunity – even pub management. It all depends upon appropriate perspective and preparedness which good leadership ensures.

I am frequently asked and often challenged by being asked “Can leadership really be learned?” In response to my reply that it can be learned I am usually then asked “What about natural leaders then?” In reply I usually ask “What about natural sportsmen and sportswomen?” Given we state quite clearly our definition of leadership is ”the ability to influence and motivate others to perform successfully and achieve” then we are considering leadership as an ability which, in turn, implies understanding, knowledge and skill are required to be able to exercise the ability to full effect. Even the most talented and skilled sports people, speakers, artisans, practitioners of whatever kind undergo some level of training and development, no matter what degree of innate talent they posses. Similarly, all who participate in such activities at whatever level usually require teaching and or training to some extent. The one thing I do caveat my reply to the initial question is simply this; a potential leader needs to want to be a leader. Try teaching someone who doesn’t want to play football the skills of the game – it doesn’t work well at all and they tend to avoid playing the game by fair means or foul (no pun intended). The same is true for leadership. The surest route to poor leadership and the harm it does is to promote people to leadership positions they don’t want , the problems this causes can be multiplied significantly by not training them appropriately. My question to many of the HR directors, MDs, CEOs and business owners of this world is simply “Why do you do it?”. In anticipation, I would add; the desire for more income is not the same thing as the desire to lead. Leadership can be learned and it is easiest learned and best applied by those who do want to lead.

Intangible; unable to be touched or grasped; not having physical presence.

I am too frequently told leadership development and training is intangible and a constant challenge of being in the business of leadership development is the marketing and selling of an ‘intangible’. I do not entirely agree with this view and challenge this perspective with an alternative view; leadership is held to be intangible because we, especially leaders and managers, are generally uncomfortable with the concept of tangible leadership. There is a relatively abundant supply of case studies, reference articles, etc. articulating the benefits of undertaking leadership development in tangible, financial terms. For example, we helped turn around a struggling SME with debt of around £50k to turn over in excess of £350k, clear all debt and return a profit margin of over £15k in one year. Apologies for the advertorial but the point I am making is the benefits and effects of leadership development are definitely not intangible, more often the case is there is no pre and post development measurement of  the situation. Additionally, there is an abundance of well articulated definitions of what good leadership looks and feels like and development and training activities are what they are, visible, physical actions and events. A leader or manager has a physical presence and their actions and behaviours and the results thereof can be seen and felt.  Again, where is the intangible?

For me the real issue to address is it suits people, leaders and managers in particular, to describe leadership as intangible; it maintains the mystery and myth whilst assisting in the evasion of the easy accountability a tangible brings. Furthermore, leadership is about the effect of personal attributes, characteristics and behaviours of individuals on others, which in turn means, leadership development is about examining personal beliefs and attitudes affecting personal behaviours. Given, at least in the UK, the majority of leaders and managers effectively ‘fall’ into their roles it is unlikely they will have the personal motivation to subject themselves to a rigorous development process. Given it has been reported most leaders and managers did not want the responsibilities their role entails it is unlikely the will want to subject themselves to the scrutiny truly effective development requires. More often than not, leadership comes under real scrutiny only when it is too late; timely, proactive self development is the way of the enlightened.

I believe the real challenge of marketing and selling leadership development is not the ‘intangible’ it is more often the case most leaders and managers do not have either the desire nor the courage to address the issue until it is forced upon them or too late. Happily there are enlightened, well motivated leaders out there who have the courage and strength of mind to be proactive in their own leadership development.