England against France in the quarter finals of the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand. Expectations high after France’s dismal performance against Tonga, so what happened? I believe English sport has yet to learn some real leadership lessons that are applicable to business as much as they are sport.

The first one I call leadership and it is interesting in several perspectives when it comes to this performance. The coach was one of the best on field leaders English Rugby has produced. Martin Johnson was a true leader someone with presence who commanded respect from his players. He is still a character who is held in high regard within rugby circles and it is perhaps his presence that has had a debilitating effect on the development of pitch leadership. Leadership has to be present at every level within a team and players need to know when to follow and when to lead. There was a distinct absence of leadership on the pitch that disastrous match.

I saw a lack of passion amongst the England players that certainly was not evident amongst the French. Passion is inspired by vision; a vision of victory that drives belief and frees up players. It is key to an outstanding performance and that belief belonged to France on that day. I saw little evidence of the emotion and passion from the English team before, during and after the game which I believe was caused by their lack of belief.

For me sport is about dynamism it is about seizing the initiative and making your opponents react. For when they are reacting they are not focusing on their game and therefore not able to seize the initiative. England became predictable. England lacked that dynamism as they were constantly   reacting to the French and therefore unable to play their game. They were predictable ball out to Tuilagi and let him break through. He never did.

Pressure played its part as it caused some crucial mistakes in terms of decisions and handling errors. England lost several opportunities to score as because of such errors. Good leadership and mental toughness ensure that control is exercised in all areas of the game. I believe from the evidence in front of me that desperation came into England’s game. Players must learn to handle international pressure through experiencing similar pressure in other environments!

Selection is always going to be controversial and it is here that I believe Martin Johnson needs to learn the Alex Ferguson lesson of knowing when to let players go and when to blood new talent. I believe despite the arrival of Tuilagi, Lawes and Youngs this side was picked too much on sentiment and old allegiances. Every boss needs to know how and when to nurture talent and when to let it go. For me Wilkinson, Moody and Tindall had gone a tournament too far.

Self control comes from self awareness and self control is key to team cohesiveness and victory. If each member of a team maintains that control and awareness they maintain their role in the team at that moment, if they lose control then the team begins to disintegrate. The second French try is a perfect example three players to one French attacker leaving an unmarked player and a  gap for the try. Self awareness and team awareness in terms of what is my role for the team now are essential in international sport one error can be fatal.

My last comment is flexibility if something is not working there is no point in pursuing it. If you do what you always do you will get the result you always got. Match tactics and plans have got to be adaptable to the situation players have to understand several options if a team is to have the inherent flexibility to win major  tournaments. I thought England were one dimensional and that was the power dimension. When they came up against an equally powerful team they had nowhere to go.

So the key lessons for me for Rugby are:

Develop leadership at all levels,

Develop a winning vision,

Maintain the initiative,

Understand and minimise the impact of pressure,

Learn when to let go of players,

Develop player self awareness and role awareness

Maintain flexibility.

These are all lessons that are as applicable to business as they are sport and I believe the English Rugby Football Union needs to take a good hard look at its leadership development throughout the game. I have jsu watched the Australian team defeat South Africa and what leadership there was on the pitch from Pocock and Horwil!l

Small to medium size enterprises are beginning to collaborate more and more. Such collaborative enterprises are beginning to challenge some of the bigger commercial organisations as co-operative ventures NISA, Mole Valley Farmers, The Co-Op are all examples of successful mutual collaboration. Now with customers becoming more and more environmentally sensitive and more concerned with the local impact of the big five supermarkets there is a growing opportunity for local collaborative work to truly challenge organisations with a large environmental footprint.

So if SME’s wish to collaborate what are the key tenets of effective collaboration. After all  collaboration is simply working in a leaderless team!

Vision as ever is vital and it must be common. A shared and well communicated vision will hold a collaboration together and empower those within it to achieve.

Trust Collaborators must trust each other. If they don’t collaboration wont work. Trust is two way and trust is important when there is no leader to arbitrate.  Trust allows the collaboration to be honest and forthright in its  internal challenges without fear of dissolution. Trust  also breeds respect and respect ensures that listening to and comprehending each other’s point of view is  part of everyday life.

Communication is the essential life blood of collaboration and it has to be effective without  a leader to interpret messages. Communication in the early stages makes for stronger collaboration. That early communication is important in establishing members expectations and boundaries. For collaboration will crash without all those involved understanding each others expectations and boundaries. The most important part of communication is honesty in terms of being honest in what you will do and not what you may do! It is also vital to communicate any change in your intentions- for to announce that you haven’t done something on the day you promised to deliver it it breaks trust!

Clear Responsibility and Ownership boundaries are enhanced by clear delineation of responsibilities, they make for effective work and control and ensure accountability within an organisation. Ownership of issues and tasks has to be clearly understood by all those involved. And all those involved have to be prepared to accept responsibility and accountability.

Results Without outcomes which match or exceed expectations no collaboration can survive for long as members look to others to satisfy their ambitions.  A collaboration and the individuals must focus on results.

Well its easy really when you know how. Then why is it so difficult for SME’s to achieve successful long term collaborations? Follow these simple principles and suddenly many doors and avenues of opportunity are opened.

So you think you are a leader? Well how good a leader are you?

A good leader is dedicated, for to inspire and motivate a team you have to be. But how good are you at all the various sometimes unpleasant duties of leadership? For leadership is a duty and not a bauble to aspire to.

Moral courage is the primary characteristic for without it you walk by things that you really should own. And if you walk by, every single member of your team learns to walk by as well and n0 one owns the issue – so it festers . As a leader you must always have the moral courage to own an issue however unpleasant the consequences may be.

Honesty is critical to success as a leader and it is being honest with yourself and your team. Sugar coating only lasts so long and it is something that doesn’t always work particularly if it is over used.

A leader sets the example and if they are respected that example becomes the norm for the team. A leader who demands punctuality and regularly arrives late destroys their own leadership potential.

A leader is watched all the time they continually communicate. Leadership is not something you can switch off and on.  A leader communicates even by ignoring someone or something and leaders have to be continually aware of how and what they are communicating.

Leaders must be the bearer of bad news. When it comes to delivering it to the team it is a task that cannot be delegated. If it is delivered honestly and compassionately the message is not distorted and the effects can be monitored and reactions controlled. If it is delegated a leader succumbs to the rumour mill and all its toxicity.

Leaders make judgements and decisions they don’t avoid them. But leaders can’t afford to make too many bad judgements otherwise they will erode their credibility.

Leaders need to deliver they cannot rest on their laurels leadership brings with it a duty to deliver regularly.

Leaders must show equality even when they don’t like team members they must treat them equally. One famous coach stated that he didn’t like his team all the same but he loved them all the same.

Being a great leader may bring rewards but it is far more about servitude and duty than ever it is about status and reward.

I often come across Chief Executives and Business Leaders who are prepared to spend great amounts of money to maintain the technological advantage over competitors but do not feel able to commit the same amount to the development of their people. All too often the cry is ” Our people are our greatest asset” and yet everything that happens within an organisation goes against that mantra. Scant rewards, little engagement, no recognition eventually leads to someone moving on with a view to improving their lot. Well that’s a years wages down the pan to recruit train and develop a successor according to Price Waterhouse Coopers. That is without looking at the competitive positives that come with that employee in the new organisation.

Loyalty is a word that springs to mind. Loyal customers are vital and loyal employees bring similar rewards. They don’t require initial training, they spot opportunities, they understand the business, they know how to service customer needs and they know each other and all those benefits come without a bill!

Now should one of them leave and join a competitor what will go with them? Their knowledge of the organisation and the way it works will disappear, their experience and their training even perhaps their customers will all go! The gaining organisation wins hands down by investing in them and their future contemporaries.

Now lets invest some time with employees meeting  and matching their needs, engaging with them, leading them properly, empowering them to greater productivity and rewarding them appropriately with well thought out rewards. Suddenly people will enjoy work. They will strive for future organisational success and  ignore that other offer. With a little bit of investment staff will be content and happy to work with a caring and progressive organisation. When you work for one of those organisations you don’t want to work for anybody else.

I think that many in the modern Western World have trouble accepting their life’s lot. And by that I don’t mean meekly accepting a position but remaining honest enough with yourself to set realistic and achievable goals.

For me many people attach the same emotions they feel for real events to what has appeared on their television or games console screen. Soaps can become as much part of their life as the woes of a neighbour. I believe this is because soaps and some games, unlike films which have a beginning and an end, are constant in life and have a longevity that makes them difficult to distinguish from reality.

This is really the crux of the matter for me. In the past, prior to the information age, people achieved the best they could in their area of the World. They knew how to measure their achievements and put them into context. Now because they have access to modern celebrities and sports stars the bar on realism has been raised and people have difficult distinguishing their lives from those who appear in the media. The more naive assume that they are only successful when they have matched their celebrity lifestyle. They become over ambitious and dissatisfied with  their personal achievements and unrealistic in their expectations. They are unhappy with their considerable personal progress and crave more.

People in poorer parts of the world often appear more content with their lot because they have not been continually influenced by the media. They understand relative success and failure far more clearly than many in the media oriented Western World. Those who are happy live for the present, learn from the past and challenge  themselves with realistic goals and are very content when they achieve them. Perhaps we should consider the impact the media makes on our own happiness?

Leadership as a term is as broad as it is wide and hence all encompassing. It exists  in every facet of life from self leadership through to multinational corporation and even national leadership and it exists at different levels in an organisation. But how do we know how good we are as leaders and hence where we might need leadership development? Could you turn an ordinary successful organisation into an extraordinary successful organisation?

Leaders are successful in myriad ways and what suits one situation may not suit another. Leadership in times of plenty is simpler than leadership in fallow times. Self analysis through reflection is essential to understanding your personal leadership style,strengths and areas for development but to quote Donald Rumsfeld “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” And that is the issue for without a real depth of leadership experience and knowledge we cannot gauge whether we are performing at our optimum leadership level and hence are we leading  our organisation in the best way they deserve.  Internal 360 degree feedback is useful,  mentoring helps but an external leadership audit can be really effective in leadership development terms.

Amazing in the current economic climate; fully funded training for leadership and management development is still available to a select few. If you happen to be a strategic person (director, leader or manager) in a SME in the North East the immediate outlook may not be so grim as funding is still available for leadership training and development. This said, the pot available is of limited size and awarded to those who qualify on a ‘first come first served’ basis. Fair or not, I guess this depends on your perspective and relative position.

To date, we at Sampson Hall have steadfastly and consciously avoided the funded route to providing our leadership development and training services, mindful of the perception apparently ‘free’ services hold no real value to the recipient. However, is funded training really free and do those who access this look at it as having no real value? The answer to the first question is “no”; the funding has to be found from somewhere and, one way or another, that somewhere is our taxes. The only people who can answer the second question are recipients of funded training, this said, without follow up on training the likelihood of any single training evolution yielding much of a return is low.

Fairness or unfairness of the ’why’ in this instance largely remains a matter of opinion in my mind but what of the ‘how’. If a fund is managed conscientiously with the training and development services being properly scrutinised and validated as a client’s priority need the potential positive impact on both the business and the economy should be obvious. We have found an organisation who manage funding in just such an ethical way and they have also managed to strip the application process down in an extremely practical way to cover essential criteria only. They actually go to the trouble of validating the client need as opposed to ensuring the service provider ‘ticks all the right boxes’. I cannot help wondering if this is why there are still coffers in their fund when others are apparently empty.

So what? We always follow up our delivery of training through our ’999′ policy and provide one to one support during the process if required. Therefore, if we work with an agency who really does exercise their guardianship of grant funds in such a way as to ensure the client’s needs are being properly met, we can make our services affordable to businesses who would otherwise find us cost prohibitive. A genuine win win!