What Singaporeans must know about leadership

“The simplest reason organisations fail to see the future is their leaders fail to write off their own depreciating intellectual capital. They have a view of customers and technology that’s out of date and they know it’s out of date, but they hang on to the past until the future overtakes them”- Gary Hamel

The last five years has seen unprecedented condemnation of poor leadership in business, politics and sport. Numerous surveys i.e. Edelman, Harvard Business Review have highlighted the low ratings of trust, not to mention respect and integrity, in leadership and senior management from various stakeholders.

So it begs this question? Is the type of leader of the past the type of leader for the future? – you decide it’s not for me to tell you.

Gary Hamel, the highly respected visiting Professor of Strategic and International Managementat the  London Business School, during a presentation in Singapore in September last year constantly referred to the need for a “Management Revolution” that acknowledges and embraces the new reality.

We are most definitely in a new age and have been for a while but aren’t we still labouring with worn out or obsolete tools.

Is Hamel right? – absolutely. The next question is how are leaders going to “grasp the nettle” and resolutely implement change. Is the Executive suite a dynamic forum for change? - no but it needs to be. Change is something we humans are not that comfortable with unless people are actively involved and engaged in the change.  

Look at the world’s education systems originally built for the industrial age. Today, unless you have been living under a stone, we are well into the knowledge age and governments are belatedly and feverishly ramping up their education systems or trying to.

How do leaders embrace failure? A. G. Laffley, former CEO & President, Proctor and Gamble remarked in his book that “Failures were nuggets of gold so long as you learn from failing but do so early and cheaply”. Do you cherish or chastise failure?

Can we expect a perfect leader, probably not, but a consistently great leader, yes. How? - by staying connected to, not distant from, their people, by holding people accountable with challenging work. As Steve Jobs said “I believe people just want to do great work”. Do leaders understand what that means?  

The stand out Leadership Challenges today are:-

·        Emotional Intelligence

·        Mastery of Key Basics – yes I believe we have let that slip.

Get these right and leadership can become effective, productive and trusted. The focus of leadership has in the main been centred purely on the financials as a sole measure of business success. Kaplan & Norton’s Balanced score card was a good start to readdress that.

Leadership Author, Daniel Goleman, has observed robust business performance when leaders demonstrate substantial emotional intelligence competence.  

Emotional Intelligence still has its doubters - woolly, flaky, soft, a sign of weakness. They couldn’t be more wrong. Control and command leaders still cling to that outdated flotsam, probably out of fear possibly ignorance; worst arrogance. The challenge is executing the transition.

The transition swill not be a quick fix or sideways shuffle. It will need to be a dedicated and sustained implementation over time that gains traction for the leader and his team.

You may want to objectively consider self-awareness of:-

·        how would people actually rate you as a leader?

·        how effectively do you communicate – and listen?

·        your various communication styles, when and how to use them?

·        your leadership style/s, when and how to use them?

·        the styles you lack, are they covered by other team members?

·        how would you rate your own E.I competency level on a 1-10 scale?

·        how well you really know your team members?

·        creating a dynamic environment where people want to be

·        articulating a vision, mobilising support and getting buy in from motivated followers

There are three types of leaders

1.   those who make it happen

2.   those who watch it happen

3.   those who wondered what happened

Which one are you Singapore?