What Makes People Follow?

OVERVIEW: Insights into Inspirational Leadership In these times of "empowered" followers, executives who look beyond the most obvious qualities of leadership will find surprising characteristics that truly inspirational leaders share.

TAKEOUTS:

At the heart of effective leadership lies one word: character. The key character traits of inspirational leadership are humility and toughness.
Leaders are not born, but made. Inspirational leadership can be nurtured and developed within individuals and organisations.

In the early 21st century, more than 2,000 books a year have been published on the topic of leadership. This means that roughly 40 business ‘gurus’ each week are spruiking their latest theories (often with websites promoting high-priced seminars to match). Amazon.com offers over 170,000 titles . But add the word ‘inspirational’ to your search, and the list surprisingly narrows to just a handful of titles.

With so many competing voices, it’s little wonder that business leaders are confused about how to identify inspirational leaders; those charismatic, anti-bureaucratic people who can capture the hearts of their people and evoke deep loyalty. It seems clear that modern corporate culture creates many obstacles that prevent those with the potential to become truly inspirational from emerging. For every Steve Jobs, there are many thousands of also-rans who never make the grade.

Breaking through the Barriers

On the journey towards building a high performance culture and strongly engaged workforce, no-one disagrees that leadership is a crucial factor. But it’s all too easy to get buried in the complexity of HR related leadership issues: competency frameworks, online learning management systems and dissecting the differences between leadership and management, to name just a few.

The real issue is to define what makes people choose to follow; to pledge their allegiance on some level to another person. It can be simply summed up in one word: character. But the word has so many connotations and interpretations that it’s easy to lose sight of the essential qualities that all truly inspirational leaders possess.

Busting the Myths

For every new leadership book, there’s a ‘myth-conception’, varying in size in almost direct proportion to how successful it’s been on the best-seller lists. Dig behind the hype, ask some tough questions, and more often than not you find it’s the latest “fad”, driven by market or historical trends that have impacted on leadership theories since the 1920’s when serious leadership research really first began.

In contrast, there is a growing body of empirically driven research that is unearthing counter-intuitive conclusions which fly in the face of many tacit assumptions commonly held about leadership.

Goffee and Jones have condensed 30 years of research into four ‘myth busters’, to which we’ve added a fifth:

1. Not Everyone Can Be A Leader

Many executives lack the necessary qualities of emotional intelligence (particularly self-knowledge and authenticity) that are vital to effective leadership. In addition, many talented employees are simply not interested in taking on the job. Some staff choose never to rise beyond a certain level because they’re on too good a wicket in terms of job comfort, security, financial reward and job responsibility.

2. Leaders Deliver Business Results

If this were true, your leaders would be obvious: pick the people who get the best results. It’s just not that simple. Depending on the maturity of your market, product life-cycle and market position, you may succeed very well with competent managers rather than great leaders. For example, in a market monopoly, you don’t need breakthrough innovations, just people who are strong at fast roll-out and implementation of “2nd mover” status.

3. People Who Get to the Top Are Leaders

Many people at the top achieve their status through political savvy above any other avenue. By definition, leaders are people who have followers. This means that they can be found at any level of the organisation. There is a big gap between leadership that is bestowed by the company and that which is informally ascribed by the people within the business.

4. Leaders Are Great Coaches

Coaching has rapidly evolved over the last decade from cottage industry through certification into a management core competency. But inspiring the troops and transferring technical excellence are two entirely different things. While it’s possible for one person to be highly skilled in both, there is no guarantee a ‘leader’ is. The typical corporate leader is presented as the ‘visionary’ who excites others through big-picture thinking, rather than their one on one mentoring talents.

5. Leadership and Management Are Diametrically Opposed

How often have you heard the cliché, “Managers do things right, but leaders do the right things”? Nice, homespun, folksy wisdom, but it’s a false simplicity. Management is not just about efficiency, nor leadership just about effectiveness. Both contribute to results that endure through the interplay of the many dynamic forces that drive your business. Rather than unhelpful black/white contrasts, accept the reality that management and leadership sit on a continuum, with many shades of grey . Managers can be leaders, and your staff training and development programs should offer a path that continually grooms emerging candidates for such challenges.

Bridging the Gap

Marketing and Consumer Behaviour Strategist Dr. James Cowley recently concluded that after 20 years of research within companies, there has never been more of a disconnect between those who run companies and those who do the work. So what makes the difference? What are the non-negotiable characteristics of truly inspirational leadership? In 2000, Goffee and Jones identified the four ‘less obvious’ qualities that all leaders must have in order to be truly inspirational:

Understanding and Exposing Their Weaknesses: This does not mean great leaders have warm and fuzzy tell-all sessions that leave both them and their organisations open to competitor attack. Inspirational leaders know their blind spots and selectively reveal them in a way that makes them more human and approachable; an attribute supported by Goleman’s ‘resonant leadership’ writings. Especially in our tall poppy culture, staff want to follow authentic people not cardboard cut-outs.
Intuition: Inspirational leaders place great stock in “going with their gut”, based on their ability and skills in collating and interpreting the ‘soft data’.
Tough Empathy: Inspirational leaders have a deep passion for the work staff do, but are also able to realistically care for them in a work environment.
Differentiation: Inspirational leaders are masters of using their unique qualities to maximise opportunities for the business. Whether a sense of humour, an ability to absorb, analyse and dissect large amounts of data or any other attribute, inspirational leaders know who they are and how they best contribute.

The truly inspirational leader instinctively understands the interplay between these four qualities, and is able to use the right combination at any given moment.

Harthill, a leading UK Capability Development organisation, has taken this one step further in their 30 year research programme. They have identified nine stages (called ‘action-logics’) of leadership development that have varying levels of impact on the organisation. They found that less than 10% of leaders consistently act in a way that can deliver ongoing transformation of organisations such that others will follow.

While these attributes and frameworks help give us foundations to build on and scaffolding to climb, the two characteristics that must be present for the development of a truly inspirational leader were perhaps best defined by Jerry Collins in “Good to Great” as part of his ‘Level 5 Leadership’: humility (giving credit to others and taking responsibility for more than direct failures) and tenacity (willpower and resolve).

Conclusion

It can be very discouraging to be confronted with the reality of what it takes to be a truly inspirational leader. The level of personal maturity, courage and conviction required to lead in a way that others will follow is not easily gained. Accurately assessing your current level of leadership potential, recognising your weaknesses and being willing to change to grow are not light issues. The upside is that leaders are most certainly made, not born. There are key skills that anyone can learn and apply. In an industry as rapidly changing as IT, the challenge of identifying and releasing inspirational leaders is significant – but vital to a company’s long-term survival and profitability.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of absoluteIT.

This article was licenced by absoluteIT for the absoluteIT client newsletter. Article Written by Victoria Small and Nathanael Small, and edited by Paul Quinn, Quinntessential Marketing Consulting Pty Ltd.