AND THE AWARD GOES TO... MS: I think these are two fundamentally “I’m very gratified to win this different issues. If it’s only one person award. It’s a wonderful thing. determining the strategy, it’s very possible I wrote the book feeling that that it will be a poor strategy. This is why diversity is an issue of huge significance. Obviously it leaders put a team together to give them has a significance in terms advice. That's where diversity is important. of morality and social Having made a decision, however, you justice, but I also think it’s want to have unity of purpose. So I draw a probably the key factor that drives high performance in distinction between evaluation – where you business and management, need diversity – and execution, where you particularly in the field of need unity of purpose. innovation, but also beyond” MR: Looking beyond this crisis, is there – Matthew Syed, author of Rebel Ideas: The power a case to be made for leaders to dial down of diverse thinking (John their dominance characteristics? Murray, 2020), winner of MS: The best leaders in the world at the the 2020 CMI Management moment know how to pivot between Book of the Year, awarded in association with the British leadership styles. So when they’re talking Library and sponsored by to the group, they have the humility to listen Henley Business School in order to make a better choice. But once a decision has been taken, they know how to galvanise and to occasionally dominate. They pivot depending on where they are in the decision cycle. MR: Are there organisations where you see these kinds of positive habits taking hold? MS: I’ll take it away from business [to] sports. I remember interviewing the golfer Nick Faldo and asking what quality was important as a golfer. For example, do you need to be supremely confident? And he said, “It’s very naive to think that you need to say, ‘I’m going to hit this ball. It’s going to be fantastic. It’s going to go in the hole.’ Instead, when you’re deciding on what shot to play, you need to be highly realistic, humble, and rational at that point. But once you’ve decided to do something, then you need to be confident. You need to galvanise yourself in order to execute the shot. The best surgeons, for example, are very confident when they’re wielding the scalpel and very humble when they re-evaluate what they could have done better after the operation has finished.
Matthew Syed was speaking to Matthew Rock You can watch the full interview with Matthew Syed by clicking on the tile on page 46, by going to managers.org.uk or by searching CMI’s social media channels. To find out more about his consulting business, Matthew Syed Consulting, visit matthewsyed.co.uk 48 — SUM M ER 2020
