Inspirational Leadership

Foreword by Patrick Thomas

Harley lovegrove

InspIratIonal leadersHIp The Five Essential Elements linchpin

It is generally understood that Inspirational leaders are that rare breed of people that not only have vision but are also able to share it with others. But where does their vision come from and how can we find it in the chaos we call life? Inspirational leadership uncovers five essential elements that need to be nurtured and kept in balance if we are to reach our true potential as leaders, and inspire those within our influence to excel.

In this, Harley lovegrove’s second book, his fresh and natural writing style brings home the fundamental truth to self understanding and improvement in the field of leadership and management. His real life stories and observations are delicately laced with the results of his research and first hand observations of working with some of the top inspirational leaders of our time. this is a thought provoking book that encourages a deeper understanding of what it is to be a leader and an inspiration to others.

Inspirational Leadership

Inspirational Leadership

Intellectual Curiosity

The Five elements: Confidence Emotional Intelligence Adaptability Intellectual Curiosity Pragmatism

Advance reviews and reflections on ‘Inspirational Leadership’

“I believe that every leader needs emotional intelligence more than possibly anything else. Without the ability to win over and convince those around you to work together, very little can be achieved. In my role, heading teams of ICT engineers, it takes a great deal of effort and encouragement to get them to work together and to think beyond the immediate challenge they face individually. The concept of ‘team’ does not come naturally to them, especially when engaging with their business counterparts.

Harley’s book is a great opportunity to look in the mirror to understand where you are, as a person and as a leader, and which directions you can take. I especially enjoyed the pieces: ‘Accepting Criticism’ and ‘Who are they?’ I will encourage my team to read these in particular!”

Geert Sinnaeve, IT Manager Thomas Cook

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‘With his natural unforced style, based on his own experience, Harley again makes a difference by engaging with his readers and encouraging them to think up for themselves. A truly inspirational book!

Jean Paul Schupp, Innovation manager ‘Inspirational Leadership’ is a masterly crafted book. With its easy to read chapters, made up of short stories and essays, it encourages self reflection on a wide variety of topics associated with leadership. I often found myself saying “this is so true!”

For me, Inspirational Leadership is all about installing energy and passion in people and then focusing it in a good direction.

This book helps re-energize one’s own energy levels but also provides the source material that can be used in coaching sessions and everyday management meetings.

Katrin Derboven, Executive Coach & Consultant for start-up organizations.

Harley’s done it again! In this his latest book, he offers people-driven managers/leaders the chance to learn from his long experience ‘in the field’. No theoretical nor pure consultancy talk, but ‘real life’ and lived-through lessons from a real business professional. A ‘must read’ for business leaders that have the aspiration to achieve great results together with their ‘inspired’ teams.

Inspirational leaders are not just managers ‘business as usual’. They inspire their teams to go the extra mile on the

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work floor, thanks to their leadership style that is focusing on the 3 main drivers of people motivation : 1. Me: “As an employee, I want to be recognized and rewarded for my contribution to the company I work for”.

2. My job: “As an employee, I want to develop my talents in a job I love and in a team that is empowered”.

3. My company: “As an employee, I want to work in a company that I respect and in which I believe in the long run, thanks to the quality of its leaders who inspire me !”

Georges Anthoon, Executive Director Human Resources, Axa Bank & Insurance What fun it is to work with an inspirational leader, and what an opportunity!

This book will inspire leaders to walk the talk, and associates to ensure (even request!) that their managers lead by example and demonstrate confidence, emotional intelligence, pragmatism, adaptability and intellectual curiosity.

Harley’s book is a call to action to join the league of inspirational people in companies or communities who don’t compromise their values or integrity and are obsessed by receiving and providing constructive feedback. These leaders make every day a learning experience for their team and for themselves, turn vision into collective achievement, leverage differences in their team, and drive to win together. Easy !!!

Regis Mulot, Vice President HR International, Staples Inc.

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At the end of the first decade of the twenty first century a new generation of leaders is emerging. Leaders that have many followers but very few employees. Leaders that need to show vision and inspire creativity without having the traditional line of authority. The Essential Elements of Inspirational Leadership that Harley prescribes are as relevant for this new generation of ‘virtual’ leaders as for any other. ‘Inspirational Leadership’ is a truly thought provoking and inspiring book.

Dries Buytaert, Ph. D., Founder and project lead Drupal, cofounder and CTO Acquia What is it that differentiates an everyday manager with an inspirational leader? What makes inspirational leaders so special and how can you know if you have what it takes to go to the next level, if you are not there already? In this moving and hard to put down book, Harley Lovegrove explores the five essential elements that all leaders must utilize to become, and remain, an inspiration to others.

As a member of Levi’s Executive Leadership team, and in my role of being responsible for bringing new business ideas to life, I find that Harley hits the nail right on the head with his belief that ‘Intellectual Curiosity’ plays a key part in forming the vision needed to motivate a team into action. Through it he believes that seemingly unrelated things combine to form new ideas. “It is the essence of what makes us interesting to others. It inspires us to share our discoveries and in doing so enables ever more interconnected possibilities.” When I couple this concept (of not only feeding my mind, but also the imagination of my directors and junior team members) with 6

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Harley’s fifth element Pragmatism; I end up with the perfect combination for ensuring that my vision is realized.

Cor Loots, Vice President Business Improvements & New Business Operations, Levi Strauss Only by looking back, over the path I have taken since my University days, is it easy to see the red thread that flows through my journey. Along the way I have been fortunate enough to have had a number of inspirational leaders from whom I could learn my craft. Leadership is something that for many just seems to appear as if by chance. One day we find ourselves leading a small group of people, the next an entire organization. Sanoma, like any other company with multiple regions, business units and departments, has many leaders whose task it is to inspire and motivate their teams to fulfill the vision they have for their future. Harley’s book is a collection of thoughts, comments and essays on life and leadership and what it is that makes the difference between an ordinary leader and an inspirational one. It is a book you can dip into almost at random and find a one line quote or short story that traps you into comparing and contrasting his experience with your own. Like all good ‘life’ books it is easy to read and shares its wisdom subtly.

Aimé Van Hecke, CEO Sanoma Magazines, Belgium.

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This book is dedicated to my wife Griet.

Her continual support and acceptance of my need to put down in writing the thoughts that run through my mind; are gifts of time that are greatly appreciated. I love you far more than any of my words can ever say.

Harley Lovegrove

Inspirational Leadership The Five Essential Elements

Linchpin

Inspirational Leadership The Five Essential Elements Harley Lovegrove www.Linchpin-Books.com Š Harley Lovegrove & Publishing house Linchpin, Rochester, UK, 2010 Original Text Editing: Albana Vrioni Design: Jurgen Leemans All illustrations: Michael Horton ISBN 978-0-9566157-0-1 All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted by law, without either the prior written permission of the author and the publisher.

Publishing house Linchpin 26 High Street, Rochester, Kent, ME1 1PT United Kingdom info@linchpin-books.com

Thanks

Thanks

I

would like to offer my personal thanks to all those that inspired me to write this book and to: Albana Vrioni, who did an excellent job of cataloging all the blogs I have written over the past three years into the required categories for this book. Her subject knowledge, objectivity and editing skills enabled her to structure them in such a way that made it possible for me to begin the necessary re-writing and final text polishing for this book.

Patrick Thomas, for his foreword and support.

The reviewers and ‘Inspirational leadership’ commentators.

My mother: Angela Lovegrove, for her excellent advice and encouragement on this book and throughout my career, her belief in me has been a true motivator.

Mike Horton for his inspiring illustrations and immense patience; every time I had ‘another idea…’

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My first draft proof reading team: Alfred Nolmans, Candy Lovegrove, Christoph Sieger, Emma Boonen, Jean Paul Schupp, Katrin Derboven, Kurt De Ruwe, Laurie Miller and Maria Van Emelen.

Liesbeth Andries and the publishing house teams for putting up with my insistence for perfection, even when I did not know exactly where it lay.

All my regular blog readers and supporters whose appreciation motivates me to keep going week after week: A very big thank you.

Harley

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Table of contents

Advance reviews and reflections on ‘Inspirational Leadership’ 3 Thanks 13 19 Foreword by Patrick Thomas Introduction 23

Considering the five elements as one

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Element One

Confidence

43

Are you playing it too safe?

49 One reason some people achieve so much more than others 51 Company Politics 53 There’s no success like failure 55 How far do you dare go?

58 Is your ego a problem?

60 Outside of your comfort zone?

63 Trust me, I am a doctor!

65 Me? I am the leader, I never feel down!

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Element Two

Emotional Intelligence Accepting Criticism The power of a really good story What’s in a question?

In My Humble Opinion….

Young Potentials Build your own reputation Brilliant but Stupid!

So you think what you are doing is for the best?

Everyone’s a liar Finding the Hidden Agenda Creativity in the workplace – who needs it?

The Importance of Listening

71 82 84 87 89 92 94 97 100 103 106 108 111

Element Three

Adaptability

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It’s just the way it is!

Working with the team you are given If it isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it The Weakest Link “And the Winner is….”

Imperfect employees How much damage can one customer do?

After a fall Just how important are you really?

121 124 126 129 132 135 138 140 142

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Table of contents

Element Four

Intellectual Curiosity

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Interesting people You are never too old to learn, just too stupid!

“Yes, you’re right!” (the trouble with ‘Yes men’) Fun in a structured environment ‘Innovation’. Is it just a buzz word?

On feeling brain dead Listen to good advice, but don’t follow it…

Business Intelligence is not a luxury How alive are your employees?

149 151 154 156 159 162 164 166 168

Element Five

Pragmatism

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An e-mail from my Mother Keep it simple Who are ‘they’?

No water in the hospital!

Perfectionists Planning for the inevitable Planning, Strategy and Provisions Torturous Meetings Clearing up before the cleaner comes Keeping your network loyal Never done a days work in my life

179 182 184 186 189 191 193 195 197 200 203

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Foreword by Patrick Thomas

Foreword

by Patrick Thomas

F

or many years now, I have followed the maxim ‘The role of a leader is to take you somewhere other than where you are headed.’ To me this not only implies that true leaders impart influence, but that they have the necessary vision, commitment and motivational powers needed to change paths; in some cases the paths of history.

I have been fascinated by the art of leadership since first reading about the great leaders of history, when I was a boy. The myths and legends that fascinate young adventurous minds are peppered with heroic acts by leaders from Alexander the Great to Mahatma Ghandi. Each had vision and an armory of other skills that set them apart and gave them the necessary cocktail of qualities that turned them into great leaders.

It is this mix of skills that is so important for a leader to be truly effective. It is also the ability to select the right skill at the right time to address a particular problem that differentiates those practicing the art, or science, of true leadership.

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As I progressed from reading the legends of the past and as my future was being formed by a rounded education and a wide variety of interests, I never strolled far from my fascination of leadership. I sought to find logic in why success was achieved and I constantly searched for the essence of leadership at every opportunity.

I grew up having a healthy interest in sport and in particular athletics. For me, however, there was one Olympic event that embraced everything that was marvelous about sport and the human desire to succeed: the decathlon. Its combination of speed, strength and stamina is unparalleled in any other sport.

To succeed as a decathlete you must be fast, but not necessarily the fastest. You must be strong, but not necessarily the strongest and you must have dexterity and stamina in abundance, but not necessarily the most. It is the combination of talents and skills that delivers the true champion.

Similarly it is the combination of leadership skills that delivers a great leader.

In this book, Harley Lovegrove describes his five essential elements of inspirational leadership and I thoroughly enjoyed reading his reasoning and perceptiveness for his choice of elements. I smiled often as I recounted my own experiences of some of his anecdotes and could picture some that still lie ahead.

Unsurprisingly, I have developed my own 10 disciplines of leadership, based around the decathlon. The metaphor suits me and who I am and in fact the 10 disciplines are derived from the five in this book. Each one of them is critical for success. Adopting them, practicing them and learning from 20

Forewordby Patrick Thomas

experience about their value and power is an essential part of leadership.

I congratulate Harley on this his second book and the manner in which he delivers a fascinating insight into this important subject.

Patrick Thomas, Chairman and CEO Bayer MaterialScience September 2010

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Introduction

Introduction

I

f you are anything like me, you started your career at the bottom of the ladder and by doing so you probably had the depressing experience, at one time or another, of having to work for an uninspiring manager. Sadly, this is not uncommon. However some people have the good luck and privilege of working for truly great managers – or what I like to call ‘Inspirational Leaders’. I refer to them in this way because quite simply they inspire those around them to perform to their utmost best.

What are Inspirational Leaders?

Inspirational leaders are much more than great motivators, much more than just charismatic icons. In fact the majority of Inspirational Leaders are not what one might describe as charismatic at all. These special people seem to have the knack of consistently making good or great decisions, they

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are able to take on board a wide range of parameters and to mould them into strategies with vision.

Inspirational Leaders sometimes lead by example but, more often than not, they lead in much the same way as the great symphonic orchestra conductors; first by studying in immense detail their subject matter and only then, as if by magic, inspiring the talent that surrounds them to deliver extraordinary results.

Inspirational Leaders have influence on all those that enter their space and take the time to listen. From secretaries and line managers, to boardroom colleagues and shareholders, the Inspirational Leader binds his or her team together and gives meaning to the way employees conduct their business lives. But just when you are beginning to think that this book is only about leaders in business, let me reassure you, that Inspirational Leaders can be found in every kind of environment; be it at home as a parent, in a religious or charitable community or even in politics and academia. The essential elements that allow leaders to inspire others to achieve beyond their expectations is as relevant and important in those areas as it is in any commercial environment.

What makes a leader great?

Just like top Olympic athletes, Inspirational Leaders are not born great but with the potential for greatness within them.

And as with all athletes, as long as they have the necessary essential elements for success, their level of potential is only 24

Introduction

matched by the sheer amount of preparation they are willing to undertake. However, as I will point out later on, even a leader’s desire to work hard at their craft, is a fundamental part of what makes them who they are. Please do not be mistaken, in my analogy with athletes I simply want to emphasize the importance of an individual’s willingness for self improvement and their desire to take the natural ability they inherited to a much higher level. For the would-be inspirational leader this means being completely open to learn how, in whichever way possible, they can improve at the task of leading.

It is my personal belief that even the most severely challenged people, can learn to do complex mathematics or find a way to climb a mountain and no one should assume the limitations of another. Personal achievement is very largely down to a combination of circumstance, force of will and being suitably inspired. An important factor, yet often a limiting one, especially for confident people, is their openness of mind to realize that most of us need to be shown how. No one learns in isolation. We learn from our parents, our peers, our professors, our bosses and most of all from experience.

To a large extent how high we can jump is largely down to how high our mentors place the bar. The desire to run or jump faster or higher than anyone else is not necessarily the driver that Inspirational Leaders have. Like with most athletes, for them the biggest challenge is not to be better than their opponents but to become better than themselves.

Leadership is not about winning one particular race, it is about consistency, year in and year out. Lots of people can get lucky once but sustaining top flight performance is some25

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thing quite different and requires very special talents. And just like athletes, our Inspirational Leaders only remain at the top and inspirational as long as they keep themselves both mentally and physically fit.

So, what are the essential base elements that a leader needs to have to become inspirational? What is it that makes them so special and how can we know if we have the potential within us to inspire others in much the same way?

In the first part of this book I define the five elements that all Inspirational Leaders have in abundance. I show how the five elements combine to form the fuel that enables extraordinary performance. I reveal that most of the Inspirational Leader’s ability comes from a mixture of natural talent and sheer determination to nurture the effectiveness of the five elements within them.

There have been literally thousands of books written on management and leadership and no amount of reading alone can turn a dull manager into an inspirational leader. And this book is no exception. However, by combining knowledge and the right frame of mind, it is possible to begin to recognize true inspirational leadership for what it is and to distinguish it in others more accurately. And by doing so, we can begin to emulate their behaviours and set higher standards for ourselves in our efforts to improve.

The objective of this book is to stimulate a mixture of personal reflection and public debate on the subject of inspirational leadership. Many of the illustrations I use can be seen as challenging, and they are meant to be. If I say, for example, that Beethoven was the greatest composer ever, I do not nec26

Introduction

essarily believe it to be emphatically true; I simply want to make a statement and encourage the reader to consider their own opinion on the topic and to take it further. To help allow this to happen I have created a forum (www.Inspirationalleadership.org) from which the debate can begin.

What is Inspirational Leadership?

Inspirational leadership is the ability for an individual (seemingly easily) not only to win the support, trust and loyalty of those that surround them but also to be able to motivate and inspire them to achieve great things – a level of achievement that their followers may even not have felt possible before they came under the guidance and coaching of their leader.

However this does not simply apply to just any particular individual achievement, inspirational leadership is about leading a group of people to realize a specific objective or vision, within a desired time frame.

Inspirational leadership is what is expected of every leader.

In some ways it can be seen as not so much benefiting the leader themselves but more how it benefits their stakeholders and the people in their care. And that, in a way, is partly the reason why the inspirational leader’s followers hang around.

None of us does anything truly against our will; we only ever do things if we can see a benefit for ourselves.

True inspirational leadership is therefore not about ego and being paid more; it is about fulfilling one’s potential and inspiring those that look up to you to do likewise. Inspira27

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tional leaders take pride in seeing their prodigies grow, even though they realize that it is likely that one day they will have to let them break away and find their own road to success.

Great leaders leave their egos in their cars, once they enter the office. They don’t do what they do for praise alone; they do it to see the change they want to bring about happen, both in themselves and in the environment which they influence.

Although Jim Collins’ pioneering book ‘Good to Great’ has now come under much scrutiny, I still find it extremely insightful and at least one fundamental truth in it remains without question: his definition of what he refers to as ‘Level five’ leaders; those that have known sustained success. He says “boards of directors frequently operate under the false belief that they need to hire a larger-than-life, egocentric leader to make an organization great”. Contrary to popular belief, the leaders that turn companies around and keep them strong are not flamboyant, charismatic personalities, but rather quiet unassuming people. My personal experience ties in very much with Collins’ more scientific observations, in as much that when powerful charismatic leaders are brought in specifically to raise shareholder value, they can do it for a while but cannot sustain it over time. And when they leave (or get booted out) a vacuum replaces them that often causes great upheaval until another ego comes along to fill the one that just left. An interesting observation that Collins makes is that Level five leaders “look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves…” they “attribute much of their success to good luck, rather than personal greatness.”

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Introduction

Likewise, if you are to head up a very successful business then what will make your business successful is not going to be you, but the people around you. Even the very best sport coaches have not necessarily been the top players of their time. On the contrary, they are often just extremely talented observers – tacticians and motivators of people. A top coach is able quickly to understand the environment in which they have influence, spotting talent and mastering the tactics of game they see before them.

One thing I know for sure is that everyone needs the right environment to develop their natural abilities. If you find yourself in a barren environment and you want to grow and learn, you need to break away and move on to a more fertile one. In career options, it is important not to focus too much on job content but rather on the added value of the people you work for, because it is they and what they do that can take you to a higher level, not just learning a new skill.

Even the most entrepreneurial people do not become entrepreneurs in a vacuum. Their success and fortune is born out of developing something new from the resources and circumstances that surround them. However it is important not to confuse inspirational leaders with entrepreneurs.

Although many inspirational leaders have a degree of entrepreneurial spirit within them, they are seldom entrepreneurs in the truest sense of the word as we use it today. In fact, closer examination on the topic bears out the truth that many entrepreneurs are alpha managers (one man bands) and, consequently, terrible leaders. More often than not, the entrepreneurs’ success is not usually born in their ability to 29

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lead but their singular vision of something that is yet to be.

Many entrepreneurs’ visions can be inspirational but more often than not they depend on others to lead their employees to deliver success. An inspirational leader, in my definition, needs to have both vision and leadership – not necessarily the kind of vision that foresees something radically new but more based upon an insight of how something could be: an innovative way of bringing about change or improvement, a new way of doing business, deciding to lead their business in a new direction or simply orchestrating a merger or acquisition.

If what I say sounds too easy and obvious, it is probably because it is. Professor Marc Buelens, of the Vlerick Management School, Gent, once told me at the end of one of his lectures, “I can only give you the language to explain how, and possibly why you do the things you do, so that you can evaluate for yourself the way you behave and by doing so, you can then pass on your experience to others.”

Why this book?

Over the years I have worked very hard to hone and perfect my craft, constantly adapting it along the way. Among the many things I have learnt is that there is not a leader anywhere that cannot improve further. Perhaps an analogy would be helpful here?

There are very few great movie actors that have not spent many hours studying their colleagues and heroes. Observing their every action, asking themselves why their mentors 30

Introduction

chose to move or speak, in this way or that and then contemplating on just how it is they weave their magic on the screen.

And this process continues until, in one way or another, some of the magic wears off. By working alongside the very best we can learn to emulate (possibly by mimicry at first) but later on with the development of our own natural style and techniques. Through this process, new leading actors emerge from the archives of their role models.

The problem for would-be business leaders is that there are few, if any, movies of inspirational leaders to follow. And the leaders that are at the height of their powers are so busy that it is almost impossible to get near to them. Even if one could persuade an inspirational leader to give up their limited time to show us how they do what they do, they probably would not know what their secrets were in order to reveal them.

Most inspirational leaders would probably think that their ability to lead just came naturally to them. In fact the things that make most inspirational leaders so special are more often than not the very things that they themselves completely take for granted.

The Structure of this book ‘Inspirational Leadership’ is set out in five sections, each one representing one of the elements that I believe are essential for an inspirational leader: Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Adaptability, Intellectual Curiosity and Pragmatism.

I have begun each section with my definition of the element 31

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and an explanation as to why I believe it plays such an important part. However, there the theory stops. The remainder of each section is comprised of a number of short stories, essays and articles which have been edited from my weekly blogs and newsletters and selected to illustrate a practical application of the characteristic of the element in action.

It is my intention in this book only to illustrate aspects of the elements, rather than try to theorize about them. After all, at the end of the day it is only our own perception that truly matters. By reading we can challenge it, by writing we are forced to express and condense it into an identifiable argument for others to debate.

Enjoy

www.harleylovegrove.com

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Interconnected thinking: unrelated things combining to form new ideas and concepts

CONFIDENCE

Drive/Ambition Achievement Risk/Challenge Work life balance Inner competitiveness Values/Integrity Managing Failure Handling success Motivation Listening Building team spirit Communication Discipline/Criticism Loyalty Lobbying/Persuasion Relationships Reputations

ADAPTABILITY

Change driven Ambition Strategies Optimism Managing Failure Handling Success Situational leadership Dynamism Fascination Studious Inspirational Vision Purposefulness Knowledge Desire The Arts/The senses Pleasure

PRAGMATISM

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Structure Planning Results driven Sustainability Anticipation Resourceful Company Politics Decisive Action/Just do it!

INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY

Considering the five elements as one

I

am not a qualified psychologist, nor have I conducted a worldwide, scientifically objective study on the subject of inspirational leadership. However, no matter how I look at it or what labels I try to apply, I find myself coming back to the same five key elements each time I try to categorize what it is that a leader has that differentiates him or her as ‘inspirational’.

Although every inspirational leader will have a whole variety of skill sets and personal characteristics, I have clearly detected common elements in every inspirational leader that I have ever come across, worked for, read about or known.

To verify my findings I have taken time out to read several management books on the subject, to examine modern day research and to look back at the key findings of the thought leaders from over the past four centuries.

What I have discovered is that it is too simplistic to consider leadership characteristics in isolation and that the ‘do like me’ books are often not very helpful because one important fact: the very best leaders all lead in their own different way. In addition, because the environment in which they learned their craft and find themselves operating in differs so widely, they each have their own unique style and personalities that, in part, define who they are.

What is important, therefore, is to define exactly what it is that sets these people apart. To help achieve this I categorised five labels; each one representing an essential element of inspirational leadership: Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Adaptability, Intellectual Curiosity and Pragmatism.

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Each one of these base elements needs to be present in almost equal measure because each drives and counter balances the other. In the day to day actions of any leader the five elements will be emphasized or retracted many times depending on the immediate circumstances in which they find themselves. Any leader who has a serious imbalance regarding one or two elements will always find him or herself at a significant disadvantage. Success can, in these circumstances, only come about in the long term if the leader focuses on developing their weaker elements to such an extent that, although the balance may not be perfect, he or she can compensate enough to disguise their weakness. Many leaders do this by surrounding themselves with trustworthy and brilliant core team players that can naturally take over in the areas where they are lacking. But, although this situation can work in the short term, it is not truly sustainable for inspirational leaders because there are too many significant moments in a leader’s daily work where they stand alone, open for scrutiny and judgment.

Sadly, far too many leaders (especially entrepreneurs) refuse to recognize their own failings and suffer for it as a consequence. A leader who does not have an acceptable level of each of the five elements can never achieve the heights of success open to them. I have personally known many people that started out well but later become blocked due to failing to understand the importance of balance. Some of their falls were spectacular. However, the great thing about failure is that if you are strong enough to step back and see where and why you failed, then there is always the possibility that the next time you will learn from it and do much better.

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For practical reasons, in a book, one is forced to examine each of the five elements in turn. This is not ideal because it is the special chemistry resulting from one element working in conjunction with another (or a combination thereof) that makes a leader’s actions extra special or ‘inspirational’. However, if you would consider the endless combination of the possible sub-categories to each element (for example, ‘listening’ for emotional intelligence or ‘ambition’ for confidence) and you try to calculate the net result of combining them, you can begin to realize just how complex it is to understand what is going on.

It might be useful to imagine the five elements being connected by invisible elastic threads or by an elaborate series of muscles that prevent one from breaking away and becoming too dominant. In short it is the push/pull characteristic of each element that makes the inspirational leader so effective. Their ‘natural’ sense of perfect balance distinguishes them from ‘ordinary’ managers and makes learning from them so fascinating.

For example (in the case of an actor waiting to go on stage): deep down they may be confident about their ability but their nerves are making them feel physically sick, while at the same time they are perfectly aware of the rationality that there is an audience out there that needs to be convinced of their ability and entertained at the same time. Pragmatism, confidence, and emotional intelligence are running together, creating a chemistry within them that makes for an electric atmosphere. By studying their subject matter well, by observing people closely, by feeling for the character they are about 39

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to play, by stepping into their shoes, our actor sees the world in a very different and complete way. If their performance is convincing, then we (the audience) will and can believe in them. We will see them not as an actor but as the person they are playing. And this is the kind of chemistry that inspirational leaders are used to making each day.

A typical example of this is when a CEO is obliged to brief their shareholders on an unfortunate set of results and be open for questioning from them on almost any aspect of the business and in any level of detail. In this situation all of the five elements (Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Adaptability, Intellectual Curiosity and Pragmatism) will be clearly on show. By blending the five elements in just the right measure, the inspirational leader is able to give a clear, confident and engaging performance that not only wins over a diverse group of people with differing agendas, but also allows him or her to show off their intellectual ability to hold and manage all the information they need to do their job. In this way the inspirational leader gives the performance that those around them need to witness to remind them that they are indeed the right and natural person to lead the business.

Being a leader takes a great deal of energy. Being an inspirational leader takes even more. However, because humans are not machines, this energy is not always so simple to replace.

If the balance between the five elements becomes temporarily broken or if one element appears to become dominant over the others (in a person that usually has them all under control) it is often a signal of exhaustion or personal trauma and it is at these times that the inspirational leader depends 40

Considering the five elements as one

upon their trusted colleagues and loved ones politely, but firmly, to remind them that it is time to take a break; time for some relaxation and a re-tune, time to recharge the batteries of the weaker elements and to cut back on the fuel that is feeding the over-dominant element.

In the following chapters we will explore the five elements in turn and examine aspects of them that we might recognize as being either too dominant or lacking in ourselves. I crafted my quotes, essays and stories as a reminder as to what the elements might mean in real life.

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Element One

Confidence “Confidence is that deep inner belief of knowing that everything you imagine is possible.

It is the energy that fuels your life.�

Confidence

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onfidence is the foundation element that gives inspirational leaders their sense of certainty; it is what inspires them to believe that their hypothesis or vision is the correct one, that their plans and ideas will be the most effective.

However, it is not all about the self. By trusting their own judgment, confidence allows them to trust the judgment they have of others. In short, it is the element that allows them to trust and thereby form (in conjunction with their Emotional Intelligence) strong bonds with their colleagues and advisors and this is essential for consistently making informed decisions and having the nerve to carry them through.

Confidence has nothing to do with being extravert or introvert, in fact quiet people are often just as likely, if not more so, to be more confident than extraverts. Being loud and impulsive (often traits in extraverts) are surprisingly not qualities that sit comfortably with inspirational leaders who need to consistently perform at their very best day in, day out.

The Inspirational Leader’s confidence gives them the inner belief of knowing that whatever goes wrong, can be put right; that no matter what, they can and will survive. It gives them the energy to be prepared to take bold decisions and to break ‘the rules’ when required. This does not mean that they become reckless – far from it. The interplay of the opposite element of confidence, pragmatism, is what keeps their decisions and lives in balance. But it is their pragmatism that 45

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plays the most important part here. Pragmatic people plan for adversity. Pragmatic people analyze risks and it is this balance between ones inner confidence and ones pragmatism that makes our inspirational leaders so effective.

But where does this confidence come from? According to research carried out by Corina U. Greven and Professor Robert Plomin, of the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, there is evidence to suggest that ‘self perceived ability’ is genetically influenced.

Although the scientific community seems to differ widely on this subject, one thing seems to be clear: true confidence is acquired over a period of time. For every action we take that delivers a positive result our confidence grows. For every action we take that ends in disaster, it temporarily deflates.

But here lies the crucial build motivator. If we are surrounded by good life coaches, we are taught that learning from our mistakes helps us avoid them in the future and thereby, even in failure, we can see a net growth in our confidence level, once the emotions have passed.

In my case, for example, when I was a child I was very self confident. I had a very high level of self perceived ability.

I was not afraid of standing up and showing people what I could do. In the truest sense of the word, I had the confidence of a fool. However, once I became a teenager, my confidence subsided. It was replaced with a more realistic understanding of the average ability that I seemed to possess. I was told by my teachers that I was about average in everything. So when I began my career, I was happy to start at the bottom and to learn everything from scratch.

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When I was twenty one I was working for a company that regularly used to encourage their employees to give a short speech. Even though as a child I enjoyed drama, as a young adult, I was so terrified of public speaking that I constantly avoided any situation where a speech might be required. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-thirties that I gave my first public business speech. And this was only because I had suffered for too long the dreadful efforts of my colleagues that I felt confident enough to know that I could do much better than them. Once I overcame my nerves to step up to the podium, my future was set. From that moment I was seen as a leader and my career took off. I was invited to give speeches at what seemed every opportunity and I became the spokes person of both my family and company and thereby considered as a ‘natural’ leader.

On reflection, I believe my lack of confidence towards public speaking came from one thing alone. A lack of ­content. While at school, I could confidently act upon a stage because my teachers gave me the words of famous playwrights and authors. As a young adult in a new environment I had not formed enough knowledge to make sense of it and therefore was simply unable to give anything back. I was simply lacking content.

Of each of the five elements that make up an inspirational leader, ‘Confidence’ is by far the most variable. Its levels are measurably linked to circumstantial change. However, because inspirational leaders generally have high selfperceived ability, usually based upon objective comparison with others, the danger of a low level of confidence is far out47

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weighed by the much riskier heightened levels that appear in times of great achievement.

Of the five elements, ‘Confidence’ links most naturally to ‘Adaptability’ in as much as one’s ability to adapt is greatly enhanced when one’s confidence is high; similarly the opposite is true.

Some people in positions of leadership do not have the necessary balance between confidence and pragmatism and in this sense an over-abundance in their level of confidence can be a hazard, especially if they allow their ego to confuse their natural ability with circumstance. This can have disastrous results especially when they begin to believe that their success is solely down to their genius and not the normal mixture of vision, preparation, opportunity and the enormous hard work and dedication of their loyal colleagues.

“What is it that drives us forward? Is it the wind of change or is it something deeper, something not fully understood? When we are young ambition drives us to prove something if not to ourselves, then to someone else. And yet, when we stop our proving and enjoy our journey for the journey’s sake; we become bigger, more relaxed, open and sincere.”

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Are you playing it too safe?

“When the cycle of routine becomes the norm, it’s time to stretch yourself beyond the boundaries of the expectancy of others.”

Anyone who is earning an attractive salary, working in a comfortable position, without risk or sense of challenge knows the feeling of dull acceptance. The weighing up of the sure knowledge of a regular income against the uncertainty of something different is, for many, far too compelling.

If a leader’s life and career is to mean anything then they need to shine and to breathe creativity into their working environment. And this is done by daring to challenge the environment in which they find themselves, to imagine something different, something new, something worth achieving. This means daring to take risks by taking on assignments that have not been tackled before, to enter into a world where one needs to persuade others that the crazy idea you have makes sense, not just for you but for the business at large.

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Only by taking chances can we get our adrenaline levels to the point where others can really benefit from the passion and expertise that we want to deliver.

But what if you are comfortable where you are and are not ready to take the risk to dare to break away? Then at least force yourself to think more creatively by implementing a plan to broaden your horizons. Enrolling for a course at a reputable management school is worth considering.

Courses in unfamiliar subjects require energy and thought processes that refresh our brains and prevent us from becoming too narrow-minded and dull. A well-chosen course can also fire the hope of taking on a new assignment that can become the stepping stone to a whole new direction in one’s career. Extra-curricular activities give us something new to think about and help prevent us from becoming boring. In addition the interaction between class mates confronts us with new ideas and provides an ideal network environment.

Don’t let yourself become a dull manager, always try and be an inspiration and enabler of opportunity for others. And if that means taking risks with gambling a secure but deadend career then risk it, if it is the role of inspirational leadership that attracts you.

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One reason some people achieve so much more than others “A deadline is a constraint that turns an idea into a challenge.”

Have you ever wondered how it is that some people achieve so much more than others? One of the many answers is because they have a tendency to set ambitious deadlines for themselves constantly. The moment they are given a task or have a new idea, they immediately turn it into a challenge by setting a deadline by which it will be achieved. By broadcasting their deadline to the world it becomes an irreversible ‘must do’ matter of pride.

The all-time classic ambitious deadline for me is President Kennedy’s “to put a man on the moon and to return him safely to Earth, before the decade is out”. High achievers set this kind of deadline constantly and for absolutely everything. “I am

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rather busy right now, but you’ll have it by Friday, is that OK?�

For them a deal is a deal and Friday is their new deadline.

Because most high achievers are also optimists, their overriding sense of confidence makes them temporarily blind to obstacles. They rely on their ability (and that of their team) to overcome everything that blocks their way. Life, to them, is like a computer game with its constant stream of challenges.

When they run out of them, they simply invent more.

Geoff Thompson, the author of The Elephant and the Twig, purchased twenty thousand copies of his own book. By doing so, he set himself the task of ensuring they got sold, rather than sitting back and relying on his publisher to sell them.

Successful leaders are not afraid of surrounding themselves with high achievers. They are not worried about competition or being out-done. The only thing that is important to them is realizing their vision. However, when high achievers come across people that do not share their energy and passion, they have a tendency to simply ignore them, rather than trying to put them to good use.

To a high achiever, a person without vision or drive sooner or later becomes an irrelevant bystander of a forgotten game.

For the inspirational leader though, the bystanders need to be brought on board and found a useful role. Idle minds can quickly become a problem because they tend to find ways to frustrate and block the paths of the high achievers that the successful leader badly needs.

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Company Politics “Company politics is the hollow game that some people play to obtain something more than they truly deserve.”

I was 27 years old when the communications and marketing company I had formed three years earlier had grown to the extent where I needed to take on a third employee. Soon afterwards, I re-lived the nightmare that I thought I had escaped from during my short career as an employee. Namely: company politics!

Competing against other companies to win a new order is still the adrenaline rush that fires me up twenty five years later.

Whereas competing against another employee for the attention of someone with influence, within one’s own company, simply bores me. The waste of company time and money, only to serve the purpose of one’s own career, is abhorrent to me. And yet it is the life blood that sadly runs through far too many companies, eating away at the attention that should be focused on the real job in hand.

For the inspirational leader the challenge is to keep their teams focused in the direction of the corporate vision and 53

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to delivering it, rather than focusing on each other and the motivation and capability of individuals to deliver it. There seems to be an inverse law that states that lack of vision is proportional to the level of political activity within a team.

Inevitably, people being people, the focus will too often be on the path to personal gain rather than that of making the vision happen. The inspirational leader knows this is normal and understands it. However as long as it does not become habitually systematic within the business and there is no measurable detriment then we can say that no harm is done. But there are two inescapable opposing elements to company politics; the detrimental act of playing politics in order to achieve more than you may justifiably deserve and the innocent self-publicity of one’s talent and achievements.

A useful skill to learn is to be able to spot the difference early on, and to decide how far you are prepared to tolerate behaviour in either direction that blocks creative collaboration.

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There’s no success like failure “Sometimes the toughest part to being a leader is to remain on the sidelines and witness your team fail.

A team that has not failed is a team that does not understand the meaning of winning.”

Anyone who knows the Bob Dylan song ‘Love minus zero, no limit’ will know that the following line to ‘There’s no success like failure’, is ‘and yet failure is no success at all’.

While match officials hand out medals to the winning team, the losers can take some solace in Dylan’s words. But what the words really mean to me is that in order to be successful you need to learn by making mistakes and in doing so, you must even be prepared to fail along the way. In order to fail you have at least had to try and it is through failure that one learns the toughest lessons of all and obtains the potential of progressing further.

A while back, I was coaching a group of company employees in the fine art of project management and people moti55

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vation. In the classroom things were going well but the real problem was that some of my students were struggling with the fact that their managers were not giving them the space they needed to do their job. When I spoke with their managers I found a genuine desire on their part not to expose their new PM’s to the risk of making mistakes, especially in front of senior management. I was comforted that they had their employees’ best interests at heart but I was also shocked by their lack of nerve to let them shine.

I admit that giving people just enough room to make mistakes but not so much that they hang themselves is a tricky balance at the best of times. But it is important that true leaders resist the tendency to step in too soon. It is also important that when asked for an opinion, they should listen and comment and not give the solution instead. A person that discovers the solution for them self is much more likely to ensure it gets implemented.

Losers need to remember that the jubilation that winners feel, is largely based upon the tears and disappointments they have suffered on their long road to success. They should also reflect that maintaining a winning position is harder than obtaining it.

Inspirational Leaders know that winning one or two moments of glory, followed by a season of failure and disappointment is not what is needed. They know that they need consistently even performances; that the true winning companies are the ones that are not always in the number one slot but in the top five performers year in, year out.

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It is a wise coach that can stay on the sideline and watch their team fail, knowing all too well, that even if they could somehow step onto the pitch and win it for them, their team would not appreciate it. Leaders need to have inner confidence, not only in themselves but also in their team. Win or lose.

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How far do you dare go?

“I saw the warning sign and chose to ignore it. I knew there could be consequences but I chose to take the risk. I am not a maverick I am a leader. I know that sometimes I need to do these things.”

There is a theory that when highly successful entrepreneurs are confronted with a rule or convention that blocks their way, they tend to ignore it, circumnavigate it or simply break it. Their confidence in themselves and their abilities reassures them that no harm will come to them. And anyway, most of them think that an inconvenient rule does not even apply to them.

There is a short story by Kafka called ‘Before the Law’ in which a man wants to pass through a door to gain knowledge that he believes to be not only useful but also his right to know. But there is a gatekeeper next to the door, seemingly preventing him from entry. The gatekeeper tells him that he does not have permission to enter, so the man waits for days and years hoping that one day it will be granted to him.

As we have observed, all babies try to challenge authority (for example by throwing their rattle out of the pram, making Mum 58

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or Dad cross and continuing until they either receive a smack or the rattle is taken away). In most cases, as people become older, the pressure to conform pacifies this tendency and only shows itself when they are confronted with unwanted change.

I find this topic useful to consider as it can largely explain one aspect of achieving success. How far are you prepared to break rules and conventions to achieve your goal?

If we accept that there is no challenge without risk then those that are motivated by a challenge are prepared to take risks and in doing so will, from time to time, push the boundaries too far. There are of course many different types of risk and perhaps in business we can exclude the ones that involve physical danger and focus more on the legal and financial ones. One thing is for sure, the more we want to push for rapid change the more risks we need to take.

It is easy to say on the one hand that it is no wonder so many entrepreneurs and politicians end up in trouble and yet you can equally state that it is a wonder that not more do so. Apart from the fact that most organizations have pragmatic ways of enforcing their corporate governance, most leaders surround themselves with an array of experienced advisors to advise them as to how far they can push the boundaries. Often, though, advisors play a more ‘after the event’ role, assisting their clients to get out of the mess that ignoring the rules sometimes gets them into.

As Oscar Wilde famously said in 1892: ‘Experience is simply the name everyone gives to their mistakes’. I find that when people deliberately break a rule, they only consider it a mistake if it comes back to hit them and their desired end result is not achieved.

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Is your ego a problem?

“Ego is not good or bad, only big or small. Our ego is important as it is our personal assessment of our own self worth.”

It is a sad fact of modern life that the word ‘Ego’ is beginning to take on a negative connotation. People with a big ego are considered somehow bad and those with an absent ego as good. Of the various dictionaries I use, I think the Collins says it best: “Ego: a person’s opinion of his or her own worth”.

If we accept this definition then the word ego is linked with the word pride.

Whether we like to admit to it or not, our sense of selfworth is very important. Without it we lose confidence and motivation. Any leader without a big ego is unlikely to lead for long. The question to keep in mind is: “Is it too big”? But before attempting to answer this question a secondary question is needed: “Too big for what”? In situations where selfconfidence and pride are an absolute necessity it is almost impossible for any ego to be too big. The very nature of the

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self-belief expression ‘I can do this’, is built solely upon oneself, i.e. one’s ‘ego’.

However, in a counselling group or at home on the weekend with the family, the career ego needs to remain in check.

This can be difficult as it requires the balancing of three different elements: adaptability, emotional intelligence and confidence. For this reason it can be very useful to have one’s place of work a short car journey or (better still) a walk from one’s home. If the journey is long enough to tie up the loose ends of the working day and to re-focus on the needs and pleasures of our loved ones, then the distance is just right.

Very few people can switch from work to home between the garage and the kitchen. For those working from home, a dog can come in handy here; a short walk every morning and evening is good for both hound and master.

So my advice is: worry, if your ego is too small rather than too big. Worry, if you do not feel proud of your achievements and of who you are. Worry, if you do not make the time to turn negative feelings into positive plans for reconciliation and improvement. For as long as your ego is matched by the perceived level of ability that others have of you, then no harm can come of it.

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“You can compromise on many things but never on the vision�

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Outside of your comfort zone?

“Extraordinary results are achieved when we dare to step out of our comfort zones and face the challenge of trying something new.”

Everyone has experienced a time when they stepped out of their comfort zone, like turning a wrong corner in a foreign city or walking into unknown territory. The effect is immediate; heart rate increases, adrenaline runs high and suddenly all our sensory receptors are processing massive amounts of information, looking for creative exits.

In good times, we have a natural tendency to cruise around in our comfort zone and come out with statements such as: “Let’s stick to what we know” or “is this idea really our core business?”

In difficult times, though, we are forced to find creative solutions to unplanned circumstances. To achieve this we are obliged to encourage our teams to step out of their comfort zones to avoid despondency and defeatism. Creative ideas 63

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and adrenaline-based motivation do not come from staying safe within our caves. Departmental re-shuffles; moving people into new roles, can be a good way of stretching a tired workforce into new challenges and encouraging people to take on new responsibilities that inspire them to look both at themselves and their immediate careers in new ways.

A person stepping into something new is likely to work hard and remain focused simply because they are outside their normal comfort zone. The risk is minimized because they are likely to act cautiously but keep all their options open.

Because they lack experience they will be forced to adopt a creative approach and to look to solve the issues they face in innovative ways. What is more, they are more likely to take their new responsibilities very seriously and rely on all their resources, not just their own opinion.

I do have a caveat however: there is a difference between deliberately stepping out of one’s comfort zone and drifting too far from the shore. The inspirational leader’s role must also be that of a diligent lifeguard, keeping their team and the business safe.

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Trust me, I am a doctor! “Trust is the emotional energy that keeps us believing in each other. Trust is fickle, trust is precious. Once trust is lost it is very hard to regain.�

The basis of any relationship where an instruction is given and an action is expected in return, is trust. Whether in management or in leadership, be it in the office or at home, trust is the most important component of the foundations upon which our lives and relationships are built. But where does trust come from and how do we instil it in others?

When two strangers pass one another, be it in an office hallway or even on the street, it is customary to acknowledge one another in some polite way. This simple act puts us at our ease and allows us to relax and continue on our journey comfortably in the belief that the other person will not harm us. This is the very basis of trust; believing that another will not harm or let us down. Trust is earned incrementally, step by step, bit by bit.

A new leader’s ability to establish trust in their team is to some extent dependant on the level of trust that their team 65

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have in the board that appointed them in the first place. A team’s natural scepticism will only be overturned if they can contextualize their leader’s actions by associating them with their past and present results. For example; if a team recruits a new coach that has a track record of leading champions, the coach can demand of his or her players much more than someone who is becoming a coach for the first time. This paradox is what presents all new leaders with probably their toughest challenge.

However, because all successful leaders have a higher than average level of confidence, they feel comfortable with delegating and to trusting others to deliver what was agreed. By demonstrating their own skills and quickly acknowledging the skills of others, sustainable trust is progressively formed between the leader and their colleagues.

But leaders have an additional burden when it comes to trust. There are always people that will distrust you no matter how hard you try to demonstrate your worthiness. This should not concern you too deeply as long as the doubters still believe in the vision, if not in you. In this case the doubters will more likely than not come around in time. However, a leader is not leading if he or she allows non-believers to straggle on, continuing to spread doubt after a reasonable time has passed.

Winning teams win because of their ability to align to a common held belief and shared commitment. In this scenario, no one is bigger than a team, not even the leader; the leader’s role is just one of many. It differs, of course, but is nonetheless a role. Therefore trust is singularly the most 66

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important thing that a leader needs to instil in their team and this they can only do by balancing all of the five elements over a prolonged period of time: -- Intellectual Curiosity to inspire and inform -- Confidence to motivate pride, ego and self belief -- Emotional Intelligence in order to get the maximum performance by knowing how far the leader can push and motivate the team and each of its individual before their break points are reached -- Adaptability to show there is a strategy and plan for all circumstances -- Pragmatism to demonstrate that the strategy can be implemented

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Me? I am the leader, I never feel down!

“The best way to cope with that hollow feeling that inevitably comes after success is to drown yourself, not in work, but in culture and relaxation.”

When you have been sweating over a project for what seems like an eternity and you have pulled your team through all kinds of troubles, motivating and re-motivating them into action beyond the norm of what is usually expected of them; when you have fought off all the politicians in the company that would pull your project this way or that and battled with suppliers to get them to simply deliver what they promised; when you have risked breaking nearly every rule in the book to ensure that you get exactly the result you need, it’s really no surprise that after the champagne reception; when the last celebratory sandwich has been eaten and all there is left over is a half full bowl of potato chips (that somebody accidentally spilt red wine into), then yes, you might well go home feeling down or depressed.

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It’s normal for people who push the boundaries to put all their passion into their work. When they finally get the result they want, the euphoria can only ever be short-lived. There is no amount of thank you’s that can compensate for all the effort invested. Even the bonus you might expect to receive can never really pay for the emotional effort spent. It is in these moments that we reflect on why we do the things we do and about the meaning of leadership and why we are prepared to give so much up to live the life we do.

I once met a professional mountain climber at a dinner party and he spoke of exactly the same sunken feeling once he reached the summit, but then he had to climb back down again. In a similar way, we too need a mountain to walk back down. Putting what we do in perspective is essential if we are to maintain sustainable results. I personally advocate deep immersion in culture. A short holiday to a place that is very different from where we come from or a quiet place where one can listen to music or read a book uninterrupted; no phones, no emails, no nothing apart from what naturally makes us feel good. Everyone needs a retreat once in a while.

In time, you can look back at projects gone by and remember with fondness their ups and downs. You can draw up lists of ‘lessons learned’ and invent ways of avoiding them in the future. For now, however, what a colleague said or didn’t say at the project ‘thank you’ party, is immaterial. Probably they, like you, couldn’t find the right words either.

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Element Two

Emotional Intelligence “Emotional intelligence is the element that allows us to engage effectively with others. It enables perception and ensures self-control in times of need. Emotional intelligence helps us assess the limits of others and to manage hostile situations. In short, it gives us the basic tools we need to motivate and even manipulate those within our spell.�

Emotional Intelligence

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he source dna program for our emotional intelligence has been written over millions of years of evolution, but its effectiveness is derived from our need to engage with others. Like all the five elements it is more abundant in some than in others.

Amazingly enough, many people still see emotional intelligence as an over-emphasized, imaginary and unimportant trait; something invented by sociologists and psychologists somehow to give importance to something secondary to intellect. And yet, no matter what label you choose to apply to it, emotional intelligence is an absolutely critical element for all would be inspirational leaders. It is the basis for enabling our ability to have others do what we want them to do without having to resort to physical force or threats. “I am doing it for our leader because I want to.”

In his book The expression of emotions in man and animals, published in 1872, Charles Darwin recognized the importance of ‘emotional expression’ for man’s evolution and survival. Since the 1920’s, similar terms such as E.L. Thorndike’s ‘social intelligence’, have been used to describe the degrees of ability for humans to read and manage not only their own behaviour but also that of other individuals and groups.

There is, to this day, still much controversy over emotional intelligence and if and how, it can and should be measured.

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Because measurement can be regarded as half way to understanding, we can thereby find ways to coach ourselves to improve our levels of emotional intelligence. However, one thing remains; leading a group of people requires the ability to accurately judge the mood of the group. It is therefore vital that a leader can pick up on the emotional subtleties communicated to determine the correct approach to handle any given situation.

Using a sports analogy, imagine it is half time in an important soccer match and the team has entered the changing room as first half losers. Some of the referee’s decisions have gone against them and all talk and focus is on the poor refereeing skills. The team coach enters the room, looks around and then begins to scream and shout at the team accusing them of being lazy, complacent, sloppy and lacking discipline and focus. The coach singles out specific individuals and ridicules them in front of their team mates, coming out with classic lines such as, “You are not children, this is not a party game!”; “This is a professional arena where I expect you to act like professionals!”; “Accept errors of judgment for what they are!”; “Work together for Christ’s sake!”; “Now get out there and show me what you can do!”

In this situation the coach has read the mood of the moment and has decided which emotional tactic he wants to use to divert forcibly a group dynamic into a completely new direction. His objective was clearly to focus attention back on themselves and to give the team a new sense of purpose. The coach had a very wide choice of behavioural options: compassion, empathy, bullying, cajoling, to name but four.

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I have heard it said that the French claim there to be more than ten ways of boiling an egg. When it comes to selecting the correct tactic for re-motivating individuals and teams, I firmly believe it. Each coach is different, and each must decide how to play any specific moment. It is their emotional intelligence that keeps them focused on their objective and in control on the inside, while possibly appearing otherwise on the outside.

The moment we lose emotional control, we lose our ability to steer and thereby our ability to lead. In that moment we enter the world of random chaos and chance.

Turning the mood of a group of people requires the utilization of all the five elements. It demands a clear objective and a super high level of emotional intelligence supported by confidence, adaptability and pragmatism. However, whenever the leader is likely to be passionate about his or her desired outcome, it is always the emotional intelligence element that needs to take on the dominant role to ensure he or she remains focused on their team obtaining the required result and not what it means for them personally.

On other occasions perhaps the team coach would have adopted a quiet word with the captain. The inspirational leader knows this and obtains the result they want by creating ever-varying cocktails of advice and motivational tactics in the method and style required by the moment.

In my book, Making a Difference I described how my career advanced significantly when I learnt to control and adjust my behavioural style to suit each situation: one minute deep, serious, calm, listening with the utmost attention, while the next moment visibly upset and demanding. I find this cha75

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meleon-like behaviour especially important when confronted by negativity from others. The trick is to utilize a very high degree of self control and not to take it ‘personally’ but instead establish a sense of objectivity by learning to ‘act’ out external reactions. In this situation I quite deliberately mimic the behavioural patterns of previous role models such as school teachers and bosses before me.

Emotional separation enables inner calm in difficult circumstances and the retention of one’s ability to think rationally and take high quality decisions. The moment that our brains become overloaded with emotional issues, they are unable to compute decision making effectively. Even the finest brain has a maximum level of processing power (hence the popular advice of “calm down and think clearly”). This is, in short, what emotional intelligence is.

Being emotionally intelligent has very little, if anything, to do with being popular. Most of us learn pretty quickly that giving individuals or groups what they want, leads to disaster.

The trick is to be able to realize what is best for them and to show them how they can obtain it for themselves. Young children are very good at getting what they want but as they grow older they learn the importance of rationalizing their temper tantrums, in order to get what they want. From teenage daughters who want to go out with their friends on the weekend to development managers who just need an additional few millions to complete their research, deciding who can get what and when, and then being able to enforce it, is a skill that needs to be learned. The bottom line I aim for is

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obtaining respect. I do not expect people to like me, it is nice when they do, but it must never be the driving goal.

Of the five elements of inspirational leadership, the need to master our emotional intelligence capabilities is probably the most important of all. Without a degree of emotional intelligence one cannot repeatedly deliver exceptional results from a team. Sadly, however, there appears to be a kind of stigma towards it.

It is my experience that most managers avoid actively seeking ways to develop their emotional intelligence skills. I find this a great shame. Leaders should encourage their employees to develop these capabilities without it coming over as some kind of character flaw. This need is becoming ever more important because motivation and leadership is becoming much more complex as we have to take into account an extremely wide variety of cultural trends and behaviours.

Today our managers need to know how to engage with people from all over the world. If they are going to take control of any given situation, they need not only to have excellent interpersonal skills with their own cultural heritage, they also need to be sure that they are correctly interpreting the thoughts and intents of others from cultures very different from their own.

A one message suits all approach does not always work, especially in sensitive communications.

I imagine that, over time, cultures in business will align more and more and there is powerful evidence all around us that today this is true. The global ‘Coke is life’ phenomenon is being matched by corporate household rules on leadership and

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employee behaviour. However, many multi-nationals today realize that a one-culture-fits-all society is not sustainable.

Some global business leaders are beginning to look at diversity not so much in terms of men, women and race but more in terms of the creativity of ideas and approaches that cultural diversity will inevitably bring. By encouraging level playing fields of cultural interaction, society gains through the creativity that is released when divergent cultures and thought processes meet. Social fusion should not be about creating similarity. It should encourage and embrace difference and thereby unleash the creative potential offered by it when it occurs. Emotional intelligence and intellectual curiosity are the two elements required to unleash this kind of innovation in achieving creativity and complex problem solving.

New social behaviours are emerging that demand the simplification of language in order to express complex messages accurately and subtly without diluting its meaning. In fact, I am writing this book very deliberately in a style knowing that the majority of people will either read it in their second language or in translation. This fact necessitates the use of a restricted vocabulary and the careful use of punctuation to ensure first time understanding.

Too often people confuse emotional intelligence with just being a good listener and generally getting on with everyone by being a ‘nice person’. This is very far from the truth. Inspirational leaders are inspirational because they tend to have a highly developed emotional intelligence. They can be very tough by knowing exactly how far and hard they can drive people. Their emotional intelligence allows them to influ78

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ence and over-ride the general desire of a group of people, even to manipulate them. They can do this because they are able to accurately predict the reaction of the group and know how to manage, in advance, any likely dissention or mutiny.

Their confidence only serves to reassure them of their abilities, which in itself is the driver to do so in the first place. ‘I do these things because I know that I can, the moment I doubt is the moment I will stop doing them’.

Eugene (“Gene”) Kranz is a famous example of a leader who managed to turn almost certain disaster into a satisfactory outcome by displaying extremely high levels of emotional intelligence. Kranz was the lead of ‘the White team’ in Apollo 13’s control room, when a major incident occurred that threatened not only the success of the mission to the moon but the very lives of the astronauts themselves. As one after another seemingly impossible challenge confronted his team, Krantz managed to prevent them from adopting a defeatist attitude.

His immortal words, ‘Failure is not an option’, captures perfectly his approach to motivating his team. Through the crucial hours and minutes of uncertainty that followed he kept his team focused on coming up with creative solutions to every problem that confronted them.

In the movie version of events, it is fascinating to observe how Krantz manages to keep his senior expert team on board and motivated during a debriefing meeting when he forces them to listen to the voice of a much younger team member who confronts them with some crucial facts that, had they been ignored, would have certainly resulted in disaster.

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Unsurprisingly, one of the key elements of emotional intelligence is listening. I see listening as an active process rather than a passive one, as it is usually taught in school. I regard listening as primarily an active process because when truly listening, one needs to stay focused on the speaker and not allow one’s mind to be distracted. Every nuance needs to be processed and analyzed in real time. In addition, the receiver needs to take in and store as much information as possible.

Accurately reading the facial expressions and body movements of the speaker and matching them to the audio data received can greatly enhance true understanding. The received data needs to be put into context (someone speaking shortly after experiencing a traumatic shock may say and do things that require a different set of interpretation responses from those of a normal working day in the office). Lastly the receiver’s own body language and facial expressions can make a big difference. They can either encourage the speaker to continue and go into more depth, or stay on the surface of a particular topic. By giving openly negative physical responses, the listener can even influence the speaker’s content, encouraging them to say things that they do not believe!

Man’s general desire to be accepted and to please others, lies at the heart of the foundation of social life; be it in the family, with friends or in the work place. Mastering emotional intelligence therefore becomes one of the most powerful tools that any leader has at their disposal.

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alongside their other four elements to effectively get what they want; inspirational leaders become intrinsically very powerful people (perhaps luckily, much more so than they believe).

Consequently, it is of no surprise that in most religions, the devil is portrayed as a cool customer, coming disguised as a rescuer; someone with a quick fix solution that looks most attractive, especially to the vulnerable. Inspirational leaders need to be reminded of, and work within a strict regulatory framework; otherwise their power can very quickly move in a dangerous direction.

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Accepting Criticism “We progress by means of open-minded observation and by learning from our mistakes.”

It is a strange but understandable phenomenon that most of us find taking criticism so difficult. Mankind progresses by means of open-minded observation and learning from its mistakes, and yet, at a personal level, taking criticism is often such a painful experience that we do everything in our powers to avoid it.

When someone criticizes us, our first reaction is to see it as some kind of attack, a direct challenge on who we are, on our competence. And yet criticism gives us the chance to question and improve, and by improving we become more valuable in both our business and private lives.

Because constructive criticism is a gift, we should always be ready to say ‘thank you’ to the person who gave it to us (even if it is a day or so later). We should do this for two reasons: one, because the giver is the one putting him- or herself out and is therefore taking all the risks, and two: we are the real beneficiary at the end of the day.

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Look around you and check your friends, family and colleagues. Which of them is actively seeking feedback and criticism and thereby moving forward with their lives, and which of them is standing still unwilling to improve and move on?

Next go and take a look in a mirror and ask yourself, “How open am I to improve by listening to the criticism of others? When was the last time I actively changed my beliefs or behaviour due to criticism from another?�

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The power of a really good story “Don’t confuse who you are with who you want to be. By being honest with ourselves we can engage and communicate with an honesty that knows no boundaries and wins the trust of others.”

To communicate well you need to find a common level of understanding and a reference point of trust. At its highest (most intellectual) it can be a professor sharing knowledge to his or her students, on the lowest level it can be two people engaged in physical arm-to-arm combat or a couple making love.

However somewhere between these extremes is the power of a really good story. There is no doubt in my mind that a powerful story can have an enormous impact. For managers, consultants and leaders it is one of the finest ways of sharing personal vision, beliefs and insight. And if the story can be reduced to a single line or slogan, then the chance of it being

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remembered long after it was originally told will increase dramatically.

Historical stories of past leaders create a sense of continuity. Stories of delighted customers and supportive suppliers reinforce our company values. But the stories that confront us with our personal weaknesses, which show that we are human, are the stories that leaders need to tell. These stories are the ones that can engage listeners on a level that our marketers cannot reach.

I remember a colleague telling me a story about his childhood, growing up on a Greek island. Struggling against the dominance of his father and the over-protection of his mother, my story teller enraptured me with the humour and romance of a young boy under the influence of an unreliable yet lovable uncle. I was there; I was with him on his island.

I could sense the heat of the midday sun and the smell of ripening olives on the ancient trees. I could wish, for just one moment, that that young boy was me. The story was powerful and engaging, it revealed the innermost thoughts and values of the story teller. It turned an unknown colleague into a friend; someone that I felt I could rely on in times of need.

What is your story? How do you ensure that people remember you after your first encounter is over? How do you instil in your listeners a feeling of trust? Your story needs to be clear, engaging and in its very essence, true.

Make sure your story can be edited for length, to slip comfortably into the amount of time you have with your audience and not to fill it completely. If you lose their engagement,

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adjust the style but never the content. It is your story; be prepared to share who you really are.

Your story should not be used as a weapon or a con trick to win the favour of your audience. For as Shakespeare wrote: ‘To thine ownself be true’. After all, you are who you are and although you may aspire to being someone else, it is you that matters to those who surround you and not who you might want to be or become.

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Imperfect employees “There is little I find more depressing in life than witnessing the search for new talent while ignoring the potential of those that surround us.”

When someone drove a truck into the back of my car, what was once a perfect piece of German design and engineering was no more. Although the garage said that they can make it ‘as good as new’, I knew that it never would be. When one puts this in the context of imperfection in general and in employees in particular one understands the value of knowing how to handle the “imperfect” employees and see beyond their imperfections.

When someone, carefully selected, joins the team they are always perfect until they inevitably slip up. It can be an extremely minor thing – possibly missing a non-urgent milestone or sending an email to the wrong person. Even if you are completely unaware of their error, you can be sure that others will be very quick to point it out. “You’ll never guess what the new guy’s just done?”

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The best football managers sometimes stick with what might at first appear to be very bad signings, keeping the player on the pitch long after many others would have dropped them. Manchester United’s manager Sir Alex Fergusson is a good example of this technique. If he believes in someone he gives them plenty of room for error and somehow manages to reassure their team mates to support them through what can be a very long settling in period.

Evolution has taught us to make decisions about others very quickly and I, for one, know that sometimes I can be too quick in drawing conclusions. I put this bad habit partly down to my time as a crisis interim manager when it was not unusual to be given as little as three months to restructure an entire company. Reducing a workforce by half, or more, in such a short timeframe forces you to weigh the end result over the short term risk of not making the right choice every time.

However, with experience and a little more time, focusing on an underperforming employee’s strong points and nurturing their confidence level can deliver surprising results.

The satisfaction of seeing a great piece of work from someone who was previously almost at the point of being written off is proof enough of the worth of the invested effort.

In Western Europe, human resources are the most precious commodity of any business. Winning companies are often those that find creative ways of ensuring that every one of their employees is focused on activities that suit them best.

The taking over of Cadbury by the US giant Kraft saw the end of an era. Cadbury was a very successful and profitable confectionery manufacturer. Established in 1824, its roots were 136

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founded in Quakerism and it embraced the philosophy of ‘finding something of good in everyone’.

Perhaps it is a worthwhile exercise to make a mental list of those whom you have mentally written off and to re-evaluate what hidden strengths and talents might still be found within them?

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How much damage can one customer do?

“We need to live our company’s mottos.

If they are proven to be false, then so are we.”

A company’s image is potentially far more fragile today than it has ever been. With the power of global communications in the hands of anyone with access to the internet, even the reputations of the bastions of industry and commerce can come tumbling down with the hit of the ‘Send’ button, if the story is powerful enough. It does not even have to be true; it just needs to be plausible.

There have been many famous cases in the recent past but probably none more so than that of Dave Carroll, a customer of United Airlines. He had his hand made Taylor guitar broken while in transit in the USA. After a year of trying to obtain some kind of compensation, he finally gave up and took the issue into his own hands by making an entertaining video and posting it on YouTube. A few days and eight million hits later, the story had been covered by all the world’s 138

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top news agencies and United Airlines had to engage in a massive, unwelcome and unexpected PR campaign. In the meantime both Dave Carroll and Taylor Guitars moved from obscurity to worldwide brands.

So what went wrong? Who was to blame and what is the role of leadership in this scenario? It is a well-known fact that the general public has a macabre fascination with witnessing big brands taking a knocking. The problem usually arises when a company’s PR & marketing slogans are seen to be insincere and out of step with reality. It only takes one customer such as Dave Carroll and an inattentive Customer Care department and whole strategies can come under attack.

The role for leaders is to anticipate such attacks. They need to personally challenge the slogans that their company’s departments are so proud of, from both the standpoint of an angry customer and a cynical public. They need to feel confident that their organization is living up to its promises.

By anticipating an attack, strategies can be prepared not only to help avoid such image catastrophes happening in the first place, but also to deal with them effectively, should they ever occur. At the end of the day, leaders of departments and business units need to take ownership to ensure that what they claim publically is substantiated in real life. When it is not and things go wrong, they need to own up to it quickly, take responsibility, get involved and move on, and never hide behind the face of an employee in customer service.

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After a fall “A team that pulls itself out of trouble is far stronger than one that is shown the way.”

When you have been to the bottom of bad luck in business, when you have seen those around you become blank with the fear of uncertainty, you know how futile it is to go around reassuring people that ‘everything will be alright’. The best one can do is to focus on the positive points and to try to keep the general debate on maintaining an open mind and as positive an attitude as possible in the circumstances.

However, when the first signs of hope re-enters the team it is important to nurture it and not let it get trampled on by the defeatists. One of the secrets of cultivating recovery is to recognize its first shoots. A sure sign can be when you hear people make comments like “What the heck, it’s worth a try, what have we got to lose?” When you hear these things – then you stand a good chance of survival. Even though the first ideas are often badly thought through, people soon gather round to watch what is happening and in doing so begin to offer help and make suggestions (although not always very 140

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welcome). This is often the turning point and is accompanied by a detectable rise in optimism and energy in the team. With continued nurturing and support (even if the first thoughts end in failure) the new adaptations can often be both surprising and profitable. What’s important here is that it was ‘their’ idea and not yours and ‘they’ will work and work in order to show you that they have a worth, they have a vision, an idea and a possible way forward. What more can a leader ask for in a team? After all, it is better to have tried and fail than never to have tried at all.

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Just how important are you really?

“Remembering that we will not be around forever should not depress us but help us select our current priorities better.”

I once heard it said that the ultimate measure of an ‘important’ person is that when they die their passing has an identifiable impact on the financial stock market. Perhaps, if you are really important, your death might even influence the exchange rate of a national currency or the global economy and yet, ‘The graveyard is full of irreplaceable people’.

So if you find yourself in the frame of mind where you think you are momentarily irreplaceable, don’t kid yourself. I have seen too many irreplaceable people pass away only to witness just how quickly the world they left behind gets back to business again – almost as if they were never there. For most of us we can only aspire to becoming a name on a plaque or a picture on a wall in the company library or corridor.

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Facing our own lack of importance need not be depressing, it simply reminds us that we are not alone on this planet and that, by and large, we choose to spend our time the way we do. We simply need to decide if what we are doing is fun and whether we have the balance right between the things that matter to us and those that matter to others?

After all, none of us can be sure how long it will be until tomorrow becomes today. In the meantime my personal motto is: ‘Be sure always to live each and every day to the full’.

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Intellectual Curiosity “Intellectual curiosity is the element that gives us our inner desire for a deeper understanding of everything that surrounds us. It is the essence of what makes us interesting to others. It inspires us to share our discoveries and in doing so enables ever more interconnected possibilities. Intellectual curiosity is the one element that if not kept in check, can drive us insane.�

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ntellectual curiosity is an addictive element. It feeds and influences all the others. Of the five elements intellectual curiosity is the most noticeably dominant. It is the element that encourages the inspirational leader to embrace change.

Intellectual curiosity feeds the inspirational leader’s brain with the desire for the continual search for new truths: from how things work, to why things are; from the visual arts to the analyst’s conclusion, it is the quest for the understanding and appreciation of science, music, culture, literature, history and even concepts of perfection; all that lies in the universe and in the hearts and minds of mankind. It is unending in its search.

Intellectual curiosity generates the side effect of always having something interesting to say or comment on. The vast general knowledge gained via a combination of study and empirical observation is instinctively applied by the inspirational leader, wherever and whenever the situation demands.

It is the element that allows them to be creative, to be able to combine two or more apparently unrelated items and fuse them into new ideas or concepts. It is the engine that allows them to add two and two together and make the number five, to link seemingly un-linkable facts and to make new thoughts out of apparently nothing. It is the birth place of ‘Vision’.

The constant streaming to the brain of new and interesting data not only keeps the inspirational leader’s intellect active, it also allows him (or her) to contextualize what they witness.

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Coupled with the other four elements intellectual curiosity not only keeps the inspirational leader interesting and engaging to others, it also makes them a reliable source of wisdom and advice. Most inspirational leaders suffer to a greater or lesser extent from intellectual curiosity. Ask their life partners for the most irritating trait they witness in them and, more often than not, the answer is their ‘inability to switch off and simply relax and think of, or question, absolutely nothing’.

Intellectual curiosity, coupled with confidence, adaptability and pragmatism, forms the basis of the inspirational leader’s decision making skills. Intellectual curiosity coupled with emotional intelligence forms the basis of trust when it comes down to the acceptance of a decision.

Intellectual curiosity does not necessarily turn a leader into a professor. In fact, in many cases their professional followers may even be totally unaware of much of the breadth and depth of their learning. Because of their emotional intelligence, more often than not, the wisdom that the inspirational leader needs to share comes out not in a torrent of data download but subtly attached to a specific and relevant topic.

Their knowledge is what turns a perfectly practical grey concrete block wall into an engaging mosaic of colour.

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Interesting people “Only by exercising our senses can we challenge our intellect and keep ourselves fresh and alive.�

What exactly is it that makes someone interesting rather than boring?

An interesting person fills you with new ideas. They challenge the way you think, they have a deeper knowledge than you, on a whole variety of subjects. They constantly come up with interesting conundrums or theories. They have always just discovered something, not necessarily at work but perhaps in a new book, or play, or piece of music or work of art. They are always very busy with a wide variety of hobbies and interests which exercises their intellect. An interesting person needs also to have a sense of humour. They need not necessarily be a joke teller but they should be able to find comical connections within themselves; the world and their subject matter. They should not, therefore, take themselves too seriously; after all we are all only passing through, our time is now but it will fade and for that one needs to be able to laugh at oneself and the absurdities of life!

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In much the same way leaders, like friends, need to be interesting too. Leaders need to be inspiring, but how can they be if they are boring, if they focus on the same things day in, day out?

When I think of the leaders I enjoyed working for, they were all inspiring. Every one of them had the ability to plant a new seed or idea in my mind to motivate me further on my journey.

I do not suppose there is anyone on the planet today that can be interesting to everyone, all of the time. Perhaps even Leonardo Da Vinci was boring once in a while. And this is one reason leaders need to restrict the amount of time they spend with any one person. To be interesting one needs content. When content runs low it needs to be recharged and ready for the next encounter.

The question is: where do interesting people get their ideas? This is easy – from life, from others, from books, from newspapers, from research, from self-study, from travel, from exploring new ideas, from trying new hobbies.

In short, interesting people explore the usage of all their senses and ensure that they are stimulated as much and as often as possible. They make the most of each and every day and live life to the full.

Question: on a scale of one to ten (compared with Leonardo Da Vinci or Francis Bacon) how interesting are you?

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You are never too old to learn, just too stupid!

“The desire to learn and to discover new truths is my motivation for experiencing everything that life has to offer me.”

It is true that we humans seem to make the same mistakes over and over again, even when we are ‘old enough to know better’.

As adults we are usually only motivated to learn when we see an intrinsic benefit for doing so. Because of this, the level of effort we are prepared to invest tends only to match our perception of its added value. So it should come as no surprise that I get very upset when I hear people say ‘I am too old to learn….’ You are never too old! I know of countless stories of elderly people acquiring deep knowledge in new topics and learning how to use new tools to amazing levels of skill.

Saying ‘I am too old to learn’ is the same as saying ‘I can’t be bothered.’ I do not know why people cannot simply be honest and admit that they are not interested enough in the 151

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subject to go through all the hassle of learning it. But, before I pass judgment too quickly, it is important to remind oneself that, in certain aspects of our own lives, we continue to repeat our old mistakes over and over again because we are either simply too lazy (or dare I say too stupid?) to do otherwise.

Of course people have different capabilities for learning, which is as much a question of being able to store and retrieve data as it is a matter of being able to focus on the subject long enough to let it sink in. I do not mind admitting that between the age of eleven and eighteen I was not the brightest student in my class, always returning only average grades for my academic studies. So in order for me to do well in anything, I had to put in a lot more effort than my more gifted classmates.

However, as I went into business, I realized that success is more about the application of knowledge than the amount of factual knowledge acquired.

Coming to terms with the fact that one cannot be good at everything is extremely important as it helps one focus learning in the direction of the areas that need it most. A willingness to compensate for one’s weaknesses is the first step on an important new journey.

In the last decade, the advance of the personal computer has given people with bad memories immediate access to incredible amounts of instant data. With today’s low power consumption PDA’s (Personal Digital Assistants) it is possible to foresee a time where brain power can be used mainly for the application of knowledge rather than the retention of it.

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– it might take them longer than a child, but a few words in the head of a wise person, are worth a thousand in that of a fool!

So if you ever find yourself saying ‘I am too old to learn’, correct yourself before you set a bad example to those around you. Fact: you are not too old, you’re simply too stupid to admit that the subject does not interest you enough to be bothered to study it with sufficient effort!

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“Yes, you’re right!” (the trouble with ‘Yes men’) “A leader’s effectiveness is matched by their willingness to challenge and understand the views of others.”

I can think of three main reasons why people use this misleading phrase: one is simply to agree with whatever the person is saying because their mind is on something else and they cannot be bothered to engage in a discussion. Two, they genuinely agree with what has just been said. And three, they want to disagree but they are either too polite or scared because the person they are supposedly agreeing with is their boss.

‘Yes men’, as they are sometimes politically incorrectly referred to, can be a real pain and can cause all sorts of needless damage. I once inadvertently agreed something with the CEO of a company I was a board member of and he immediately set about arranging meetings with his key sales managers to discuss about reducing their bonuses. When I challenged him as to what he was doing he said, “Well, you agreed!” Indeed, I had, but I did not mean it literally, it was 154

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more of a principle thing, and anyway, I didn’t think he would really act on it. It was an expensive lesson for me.

Even the most confident leader has doubts sometimes and looks for people to share their ideas with. A strong sparring partner can save them a great deal of time and often helps them to take the topic to a deeper level quickly.

Unfortunately, there are far too many ‘yes men’ around.

Even without consciously knowing it we can become susceptible ourselves because agreeing with someone is much less hassle than rejecting their ideas head on. This is especially true of any topic that has a degree of uncertainty. Think about it. How many times last week did you say, “Yes, you’re right” without meaning it one hundred percent? And who did you say it to? They might be out and about acting upon ‘your advice’ right now and even endorsing it with your name!

One way of breaking the ‘yes you are right!’ habit is, the next time someone says it to you, challenge them. They won’t expect it. Ask them, “That’s interesting, what exactly was it in my argument that motivated you to agree so readily?” You never know, perhaps their answer might be useful? In any case it is very likely to encourage a more thoughtful response in the future!

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Fun in a structured environment “In leadership there is a constant need for balance between unbridled adventure and structured continuity.”

Question: ‘What is the difference between the song ‘Born to be Wild’ by Mars Bonfire (made famous by the band Steppenwolf) and the great ‘B Minor Mass’ from J.S. Bach?

There are a number of obvious answers, the first being length: Steppenwolf’s song takes only three and a half minutes to perform and the B Minor mass very much longer.

The B Minor Mass has, necessarily, a complex structure; Born to be Wild does not. The real difference is that one represents unbridled adventure and the other duty and sense of purpose. But both pieces of music portray the very passion of life and death in their deepest forms.

Motivational leadership involves balancing three basic but not necessarily conflicting elements: fun, work, and responsibility. The trouble is that, too often, we expect to be able to 156

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combine all three all of the time, the result of which is often a dissatisfied and unfulfilled workforce.

For the lucky few, work is fun but what about the majority?

We talk of success as having a ‘contented’ workforce and thus if contentment is to be our goal then we need to understand what that is.

For most of us, contentment at work comes largely from the feeling of being both appreciated and needed. This sentiment is usually only possible when we are working in an environment with a clear sense of structure, supported by a set of generally accepted guidelines. Creativity – that is to allow employees to be able to think and act in an expressive and individual way – is extremely important.

As in the B Minor Mass, it is its structure that guides and enables the composer to exercise an extreme level of creativity, giving the piece form and meaning.

Unfortunately, however, too many leaders think that creativity means having to encourage a collective responsibility and freedom by which all voices are heard and debated. The result of this approach is an ugly culture of compromise and bullying – workers councils against management, department heads and stakeholders battling it out against each other.

Leaders need to make choices; they need to empower individuals to investigate and take decisions, especially where any kind of change is desired.

In the spirit of ‘Born to be Wild’, we may have the drive to start up a new business or to take the company in a new direction, possibly even simply to take an existing business 157

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model and to restructure it in a new way: these things are ‘our’ adventures. They break up the dull routine we call management. An adventure is exciting, it is new and unknown, it nearly always involves risks and a hint of danger. We like what it is that stimulates the circulation of adrenaline around our bodies. Without an objective, structure and planning, adventures quickly become dull and too difficult. This tends to lead to mediocrity, reluctance, apathy, disappointment and, ultimately, failure.

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‘Innovation’. Is it just a buzz word?

“A business without innovation is like a bygone machine in a modern museum.”

Too many people mistake the word ‘invention’ with ‘innovation’. Invention is the creation of something totally new, whereas innovation is the taking of something that already exists and using or applying it in a new way. Put simply it can be seen as no more than the adaptation of an existing tool, product or process to suit a new and useful purpose. So why is it so hard for many leaders to ensure its rightful place in the heart of their companies?

At the age of 40, I was privileged to be the COO of a small but very innovative software company.

If you were to ask the design team of that company how come they always managed to beat the giant Texas Instruments, with its teams of literally hundreds of engineers, to the market with more innovative and better performing soft-

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ware, they would probably put it down to their super innovative and brilliant software development skills.

If you were to ask a similar question to the sales and marketing teams, they would put it down to their innovative techniques for finding the right clients and suppliers.

If you were to ask the finance department they would clearly say that it was largely down to the way that they could consolidate the financial book keeping of six legal entities in six countries in three continents in less than 30 days, using homemade spreadsheets and a simple database.

If you were to ask the CEO he would have put it down to his extraordinary talent for reading the future and delivering today what was required tomorrow.

As the company’s COO I believe it was partly my input into the creation of a diverse cultural environment that allowed open communication and the cross-fertilization of ideas from each of the company’s departments key disciplines.

As the company grew, the employee’s kitchen became too small to allow the sales and marketing people to sit around the same dinner table with the development team and finance. The CEO’s travel budget was increased so that he spent more and more time away visiting interesting people and companies all around the globe. At that point I could see things change and although I managed to ensure that each department still had the structure and space to remain innovative within itself, something special died within the company. There was less laughter and far less fun. The arrival of new investors on the scene put pressure on me to ensure that discipline was maintained at all times. Christmas p ­ arties 160

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were moved from home-grown events in the warehouse to formal restaurants in the local town. And so it is that this is the challenge of nurturing innovation in large companies with their departmental fortresses.

Innovation is as old as mankind itself. However, for it to flourish it requires leaders with the dedication and ability to establish and maintain environments where it can be stimulated and rewarded.

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On feeling brain dead “There’s nothing useful that comes from a tired mind. A lack of inspiration is nature’s way of telling us to take a break.”

Every once in a while, we all encounter short term memory loss; struggling to recall a name can be very annoying. But I find this not half as bad as trying to find the words to compose an important e-mail or come up with a simple solution to an important issue when ones creativity level has sunk to an all time low.

When you feel brain dead I recommend taking a short break. It is important to remember that we are not machines.

Walk away, do not think or focus on the issue at hand. Even a few minutes of peace and quiet can make a big difference.

See your time out as a kind brain re-set. Another cause can be a simple lack of oxygen. Open a window, take a walk outside for ten minutes and you can be right back up and firing on all cylinders again.

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in a divergent thought provoking activity such as studying a painting in detail. It can be the one in your office or in a hallway that you never take the time to notice. Or, if you prefer, listen to a piece of music that you have not heard for a while.

And if that still does not work, then give yourself a good talking to and apply some self-discipline. Give yourself five minute deadlines and assess progress accordingly. Forcing yourself to move on is important especially if you are the boss and there is no one around to give you a proverbial kick up the backside! (I always try and visualize the shareholders and what they might think if I met with them unprepared, or even worse what I would answer to a member of my family if they asked, “And what did you do at work today?�)

The coffee machine is a good place to go to, or even take a short walk around the office. I find watching others hard at work is a powerful motivator for me.

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Listen to good advice, but don’t follow it…

“Advice given too freely can prove to be the most expensive advice of all.”

When I was a young manager I used to encourage people to come to me for advice if they had a problem. I used to listen for a while and then tell them what I thought. Sometimes my enquirers would smile and say encouraging words along the lines of, “Thanks, that’s great advice. Just what I needed to hear.” But when we met again some time later, more often than not, it was pretty obvious that my advice had not been followed and their situations were not improved. Consequently, today I am much slower to offer advice, especially without a full briefing. After all, the people asking for it are mostly the very people I employ to solve my problems!

Typically, when we ask for personal advice we do so because of one, or more, of the five following reasons: 1. We are too lazy to work it out for ourselves. 2. We like the personal attention we receive. 3. We are too close to the issue to think and 164

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act rationally. 4. We like to have confirmed something we already know. 5. We need very specific advice from an expert.

However, when we truly desire to solve a problem, especially a business problem (which by their very nature are often complex), it is important to remind ourselves that unless we brief our advisor sufficiently (which when you think about it could easily take several hours) the chances are that our advisor will be guessing at a solution.

I believe that when we face a problem we should at least try to work out at least one plausible solution first, in order to establish a starting point for discussion. I do this by forcing myself to consider three of the most basic questions that apply to any problem: 1. What is the real problem? 2. How did it come about? 3. How will I know when it is solved?

These three simple questions take some effort to ­puzzle out, but the answer is in us somewhere. Talking them through with others often helps – but asking for advice without having tried yourself first will only lower other people’s image of you and possibly waste their time.

There is a big difference between asking for directions when lost and asking for advice to confirm where we are. A confident leader should normally only have one counsellor for each topic, but many colleagues with whom to debate.

There is a difference.

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Business Intelligence is not a luxury “You wouldn’t drive a car without dynamic real-time information. I wonder why so many leaders put up with less for their businesses.”

Imagine you are a fighter pilot in a fully equipped F16. You are flying high over enemy territory when suddenly there is a blip on your radar screen. Your on-board computer systems tell you that the blip is most likely another aircraft. But is it an enemy or a friend? Is its pilot coming to assist you or to blow you out of the sky? This is what business intelligence means to me.

Today, most company’s business intelligence systems can see a blip on their radar screen and, after some deliberation, can detect if the blip is another aircraft and if it is from their own squadron. But when it is not one of theirs, then they cannot be sure about anything. Thus, for leaders trying to run businesses with inadequate BI systems, fast global decisions

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can be risky and flawed, especially if they do not take into account all of their assets, resources and opportunities.

To win in a competitive market-place, leaders need to be able to detect enemy aircraft before they even leave the ground.

This might sound like a dream but well integrated global business intelligence systems can give this kind of advantage.

However the best BI systems are usually built on simple technology and based upon the following questions: what information do you need to have and why you do need to have it? What information matters and what is irrelevant? What are you going to do with the knowledge once you have it?

Just like the fighter aircraft’s computer systems, BI should be able to integrate external events with internal events and allow companies to create opportunities by making intelligent decisions, based on real data. A simple example could be the optimization of product pricing or the ability to trace instantly where in the world a product is in short supply and can thus be sold at a premium price, and where the same product is over stocked and being sold at knocked down prices.

When the balanced score card system was invented I thought that the world of business would dramatically change; unfortunately for most it has not moved on at all. Leaders need high quality and reliable information that is generated automatically from their business processes. Unfortunately this is too often not the case and they somehow get used to driving their businesses without a reliable and accurate dashboard in front of them.

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How alive are your employees?

“When we challenge ourselves and the way we do things we open our minds to whole new horizons of possibilities.”

Unless we receive regular challenging and inspirational input sooner or later we become dull and apathetic so why would we expect our employees to be any different?

In Brussels there is a charitable organization called ‘The Exchange Company Club’. It arranges experts from Belgium to spend time working on a voluntary basis for companies in the southern hemisphere which need expert help but have no way of being able to pay for it. Having engaged my consulting business with this organization, it got me wondering why more companies don’t do this.

To put it bluntly, no matter the company, I notice a common trend. After a number of years in the job, many employees become so insular that they are simply unable to imagine doing their jobs, or running their businesses, in any other way.

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Over the last decade or so the software company SAP has played a considerable part in challenging large companies to look seriously at their end to end business processes and to streamline them. Over time their software has been released in versions that are tailored for specific industries. However, no matter how similar one business might be to another, most have one thing in common: they believe (without really knowing) that they are different and that any other way of doing business would not work for them.

For most companies redesigning their business processes ‘in line with a software program’ is a challenging change of mindset and therein lies the danger. Alongside the many success stories there have been numerous disasters. In general these were not down to the technology but to the way that the projects were owned and managed. Too often it is the IT department, working with external consultants, that try to tell the business how it should be run. Resistance becomes endemic and business ownership flies out the window.

However, looking beyond this horizon, one of the problems lies in our lack of desire to look objectively at ourselves from another’s view point. When my children were at school their teachers used to organize school outings to local businesses, factories and museums. Apart from the adventure of a coach trip and a day off school, these trips encouraged the opening of young eyes. Opinions were formed and even career choices made in those early, informative days.

In the same way, it would make a refreshing change for long term employees and middle management to have the chance to visit other companies and even consider exchang169

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ing jobs for a few weeks. This could be safely done with either a similar, but non competitive, business, or by working for a small company in a developing country where the benefit of one’s input can be more than matched by the total experience and knowledge gained.

I believe that leaders should work with voluntary organizations such as ‘The Exchange Company Club’ and try to find ways to encourage their middle management to inject new ideas and life into their organizations while benefiting others at the same time. Just an idea!

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Pragmatism “Pragmatism is the element that encourages us to stop theorizing and to put a concrete plan into action. It is our desire to break down the complex into something understandable and manageable. It is the point where the application of common sense and logic takes over from concepts and beliefs.�

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T

he philosophical movement from which the word ‘Pragmatism’ or the ‘Pragmatic Maxim’ was derived was formulated by an American called Charles Sanders Peirce in the late nineteenth century. In 1878 he published an article called ‘How to make our ideas clear’, which was to form the entire basis for modern logical thinking. His work suggested the argument that if something works satisfactorily then it is true, meaning that the truth of an idea needs to be tested in order to prove its validity. And it is this ‘pragmatic’ approach that is a vital ingredient in all inspirational leaders. Concepts alone are not interesting to them because they cannot lead on the basis of a concept. A line of reasoning or faith is no longer enough.

To put it simply: you have an idea that you think might work, so you go about building a model to see if it will. Once you have witnessed it working, no matter how faintly, you can believe in it and can confidently share the idea with others to apply it to solve a specific problem.

The inspirational leader knows better than to rush in on the first brilliant idea they come across, no matter how good it sounds. They always need to see if their teams can and will use it – if it actually can make a difference. The challenge for them is more in finding the best way to describe it confidently, to show belief in it so that they can sell their plan to others less

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open to new ideas than they might be. In this way the idea becomes actual and visible and therefore much easier to accept.

Once an inspirational leader has faith in someone and knows that they can be trusted, as long as the person they have faith in can demonstrate how an idea they have will work, then they will give them all the support and encouragement they need to deliver, without further intervention and questioning.

Being confident, adaptable, emotionally intelligent and intellectually curious is all very well but at the end of the day you need to be pragmatic. There comes a time when the theorizing needs to stop and a plan of action is required.

This deep desire to switch from the conceptual to the real is the basis of the success of all inspirational leaders. It forms a window through which their followers can witness their vision in action. For this reason inspirational leaders are always looking for concrete metaphors and models to which they attach their story.

At first, most of their followers are sceptical. Gradually some follow and later (when their ideas look like realizing real benefit) the majority jump on board. Without pragmatism, the inspirational leader remains a theorist, a ‘number cruncher’ or even a geek.

This theory can be best defended by the fact that many, if not all, inspirational leaders take immense pleasure from what I call ‘hands on’ pastime activities. The CEO of a global multi-national once told me how he had spent the entire weekend repairing his daughter’s i-pod. He worked out how to dismantle it, without breaking the outer shell and replace 176

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the defective internal memory drive. “The trick”, he said, “was getting it back together again!”

I could imagine the mixture of both pride and disappointment on his daughter’s face when her father finally repaired it. On the one hand, she probably would have preferred a new i-pod to take to school, while on the other she must have been impressed with her father’s talents, even if it was at the cost of the attention of other family activities that weekend.

Another director I know rented himself a five-ton digger and through trial and error taught himself to operate it well enough to dig a pool in his back garden. Neither of these two leaders needed (or were trying) to save money, although they may have used that as an argument to justify their behaviour.

They just wanted to do something practical for a change, to take a pragmatic approach to solving a problem. In short, they wanted to set out and accomplish their own mini personal challenge.

I too have spent hours dismantling broken household goods in order to fix what often turns out to be an original design deficiency. Although I know very well that in possibly half the time it takes me I could have earned enough to buy three of the machines I am trying to fix, that is not the point; that is not why I do it. There is a complex pattern of intellectual and emotional activities in play here and probably best analyzed by someone more qualified to do so than I. Luckily for the shareholders, when it comes to pragmatism, our inspirational leaders derive as much pleasure and pride from observing their teams accomplish great things as indeed they would have had by doing it themselves. Mature 177

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leaders know that in their position, it is not necessary and even not right to get ‘hands on’ with an activity that can be just as effectively carried out by someone else. The art of feeling comfortable with suggesting a pragmatic solution instead of acting it out oneself, takes time to learn and years to practice.

So what is a pragmatist and what is it that is so special about the need to be pragmatic?

The pragmatist is the antithesis of the analyst; the pragmatist wants to take complexity and break it down into simple, understandable components that combine together to achieve a result. If the pragmatist is unable to explain something to someone in simple to understand terminology, then they know that most likely they do not yet fully understand it themselves. The pragmatists’ demand for simplicity and their deep understanding that the ‘greatest journey starts but with a single step’ is the core to their ability to communicate their passion for what needs to happen and why. It is their knowing that everything that is thinkable is possible, so long as it can be plotted out in a project plan and assigned resources.

In conclusion, sometimes the inspirational leader must blend the five elements to come up with the right chemistry to act. At other times he or she will deliberately suppress certain elements to utilize all their focus and energy in one direction.

Pragmatic planning, converting concepts into physical activity is one area where this is needed. However, as the inspirational leader matures, the simple knowledge that an idea is ready to be converted into a plan is enough for them. Finding the right person to take ownership of it and to make it happen becomes their only concern.

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An e-mail from my Mother “In the time we waste complaining about a problem we could often have implemented the solution.�

My mother replied to an e-mail in which I mentioned that my lawn mower was at the repairers, just when I needed it most.

In her reply she gave me seven valuable lessons in four lines of text. (At the time my mother was 80 years old and her own lawn was bigger than a full size tennis court, with additional grass paths and grass covered orchards).

Dear Harley, Can’t you borrow a mower from a neighbour, friend or relative?

I get my mowers serviced in the winter when it is 10% cheaper. I must admit that Judith takes it for me to where she gets her machines serviced. We cut all the grass today, using the big machine to pick up the leaves etc. Then I can use my mulcher, a smaller, manageable size with no grass box to empty, so much quicker.

Have a good weekend, Love Mum xxx

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Lesson I: Be resourceful Lesson II: Solve the real problem and stop complaining Lesson III: Plan ahead Lesson IV: Save on bottom line costs Lesson V: Delegate and get the task done Lesson VI: Be efficient; use the right tool for job Lesson VII: Put the right tools in the hands of the right people Nevertheless, here was my reply: Dear Mum, Me and grass, we have a love/ hate relationship – I try to ignore it and hope it goes away, it ignores me and keeps on growing!

Following your email I have put an annually reoccurring reminder in my computer to take the lawn mower in for a service on the first Saturday of December every year.

I think human evolution takes so long purely because the things we should do to improve, we don’t do – because for the most of us, planning ahead is not natural. In prehistoric times (and still today for the millions of those that are living on the edge) we lived for the now moment, each day, live or die.

In business I learned to plan ahead and have created elaborate planning and progress measuring systems – but in my private life, I simply want to go home, chill out, listen to the radio and drink a glass of white wine in the sunshine – all the rest is an unwelcome interruption.

Love Harley xxx

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I know my Mother; I know what she’s going to reply, ‘Harley, stop theorizing and just get on with it, if you plan smart – you won’t have to even cut the grass yourself…’

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Keep it simple “A leader needs to keep their team focused on achieving the desired result and not on the problems that seemingly prevent it.”

When we try to solve problems we often focus too much on the reasons why something cannot be done instead of focusing on the desired result. In times of such difficulties I remind myself of a story that happened to me a few years ago.

I was working in China. My client was in the closing stages of building a giant chemical production plant which was situated two and a half kilometres away from their regional head office. By coincidence, I had joined a technical meeting at the point where everyone present had seemingly exhausted all the options to solving what was obviously a complex problem. When I asked what the problem was I was told that twice a day a massive amount of data needed to be transferred between the plant’s production systems and the servers located in the regional head office. Apparently, none of their options worked: laying a dedicated cable apparently meant tunnelling under a competitor’s factory. Going 182

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around it would be way too expensive (and the cable would then be subject to damage from road building schemes and other forms of maintenance), using satellite or 3G technology would be too unreliable and far too expensive.

The participants were close to panicking. It was then that I noticed a Chinese construction worker cycling past on his bicycle. “Why can’t you do it manually?” I asked. “Why not simply download the data onto an external hard drive and have someone cycle with it to office? If you are worried about risk, download the data onto two hard drives and have two cyclists, one in reserve – just in case?”

As far as I know, to this day the bicycle method is still being used!

For the pragmatic leader the focus should always be on the desired result and not the problem itself. If subsequently someone finds a more durable solution, then so be it but, if there is suggestion on the table that works, take a decision and move on.

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Who are ‘they’?

“Too many of us give up before we even begin and in doing so, we look for the reassurance of others to confirm that it is the right thing to do.”

“That’s a great idea but they would never allow it”, “they would never accept it”, “they simply would never agree”. I hear the ‘they’ word used so often these days that I begin to wonder who ‘they’ are and why ‘they’ are so damned negative?

In some cases, the various phrases that tend to surround the word ‘they’, can mean ‘please don’t bother me with a solution; I am just in a self-indulgent mood and want to bring you down to my level’. And yet, more often than not, people simply use it as a very weak excuse for inaction. The people blaming inactivity on others do not want to hear your solution or advice because they have no intention of trying to bring about the change it implies.

When you think about it, abandoning a creative idea by blaming figurative groups of people for something you have not even bothered to consult them about is quite simply ridic-

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ulous. Apathy and lack of ownership can all too easily become the norm and hold back important initiatives.

My advice is whenever you hear the ‘they’ word, challenge it and encourage your colleagues to do likewise. Ask “Who are ‘they’? What are their functions in the company and why do you think ‘they’ would block you?” Remind the person who uses ‘they’, that if their idea is sound, if it has been well thought through and has received a degree of verification, then it is simply their duty to at least try to get support for it.

It seems that once we have left full time education, the pressures and responsibilities of daily life entrench us with an inner fear of failure. The enterprising spirit that won us our job in the first place seems to diminish with each passing year. And yet we know that nothing worth achieving was ever achieved by anyone without them having to face up to opposition. Opposing is, after all, what we humans are frighteningly good at. We enjoy putting each other down, we even put ourselves down, making ourselves feel small and insignificant, until eventually we decide that it is easier to give up before we even begin. After all who wants to make a fool of themselves by being turned down, especially in public?

Having an idea rejected in business is not as emotionally draining as being rejected by a teenage sweetheart and yet many employees act as if it is and do everything to avoid it.

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No water in the hospital!

“Sometimes, ‘what the eye does not see, the heart does not desire,’ is the best way forward.”

A hospital’s technical maintenance team was facing a dilemma. A section of the main water inlet pipe that supplied water to all the hand basins and toilets needed to be replaced.

The amount of time estimated to complete the work was expected to be less than two hours, no complications were envisaged. However it would mean cutting off the water supply for the duration of the work.

Following the rules of the hospital, a notice had to be sent out via email to the entire workforce informing them of the planned outage. A meeting was set up with those who responded to discuss the impact of the impending outage. Ten people came to the meeting, each representing their department and its interests. The impact analysis debate, including agreement on the best way forward lasted for nearly three hours. The outcome was that buckets of water had to be filled and placed next to every toilet. Each department was to have an additional supply of bottled water equalling a minimum of 186

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one bottle per bed and one bottle for every member of staff on duty. Each hand basin was to have a five litre bottle of water under it for use during the outage.

Additional buckets were purchased and bottled water, too.

It took two man days to distribute the water into position.

When the outage was over, which lasted one hour and thirty five minutes, the team spent another man day collecting all the buckets and bottles. Surprise, surprise, not a single bucket of water was used, neither was the bottled water. During the outage the maintenance team received two phone calls asking when the water would be re-connected. Now you might think that being a hospital, this is normal and that perhaps there are important medical machines relying on the incoming water supply? But you would be wrong. In this hospital, like most others, machines requiring water have their own sterilized supplies coming from dedicated sources.

Before the days of debate and company directives, when the technical team wanted to cut off the water, they just did it. And, when people phoned to report that they had no water the answer was simply: “Yes, sorry about that, but we have a problem down here; we’re fixing it right now. Please be patient; we are doing all we can. If you need water very urgently, we have some bottles available if you can send someone to collect them.” When everything returned to normal, the members of the maintenance team were seen as heroes and were made to feel highly appreciated because they had repaired the problem!

Leadership is about empowering individuals to take ownership; to assess risk, to balance arguments and opinions and to take decisions, sometimes unilaterally – even daring 187

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to change or break ‘rules’ when it makes sense to do so. True inspirational leaders are not frightened to ensure that pragmatic common sense becomes part of the culture of their companies. They instinctively know that they need to emphasize the importance of learning from observation and encourage the reduction of the relatively modern (and expensive) tendency of having everybody involved in deciding on everything.

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Perfectionists “It is better to build something that actually works than to design something that in theory could work even better.”

I once worked for a boss in London who kept pushing me to ever higher standards, much higher than he held for himself.

He was the worst boss I have ever had, not just because he was so demanding but because he never showed any respect for me or, indeed, for any of his employees. He didn’t like us and we didn’t like him.

For many perfectionists, no matter what you do or how you do it, it is never going to be good enough. The constant eroding away of one’s self confidence usually ends up with high levels of frustration and the perfectionist having an everincreasing workload.

I have been described as ‘difficult’ and as a perfectionist but I like to feel that there is a difference between encouraging people to push themselves to find new levels of excellence and constantly taking the attitude that one could either have

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done it better oneself or obtained a better result by giving it to someone else.

If you think you might be a perfectionist then there is only one key question that should concern you: do you have a deep respect for the talent that surrounds you? If the answer is yes then there probably is no real issue. It might just mean that from time to time you simply need to re-learn the Pareto principle or ‘80/20 rule’ (focus on delivering the few key points that deliver the most results).

I have created a list of characteristics to detect perfectionists who go beyond the boundaries of acceptability (in a position of leadership).

Perfectionists: -- Constantly analyze every situation -- Make detailed plans that only they seem to follow -- Think they communicate but forget to use their ears -- Are completely binary: ‘it must be like this because’ -- Are generally not popular, very few people want to have lunch with them Every leader needs a reliable sounding board to challenge and identify pitfalls. However perfectionists operate best as loners, rather than leaders. Perfectionists with an inherent disregard of those around them can still be gainfully employed, as (for example) safety auditors, detectives, financial analysts or even as artists or poets. But I personally would not recommend one to a position of management or leadership.

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Planning for the inevitable “In the land of the optimists, the analyst is King.”

Planning for the inevitable is, for many people, tiresome but sustainable leadership demands it.

While preparing for a “get away” holiday to the Arctic Circle and Lapland (to find some inner peace and live the experience of driving my motorbike through nothingness for fifteen days) I could foresee some inevitables for my project.

I do not mean the blatantly obvious ones such as the need for hotels and meals etc, but more the predictable side effects of the project, such as: my companion and I may get hopelessly lost; will certainly become cold, wet, tired and irritable, possibly bored and most likely sick (headaches, upset stomachs, insect bites, muscle pain etc.). We may end up in a hopeless search for a petrol station, or having to repair a bike on a remote road somewhere.

In business projects, as in private ones, it is important to try and anticipate the inevitable and to be sure that ­‘unforeseens’ are not something you could or should have anticipated.

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moments of extreme anxiety, moments where your sponsor’s happy and appreciative face will turn to disappointment or even anger. Your team will become bored (when everything is going smoothly) and exhausted and demoralized (when stress rules for too long). Suppliers will deliver late when they feel that the pressure is easing off. It is these inevitables that are rarely written into project plans but yet, if included, can make a tremendous difference. Of course we do not know when exactly these things will occur, but they will occur (if not on this project, then certainly in the next one) and when they do we will have a strategy ready for them.

I am not suggesting that you should plan for everything.

However, inspirational leaders tend by their nature to be optimists, so a few ‘sanity checks’ here and there make perfect sense. Pragmatic anticipation without becoming bogged down with contingencies and risk assessments for absolutely everything is the best way forward.

Life should be spontaneous. Within the contradiction of this essay lies the balance between control-obsessed management and the ‘keep cool, everything’s going to be alright, just chill’ approach. The closer you are to the cool spectrum the more adaptive you can be. Last minute corrections for things which experience should have warned you about are simply irresponsible and unprofessional.

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Planning, Strategy and Provisions “To realize a vision you need a strategy, to make it happen you need a plan.”

Every professional knows that the secret to obtaining a successful result lies, for a very large part, in good planning. And I, for one, would say nothing to suggest otherwise.

I imagine, based upon the laws of averages, that there may be some people for whom everything goes to plan but for most of us, this is clearly not the case. This does not, however, mean that things necessarily turn out for the worse; quite the contrary, even with our biggest setbacks comes new hope and new ideas.

Therefore, both in our business and in our personal life, there is no point in making very detailed, long term plans for the future. If you have ambition and you know what you want you should set out a strategy – not a plan – to reach it.

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to be constantly adjusted and revised in order to keep the long term vision in sight.

However, more important than plans are provisions. We need just enough provisions to keep us going through the rough times but not too much that they weigh us down or make us lazy. And this is the delicate balance that most leaders face.

Tip: When planning for the future, think in terms of strategy and not detailed plans. And when you have your strategy, be prepared to adapt it if keeping it risks not achieving what you set out to achieve. However, never compromise on ensuring you have sufficient provisions. Only a fool sets off relying solely on hope.

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Torturous Meetings “The measure of a company’s culture can often be found within its meetings.”

Sometimes, in the literal meaning of the word (Torture: Noun. (Collins Dictionary) ‘To cause mental anguish’) meetings can be considered torturous.

Meetings that have no agenda or recognisable structure and thus apparently no purpose, which seldom produce concrete decisions or even a list of actions, quite frankly drive me crazy with frustration. These are the meetings where you are supposedly invited to attend for your expertise but where you quickly realize that your expertise is the one thing that is not going to add any value.

I know of a company with an ‘open meeting’ policy (where people are free to attend meetings more or less as they wish) so if someone has nothing to do they can look at the list of meetings for that day and simply ‘drop in’.

Meetings are important but they are too often responsible for the single biggest waste of resources that any company has. I am still amazed that companies put in tremendously 195

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restrictive procedures for purchasing a new mobile phone or lap top computer and yet allow anyone to invite any number of people for a meeting of more than an hour, without even insisting on protocols and guidelines.

It is the responsibility of leaders to ensure that every meeting under their influence should comply to an absolute minimum requirement, namely every meeting must have a clear and realizable objective. Each person should be aware of the objective prior to accepting the invitation. Once the objective is reached the meeting should be terminated and the participants thanked and excused. If the meeting reaches the end of its time limit, a short review should take place to see if the objective has been achieved and an action plan agreed if it hasn’t.

Being ‘forced’ (when it is unacceptable or impolite to walk out) to sit through tedious meetings which deliver little or no result, is a kind of torture for me, especially when I think of all the useful things the participants could be doing instead.

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Clearing up before the cleaner comes “Anticipation is the best preparation for a meeting where a decision is expected.”

I don’t suppose that my wife and I are the only ones that tidy up before the cleaner comes. I know some may laugh and ask, ‘Why are you cleaning when you have a cleaner?’ My reply would be, “I am not cleaning, I am just clearing up before the cleaner comes!” The difference is subtle but it makes all the difference, especially in management.

When I was a young business leader I had a strict opendoor policy. People could wander in, bringing their troubles and ideas with them as they pleased. Today my door is kept shut, except by appointment, unless there is something extremely urgent; and why is this?

I found that if you have a real ‘open door’ it is very hard to get any work done; one is always interrupted. In the days when my door was always open, people just wandered in and expected me to solve all their problems whenever they had 197

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them. The better I became at it, the lazier they became. However, the real issue was that if I offered a solution to their problem, they went away happy. If it turned out well it became ‘their solution’, if it turned out badly it was always mine. I lost out, no matter the outcome. When you think about it, this scenario boils down to a question of efficiency and respect.

It’s only too obvious that a few hours, or even minutes of preparation should not be too much to ask when expecting someone else to offer their advice.

Working at senior management level teaches us the importance of preparation. The importance to encourage one’s staff to think the problem through, to look at it from all sides: ‘How would the finance director see it?’ ‘What would the sales director say?’ ‘Would the marketing director back it, what arguments could they use to attack it or defend it?’ Etc. etc.

My recommendation is to insist on basic preparation before accepting requests for advice on how best to solve a specific problem. I ask my enquirer to prepare a presentation of the problem in five PowerPoint slides: slide 1 – the problem, slide 2 – two or three alternatives, slides 3 & 4 – the for’s and againsts for each alternative and slide 5 – the conclusion, suggesting the best way to progress. With this system, as if by magic, the solution is mostly solved before it even enters my room.

Leaders need to lead. They need to respect their managers and staff enough to have them use their brains and draw their own analytical conclusions; after all that is what they are paid for. Leaders should act as mirrors. They should also endeavour to keep above the chores of daily business life, only dip198

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ping down into the details once in a while to be sure their footings are still on secure ground.

And so it is with my cleaner. How can the floor be swept if it has boxes and bags on it? How can the worktops be cleaned efficiently if they have last night’s wine glasses and dinner plates upon them? It all comes down to a simple matter of anticipation, efficiency and respect.

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Keeping your network loyal “We are not chosen for our leadership skills alone but also for the breadth and loyalty of our network.”

No leader becomes a leader without sponsors (people who recognize special talent worth nurturing and promoting).

However, most leaders know that they are chosen not just for their qualities and skills but also for their network: their ability to make immediate contact with people and organizations which can have a beneficial impact on the organization they work for. These typically include such groups as loyal customers, suppliers, government bodies, academia, trade associations, user groups, competitors, publishers and the press – who ever can help them lead with greater authority and effectiveness.

Understandably this wide-ranging network takes a great deal of maintenance. A leader’s contact database can easily run into literally thousands of names and addresses. With the help of technology, a PA and an approach plan, a high percentage of these people can be kept close at hand for when

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needed, without their ever feeling used or neglected. Managing your network and fan club is a science in itself.

So I was very intrigued to learn that Singapore Airlines use a system called ‘contact points’ to ensure their customer service is best of class. There are lessons to be learned here, not only for leaders but also for their customer service departments and PR agencies.

The Singapore Airlines philosophy of customer service is based on ensuring that every contact with their customers is analyzed, scored for effectiveness and then seen how it can be improved. Singapore Airlines have apparently recognized 150 contact points with their customers (from purchasing a ticket to saying good bye at the destination airport) and assuming that they have optimized each one so that it is better than their competitors, then it is no wonder Singapore Airlines is considered by many the most appreciated airline in the world.

The objective is to improve the experience for the receiving party to such an extent that they always come back for more. I have tried to adopt this attitude in recruitment for a long time. After all, when you interview an interesting candidate you want them to choose you and not someone else.

Now I am looking to see how it can be applied to one’s business network.

The problem is that this idea can be extended and extended until you go mad trying to flatter and please everyone. For example, apparently Singapore Airlines cabin crew have to look after 10 customers each (I guess this only applies to Business and Premier Plus), and each cabin crew member needs to know their customer’s names off by heart. The idea is that 201

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the steward’s or stewardess’es first contact point begins with: “Oh, you must be Harley Lovegrove? Welcome on board!”

(They know my name because glued to the inside of their left palm they have a little list of names of their passengers with their seat numbers – hence the need for the “you must be …” line – because I imagine people are often sitting in the wrong seat). Although this attention to detail gives the passenger the ‘rock star’ feeling, one cannot help feeling cheated by it; it’s all a bit false.

To conclude, I can’t help underlining the value of reexamining one’s contact points to identify which ones can be improved. After all, obtaining loyalty can be very beneficial, as long it does not become superficial and loses sight of the value to both parties in the process.

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Never done a days work in my life “Work is like any addiction; just because we can’t resist, it does not mean it’s good for us.”

I don’t know what it is that drives me on, that makes me want to get up and creep down to my home office before the household awakes. “Are you working again?” “No dear, just checking some e-mails…”

I don’t like my job, I love it. And because of this I don’t always know whether I am working or not.

For a self employed person, work can usually be measured by the amount of invoiced hours. But in my case, the little gaps of time I set aside for relaxing somehow become filled with unforeseen tasks that will not rest until they are put into action.

For employees, there is the addiction of not being able to resist reading emails on the company mobile phone, or thinking about work during leisure moments while in the company of others. So what is it that drives busy people on?

What is it that tells us that our work is never done?

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At school I was a lazy boy. Full of dreams, I filled my days with visions of an adult life full of fun and freedom. But somewhere between then and now my dreams have largely become my work.

Everyone talks about getting the balance right, about being able to switch off and relax. I can do that, but I cannot keep it up for long. Sooner or later the nagging foreman of life taps me on the shoulder reminding me that playtime is over; that there are bills to be paid and a group of people waiting for me back in the office. But are they?

If work means continuing to do something against my will then I am not sure I know what work is. It seems that sooner or later I always end up enjoying whatever it is that I do. That’s why I have never done a day’s work in my life.

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the end

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Harley lovegrove is a business leader, change manager, motivational speaker, life coach and author. His client list includes multinationals such as: levi strauss and Bayer Materialscience but he also likes to spend time working with smaller organizations, helping their leaders to realize the full potential within them.

Harley also lectures in some of the top business schools of europe on the subjects of Change Management, leadership and Interim Management. today Harley lives in Belgium with his wife and three cats. He publishes a weekly e-newsletter and is working on his third book, ‘Managing Change’, due out in the autumn of 2012. other titles by Harley lovegrove: ‘Making A Difference’ (also published in dutch under the title: ‘Maak het verschil’). www.Harleylovegrove.com

What is it that differentiates an everyday manager with an inspirational leader? What makes inspirational leaders so special and how can you know if you have what it takes to go to the next level, if you are not there already? In this moving and hard to put down book, Harley lovegrove explores the five essential elements that all leaders must utilize to become, and remain, an inspiration to others.

Cor loots, vice president Business Improvements & new Business operations, levi strauss Harley’s done it again! In this his latest book, he offers people-driven managers/leaders the chance to learn from his long experience ‘in the field’. no theoretical nor pure consultancy talk, but ‘real life’- and livedthrough lessons from a real business professional. a must read! georges anthoon, executive director Human resources, axa Bank & Insurance this book will inspire leaders to walk the talk, and associates to ensure (even request!) that their managers lead by example and demonstrate confidence, emotional intelligence, pragmatism, adaptability and intellectual curiosity. regis Mulot, vice president Hr International, staples Inc. at the end of the first decade of the twenty first century a new generation of leaders is emerging. leaders that have many followers but very few employees. leaders that need to show vision and inspire creativity without having the traditional line of authority. the essential elements of Inspirational leadership that Harley prescribes are as relevant for this new generation of ‘virtual’ leaders as for any other. ‘Inspirational leadership’ is a truly thought provoking and inspiring book. dries Buytaert ph. d., Founder and project lead drupal, co-founder and Cto acquia

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