Leadership Skills: Are Not a Solution on Their Own – But It’s a Bloody Good Start!

When a certain word is used in every second sentence twisted and used in all contexts, it starts to get very confusing for all of us and it starts to get annoying.

Leadership as personal development has rapidly become one of these words. Simply because it is presented as being the sole solution to everything that causes problems in a company which, in my view, it is not if there is a lack of implementation and omission of making the changes that must be made. The word leadership have now developed into a buzzword.

Rarely have we seen so much published over a concept in such a massive, complex, and aggressive way that makes all of us sound like idiots and failures if we do not immediately sign up to acquire all these “proper” personal leadership skills. To add to the confusion, there appears to be so many variations of what the most important qualities are for leaders or the types of leadership that it, for most of us, seems like a task that is mostly relevant for big organisations, which is not true. It is, however, a two-edged sword because on one hand the debate displays a lot of shortcomings in many organisations, but on the other hand it just become overwhelming for a lot of SME business owners that are already trying to do their best.

Leadership is promoted like a new concept, a magic wand that all the sudden appeared out of nowhere. This could not be further from the truth as there is absolutely nothing new in it. In fact, is quite the opposite as it has been one of the most well-researched concepts since its introduction in 1970’s where leadership was introduced as a part of the concept people management and later seemed to replace it completely. Today there is in my view an overtly exaggerated focus on leadership as personal skills and a complete neglect of capturing the organisation and management of it that is required to make leadership operational and embedded in company culture.

The danger in getting swamped by all these adverts and articles of varying quality about leadership is that we get so fed-up reading about it that we ignore it or worse gets insecure and feel like failures. There are indeed important lessons to be learned for all of us, not because we do everything wrong, far from it, but because we want to become better leaders/persons. However we need these learnings and practice changes to be seen as meaningful in our everyday business and we want to learn in small steps according to the relevance of this for our level of personal development and the relevance it has for our own business – nothing more and nothing less.

What is leadership and management then?

Definition of Leadership by Stephen R Covey: “Leadership is communicating to another person their worth and potential so clearly they are inspired to see it themselves.” And excerpted from the ADRP6-22 Army Leadership: “Leadership is the process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organisation.”

Definition of Management: “The control and organisation of a business and its employees.”

It is these definitions that I am referring to in this article.

There is good and bad Leadership! The definitions of leadership make it very clear that how well we do this is completely dependent on how well we interact with other people. It is the way we behave and our attitudes towards people. This means that these skills are residing in our personality and only we can decide if we want to change that existing version of ourselves. Because these skills are personality dependant and therefore individual, it is not difficult to see that we are all at different stages and levels of our intrapersonal development. This is the major reason for the enormous focus on personal skills in the debate and because everybody wants to stand out, the weighting of skills varies a great deal. ?

Let’s just briefly remind ourselves that all consultancies, universities, and coaches are industries that have also been hit hard by the pandemic and now need to make up for lost revenue just like every other industry. ?Let’s also remind ourselves that we have all been through hell and back in worrying about our near and dear ones, our own health, our customers, our employees and our cashflow. This worry was enhanced by the increasing uncertainty, employees back to work, work from home, health and safety in the workplace, repeated restrictions, and lots more! The time is right to focus on these skills but also the management of the leadership!

Leadership as a personal quality is the starting point and to be honest by far most of the problems, we experience in our business the successful outcome is indeed depending on our leadership qualities. But to be adequate it must be appropriately implemented through the management of the business. ?

The model shows the characteristics of organisations that are traditionally managed versus organisations that have leadership completely implemented. But companies and leaders can be anywhere in between at all levels this is usually the cause of problems. Particularly if the organisation believes it has a high degree of people orientation (leadership) but still manages all or part of its operation according to traditional management.?

Many good intentions in organisations fail because they are never completely implemented. Some of the changes that are required to move towards a leadership culture can be quite profound depending where the company is on the scale of people orientation (see the model above). To make the right changes also requires a close look at the structure, organisation, and processes already in place. To find the gaps that needs improvement is best done through dialogue with the employees. All businesses have their own structure and organise things differently e.g., its own policies, its own processes, its own values written and unwritten, its own visons, its own communication system, its own mission etc all of which reflects the actual leadership/management culture to all stakeholders. It is not difficult to imagine what can happen if there is lack of consistency or a disconnect between the desired leadership and the management of it. This is for example one of the biggest causes of underperformance and high staff turnover rate.

Some ways of organising the work seems to be new to a lot of us SME business owners as we have little experience in this area such as how to manage people working from home or in combined models. Leadership personal skills on its own will not provide a solution to this, but a willingness to make changes in the organisation, starting the dialogue with staff, learning from others and experimenting will. The truth is some businesses have worked in this fashion for decades, but because at the time it seemed of little importance to many of us, we ignored it. The experience of working from home amongst employees and changes in their priorities and wants clashed head on with the old management style when companies tried to force people back to work in the office 9-5 five days a week this is the very reason for The Great Resignation. Focus on leadership as a personal skill has great significance it just cannot live and thrive without the management of it.

Things are changing fast today therefore the greater collaboration and consistent dialogue there is in an organisation between all stakeholders the more flexible and dynamic the company will be in the response to these changes, if the structure and the way they organise the work is supporting the leadership. Neither can we allow ourselves neglecting to learn from other businesses that do things better than us even if we must get help to do it and we must truly accept that we do not know everything if we want our business to do well.

If you after reading this article, feel the need to have an open chat because you are stuck in a small or big way in going forward and growing your business, then do not hesitate to send me an email on [email protected] or give me a call on mobile 07398419889. We will have an informal meeting via Zoom free of charge about your concerns and discuss how I can be of assistance.

Anna Jensen

Director & Founder

Business Navigation Global Ltd

HELPING BUSINESS OWNERS TO REDUCE COMPLEXITY IN GROWING THEIR BUSINESS