What is leadership?

By Steve Colenbrander

Leadership is defined as the action of leading a group of people in an organisation.

I have been fortunate to have worked with many leaders over the years. Many of them have been entrepreneurs who were not only instrumental in starting successful businesses, but also proved to be effective leaders in their field.

Effective leadership is always the prime objective, and this requires trust. All stakeholders must work in a constructive and trustworthy environment. Trust is paramount.

Leadership also requires empathy. A leader must have empathy for the people they lead. Empathy is not a form of weakness but rather understanding what an individual needs to reach their full potential.

A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to engage with the Chairman of HSBC Bank. I asked him what the secret of leadership was, he named three things: courage, clarity, and humanity.

Courage is critical in the decision-making process. Effective leaders make decisions and do not hesitate or procrastinate. It is better to make nine good decisions and one bad decision, than no decisions at all.

These leaders crave clarity and communicate well. They delegate properly and do not abdicate. Poor instructions are an abdication. Giving clear instructions is effective delegation.

Building long term and sustainable relationships is crucial. The primary role of an effective leader is to engage with their customers and make sure that their customers are satisfied. Leaders must be approachable enough that customers can feel at ease contacting them.

You do not need to micromanage to produce great teams. You can tell capable people what to do and not necessarily how to do it, and you will nearly always be pleasantly surprised. Trust that your employees know how to perform their assigned tasks, sometimes even better than you can. ?

Effective leaders are reliable and timeous. They also understand that ambition is not competitive or aggressive. Ambition is the desire to expand beyond the status quo.

Effective leaders are confident in their own ability and calibrate their ego to ensure that the collective is better than themselves. They do not listen to too many voices which causes confusion.

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others,” Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric.

Effective leaders are resilient, not just in the short term but permanently resilient. They need to take punches and bounce back quickly. They make things happen. No fuss, no drama – just do it. Effective leaders are energetic. They do not necessarily have to run in the front, but they need to marshal with passion.

In conclusion, when you become a leader, success is all about growing others. Effective leaders promote and encourage an attitude of enablement and ownership. Essentially, successful leadership is about the leader and his competitiveness and ego, but that competitiveness and ego must be carefully woven into servant leadership, putting others first.