ISSUES OF LEADERSHIP

I’ve just finished Robert Harris’ “Dictator,” the last in his quadrilogy of books on Cicero. It’s about leadership as much as about Cicero. We have a smorgasbord of leadership types. Cicero himself, Pompey, Mark Anthony, Octavius and the so called, self-styled God called Julius Caesar, clearly insane but brilliant at building a fighting force of employees through non-stop action making all of them feel that they are irreplaceable and unstoppable.

Ernest Saunders at Guinness was a bit like that…he had the best foot soldier/marketers any general/CEO in business ever had. Talk to them now and they are still in awe of each other, of what they achieved with “the black stuff” as they called Guinness and having been part of the highest performing team they could remember.

The conversation about leadership is thrown into relevance by Davos where the movers and shakers are gathering like sleek vultures. The recently published Ipsos Mori Veracity Index which has been charting levels of public trust in various professions for 32 years is even more relevant.
Business leaders are now amongst the least trusted groups. As Matthew Parris spluttered in Saturday’s Times:- “the typical FTSE CEO makes 183 times more than their average employee…” Leadership is being measured, he implies, by how much they earn not by how effective they are.

What do we really expect from leaders?

In the Roman Republic they spent most of their time trying to construct checks and balances to avoid the Julius Caesar “I am God” problem. We spend our time today trying to create images of leadership perfection. Tim Cook, Charlie Mayfield, Howard Schultz and so on but whichever way it’s not going to be a long list.

When Tony Hayward ex BP CEO and running that business during the Deepwater Horizon crisis took a "day off" to see Bob, his co-owned boat, participate in the Round the Island yacht race off the Isle of Wight with his son saying he wanted to get “his life back”. In truth he was paid all those millions not to have a life of his own.

Leaders are needed to be different things in different situations. We choose the leaders we think we need. Churchill in 1940; Reagan in 1981; Thatcher in 1979; Blair in 1997. Sometimes we need inspirers, sometimes martinets, sometimes healers, sometimes role models and sometimes visionaries.

Reflect on the deluges that came after Lord Browne, Tim Leahy, Justin King, Alex Ferguson, Marjorie Scardino … and increasingly we realise leadership is as much to do with luck as skill.

To understand the role of leader, watch this Ted Talk:-



This a stunning story about conductors and styles of leadership from Itay Talgam, the Israeli Conductor and Business Consultant. It’s both insightful and very funny.

But don’t people need the smack of strong leadership…people like Trump and Putin?

No. I think people need leaders who manage to draw the best out of them…who make them surprise themselves.

Surely the age of the bully-leader is over.