WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?

We’ve been hearing a lot about leadership, that Corbyn is a weak leader, that Johnson is a decisive leader (albeit a bit of a rascal.) At Christmas we’re told about the burning need for a leader 2000 year ago. But I no longer think we really understand what a leader is.

Is it the command-and-control, “follow me” hero who storms the hill? Is it the charismatic,  inspiring thought-leader or is it anyone who has a title which automatically confers on them respect and deference?

The old fashioned concept of leader like Elizabeth 1st, Churchill and Thatcher is not what is needed today. Indeed different businesses in different conditions require different leadership skills.  It’s this that makes me loathe the absurd Alan Sugar’s depiction of leader.

We have too many examples of Attila the Hun in the boardroom and few leave businesses in good  shape. Martin Sorrell is rumoured to have called his Chief Executives on Christmas morning not, as they’d hoped, to wish them the season’s greetings but to ask them why their staff to turnover ratio had slipped by a % point in December.

Phil Green, Harriet Green and Steve Jobs were successful as leaders for a while but at what cost? Values take a kicking when the “number” is the only thing that counts.

Modern business is more like football than chess. The flow of play that a well organised team can achieve is what counts. My sense is that most businesses need to have executive teams where everyone knows their role and who are all aligned to achieve the same objective.

Winning with style and purpose. Author and academic Jim Collins defined “Level Five Leaders” as the holy grail. He describes it as comprising:-

“a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organization and its purpose, not themselves.”

The idea of selflessness has always been locked into the philosophy of the Civil Service where the importance of the role is rewarded in generous pension arrangements rather than big salaries. But in general Civil Servants are what it the title says “servants” not “leaders”.

The idea of employees – as obedient factotums not as people showing initiative and freedom of thought – is especially appealing to the old fashioned leaders with a military bent for command and control. But unfortunately for them we have spent a generation encouraging creativity.  The upside of this is the surge in new inventions and breakthroughs in all the tech sectors. Wouldn’t we rather have a bunch of wealth creating geniuses motivated with “concierge-management” - great food, services and a stress free lifestyle rather than a controlling leader?

Great leaders will leave great legacies or achieve the unexpected but above all they’ll get the best out of their people who’ll  be coached into being great, dedicated followers.

Followership matters more than leadership now. The task is to make them believe following is worthwhile. That’s what leaders do.

YA BOO SUCKS

I came back from what turned out to be a slightly longer summer break than I’d intended feeling genial. Genial is an old fashioned sort of pork pie, pint and pickles word – genial is not about being pleased with oneself but it’s having that feeling  of viewing  life in a calm, tolerant and good-natured way.

Even the news about the economy was better and the long term forecasters, genially in praise of population growth, suggest that going as things are we’ll be the no. 2 economy in Europe soon and even possibly overtake Germany by the middle of the century.

So what’s not to smile about?

Quite a lot apparently if you are a member of the far right anti-Europe Tory brigade, the Tea Party in America or the Golden Dawn in Greece (notice how I’ve willy-nilly thrown together these unhappy bed fellows into the grumpy sleeping bag.)

This right wing crowd are characterised by extreme bad manners, a refusal to play by the rules and a strong sense of self-righteousness. Most of all they won’t take no or even yes for an answer – they all have to have the last word. So you might say they are behaving in quite a childish way.

This makes me speculate that Mr Cool - Barack Obama – who is calmly saying “no” at present, probably wishes he lived in Greece because what he’d do then is lock the Tea Party up, ban them and pretend they didn’t exist.

Is he lacking in leadership? Well he isn’t a Thatcher or a Churchill or a George Bush for sure. But all of them were actually pretty unpopular from time to time in their day.

It’s been argued that the absence of leadership – so widely lamented – is partly due to a failure of “followship”. We, the electorate, have become unherdable cats or horses (if you prefer) who, when it comes the crunch, won’t drink.

And modern media adds to the trouble because wrong and right both demand and get equal billing, so it’s really difficult to keep focused on principle and stay calmly on the track you promised.

Especially as Armageddon beckons.

And finally Luke Johnson – who created Pizza Express and writes insightfully on management has lambasted the far from genial Lord Sugar and the crowd on Dragon’s Den. Their behaviour is inhibiting a new generation of entrepreneurs because witnessing the witless and greedy being torn to shreds by the cruel and rude is not what they want from their lives.

It seems to me a bit of geniality all round might not go amiss. I’m not going to align with the band War’s song “why can’t we be friends?” but it really seems endless playground confrontation is becoming  tiresome and unproductive.

So there.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

We'll never win the argument like this

 I once saw a cartoon of a guy standing in front of a white board writing out a long very complex equation…he’s pauses around the middle puts in some dots and says “ah! At this point there’s a kind of leap of faith.” And here’s another….

I see that a leap of faith, or worse an assumption that everyone else should know what comes next, in the continuingly abortive argument in defence of the arts.

I heard a leading member of the arts – I knew he was from the arts by the way because he was lean and spare like a triathlete (I’ll explain that shortly) -  who said he’d fight tooth and nail to avoid having to prove the arts was an economic generator. That’s a bit like a Bishop saying he’d fight tooth and nail to avoid having to prove Christ rose from the dead it being so obvious to him that it was beneath him to revert to anything as tawdry as proving it – proof?  Pah! Beneath him.

So the economic case for the arts has not been heard (albeit it may have been made.) In Birmingham recently a Councillor said “Yes. I know you’re right but I need more evidence to sell it to others.”  Whilst in the Nesta paper of April 2013 “A manifesto for the creative economy”, it was said:- ”the economic argument for public funding of the arts and culture have had little traction with the UK’s cultural leaders… and there’s been a corresponding unwillingness of economists to engage with the arts and culture.…..they do not necessarily provide justification for why public funding is needed to support it.”

Already, as I read this I’m fighting tooth and nail not to go to sleep.

William Tayleur at the Business of Culture 10th birthday celebration at the Africa Centre on May 16th 2013 quoted Churchill who defended spending on the arts as being dedicated to creating the sort of society in which we wish to live.

Music, art, sculpture, drama, opera, TV, advertising, novels, talks on culture are all the stuff of two things that make us human (or better humans)

The capacity to learn and surprise ourselves
The ability to suspend our disbelief and dream

And here’s one for Maria Miller and the Czar of Health, the one time Culture guru, Jeremy Hunt, the arts also make you fit – hence my comment about the uber-fit grumpy Arts Chief I referred to earlier.

To be an art critic you need to be very fit indeed. Look at their shoes and you’ll see if they’re serious – I bet Brian Sewell and Rachel Campbell-Johnson wear heavy duty walking shoes and drink gallons of water. Because walking a gallery tires your feet, your brain, your soul and uses up loads of calories.

More seriously the argument for civilisation shouldn’t be too hard to make or take should it?
I’ve decided to redesign my own life by cutting down on what I spend on food and diverse charities and increasing what I spend on the arts.

As with most things in life this isn’t much to do with government which is generally hopeless at determining priorities in the lives of ordinary, hard-working people (hard-working? George Osborne is using these words the whole time – have you noticed?).  Well me? I’m going to work less hard and enjoy, explore and discuss more art. And singlehandedly I’m starting a movement to change the way we look and think about the arts.

And I’m fighting tooth and nail for it.

Written for and first published on