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Understanding leadership
I
was walking alongside the river Danube
I
was walking alongside the river Danube
in Budapest, Hungary late noon last
month where the temperature was
subzero when I received a call from Dr Ken,
a researcher and professor of leadership,
organizational design and behavior in USA
who brought my attention to the subject
of Leadership. “Leadership is mostly an
organizational phenomenon and not solely
the property of individuals”, said Dr Ken.
Later I was engaged in several discussions
with Dr Ken and other leading experts in the
domain of organizational development and
leadership over past weeks.
During the course of such discussions
many concepts and practical tools relating
processes, management, leadership, related
competence & behavioral traits, related
processes and technologies came to the fore
which become an enabler for attaining high
performance of organizational leadership.
I was faced with some deep, some vague
and some contrasting statements, a few are
reproduced as below:
Leaders are those who are bosses.
Leadership is about influencing one
in direction of desired contribution for
something great to happen. Leadership
is all about authority managers having to
take decisions and supervise. Discussions
relating to organizational leadership has
been centuries old with no definitive model
till date. Leaders are born and common
people cannot not be trained to be leaders.
I was guided towards 5 big traits (Openness,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
Agreeableness, Neuroticism) and develop
them systematically for individuals to
attain leadership values. There are many
personality assessment tools like NEO-PI
available to test leadership competence of
human assets and help develop them.
I am now more convinced that the way
we devise organizations, deploy human
resources & material resources in a welldefined
horizontal and vertical hierarchy,
continuously develop competence, acquire
and recruit talent in more scientific ways has
a positive and sometimes dramatic impact
on organizational performance. So human
resources and their continued development
are as important as deployment of
processes and technologies. I was then
56 Link January 2011
Think of simple questions and help
prepare your organizations in identifying,
acquiring, developing and leveraging
human talents, managers and leaders,
advises Shashi Shekhar, Founder &
Group President
told that many organizations in this region
still had an opportunity to organize human
resources functions more scientifically
— there are many organizations in this
region which don’t have a well defined
human resources development efforts and
dedicated personnel to drive such efforts. An
attitude of ignorance towards human assets
development for leveraging their potential
could be fatal to organizations in the post-
recession period.
Leadership and management are two
notions that are often used interchangeably.
These words actually describe two different
manifestations of organizational behavior.
Leadership is just one of the many assets a
successful manager should possess. While
managers focus to maximize the bottom-line
through administrative implementation of
organization planning, staffing, directing and
controlling, leaders bring sensitive and fairly
radical thinking to these functions. Managers
generally think incrementally while leaders
think more radically.
Leaders also generate more loyalty due
to their attitude towards ownership of failures
and awarding credit of success to others
involved. I subscribe to a view-point that
managing and leading are two different ways
of organizing manpower. The managers
use a more formal, rational method whilst
the leaders exhibit passion and emotion.
William Wallace is one excellent example of
a brilliant leader but could never be thought
of as the manager of the Scots.
Great leaders create great organizations.
Great organizations deliver both social and
economic values. So great organizations
and great leaders are needed all the
time. Organizations should follow an
integrated approach to the development
of human resources, related processes
and technologies — many organizations
in the region need to pay more importance
in acquiring, retaining, engaging and
organizing talents.
While I am busy with this subject, I would
encourage all to think of simple questions
and help prepare your organizations in
identifying, acquiring, developing and
leveraging human talents, managers and
leaders:
Ë Are jobs and job holders in my
organization mapped to competence.
Ë Is my organization doing assessment
of competence and traits for all employees,
managers and leaders.
Ë Have I, my peers and superiors ever
undergone leadership and other personality
assessment tests, if yes then what
happened next.
Ë Is my organization deploying process
and technology framework for identifying and
training high potential leaders.
Ë Is my organization deploying process
and technology for career and succession
planning?
Ë Is my organization doing non-partial
performance evaluation and review and are
such review processes mapped to rewards.
Ë Are jobs linked to competence and are
competence then assessed and developed.
Hope the Year 2011 begins with more
attention to human assets, managers and
leaders – all are finally people.