A good CEO invests care in their staff's emotional needs, says Ashley Campbell
KEY POINTS:
Think of your bosses - those who lead your company. Do they make you want to get out of bed in the morning to come to work and achieve your best, or do you groan at the thought of spending another day in their company?
Will they lead the organisation for 15 years, or will they be gone in two? Are they authentic leaders who inspire you to achieve - or do you regard them as frauds who aren't worth putting in the effort for?
If your answers to these questions are mainly negative, you have a lot of company. Whatever way you look at it, the research, and even the received wisdom, on leadership success and failure doesn't stack up well.
Citing five different studies, American executive coaching organisation Prime Genesis claims that "40 per cent of leaders going into new roles fail in their first 18 months".
That, of course, all depends on your definition of failure. Kevin Gaunt, chief executive of the New Zealand Institute of Management's Northern Region, reckons that figure is a bit high for senior executives here, but he does see a lot who flit between jobs every two to three years. He calls them "tap-dancing executives".
"This is generally the person who comes in with a hiss and a roar and does lots of `things' for a year or so and then moves on,' he says. "If one could put a percentage on the number of tap dancers out there you would probably get your 40 per cent."
But executives move on for all sorts of reasons - one of them being that they've achieved what they want and have been offered a new challenge. Failing to engage your staff and get the best out of them is perhaps a better indicator - and here there is some startling local research to draw on.
Last year, the University of Auckland's Business School Accelerator published a study called "More Right Than Real: The Shape of Authentic Leadership in New Zealand". Its conclusions do not make pretty reading.
Dr Lester Levy and his colleagues studied 1000 people in medium-sized organisations (with up to 500 employees) and asked them how they felt about people who led them.
Levy says: "We found that 37 per cent of managers are regarded as being authentic leaders and 63 per cent are regarded as not being authentic. That's right - New Zealand employees believe that 63 per cent of their business leaders simply don't "walk the talk".
Before you start bemoaning New Zealand's business leaders as amateurs, consider this. "The alarming thing is that three other countries have done a similar study - Russia, the United States and Singapore," says Levy.
"Our results were slightly better than theirs. These things aren't New Zealand-unique phenomena - they are widespread."
The study also shows why this matters. Levy and his colleagues tested the employees for engagement, creativity, communication and optimism - all of which bring increased effort at work. Those who rated their leaders as highly authentic scored well in all four attributes.
"When they identified their leaders as inauthentic, they seemed to be hollowed out of these capacities," says Levy.
Peter Kerridge, director of executive search and coaching company Kerridge & Partners, says this is crucial because "with knowledge workers, the discretionary effort component of their output is huge". Good leaders, he says, can get a 70 per cent improvement in performance "just by engaging people".
Levy goes even further. "Discretionary effort is critical in every single person's job, whether you are brain or brawn. Engagement with leadership is absolutely linked to that level of performance."
So what are those 63 per cent of leaders doing wrong? No matter who you talk to, the answer is the same - they're not being true to themselves, and they're not being true to the people they're meant to be leading.
And one of the reasons, as executive coach Kevin Gaunt puts it, is that not one study has shown a correlation between leadership success and IQ - but many have shown a very strong correlation between executive success and high EQ.
Gaunt says: "I think probably in the distant past, and still in some organisations, the alpha male has been the one that's gravitated towards the top, and they don't necessarily sit in the same room as EQ skills. I think organisations are more and more realising that for CEOs to be successful, they genuinely do need to care for their people - at the same time they can expect the very best from their people."
As Kerridge says, emotionally intelligent people understand that while they have a goal and a plan and a passion to achieve it, it will take time for the people they work with to assimilate that passion. And even when they do, each individual will move at a different pace.
"Good leaders are personally patient, but they are organisationally highly impatient. They are patient with individuals and they'll nurture them and walk with them. When it comes to the organisation's performance, they are uncompromising."
One of the reasons leaders fail to get the best out of their people is they focus too much on the numbers and too little on the dynamics of the organisation that produces those numbers, he says.
"Just pushing the numbers all the time is very different to engaging people in real purpose and the dream. People in leadership positions need to reflect the kind of change they want to see. You can't be asking people to be something you are not yourself.
"There's a very significant part of a leader's job that is immediate and urgent and all the jobs have become a lot more complex. Therefore they need more capacity to create an environment of collaboration."
Achieving this can sometimes be easier said than done - the numbers do have to stack up and taking your eye off the numerical ball is a sure recipe for disaster. And, says Levy, every organisation needs strong management - but it also needs strong leadership.
"I think in the last couple of decades a lot of our organisations have become over-managed and under-led. It's because a greater accountability has increased a compliance culture as opposed to a performance culture."
One of the emotional challenges for newly appointed leaders is to win over the internal candidates who didn't get the job, and who probably resent them as a result.
Chris Johnson, Kerridge & Partners partner, says: "The bottom line is that you plan for success. There's a huge assumption that the more senior you are the less help you need, but it's quite the opposite."
He outlines the "fantastic" strategy a recently appointed CEO had for his first day on the new job.
"He revealed himself to the lady at reception and said, 'Hello, my name is X. Would you show me to my desk? It's my first day'. He very quickly got to know people at a personal level before really charging into stuff. A little humility goes a long way with a successful leader."
When asked to name an example of a good leader, Gaunt comes up with former Crusaders, now Wallabies, coach Robbie Deans.
"He's a person who absolutely understands himself and he's comfortable with his own style. With the teams that he works with, he genuinely wants the best from these people and genuinely plays to their strengths.
"One of the things that I see with CEOs who take themselves to a significant new level, one of the realisations they come to is they are a human being before they are a CEO, and the more true to themselves they are in their leadership role, the better they seem to do."
TIPS FOR NEW LEADERS
* Be consistent in what you say and do - everyone is watching you.
* Start before you join - use the time between accepting and joining to research and really understand the organisation.
* Be intellectually curious, show real interest and ask "Why?".
* Don't make assumptions, just because something worked before doesn't make it appropriate in this situation.
* Success doesn't just happen - it's a planned activity.
* Be open to feedback, use judgment wisely and be authentic.
* Get the best people you can around you, recruit capable individuals.
* Be uncompromising on what you expect to be delivered but be patient with the people delivering it.
* Identify the risks and opportunities quickly, don't wait forever.
* Understand yourself and help others understand you.
* Identify your support network, don't underestimate the value of an external coach.
Source, Kerridge & Partners
