The Myth of the Perfect Leader
The complexities of today’s business landscape mean leadership has never been so challenging. In a four-part series, Lynda Ennis, Founder and CEO of automotive executive search and research firm Ennis & Co, discusses leadership in a changing world with Stevie Fine, Founder of the executive coaching and talent development company, Inspire.
Stevie Fine: I sometimes get asked whether certain people are born to lead. My answer is a resounding ‘no’. There are 8 billion people in the world and no two people are the same. People have different individual qualities and vulnerabilities and the idea that someone is born to be a perfect leader is a myth. What you do have, though, is people who have certain behaviours and skills that can help them rise to the top.
Being an effective leader is about certain very defined things. It’s about how you connect with people, how you engage and drive them. You can’t lead an organisation by yourself. You can only lead the core people around you to lead the wider organisation and to develop the strategy or the focus for the business.
The idea of the great Victorian, authoritarian leader making black and white decisions no longer holds water. The complexities of today’s world require people to lead through other people. But, at the same time, you must know where you are leading them. There’s no point inspiring people if you don’t know what the strategy or outcome is.
In its simplest terms, therefore, the job of a leader is to lead people and lead the strategy. Of course, there are other skills and behaviours that make an effective leader, but these two pillars are non-negotiable.
Lynda Ennis: It’s interesting what you say about the complexities of modern life. For me, great leadership is also about being able to see through the fog and make very clear decisions. The transformation taking place in the automotive industry means there is a massive amount of complexity to deal with, and the best leaders are able to navigate their way through it calmly and sensibly.I agree that a key aspect of good leadership is the ability to lead people in a certain direction, which means leaders need to have a clear understanding of the strengths within their team. At the same time, good leaders are not frightened about making decisions. Some they get right, some they get wrong, but they learn from their mistakes and become better leaders.We’ve all made mistakes in our business lives, and sometimes you just have to face up to it when you get things wrong. I often feel that leaders are nervous about admitting their mistakes because of the criticism it will invite, but honesty and integrity is fundamental to good leadership.
Stevie: It comes back to the fallacy of the perfect leader. Superman and Superwoman don’t exist. Not even the great stereotypical leaders – Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Sir Winston Churchill – had every single personality trait that makes a successful leader.
To be the most successful leader, you need as wide a range of personality traits, skills and behaviours as possible, but no individual has all of them. What is important is for leaders to understand their range of abilities and behaviours and how to overcome their deficiencies or vulnerabilities, either through others or through personal development. They have to put aside the myth of the hero leader and accept that they can’t do everything themselves.
Lynda: Self-awareness is fundamental. If leaders were more honest with themselves about what they are good at and what they are not, they would become better leaders by surrounding themselves with people who can plug the gaps. The problem is that many leaders feel under pressure to conform to the stereotype of the strong, infallible leader and fail to confront their deficiencies.Without confronting them, the danger is that failures of leadership can filter down and infect the whole organisation. I have seen this with my own eyes, with managers at lower levels using the same language as the senior leadership and coming up with the same excuses about why things can’t be done.
Stevie: What you’re describing is something that is becoming increasingly prevalent, where a leadership shadow is being cast from the CEO and their immediate leadership team to the layers below them. It’s not healthy and it’s not effective but it becomes the prevailing culture within the organisation.
Lynda: Dissatisfactory underperformance becomes acceptable and impacts every corner of the business. It also becomes self-perpetuating because the future leaders within the organisation don’t have the leadership role models to learn from.
Stevie: Learning is the key word here. If we come back to the original question about leaders being born, I think we’re both in agreement that there is a lot that can be learned about becoming a successful leader. But there also needs to be sustainment.
Organisations will not hesitate to pay significant sums to executive search specialists like yourself, Lynda, to hire the best leadership talent. But if we draw an analogy between business and sport, you wouldn’t buy a £50 million footballer and let them get on with playing football without any coaching.
As an executive coach, I often have to convince a business to invest in support for a leader or leadership team, and if they agree to do it, it is often a transient arrangement to address a particular problem. Too many businesses are focused on short-term interventions. In this changing world of technology and societal change, leaders require ongoing support that require us to understand failure, to embrace it and learn from it.
Leadership is key to a successful business. We find amazing leaders for amazing brands. This is how we do it.
This is part 1 of a 4-part series on Leadership
The industry is transforming at pace – can leaders keep up? Look out for the second part of our series, which will be published on 29th April.
