LEADERSHIP is an issue that ignites debate and argument. People care about it. This is clear from talking to the UK’s top thinkers on the subject.
Rob Goffee, professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School, raps the table in his office to make a point about current opinion on leadership. Gareth Jones, the co-author of their forthcoming book, Why Should Anyone Be Led by You, prowls nearby with the intensity of an avuncular Gavin Henson. Jones is a former HR director at the BBC and an academic in his own right.
We are discussing in particular what MBA students, the chief executives of the future, need to become effective leaders. The talk is not of creating shareholder value.
“Great leadership has the potential to excite people to extraordinary levels of achievement,” Goffee says. “But it is not only about performance. Leaders make a difference to performance because they make it meaningful.”
Goffee and Jones say that any would-be leader must be able to answer one question: “Why should anyone be led by you?” Their Harvard Business Review article of that title won the prestigious McKinsey Award and turned up the volume in the leadership debate.
Their book of the same name focuses on the reality of leadership rather than the leader as hero. Unusually, it reaches beyond the boardroom to include interviews with a hospital nurse, a Zimbabwean soldier and a head teacher.
“Leadership is real and leaders have to be real,” Jones says.
Leadership is about far more than hierarchical power; it is about relationships with followers. Integral to these new perspectives on leadership are so-called soft skills, such as emotional intelligence and effective communication, which are now being integrated into MBA programmes.
Beyond the classroom, students can also learn by observing business leaders at close quarters. The Judge Institute at Cambridge University holds seminars every May. Speakers this year included Tom Glocer, chief exective of Reuters; Kevin Roberts, chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi; and Ian Davis, head of McKinsey & Co.
“You are forced to reflect upon why anyone would want to follow you in the first place,” says Rebecca Schutt, a Judge MBA student.
Those who cannot answer need not apply.
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Captains of industry need to ask themselves whether they have the qualities to inspire their troops, says Des Dearlove