WWW.IDAIRELAN.COM To have executives change character will always


be a struggle, but they can learn to improve their reactions to difficult situations and develop


greater emotional intelligence that will turn them into more effective leaders. Leadership


Development and Organisational Change expert MANFRED KETS DE VRIES explains.


S


tudies show that organisations that take leadership development seriously


outperform their competition. This holds greater truth today when leaders


in this


cyber age find themselves under greater (and increasing) pressures


from globalisation.


Twenty-five years ago, very little attention was being paid to the idiosyncrasies and irrational processes that make up individual behaviour. Corporations and business schools were preoccupied with models of the rational economic man, not realising that executives are


everything but


had an impact and he told me yes, in fact it had taught him three things. In the first place, it helped him have the courage to quit his job and become an entrepreneur which had made him very wealthy. Secondly,


it


made him change his relationship with his son, that


turned out to be a very good


investment, and thirdly, he had learned how to be more effective in speaking up – to work out what it was he was wanted to say, and to have the confidence to say it. In fact, what happened to him during the


rational


decision makers. The emotional aspects of leadership, and the importance of corporate culture were all but ignored. Leaders at that time were expected to simply leverage their vision and skills to create sustainable, results- oriented organisations. Today they face added complications of


rapidly changing technology, virtual working teams separated by cultural and geographical boundaries, and the difficulties of making decisions when faced with an overload of information. Recently a former participant from one of my Challenge


of Leadership (COL)


programmes approached me at an event in Holland and introduced himself. It had been 15 years since he took my class and I couldn’t place his face. But always being on the lookout for feedback, even many years on, I asked him whether the programme


“You need to create places of work


network structure; organisations


where people can have courageous conversations.”


where people feel comfortable in a


COL programme were three tipping points, the kind of ‘a ha’ moments that give people the insights they need to change or develop their behaviour in a way that better supports their personal and organisational goals. When I created the programme I had in the back of my mind the ‘fantasy’ to make INSEAD the foremost business school in ‘soft skills,’ which (when it comes down to it) are the ‘hardest skills.’ Organisations have followed this fantasy over the last 25 years too, because they’ve realised that it’s critical to success. Modern organisations look more and more like a matrix star ship, where many ideas develop and the challenge in putting these ideas into action becomes a very different story. Vision without action is a hallucination, and execution is where many well intended decisions get bogged down. To make things happen – to arrive at seamless execution – requires a leadership


The Great Man Theory


The Great Man theory believes that leaders are born, not made, and is often associated with the 19th century historian Thomas Carlyle who wrote, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” The theory espouses that great leaders are born possessing certain attributes that enable them to rise and lead when there is a need for them. It implies that those in power deserve to lead because of these innate traits. Carlyle’s views were not entirely welcomed, with political theorist, philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer calling the theory childish and primitive. He believed instead that leaders were products of their environment. Regardless, the Great Man theory become the predominant theory for explaining and understanding leadership until the 20th century.


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model that is less autocratic but more of an authoritative and networking nature. We have moved from the ‘Command,


Control, Compartmentalisation’ way of leading organisations to a more interactive, informative and innovation-oriented model. To be truly effective, today’s organisations need to have leaders who have the emotional intelligence to create meaning, and have the capability to inspire and empower their people to get


things done. This becomes


especially difficult when the members of an organisation are spread across different continents. After all, you can’t email a smile or a handshake. You need to create places of work where people feel comfortable in a network structure; you need to create organisations where


people can have


courageous conversations – organisations with people that are adaptable, self-aware, collaborative, resilient, and have a systemic orientation. To create


these knowledge exchange beyond silo thinking.


WHY ARE SO MANY LEADERS SELF-DESTRUCTIVE? As executives climb higher up the corporate ladder these soft skills become even more important. It is no longer enough to be a functional manager. Ultimately leaders need to get out of their functional silo to be able to get the best out of people. Unfortunately, many executives fail to rise to the occasion; they simply don’t know how. The question I often asked myself 25 years


ago, and continue to ask myself today is: Why are so many leaders self-destructive? Why are so many executives so poor in developing well-functioning teams? Why have so many organisations a gulag quality? The truth is despite having a greater


awareness of their role, many successful leaders still share a great sense of anxiety and


organisations, we need people that practice true


and will go agile


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