Conclusions

This chapter has outlined six core elements of leadership. They can be summarised as having vision, the ability to communicate, to take responsibility, to support your people, to listen and, sixthly, to have a core team of critics There are two major omissions:

  •  the first is the need for genuinely developed adult love, affection and warmth amongst, and between, the senior executives, which I have mentioned in the context of the role of the non–executive chairman;
  •  the second is the need for a thoroughly thought through set of values, a moral centre that is part of the everyday use–in–life of the CEO and the company.

We take many of our leaders from the pool of men and women driven exceptionally to strive for abnormal achievement, partly to cover up their early life experiences, and the lack of affection they have received. These individuals can appear difficult to like, brutal, insensitive. Many of them tell me they feel difficult to like. Ultimately their careers really are long–term quests for some human recognition that can fill the void in their lives. The more readily leaders are surrounded by teams who recognise this and respond with affection, the more they can be helped to avoid the gross excesses of the last ten years, and the more corporations can avoid their most bizarre and insensitive management incompetences.

This human recognition is not the romantic, sugary design–world type of froth, but grown–up adult tough love. It is there to help the executive and also to help combat the enervating impact of office politics and loneliness. Similarly no executive can easily deal with the excitements, challenges and attractions of leadership without their own thought–out and consciously honoured set of values. In my group courses with executives we discuss this, and I have listed below the conclusions that we most commonly reach:

  • A worked–out, clear purpose in life, a mission – shared with key people, family, and made workable with them. Reliable and caring;
  • Awareness of and confronting the realities of life – open to experience, learning, proactive, robustly taking responsibility, completing, straight–dealing and honest;
  • Open to compassion, empathy, emotion – communicating, able to deal face to face;
  • Having a strong self regard, actively maintaining health, fitness, skills; self–aware;
  • Happy, outward–looking, having fun; and almost certainly:
  • Having a set of beliefs, linked to religious understanding and conviction.

 

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