Executive hype and hope

Effective leadership equals traditional management with a sprinkling of vision and integrity, writes Gerald Flynn

NO MATTER which college they attend, be it Trinity and the IMI, Smurfit Business School, DCU, the University of Limerick or even Insead or Cranfield, they all get the same introductory pep-talk. The new batches of MBA, Management MSc and MBS students are told they are the crème de la crème, the top-layer and members of the "first division" who have made it into a special career launch pad.

They are all told that they beat off tough competition to make it on to the course and, of course, ensuring that the €20,000 fees were paid in advance helped.

The aspiration is that they should become "leaders" but the reality is that most just get some promotion and change jobs. Few can really claim the "leadership" mantle. The term is so debased that it is the sort of thing PR spinners put out about some new chief executive appointment or write on the blurb of a cheap biography.

How often do you look out the window admiringly as the "leader" of your organisation alights from his, or very rarely her, company car? If you pass them in the lobby do you feel touched by "the hand of history" or of having been in the presence of greatness? Fat chance.

More likely you are like the delighted bank teller I met who told me that she was looking forward to going home to watch the evening news to see some of the bank's most senior managers cowering and cringing as they appeared at an Oireachtas probe into customer and tax fraud.

Some of these are the very same people I have observed over the years at annual shareholder meetings. Often the issue of executive remuneration came up at the behest of some small shareholder equally envious and suspicious as to why the executive directors should be paid about 20 times the average employee's salary plus pension and performance bonuses.

The standard answer was that these pay packages might seem large by Irish standards but the institutions had to compete in a global market for leadership talent and so had to tempt and retain the chosen few with mega-salaries.

It was always good for a laugh as I knew they were not swamped with job offers from Chicago, Frankfurt-am-Main or Hong Kong for the few 50-somethings who "joined the bank" in their late teens and kept their noses clean in the intervening 30 years.

There were "leaders by position" but not necessarily "leaders by vision" in the organisational development concept. The reality is that people often have more respect for their immediate manager or supervisor than they do for the "seven series brigade" on the top floor. Organisational leadership is generally much more mundane than the captains of industry like to pretend and is often more prevalent among those earning €50,000 a year than the few on €500,000 plus a bonus.

A Dublin man with a lot of experience in the hotel and catering trade has entered the leadership fray but, thankfully, at a fairly down-to-earth level. Enda Larkin, a journeyman manager based in Switzerland, has published a good handbook on making the first steps into effective operation and people management though, inevitably, his blurb writer refers to the book as assisting those who are "ready to be a great leader".

He tries to disentangle the natural confusion between good management and good leadership while addressing the insecurities of the newly promoted executive suddenly supposed to direct and encourage 30 people and meet output targets set by someone who is not part of that work group.

The lines between management and leadership have become blurred. Before leadership came into vogue, managers often relied on the implied authority derived from their position.

There are few work-related situations more embarrassing than hearing a manager plaintively plead that he has "a prerogative to manage" . It has that quaint ring of "the divine right to rule".

Larkin has a more down-to-earth approach and his book Ready to Lead* is really a preparation for those on the first rungs of management. It proposes to assist them to "prepare to think and act like a successful leader".

He tells us that effective communication is the key for most managers or team-leaders, though he does seem to have been mesmerised by the letter "c" when it comes to leadership advice. The two core elements of communication are content and context. Warming to words beginning with "c", he says challenges can be faced through cohesion, commitment, composition, compatibility, conduct and control, competence and capabilities, continuity, change, climate, conflict, compatibility, composition and consultation. Phew!

The different scenarios presented in the book will be familiar to those with varied workplace experience and will help anyone identify leadership styles, while also realising innovative leadership will not get far in an organisation unable or unwilling to facilitate it.

The sort of top-drawer leaders we have seen in some Irish public companies would not be comfortable with a person who would question the allocation or resources. Suggesting that money might be better spent on Blackberrys for her staff or encryption of data on their laptops rather than on a new executive gym and shower suite for those on the top floor may not get her immediate promotion but it may secure leadership respect from those with whom she works.

Of course, Mr Larkin sees limits to this leadership. "Even though you will not always be in agreement with what your organisation is doing, you have to project an image to your team that you are. This is not lying to your team, it is just being smart," he advises. Otherwise look for another job somewhere more conducive.

Leadership, despite all the hype, is traditional management with a good sprinkling of personal vision and integrity. It actually sounds very like old-style, decent, honourable management practice.

*Ready to Lead by Enda Larkin, Pearson Prentice Hall, Stg£12.99

Gerald Flynn is an employment specialist with Align Management Solutions, Dublin. gflynn@alignmanagement.net