BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Arnold Strauss
Arnold is an independent business consultant that has been in business, in the corporate environment and privately for the last 30 years. Apart from being a qualified accountant, Arnold also holds several business degrees.
THIS MONTH – THE LEADERSHIP MYTH
Leadership is still a loosely used term and widely misunderstood whereas research has shown that leadership is a distinctly different discipline from management. But before the myths are addressed, I must first briefly touch on one of my pet hates. There are certain titles that are not for you as individual that you may call yourself. If you had completed medical school, you are allowed to call yourself “Doctor”. If you are appointed as Technical Manager at a company, you are allowed to call yourself just that. The same goes for a Director being appointed to a board and so the list goes on.
However there are certain titles that are reserved for the people around you to decide whether you qualify. For example: Innovator, Inventor, Entrepreneur and the subject of this article – Leader. These are titles that depend on the perception of those that believe in your philosophies and culture. The people that you have successfully influenced, that have bought into your direction and are prepared to perform according to your directives regardless of other external influences.
Here are some of the myths that still exist around the function of Leadership:
- The Entrepreneur Myth. There are many people that I have met with brilliant concepts for business, and for whom I only have respect. But their people skills are rather shitty to put it mildly. If you can’t influence people, you cannot be a leader.
- The Knowledge Myth. It is often believed that the person with the best knowledge in a specific field is automatically the leader. Well, once again there are, for instance, research scientists and other academics at Universities and other tertiary institutes that have vastly superior knowledge in their fields but once again do not possess the skills to deal with people, put all this together into a business plan and execute successfully.
- The Pioneer Myth. The person out in front is not necessarily a leader. Once again I have seen some very lonely people in this position. If you don’t have the full support of a team behind you, you may as well forget about achieving success.
- The Position Myth. Simply having a position of seniority and power, does not automatically qualify you as a leader. There are many examples, even today, of business people leaving an organisation and people in the same organisation following him or her en masse. A true sign of a leader. “It’s not the position that makes the leader but the leader that makes the position”.
- The Management Myth. In the opening paragraph it was pointed out that it is still often believed that Management and Leadership are one and the same. Research, including that of the author, has shown that these are two distinctly different disciplines. It might well be that it is the same person but Management can only maintain direction whereas Leaders can bring about change.
- Leaders Are Born. My pet subject. How many times haven’t we been told or heard that leaders are naturally gifted and just born that way. This fact cannot be further from the truth. The reason why most people don’t want to lead is because they are being held accountable and therefore they are hesitant or just plain scared to accept certain responsibilities. Anyone can be a leader and today there are programs that can teach candidates. Once you are prepared to accept the responsibility for a function, it then requires you have a vision of where you want to take it into the future, put a plan together and get a team to support the journey. Of course it’s not that simple but this will be addressed in future publications of this magazine.
In the next article the differences between Management and Leadership will be addressed and following that we’ll tackle the requirements of leadership. The sticky issue of business plans and other business issues may require a separate column.
For more information Arnold can contacted at arrie@mega.co.za or cell: 082-524-7051.
