Today's Business Lessons
What’s new with leadership
(The Philippine Star)
Updated May 19, 2013
The acceleration of newness has intensified. Bear with me as I explain this.
Global terrorism has heightened uncertainty. Political landscapes
have changed, especially when a young leader installed into power is
threatening to fire their nuclear weapons on their neighbors. Global
warming has caused scarcity of resources, and has forced the creation of
more sustainable products and lifestyles. Global competition has
propelled the business world into hyper-competition, and financial
institutions, once bastions of stability and conservatism, have
exploded, imploded, died and then risen from the dead as evidenced by
the American recession in late 2008.
Let’s go closer to home. A new generation of tech-savvy young people
is entering the work place. It’s now an “Always-On”, 24/7,
social-networking people who are changing the way we shop and dine, and
who are always threatening brick-and-mortar establishments with their
click-away technologies which enable them to create stuff that one
generation ago people couldn’t even imagine. There’s one thing they
always want to know: “What’s new?”
A recent survey said that an average person spends around seven
seconds in a typical Google search page, while the same person is now
surveyed as spending hours – and sometimes, in young people’s case, as
much as seven hours – in Facebook activities. Surely this will have an
effect on us.
So what’s new? These implicate that the way the older generation
leads the young will have to take all these factors into consideration.
“It’s either my way or the highway!” “I can fire you any time!” “No
man is indispensable!” These are all battle cries of leaders trapped in
the old Industrial Age paradigm. These do more harm today than good.
In a glowing and growing economy, competition doesn’t only happen in
the sales space; competition for talents is also heating up. When good
talents leave and bring their knowledge to the competitor, not because
the company is bad, not because of pay or benefits, but simply because
their immediate bosses seriously lack leadership skills and have driven
them away, this is unforgivable.
There are two reasons why good people leave. The most common is that
they couldn’t stand their bosses who behave more like jerks rather than
the inspiring leaders that they’re supposed to be. Not only do these
unskilled leaders drive good people
into the hands of the competition, but they actually fuel the passion
of those people to perform better in order to “get back” at the leaders
who drove them away. The other reason is the feeling that their
contributions are unappreciated. What a waste!
Every person in the organization should be equipped with leadership
skills. Because new technologies = new management style = new way of
thinking. Beyond hard skills and soft skills are SMART SKILLS. Leaders
who don’t have these skills, who are still banking on their titles and
positions to feed their ego, and who continue to drive talents away
should be sent to the freezer. They do more harm to the business than
good.
Make a careful survey of your own organization. Find out why
attrition is high in certain departments. Address the people and the
issue.
Ken Blanchard said it right, “The key to successful leadership today
is influence, not authority.” Everyone wants a leader who inspires, not a
leader who intimidates. Even Scriptures say that in order to be a good
leader, one has to be a servant. If your leaders are driving people
away, they simply are not serving, are they?
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