WELL, I AM KING! 

ENSURING LEADERSHIP IS ALIGNED WITH THE RANK-AND-FILE

Arthur continues on his search to fill his leadership team, er, round table of Camelot, and passes a group of peasants outside a castle who are frolicking?, eating? reveling? (what are they doing?) in a bunch of mud. Arthur haughtily inquires of the peasants about the lord who owns the castle. When the peasants inform him that there is no lord, and they are all part of an egalitarian, autonomous collective that makes decisions by committee, Arthur becomes increasingly testy. After all, he is their king. The peasants want to know who elected him. Arthur begins to tell them about the Lady of Lake and the magical sword only to hear the peasants snicker. I mean, that's no way to choose a government, is it? Finally, Arthur loses his patience and unfortunately unleashes a bit of wrath on one of the peasants. "Help I'm being repressed!"

Knight on horseback trying to lead army tanks cartoonOh wow!  Doesn’t this scene say so much about leadership? Not just corporate leadership, but leadership in general. Don’t so many of our leaders seem completely out of touch with their people? I think the leadership gurus have it backwards when it comes to leadership skills. Business literature is filled with books and articles about how best to align the rank and file with the leadership vision. Isn’t it  easier and more effective to align the leadership with the organization?  This explains why “savior” CEOs brought in to rescue a company often fail spectacularly, ala  Robert Nardelli of GE who became CEO of Home Depot, only to be ousted 6 years later after alienating employees, customers, and board members alike.  His autocratic, cost-cutting management style didn’t fit at a company built around a customer-focused, friendly, laid-back organization. Later, he went to Chrysler to save them by applying the same cost-cutting approach that proved ineffective (harmful, actually) at Home Depot. The same Chrysler that, after a government bailout, filed for bankruptcy.  Yet, the business press and Wall Street seem to be enamored of the heroic “CEO” figure who can single-handedly turn a company around as if the other 50,000-75,000 people employed don’t really do anything.

 Although many studies have shown that the best CEOs are not the celebrities, but what Jim Collins calls Level 5 leaders - humble, self-effacing, and understated- corporate America is enamored of the swaggering, larger-than-life, decisive and bold personality. It's the person who dominates the meeting and forces his/her opinion on everyone who is considered leadership material, not the person who tries to understand everyone's viewpoint in order to arrive at a decision. Yet, which person would you really want to see as the CEO?

LEADERSHIP SKILLS

(THE REAL ONES YOU NEED)

For those of you who still want to make it up the corporate ranks, here are the skills that you really need to develop. Yes, I know, your company already has a prescribed set of leadership competencies that they expect you develop that go something like this:

However, many of you have probably realized that you really need a different set of skills to be seen as leadership potential. The real leadership skills are more like:

King Arthur takes a liking to a knight amongst his regular employees cartoonThe other you need to do if you want to get promoted, is to act just like the guy (or gal) in charge. Dress like them, use their favorite jargon, mirror their interests and become their mini-me. I guarantee that suddenly you will be considered to be high potential/high performing.   We love ourselves and we love people who are just like us. That's the real reason why most work places lack diversity.