Leadership and management go hand-in-hand. An effectively led company
must also have an effective management team.
“A company that has strong leadership
but weak management can survive — as
can a company that has strong management and weak leadership — but the best
companies excel in both areas,” says Jerry
Hoag, executive director of The
Leadership Center at UTD, which is part of
The University of Texas at Dallas School of
Management. The classic example of
strong leadership and weak management
is perhaps the entrepreneur who successfully starts and builds a company, but then
risks failure as the company grows to some
size and management becomes critical.
According to Hoag, seven principles of
leadership are critical for effectively leading and managing any organization. And
practicing these seven builds the eighth:
trust.
Smart Business recently spoke to Hoag
about what leaders can do to ensure their
organizations have effective leadership
and good ethical footing.
What does it take to be a great leader?
First, leaders must want to lead, and they
must want it passionately. Leadership
takes time, energy, intense focus and constant thought. It is hard work. You have to
know yourself and be able to honestly
assess your strengths and weaknesses.
The second principle is to assemble the
right leadership/management team. You
need to assess your own limitations and
find others who are strong in those areas
for the team.
Next, great leaders need to develop a
clear vision and strategy. You have to know
where the organization is headed, and the
followers have to understand their role and
how it fits specifically into the overall
vision and strategy. This is a key leadership
component.
Importantly, leaders must communicate
effectively and excessively. This is the
fourth key ingredient of leadership. Say
what you mean and mean what you say.
Say it clearly, over and over again. Many
CEOs suffer from isolation. Combat this by
understanding the people you’re leading.
Walk the halls and work alongside of them
— relating with them goes a long way in
building trust.
How do ethics and values fit in?
The fifth principle of leadership embodies ethics and values. Leaders need to
clearly establish and embed ethics and values into their organizations. Ethics and values are the building blocks of an organization’s culture, and they require constant
vigilance and commitment. The leader
needs to keep a strong hold on what’s
going on. This is hard work and doesn’t
always make the leader popular, but it’s
necessary. Even temporary lapses in ethics
can destroy trust and bring an organization
to its knees.
Companies that get into trouble seem to
do so in small steps. Essentially, people
want to do the right thing. But competitive
pressures to meet quarterly projections,
sales goals and other objectives can be so
extreme that they overtake personal
morals. People find themselves rationalizing, ‘moving something here … moving
something there,’ adapting a more liberal
accounting methodology, for example.
The sixth important principle is execution. An effective leadership team manages
and implements its strategy consistently
and unrelentingly.
What is the most critical ingredient for long-term, effective leadership?
This is the seventh principle — humility.
A leader is there to serve, just as the janitor
serves. If your ego gets in front, you’re in
trouble.
A humble leader hires ‘up’ — hence a better team. In addition, a humble leader is
more open to learning.
Leaders who have their egos behind them
tend to externalize criticism. By externalizing the criticism, they resist becoming
defensive and evaluate the criticism objectively and fairly. They put the needs of the
organization before their personal needs.
You mention the final ingredient is trust.
Explain.
You cannot lead effectively, long term,
without trust. Nothing is more devastating
than having the senior team viewed as
unethical.
Leaders build trust through their firm
commitment to ethics and values, and living that commitment day in and day out.
When people in a company have to ask, ‘Is
this legal,’ that’s a red flag. And even if
something is legal, the real question is, ‘Is it
right?’ Doing the right thing in context with
the company’s ethical values will go a long
way in keeping trust intact.
How can leaders improve?
It takes courage to analyze one’s weaknesses and make a real commitment to
improve upon them. Change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, and new
behaviors require changing habits, internalizing change, and applying it. It’s a
process that can take months, and — in
many cases — years.
JERRY HOAG is executive director of The Leadership Center at
The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). Reach him at (972) 883-4785 or [email protected].
