What leadership is really about?

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Pascal Nyasha | 15 Jan, 2013
ON several occasions that I have met aspiring or established leaders there has been one question that I have been asked: What is leadership really about?

As complex as leadership is, it does not surprise me each time this question comes up.

I am going to try to break down what leadership is about perhaps in one sentence. I define leadership as achieving through and with people.

My definition portrays the leader as a person of influence and a team player. To achieve through people, the leader uses influence.

To achieve with people, the leader develops team spirit. Without influence and team development, there can be no leadership.

Remember that leadership is a people thing. To further explain what leadership is about, here are a few attributes of leadership that are not of a leader.

These are the ingredients that make up leadership in their proportions. Leadership is 37 percent vision, 30 percent energising people, 20 percent communication, 8 percent charisma and 5 percent competence.

Do these figures make sense? What this means is that leadership requires more of vision than anything else.

This is followed by energising people; take note, it is not intimidating or coercing people. How does a leader energise people?

He influences them, by motivating them for example. The leader is supposed to create an atmosphere of enthusiasm.

One wise man once said, "Be enthusiastic as a leader, you cannot light a fire with a wet match stick".
Communication is the next attribute of leadership with a slice of 20 percent. Leadership is all about telling your story.

The average leader communicates effectively but a great leader connects with people. Notice the difference between the two, communication and connection.

Aspire to connect rather than to just communicate because connection is greater. To share a vision, the leader has to communicate effectively.

Communicating a vision still remains a challenge for many leaders. This is perhaps why leaders of organisations invite us when discussing communication business to help interpret the organisational vision at strategic meetings.

To energise people, a leader has to be an effective communicator. This is perhaps why we in the communication business are often invited to energise people in organisations in seminars and motivational sessions.

That is what we specialise in anyway. The next attribute of leadership is charisma. I get so many requests to teach on this topic.

Many leaders think charisma is so important in their leadership. Charisma is all about being attractive, being attractive.

Becoming somebody who is difficult to resist is usually achieved through deliberate actions and words targeted at affecting subordinates' emotions.

You can be a great leader without charisma anyway. You do not need a big measure of it.

Having the James Bond charisma will not bring results to the table; it just helps you get a few things done.

Charisma is a form of personal power that is often abused. Some good leaders who had it used it for the benefit of their people. However, some used it badly.

Hitler and Mussolini possessed it in abundance and used it to manipulate their people, bad.

Charisma, channelled in the right direction is good, but can be used to achieve selfish ends by self-centred leaders.

Competence is the last element at 5 percent.

This refers to the skills you have as a leader, perhaps obtained from your academic and professional training backgrounds.

You will realise as you go up in leadership, your competencies become less and less important and you become more and more generic.

You begin to de-specialise, you begin to know a little bit of everything. You become more generic.
If you were an accountant, the demand on you as such reduces and part of you is spread to many other facets and functions in the business.

You find yourself becoming a human resources person, a public relations person, a security person, a customer service person, and a catering person, you become a bit of everything.

There are only two people or groups of people who do the general work in an organisation, the person at the top and the general hands, everyone in between is usually a specialist or is at least restricted to just a single department or function of the business.

This is what being a figurehead means in leadership. Jack Welch gives us another perspective to this in his book, "Jack: Winning".

He speaks of the 4Es of leadership. These are, energy, energise, execution and edge. Jack says that leaders are supposed to have tremendous energy.

Since the leader sets the example, he should have enough energy that permeates throughout the business.

He creates a certain level of zeal and energy by giving people the big picture, the organisation's vision.

Jack argues leadership is all about execution. When the energy is there, it has to be channelled somewhere productive. Pragmatism is important in leadership. Leadership is not about vain rhetoric, it is about the tangibles.

Leadership is not about speeches and complex jargon, it is about results. People do not select or appoint leaders because they want to hear new or long words and phrases, the encyclopaedias and dictionaries faithfully help them with that.

All they want are results and that is what leadership is all about. It's about affecting people's lives, it's about food on the table, and it's about progression of a people.

It's about the betterment of the human condition. It's about enhancing the company's bank account and securing the smiles of shareholders always.

It's about getting people to heaven for those in the faith business. It's about creating a healthy family for every parent and raising responsible kids who will be useful in society tomorrow. It's about getting students to pass exams for those in education. It's about ensuring peace and security for those in security and police.

It's about reducing the impact of social problems for those in the civic society. It's about national development of those in politics.

This is what leadership is all about. It's about walking the talk. Leadership is not for the leaders, it's for followers.

The moment you feel too secure as a leader you should know that you have made somebody somewhere very vulnerable. The moment you become more comfortable, somebody is in a bad situation. It's not for you; it's for those who follow.

These results should not just be results; they should be results with a difference, results that give the company, family, political party, institution or nation an edge over competitors.

The environment has become so competitive and the sight of competition should be motivational enough to inspire a sober look at things and apply oneself to create the best possible environment for both institutional and personal growth.

To accelerate learning, we have come up with two mentorship and networking platforms - Leadership platinum, for working professionals and Leadership diamond for students keen on becoming better leaders.

As an aspiring great leader, it is important that you join because the benefits are unimaginable.
Hope you found this message educative and inspiring. I am also humbled and inspired by the thousands of feedback from all of you every week, you challenge me not only as a cultivator of leaders but also as a leader.

See you next week as we work on making our leadership come full circle together. To be the best. Just be the best!

The SME Times Guest Author can be contacted at pascalnyasha@gmail.com.