The Right To Be Well-Led – Lawrie Philpott

Early days…..

Remember your first day at work?

Most of us entered the workplace with a justifiable sense of trepidation, for the most part combined with a silent hope that things would go well, and that happy success would follow….. Sadly, with the passage of time, these worthy aspirations often turn out to be a vain hope for far too many people!

Right from the start, often with a series of painful experiences, the reality of poor leadership kicks-in and, with it, the generation of a lifelong sense of disappointment, frustration and cynicism with the subject of leadership itself.

As life at work progresses and disappointing leadership continues to loom large and with ominous regularity, we know instinctively that things aren’t right  –  often without any great understanding as to why that’s the case  –  or what might be done to make things better. Like watching a bad film, it’s easy to be clear that it was bad  –  and that we won’t be recommending it to our friends; equally, we’re clear that our job was to watch and, ideally, applaud the film  –  as opposed to making a better production ourselves.

The financial titans…..

In recent living memory, staff who walked through the doors of many of our major financial institutions were surely not wrong in offering their labour and trust to the titans whose life in the C-suite  –  with all its privileges, creature-comforts and financial reward  –  was simply to lead them well. And yet, history tells us that many of those members of staff were well and truly failed by their leaders’ lack of stock-in-trade leadership ability and, in a number of instances, by a fundamental lack of professional competence. Sadly, the syndrome is not solely confined to the financial services sector.

Political pathos…..

Political leaders often struggle hopelessly with the leadership challenges that are baked into their roles  –  often because the gap between political ambition and leadership ability is too complex for them to grasp and even more difficult to close. Hopeful aspirations – rather than decent plans –  turn sour, sometimes viciously and with speed that defies mortal understanding. 24 hour rolling news disgorges its painful notes  –  adding to political misery and the all-too-often defensive mantra of ‘lessons needing to be learnt’. On many occasions political leaders fail to understand what is fundamentally wanted and needed by those whom they aspire to lead. Political failure and follower dissatisfaction all too often become the norm rather than the exception. And, with growing regularity, surprise election results are the force that make the followers’ point – often vividly!

Leadership ‘lingo…..’

Leaders who fail are often described as stepping down rather than resigning  –  but most of those whom they were alleged to have led are not fooled by this kind of wordplay. To add insult to injury, followers are often cajoled into thinking that the replacement leader will be an organisational saviour  –  only to have their rightful hopes dashed by the ‘Scylla & Charybdis’ of organisational life. To paraphrase Somerset Maugham: ‘”Only the mediocre are always at their best’’!

In summary, leadership deployment in today’s business and political world often resides in unsatisfactory delivery masquerading as professionalism; and hope rather than expectation. The relentless pursuit of seniority and financial reward all too often pollute the purism required of high-quality leadership. Disappointment for leaders and followers is the unsurprising outcome.

Questions to answer?

What, if anything, might be done? Might there be a justifiable case for people in organisations to have a right to be well-led? If so, how might we make leadership work better  –  and, possibly even properly? What is the role of the legion of business schools and scholarly writers on the subject? What should be provided by the HR profession – once described by Dr Nicholas Georgiades as the ‘administrative handmaiden and toilet-flusher of organisational life’? So far, if the current leadership scene is anything to go by, a different strain of thinking might well be welcome.

Is ‘leading-well’ an axiomatic component of the leadership act – for any leader? The short answer is yes. The rightful pursuit of excellence has long been a fundamental component of public and private sector organisational life  –  certainly since Peters & Waterman published ‘In Search of Excellence’ in 1982.  At that time it was predominantly leaders who turned up to hear the McKinsey duo tell their tale in conference mode all around the globe  –  with the objective that, as recipients, they would be able to carry from the lecture theatre at least some of the ‘excellence-story’ into their own organisations via their individual leadership act. Very often, this laudable objective turned out to be illusory in practice, with the result that leadership and its connection with organisational performance became viewed with growing cynicism.

To attack, or at least dilute, the case for being well-led by an ‘individual leader’ critics might say that leadership must be seen as both an individual and a team-based act. At one level the critics would be right, albeit in a somewhat obfuscatory way. Put simply, there are many times and circumstances in modern organisational life when an individual leader has to ‘step up to the plate’ and in so doing endure the ‘loneliness’ of leadership that many leaders experience. Similarly, there are times when a leadership team, including the leader, jointly need to step-up. Whatever the circumstances, the right of organisational recipients to be well-led and, as a result, to get the benefits of stepping up to the plate, whether via individual or collective leadership, do not change.

Principled leadership

The overriding leadership contention is for the individual ‘principled leader’ to ensure that all of the necessary components, both structural and personal, are in place so that the right to be well-led can be professionally delivered  –  by an individual leader and by the leadership team. Regrettably, that is where significant problems germinate and thrive.

It is entirely reasonable to believe that professionalism in leadership has never really been taken terribly seriously – and certainly not as seriously as the leadership act of piloting a jet aircraft! In corporate terms we’ve often left it to chance, amateurism and the luxury of scholarly, and sometimes not so scholarly, contemplation. Occasionally, a truly inspiring, globally-recognised leader will emerge – as in the case of either Churchill or Mandela  –  and, for the most part, there is much rejoicing, applause and gratitude for their contributions. Sadly, such leaders are all too few and far between.

Leaders in demand

As a result, it’s no surprise in this day and age of mass communication and social networking, that the community at large, those who have a right to be well-led, are waking up and making their collective voices for leadership more loudly heard. The ‘social media ducking stool’, mass demonstrations and populism in politics all contribute in terms of applying pressure to those in leadership  –  bending, often to breaking point, the amateurism of much of today’s leadership act. In central government Dominic Cummings seems to have sniffed this out!

For their part, leaders, both public and private sector, hunker-down in the hope that difficulties will pass  –  sometimes known as ‘kicking the can down the road’. Faint hope! The forces of post-modern organisational life are far more powerful and long-lasting than most leaders think; and ‘leadership hiding-places’ in the current era are fewer and farther between; some would say non-existent. As a result, ‘leadership hide and seek’ becomes a game which leaders lose, often without really understanding why.

Well, finally, is it a right…..?

Against this background, is being well-led a right? Most certainly – if you believe that long-term, high-quality outcomes should be the objective of any organisation; and that leadership, particularly individual leadership, is a powerful denominator of such outcomes. By that axiom, individual leadership is, to use a banking term, the ‘lender of last resort’ whose role must include the ultimate assurance that leadership professionalism is the rightful norm.

No longer is it good enough to subject people to the ravages of leadership by chance, accompanied by a steady stream of unnecessary and avoidable ‘corporate mishaps’. Organisational leadership needs to be as dependable as ‘travelling in a jet’ rather than all too often having the aerodynamic properties of a breeze-block! Followers yearn for this and, as Sir Michael Edwardes, CEO of British Leyland, said in 1978, “there are no bad workers, only bad managers”. For ‘managers’ substitute ‘leaders’ and you’ll get the point.

A new template is required  –  comprising both old and new thinking. Over time our purpose with ‘Leadership & Leaders’ (LL) is to move current understanding of the subject to a better place  –  and to do so in practical, implementable ways. There will, no doubt, be much debate  –  but such debate must not become interminable and, as a result, obstructing of action. Neither must it fall-foul of the notion that ‘fools can ask more questions than a wise person can answer’….. Hence ‘leadership gravity’.

‘Leadership gravity’

Yes folks, it’s a new term – but in today’s world it has real meaning and relevance. We all know that to defy gravity is perilous! Hence, if we can identify the components of ‘organisational gravity’ we might just recognise that its tenets are very often at the heart of why organisations, and leaders, fail. My take on the fundamentals of leadership gravity is set out below.