He was a man who began his management consulting career in the days when the study of management was unknown, but by 1942 he was a well-known commentator on leadership, management, organisations and society. During his life time he consulted for General Electric, Coca-Cola, IBM, Intel, Citicorp, Toyota, the Ito-Yokado group, the American Red Cross, the Navajo Indian Tribe, and (you guessed it) The Salvation Army.
His work was not only recognised in the West, but he gained incredible respect in Japan, and his work inspired the anime film series, “Moshidora - What If the Female Manager of a High School Baseball Team read Drucker's ‘Management’?”
He never fully stopped working, and in the latter part of his life he headed up his research organisation, the Drucker Institute. This highly professional body became synonymous with world class quality research on leadership, organisations and society. (Many of the online business innovations that we have today were forecast by the Drucker Institute back in the 1990’s.)
In 2006 a leading management magazine published an interview they had conducted with Drucker shortly before he died.
In it he drew from his years of experience of observing leaders, and from the empirical data collected by the Drucker Institute. So when he was asked, “What are the characteristics that make good leaders?”, he was one of the few people who really knew what they are talking about. He could answer from both empirical evidence and years of practice wisdom.
So what is this holy grail of leadership, this answer to the leadership question of life, the universe and everything?
This is what Drucker said are the characteristics that appear almost universally in good leaders:
ü Psychological resilience,
ü Good communication,
ü The ability to manage complexity.
When I read this in 2006 it had a profound effect on me, for several reasons.
Firstly, it resonated as being self-evidently true. Secondly, all three characteristics can be learned, nurtured, developed and built up; and thirdly, they are the kinds of characteristics I wouldn’t think of working on unless this truth was pointed out to me.
When I look back on my leadership experience, the fact that I am still in leadership must indicate that, to some degree or another, I have been able to build these characteristics. But how much better would it have been if I had had the opportunity to recognise their importance at the beginning and to focus on their development. I hope you take this opportunity today.
I would predict that, depending on your personality type, one of these is going to be relatively easy for you to develop and the other two are going to be a struggle. (For me, the easiest is managing complexity. Communication and psychological resilience are the two that have required the most work, but for you it may be different.)
Now, almost every time I deliver training on leadership, I mention this truth at some point in the session, and I amazed at the moment of “Ah ha” that is produces for so many people.
Building these characteristics is a life’s work, so there is no quick fix, but here a few pointers.
ü Psychological Resilience: Think spiritual life and keeping yourself in the centre of God's will, exposure to challenging and difficult experiences, strong support networks,
ü Good communication: Think listening and attending skills, think repetition to the point of redundancy, think systems and mechanisms (such as meetings, newsletters, etc.),
ü The ability to manage complexity: Think time management, accurate and copious note-taking, more overview, less detail.
So, now you have an advantage starting out that not many leaders before you had. Take it and get started!
(BTW: Read Drucker. I think you would have liked him. He was passionate about the role of the non-profit sector as an essential ingredient in a healthy society, the importance of people as assets in the workplace, the need to routinely get rid of stale old ideas and practices, and the need for real community. You can look at samplers of his work at the Drucker Institute website, http://www.druckerinstitute.com/ .)
No comments:
Post a Comment