How Leaders Create More Leaders

RSOG Leadership in Action

How Leaders Create More Leaders

 with

Dr. Raymond Madden

Framework of the Session

Sometime ago, there was a saying about the definition of a power struggle: When your boss has the power, you have the struggle.  Setting aside the joke, such dynamics are common in the leader-follower-like environment.  Naturally, the leader would use power instead of influence to exert leadership.  Followers, on the other hand, spend most of their time adjusting their followership rather than accomplishing what is required of them.  In fairness, human nature, culture, and structure play a role.  In recent years, the proponents for leaders to create leaders are emerging fairly strongly, believing that the primary duty of a leader is to create more leaders.  As more leaders emerge, concerns for continuity and collective responsibility should ideally be answered by itself.  After all, everyone is a leader in their own accord – at the very least in leading oneself.  Is the idea of leaders creating more leaders a realistic one in a competitive environment like today?  If yes, how do we do it?  These are some potential focus areas that Dr. Raymond Madden will discuss in this session.

Key Takeaways from the Session

Earlier this year, public intellectuals Kishore Mahbubani and Klaus Schwab wrote an article asking what makes a great leader.  They identified several attributes associated with great leaders such as compassion, courage, and good judgment.  Similar attempts were observed as early as nineteen centuries ago with the Great Man Theory.  Whilst it started with the idea that leaders are naturally born, the more recent ones are inclined towards situational or contextual leadership.

Given that situation today changes more rapidly than ever, the need to produce more leaders are more pressing than before.  In other words, to wait for a leader to be naturally born is simply unbearable in today’s context.  Certain attributes, as pointed by Mahbubani and Schwab earlier, are generally as guidance and potentially vary depending on situation and context – as there are no one size fits all solution.

That brings us to the next point, which is how to create more leaders in today’s context, which is considerably more dynamic and resources constrained.  For example, training and development institutions may find attributes required in a leader simply too many and changing too fast, and often the pressure to deliver such leaders are as urgent as tomorrow.  Leading organisations such as ABB Ltd., The Boeing Company Ltd., and BHP Billiton Ltd. are gradually sharing the responsibilities of developing leaders to the senior leaders of the organisations.  After all, as famously pointed out by a leadership guru “a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way”.

Coaching and mentoring are among the more common methods for senior leaders to show the way to others. Coaching, for example, encourages learning through asking powerful questions, largely to create awareness and identify choices which are crucial in developing leaders’ judgment and decision-making skills.  Mentoring, on the other hand, facilitates transfer of tacit knowledge from the more experienced one to the others.  Mentors could also become a role model for the others to emulate, in particularly the attitude and behavioural part.  Sometimes the senior leaders give projects to the potential successor to make the learning more impactful.  In some organisations, such an approach is called capstone project or action learning.  Be that as it may, developing leaders have become on-the-job, real, and risky to some extent.

That explains why the idea of leaders create more leaders may encounter some degree of reluctance.  Firstly, it takes considerable time from the senior leaders who naturally have other pressing commitments to deliver, such as the business key performance indicators.  Failure to deliver projects could put them in hot soup.  Apart from that, there are also culturally-related challenges such as having a collectivist attitude, where people are somewhat shy to stand out from the rest, often fear of being perceived as selling oneself too much.  It could also be expected that many people are still comfortable with the leader-follower relationship.

Having said so, the more recent surveys among the younger generation indicates that a certain level of sophistication is on the rise and probably echoes the call for leaders to create more leaders.  The majority of the young think that an ideal leader (boss) is the one who could mentor them.  They are confident with their ability and are convinced that they could assume leadership roles as early as one year on the job.  Alarmingly, they are quite comfortable to act unethically and taking advantage where they can at work.  Thus, coaching and mentoring is necessary to curb these potential negative attributes.

In conclusion, the idea about leaders creating more leaders is gaining traction in view of ongoing developments.  Coaching, mentoring, and action learning are the more common methods used in creating more leaders.  Nonetheless, the inherent features of such methods, as well as cultural-related challenges, could have influenced the level of acceptance of leaders creating more leaders’ idea.  Perhaps, the key message to be communicated to all involved relating to this idea is to prepare more people who can assume leading roles as and when the situation changes, rather than giving an impression that they will eventually become a leader.

Key Issues Raised

• Coaching, mentoring, and even collaborating with others with the intention to create more leaders certainly takes time and energy.  Such a challenge requires one to balance the requirement as managers as well as leaders.  Unlike the former, the latter often takes a longer-term perspective, which is to treat leadership development as important as business development, if not more.
• Not everyone in the organisation is interested to become a leader. Talent game, which involves change of job, secondment, and small projects, could help in encouraging more people to assume leadership roles.
• Leadership is about what one does and not what one says, which could send either a positive or negative message to others.  The act, as well as the response is often dependent on the situation.
• Gen-Y have become a great challenge to many organisations especially on how to manage them. They generally have shorter attention span and can mix work with pleasure.  Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities are a potential way to develop their leadership abilities.
• It is not all the time that leadership gets things right.  Admitting mistakes and seeking forgiveness are qualities that should be encouraged in an organisation. Such shortcomings provide a sense of humility.
• Gen-Y are also facing leadership challenges in managing support staff who are far older.  High power distance makes it difficult for Gen-Y to make the elderly to toe the line.  In doing so, set clear expectations and focus on work instead of people involved.

About the  Guest Speaker

Dr. Raymond Madden is presently the Chief Executive Officer of Asian Institute of Finance, Kuala Lumpur; a human capital development institute dedicated to the financial services industry in Asia. He has extensive international experience in human capital development and talent management, having first coined the term the ‘talent game’ in 2009 to describe how organisations can best manage the careers of critical personnel.  He brings to the region experience from several senior roles in talent management within the European financial services industry, including tenures as Global Head of Learning at ABN AMRO Bank and Lloyds Banking Group. Dr. Madden has also held a number of academic appointments including Professor of Management Practice and Dean at the London Metropolitan Business School and Associate Dean at Cass Business School, United Kingdom.

Contact

To get more information on this event, you can contact us via email at programmes@rsog.com.my