Beyond Motivation 2
How we deal with failure

Resilient leadership

There is a good article in the current edition of The Director by Cary Cooper on hard times calling for resilient leaders. He paints a vivid picture of the stresses the economy is about to undergo and suspects the SME sector in particular will get severely hit. The changes coming will no longer be optional but inevitable, so embracing change becomes the mantra. To do this we need what he calls ‘resilient leaders’ and elsewhere ‘real leadership’.

I guess I am not being merely pedantic when I say that all leadership is ‘real’ enough, certainly for those experiencing it; and resilience may not be a quality we want in certain types of leaders: the case of Hitler springs to mind - who was incredibly ‘resilient’. If only he hadn’t been.

What the words ‘real’ and ‘resilient’ are actually disguising is a sort of adjectival tautology: what we want are leaders who lead. Er... what we want are - to use the Jim Collins’ terms - good and great leaders. There, I have said it. ‘Real’ and ‘resilient’ give the impression that we are talking about something objective, that we can empirically conjure up and control in some way; ‘good’ and ‘great’ are just so purely subjective that they seem all froth. We end up knowing we have great leaders only after the event - which is useless when we want to appoint them in advance As Cooper says, “Britain needs them by the hundreds and thousands, if it is to prosper”.

Interestingly, the activities that these ‘real’ types undertake, according to Cooper, are allowing staff ownership of the business problems, increasing their decision making, listening and supporting. In short, less command and control, more empathy, sensitivity and openness. In short, more personal qualities that require ‘real’ character - the ability to engage with another human being without rushing to tell them what to do and how to do it.

This is a tall order even in undemanding times - with the pressure of the economy weighing down on business owners, how likely is it that they are going to opt for character over control, faced with spiralling loss of revenue?

What is really needed I think are new ways of approaching how staff and teams work - and specifically of tapping into the motivational core of performance. We should try this because it is quite clear the alternative - what we are currently doing - doesn’t work.

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