Posted on

Leadership Is An Art Form

Many moons ago, I worked as a senior relationship manager within the corporate banking division of a major bank in the country. I had done corporate banking for a while by then and pretty much knew the nuts and bolts of finding structured working capital solutions for private and public sector institutions. As luck would have it, I took over my boss’s role as he was leaving to take on a different position elsewhere within the group. At our handover lunch, he imparted his words of wisdom which I carry with me to this day. “Carol, you’re about to take over a very high performing team. These guys have been your peers for a long time. You cannot manage them the way I have managed all of you. You’ve always known me as the boss, so taking directions from me was easy. With these guys, you are going to have to collaborate and influence, rather than command and control.”

 

I led this team because my former boss took the time to explain to me that I was about to take over the reins of a high performing team who should be allowed to do what they did best, leaving me to juggle the various stakeholders that needed to be managed to enable the team to perform well. I got to thinking about this when I saw some idle chatter at a forum talking about how the CEO of our biggest power utility needed to be an engineer. Why? Because only an engineer could run an institution that distributed power.

 

The same fallacious argument can be applied to an airline needing to be headed by a pilot, or a hospital needing to be headed by a doctor. Apart from being very insular, such an argument fails to take into account that leading an organization is less about one’s technical skills and more about one’s leadership capabilities. Which is why we end up with very many CEOs and heads of institutions who have been promoted to their precise level of incompetency and who have triumphantly led those institutions down a cataclysmic rabbit hole.

 

A CEO’s primary jobs are to know how to manage both internal and external stakeholders as well as to get the right people to do the right job. Regarding the latter, he needs to ask them the right questions to know if they are doing the right thing. Too many rights, right? Puns aside a classic example would be the retiring head of Absa Group Limited (formerly known as Barclays Africa Group) Maria Ramos after ten years at the helm. Ms. Ramos joined Absa/Barclays as the Group Chief Executive in March 2009 from her previous role as Group Chief Executive of Transnet Limited. Transnet is the South African state owned freight transport and logistics service provider. Prior to that she served as the Director General  of the South African National Treasury.

 

She had no executive experience in the banking industry and led the bank through very difficult transitions first with the consolidation of all the Barclays entities in Africa into one legal South African registered group, followed by the grinding divorce of the group entity from its London based parent. At her time of joining, the marriage between the Barclays and Absa in 2005 had not been well consummated leading to two very different cultures, disparate centres of power and all the ugliness that follows what the acquiring party (Barclays) called an acquisition of 56%, while the acquired party (Absa) called it a merger of equals.

Having taken over from the very dyed-in-the-red-wool Absa stalwart Steve Booysen, one of Ms. Ramos’ first tasks was to establish a team of executives that would deliver on integrating the two entities so as to derive from the synergies that were heralded at the time of the acquisition four years earlier. She also had to navigate the minefield of a growing black management cadre following the successful implementation of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) initiatives in a traditionally white, male dominated institution. Her negotiation skills were exemplified when Barclays PLC agreed to a billion dollar divorce settlement which is to pay for investments required in technology, rebranding and other separation related expenses.

 

The point is this, Maria Ramos remained as the head of one of the top four banks in South Africa (and quite likely Africa as a whole), for ten years not based on her banking credentials, but on her capacity to lead a very complex institution during very complex situations. So at the next board interview for a CEO, you as a director need to ask yourself whether the person seated in front of you can lead or even build a high performing team. Not whether they have the engineering credentials of the guy on the ground.

 

[email protected]

Twitter: @carolmusyoka

 

 

 

 

Posted on

Short Term Leadership Airline Style

Now I may have failed to mention that we were not riding in a devil-sitting-behind-the-wheel-Probox. This was an expensive piece of equipment flown by KQ’s finest, carrying human lives. Meaning that this team of pilots had to work well together, whether they were friends or not. They had to have an unspoken protocol of command that was established the minute they took their respective seats on the flight deck, devoid of ego and showing off who had more flight hours logged under their belts. The Captain was the captain. Period. I sat back and marveled at their professional waltz through the flight, with no raised voices and no hubris inspired instructions. It brought to fore that there are two kinds of leadership styles: command and control on the one hand and collaborate and influence on the other.

Different situations require different leadership styles. Say for example Mary has been promoted to become the head of a division in a manufacturing firm and is now leading what used to be her peers. Trying to command and control such a team will be extremely difficult in light of the fact that some team members may still be bristling at not being the ones to have gotten the promotion themselves. Some team members may have had more years on the job and, therefore, a sense of entitlement and misplaced expectations of respect. Mary has to navigate her leadership journey carefully, as trying to run the team through issuing edicts and driving hard for results may completely backfire on her.She will be better off trying to ensure collaboration within the team and influencing her former peers towards a common goal in order to establish her stamp of authority. Joanne, on the other hand, has just been hired from another firm, to come and head a division whose performance has been dwindling, has low staff morale and has got numerous outstanding audit issues that need to be resolved. Her leadership style in this case might have to first be command and control in order to establish new ground rules and set a certain standard, before moving into a collaborate and influence mindset once the division’s performance has been restored.

I came to learn that the command and control structure actually extends to the whole cabin crew when I spoke to one of the flight attendants. The flight purser and their team of flight attendants were most likely meeting for the first time as well. The flight purser takes charge at the beginning of the flight when they have a team meeting before passengers board. Everyone knows what to do, from simulating the instructions regarding emergency procedures to heating and serving food and drinks. A command and control leadership style is required in highly repetitive, process oriented jobs with multiple team members that may never have worked together, such as a surgical theatre. Order and not hubris is what keeps people alive at the end of the day.

Posted on

Managers Are Not Always Leaders

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a European expatriate who has been working in Africa for a number of years. Bruno (not his real name) is German, but grew up in the chocolate and wristwatch producing capital of the world, Switzerland and posits that the problem we have on the continent is using the word “leadership” fairly loosely when what we should be demanding from those in charge of both public and private institutions is “management”. I had to pause for a moment and reflect on his words. “So what would you call Angela Merkel then?” I asked. “In light of the craziness of Donald Trump, wouldn’t she be regarded as the leader of the free world?”

Bruno was very unambiguous in his response. “Germans don’t consider Angela Merkel as a leader. They view anyone in government as being managers, there to take care of the country’s resources. Angela is therefore the chief manager for German resources and has built a very strong track record around that.” He quickly scribbled a bell curve to illustrate his point. “Leadership is a very rare quality and it is reserved for people who make a big difference in the lives of their followers.” Pointing to the tapering right hand side of the bell curve, he continued,“Only about 10% of a population is made up of true leaders. The majority sits in the middle as people who manage.” He chuckled as he pointed to the left tapering side of the bell curve. “This 10% or so are not worth mentioning. Most of us sit in the middle, we are given the responsibility of managing institutions or countries and that is what we are capable of.”

By now my curiousity was really piqued and I urged him to continue. “Germans don’t like the tag leader, since the whole Adolf Hitler thing, and it’s the same with the Swiss. Do you ever hear about Swiss leaders?” Hmm. That stopped me dead in my seated tracks. I’d never heard about a Swiss leader, come to think of it. So Bruno threw me a challenge to read up on Swiss politics in order to see where the concept of management versus leadership was well executed.

The national government of Switzerland known as the “Federal Council” has only seven members, who are elected by Parliament for a four-year renewable term. The seven members are drawn from the political parties with the highest political base. On an annual basis, a “President” is elected from amongst the Federal Councilors to serve a one-year term. The Federal President chairs the sessions of the executive and undertakes special ceremonial duties, particularly abroad. Each Federal Councilor, including the President, heads one of the departments (ministries) of the Federal Council. The Federal Council is a collegial body and everyone is deemed to share power.

In Switzerland and Germany therefore, according to Bruno, politicians are considered to be managers who are there to manage and oversee the resources entrusted to them by the citizenry. You only need a leader in a crisis, but if an organization is well managed, then you don’t need a permanent leader. He paused to watch a variety of emotions, particularly discernment, play on my face. He concluded, “It’s wrong to ask managers to lead when they are simply not capable of doing so. When one is in office, one should ask themselves: Am I supposed to be a leader in this situation or am I supposed to be a manager?” If Bruno’s argument is valid, and we pressed ctrl+alt+del to reboot our country, imagine the standard we would hold our political and corporate “leaders” to? Deliver the simple mandate to utilize resources well and produce a return and you will be considered successful. Fail on that mandate and, well, keep on Johnny Walking.
*************
Last week I erroneously stated that the KCB Mpesa loan product was fee based rather than interest rate based. I wish to clarify that the KCB Mpesa loan is interest rate based, charging 1.16% per month with a one off negotiation fee of 2.5%. The cost for a one-month loan therefore is 3.66%. My sincere apologies for the misstatement.