The search for good leadership

I constantly hear that there is a leadership crisis in South Africa. If this is true, the big question is; can this crisis be addressed?

If yes, I guess the next questions are; who are the poor leaders, what are they doing wrong, and how can they be corrected? What then comes to mind is:

Who are the good leaders, and what makes them good leaders?

As I tried to dig into the essence of this problem, I discovered that everyone I spoke to was able to point out poor leaders and good leaders. When I explored further, it became clear that the general view was a good leader did something over and above good management.

In other words, a person could be a good manager but still be a poor leader. This is probably not a surprise.

What also was supported is that management is about operations, i.e. planning, organising, directing and controlling, and that one can learn management skills. For that matter, people can go to college or university and gain a qualification albeit a certificate, diploma, degree or post graduate qualification in Management. And, if they apply the management theory, principles and practices taught – they certainly will be better managers…

But when I asked the question about leadership in comparison to management, the answer was [in the vast majority of cases] that leadership was about a person’s habits, attitudes, values and beliefs, as opposed to ‘teachable’ management theory, principles and practice.

So if this is true, then what are the good leader’s habits, attitudes, values and beliefs [HAVB]? How do we establish the HAVB gaps in poor leaders and then more difficultly; how do we change and improve these poor leader’s habits, attitudes, values and beliefs?

Cleary this is not an easy task. However, it is not impossible. Building a new set of leadership HAVB is a process. And if a process is a “sequence of interdependent and linked procedures which, at every stage, convert inputs into outputs. which then serve as inputs for the next stage until a known goal or end result is reached”, then this will take time and effort and not happen over night.

For more information and ideas on how to build good leaders contact: john@arnesenandassociates.co.za