MOVERS & shakers
Today, leadership has many definitions and interpretations. What is your definition of leadership? Great leadership is the skill that underpins the success of any organisation. Leadership makes a meaningful difference in people’s engagement at work and in the performance of an organisation. From our research we found that leadership contributes more to positive outcomes than any other single factor in an organisation. Great products, great strategy, great people are absolutely critical but with poor leadership they produce only a third to a half of their potential.
There’s the ongoing debate on leaders being born vs. made i.e. nature vs. nurture. What is your take on that?
Leadership is not some mystical quality that only a few people have and everyone else doesn’t. Leadership is not preordained. Neither is it the private reserve of a special class of charismatic men and women. Leadership is not a gene. Neither is it a trait. There is just no hard evidence to suggest that leadership is imprinted in the DNA of some people and not others. We’ve collected assessment data from millions of people around the world. And we can tell you without a doubt that there are leaders in every profession, every type of organisation, every religion, every country, from young to old, male and female. It’s just a myth that
www.smeadvisor.com
leadership can’t be learned—that you either have it or you don’t. There is leadership potential everywhere we look.
Tell us a little about your bestseller – The Leadership Challenge. My co-author Barry Posner and I wrote The Leadership Challenge based on our extensive research into leadership over more than thirty years. First published in 1987, it has sold more than two million copies worldwide and is available in more than twenty-two languages. The recently updated 5th edition (The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organisations, Fifth Edition) puts our work in context for today’s world, proving how leadership is a relationship that must be nurtured, and most importantly, that it can be learned. We’ve included over 100 new case studies and examples, which show The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership® in action around the world. The book focuses on the toughest organisational challenges leaders face today and addresses changes in how people work and what people want from their work.
Your book talks about approaching leadership as “a measurable, learnable and teachable set of behaviours”. Could you elaborate further?
Approaching leadership as a measurable, learnable, and teachable set of behaviors, Barry Posner
Leadership is not some mystical quality that only a few people have and everyone else doesn’t. Leadership is not preordained. Neither is it the private reserve of A special class of charismatic men and women. Leadership is not a gene. Neither is it a trait. Jim Kouzes, Global leadership guru
Jim Kouzes, a bestselling author, an award-winning speaker and, according to the Wall Street Journal, one of the twelve best executive educators in the United States is scheduled to speak at the HR Summit in Dubai on 18 November 2015. The speaker is published by Wiley, a learning business that helps people and organisations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.
47