Tag Archives: Leadership

Ardern’s Leadership Given a Sporting Chance

22 Friday Mar 2019

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Something remarkable has been seen to happen in the world of management and leadership. It’s called New Zealand. I’m biased – I’m also a Kiwi. That said I can, I think, look at NZ in a dispassionate way not having lived or worked there since the 1990s. Much of my time has been spent in the northern hemisphere where things are done quite differently and more recently in Australia, where on the face of its things are similar, but on deeper scrutiny aren’t really.

In the wake of the terrible Christchurch mosque killings we have seen wave after wave of leadership on the big and small scale. Prime Minister Ardern’s role as leader and comforter to the nation is vital and how well she has stepped up to the plate. The three main NZ telcos (Spark, Vodafone and 2Degrees) open letter to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google is another fine example. Then there are the smaller, but in some ways more poignant, demonstrations of leadership within the community where schools have broken into a spontaneous hakas. The all-conquering Crusaders, the undisputed most successful franchise in Super Rugby history have decided to review their brand name. The list goes on.

Adversity often brings out the best in people, but this tends to be at the level of compassion. This event appears to be bringing forth both the right amount of compassion AND great leadership. Why then has such great leadership bubbled to the surface? What is it about the green unspoiled environment of NZ that seems to provide such clarity of thinking in times when clear leadership is necessary? Why does, Aotearoa, the ‘land of the long white cloud’ produce great leaders?

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Not convinced that they do? In recent days President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has demonstrated his own style of poor Leadership with his inflammatory comments about sending NZ’ers and Australians back in a box from the ANZAC ceremonies in the Dardanelles. Not surprisingly, given there are important elections due in Turkey, he is playing to his base with his hyperventilated comments. Because he didn’t limit his comments to one country, we get a rare opportunity to see how two world leaders respond to a common jibe.

Bigger brother, Australia, through Prime Minister Scott Morrison issues a robust rebuke indicating that without a withdrawal and apology for the outrageous comments then there would be further consequences. The suggestion is a recall of ambassadors and asking the Ambassador of Turkey to leave. Good chest pumping stuff at a diplomatic level! Just what Erdogan wants. He’d love that so he could say “look they killed Muslims and now they kick Turkey’s ambassador out”. As he has a tight grip on media in Turkey it’s a message he can pretty much control for his own people.

NZ a much smaller brother, or should we say sister, has sent its Foreign Minister Winston Peters directly to Istanbul for face to face talks. Erdogan would respect that; two bull-headed men plainly talking behind closed doors.  The difference is in touch and diplomacy. Such differences stem from a different perspective on leadership. While NZ arguably has a more genuine case for being upset at the Erdogan comments, because the bloodshed of the Mosque attack happened on their shores, they have nevertheless taken a less sabre-rattling approach.  Better leadership all round.

So, having made the case what might be the reason for this surfeit of leadership skills? While it’s tempting to say it’s the crystal-clear rivers and lakes and un-spoilt wilderness, clearly this isn’t the underlying cause. I think it’s because NZ as a small country has had long-term exposure to a number of really inspiring leaders and this role-modelling has rubbed off on the population at large. Given sporting heroes are an easily accessible role model for sports-crazy young men and women, its fortunate that Kiwis have had such a great run of those that have excelled and done so with a real humility and dignity over the years.

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Reflecting on leadership I often think of the example of Edmund Hillary. He was the first to scale Everest but never revealed who got there first – him or his sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. He even refused to have his photo taken on the summit! That’s a story that every NZ’er of my generation, and probably since, has imprinted in their marrow. He then went on to other feats of daring-do and spent a lifetime helping the people of Nepal. Humility – a cornerstone of good leadership.

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I also recall John Walker, the athlete who won a 1500m gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and broke the world mile and 1500m records on a number of occasions. He kept running for years, even when his age meant he could no longer win. He just ran for the pure love of it. Perseverance – a cornerstone of good leadership.

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Peter Blake was a world-renowned yachtie and someone who inspired the nation through his round the world maxi races and America’s Cup leadership.  He inspired a generation of sports persons through the removal of hierarchy and the ability to instill a single sense of focus. He was tragically killed defending his crew when pirates boarded his yacht off the coast of Brazil in 2001. Selflessness – a cornerstone of leadership.

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Richie McCaw, possibly the greatest All Black to play the game (which means the best player ever) continues to inspire those who follow in his footsteps. He played through pain from injuries and battled the emotional ‘scars’ of losing a World Cup final. His preparation was meticulous and his ability to inspire without compare. Leading by example – a cornerstone of good leadership.

So Jacinda is an inheritor of a fine leadership tradition. She has the strong leadership gene that is engrained in NZ’ers, especially Maori. There is a word in Maori called ‘mana’ that has no easy English translation. As a Kiwi when you see someone with ‘mana’ you just know it. Mana to me is ‘leadership in motion’ and Jacinda Ardern has it in abundance. Now it’s time for young NZ’ers to learn from her example as the baton shifts to the next generation. Given we live in this age of the 24 hour news cycle, assisted by the connectedness of the internet, the whole world now gets to see an emerging great leader in motion, inspiring well beyond the shores of the shaky isles!

That Philiping ‘Sound-Bite Wisdom’

17 Friday Aug 2018

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I haven’t done a blog so far in August and yet I smashed out six in June and two in July. The reason? Well partly a dearth of material, but primarily because I have got into very short-form posts to LinkedIn. They are pithy (some might say pissy) little truisms or nuggets of wisdom that pop into my head from time to time; sometimes at the most random moments. I write them on a flipchart, take a photo, post it and Bob’s your Uncle. I call them #philiped chart – a play on the word ‘flip’ and my name ‘Philip’. Clever huh?

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So over the weekend I paused for breath and had a moment to reflect. This reflection time had me pondering the sort of nano-second world we now live in. Everything seems to be about speed and expediency, meaning activities that are more contemplative in nature tend to get relegated to the ‘too hard basket’ or ‘can’t find time basket’.  We’ve all seen examples of the glib sound bite wisdom, especially LinkedIn memes with some words of wisdom, be it for life and happiness, or how to manage our company or make a million in a week. I’m dismissive of such banality but over the weekend it dawned on me (somewhat late you might think) that I’m caught up in perpetuating the very thing I dislike.

So instead of just lamenting the near demise of long-form and considered written matter, I thought it might be worthwhile considering the implications of the new normal and how it came about.

It probably started before texting and Twitter. The beginnings of this demise can probably be charted back to the advent of television where entertainment was brought to us in a lazy fashion. At least with radio there is the engagement of the imagination. Less books began to be read and before long newspapers – a very good example of long-form journalism –  were flirting with the idea of shortening their pages. First cab off the rank were the tabloids in the belief that their readership wanted their news in more bite-sized chunks. You are hard-pressed today to find even the quality newspapers (broadsheets) produced in the old large format. Necessarily this means more considered long-form journalism is less evident.

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With texting came the expediency of getting a quick message off while the thought or conversation was hot. The days of the well-penned letter well and truly behind us at this stage. Then Twitter forced us to be deliberately succinct to the tune of 140 characters although 280 are available to some. In business there is a tendency to applaud such focus. No-one likes a meandering meeting with no real purpose right? Caution is needed though because not only can little thoughtful communication be conveyed in such a few characters, but the compunction to be brief can deliver dire consequences. The infamous Trump tweets have wreaked havoc across the globe with traditional allies often getting flamed by him. Were Trump to pen his thoughts in a broader manner and expound on his reasoning for the position he was taking, then no doubt the end result would be less inflammatory. As a result of the current trend to brevity, world tensions are now much higher.

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Then came the memes and LinkedIn which was my starting point. A few words placed beneath a  picture of a tranquil lake, while on the face of it harmless enough, can often  be anything but calming for someone experiencing grave difficulties in their life. A glib line that pays no homage  to the travails, scars and complexities of difficult situations does little good and is patronising at best. Knowing that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ for example  is not really that helpful. It kinda suggests to me that the person dispensing this ‘wisdom’ has actually got that sorted and is reaping all sorts of benefits from doing so…a certain smugness comes through. What would be more helpful is a detailed exploration as to how one might get strategy implementation through developing and nurturing a culture whereby everyone knew the strategy, and was clear in their role to achieve it and worked assiduously to make it happen. Sure longer words but, more importantly, a lot harder to make happen.

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Recently I saw on LinkedIn the employability skills required to make us thrive in the age of digital disruption. Rather surreptitiously they all began with C. They were:

C – creativity;

C- critical thinking;

C- collaboration; and

C – communication.

That’s how this whole sound-bite wisdom works. There has to be some short sharp pattern. Like they all begin with ‘C’ for example. Life and management are much more complex than that, but perhaps that upsets the narrative and pattern too much. That had me thinking. Perhaps other letters of the alphabet might also be applied to the skills of the future. Here’s what a quick bit of procratiworking got me:

A

A  – agility (agile’s very much on trend right now!);

A – adaptability;

A – ambition; and

A – awareness.

I got on a roll and then thought ‘hey what about B’. Bit tougher this one but came up with:

B – bold;

B – businesslike;

B – big data; and

B – build partnerships.

C’s already been covered so what about ‘D’

D – diplomacy;

D – decision-making;

D – delegation; and

D –diligence.

So you see it’s not that hard to be glib. The fact of the matter is that the complex nature of managing in an organisation, or leading it, requires just three things (isn’t this me being reductionist?):

  • A complex battery of skills, competence and experience;
  • Self-awareness of your own shortcomings to be able to recruit to cover these; and
  • A mix of determination, sheer luck and creativity.

As suggested, this incorporates a huge array of skills and experience that cannot be contained within one letter of the alphabet.

If we are to achieve in improving our business delivery and leadership, it is unlikely that this will occur as a result of a nano-second eyeball capture on LinkedIn. In fact, most genuine entrepreneurs will talk about the hours of hard work and risks taken in order to become the ‘overnight success’ from their ‘genius’ idea. The same is true of effectively managing people and strategy. This can only be done effectively through life-long learning and having a raft of theoretical and practical skills that are constantly added to and updated. At times LinkedIn appears, in management terms, to be the equivalent of classified pages of old newspapers that carried remedies for everything from baldness to hearing loss. There are no simple one silver bullet fixes all ailments here. There ain’t no Rawleighs for management ailments!

The best solution to improving your business outcomes and managing your people for mutual advantage is to have a means by which best practice is available to you in long-form. Having peers with whom you can discuss issues and challenges with face to face, rather than a ‘like’ or ‘comment’ from one of your 800 odd connections, is much more enlightening. That’s why I have joined the Institute of Managers and Leaders and that’s why I sought the Chartered Manager status. The access to quality advice, peers, long-form research and insights provides a great opportunity to keep current in a world increasingly bombarded by little snippets of ‘wisdom’; not unlike what I contribute to most days that distract and dumb down the complexity of modern management. Sometimes too much condensed wisdom makes me want to ‘philip my lid’!

Sporting Leadership When the Future Looks All Black

02 Friday Sep 2016

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I had the privilege to live a good part of my life in Manchester (well Trafford really) so my local team was Manchester United and I was there for the glory years of Sir Alex Ferguson. In fact I still have a clock whose alarm is a recording of the commentary of Teddy Sherringham’s and Ole Gunner Solskjaer’s goals in the 1999 UEFA Champions League final against Bayern Munich. We were 1-0 down with 3 minutes of extra time on the clock and came away 2-1 victors. Imagine waking up to that every morning! I noticed the other day that Sir Alec, the most successful manager in the history of football, wrote a book last year about leadership simply called Leading.

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I’m pretty ambivalent about getting leadership advice for business from the sporting world, be it from successful captains or coaches of the past. There’s a world of difference between sport and business, despite the fact that sport is big business. In sport:

  • You dump/bench your players when their form drops;
  • You have many people competing for one position to encourage best efforts;
  • There is a much greater clarity about what the goals are of which there are fewer;
  • There are a limited number of tactics;
  • All players are pretty much motivated and have really only one or two reasons for being there (to win and make money);
  • It’s easy to replace someone when they can’t turn up to work;
  • There’s no issue with equity or equality;
  • You don’t spend most of your life at work;
  • Most of what you do is practice and the bit that really matters lasts about 90 or so minutes a week for 6 months of the year;
  • If you are really good the pay is astounding;
  • A whole group of people outside your employer want to pay you money as well and shower you with gifts;
  • You exist in a pretty hermetically sealed single gender world;
  • You can be loved and loathed in equal measure;
  • You get into nightclubs without queuing and can always get a drink at the bar;
  • If you are shit the whole world knows about it;
  • If you transgress the whole world plus your partner knows about it; and
  • Your chances of being on the front or back page are a quantum higher.

That said there is no shortage of ex-coaching soothsayers selling their wares in how to motivate your ‘team’ and make your business better. John Buchannan ex-coach of the Australian Cricket Team is a good example but there are many others. We’re often told it’s about good ‘man management’. CEO’s have to be good people managers so getting a pep talk from our sporting counterparts is maybe not so enlightening for us.

The weekend saw the failure of our beloved Wallabies (Australian national rugby team) to once again lift the Bledisloe Cup, one of the most coveted prizes in World rugby behind the Webb Ellis Cup (World Cup) and the Six Nations. Given some coaches penchant for giving us CEO’s advice I thought I would throw my hat and not inconsiderable experience as a CEO (20+ years) into the ring to provide advice in the opposite direction. In this case to the Wallabies Management on how they might build to achieve success. Here are my ten habits of a successful team:

Lesson one. Respect begets loyalty and loyalty begets respect. I’m thinking way deeper than the players respecting their coach and vice versa. I’m talking about respect for tradition and team values, respect for your paying customer and respect for all those associated with the game especially those officiating it.

Lesson two. Humility eats arrogance for breakfast. Legendary All Black Ritchie McCaw and his fellow senior players stayed behind after every rugby test and cleaned the dressing room. Sir Peter Blake, legendary America’s Cup captain and round the world racing yachtsman, would have his entire team on a roster to clean up the sheds, regardless of rank. I stack and empty the dishwasher at work. When no job is too small for a manager then no-one can complain about a menial task they might be assigned. When in the thick of it and your captain makes that clarion call for effort of ‘one in, all in’ you are more likely to go shoulder to shoulder with them if you have been shoulder to shoulder with them in a more mundane situation. Arrogance breed entitlement and there is no quicker depleter of confidence and energy than entitlement.

Lesson three. Aggression without purpose is wasted energy. ‘Punching above your weight’ does not actually involve punching. Putting ‘niggle’ in to draw penalties from your opponents is actually a zero sum game. Strive to win through fair play because to win otherwise lacks authenticity and players, sponsors  and spectators can smell that a mile away. Discipline eats aggression for breakfast.

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Lesson four. Accept your own failures and don’t blame others. I looked on Amazon for books about referees who reversed their on-field decisions when a penalised player complained. Guess what? I couldn’t find any. Captains who constantly whinge to the referee are amplifying their frustration to their players and the lack of confidence this builds becomes a contagion. So what you were unfairly penalised? The rub of the green invariably goes to the positive side. Taking referring knocks on the chin and not getting knocked sideways by them is the mark of a confident team.

Lesson five. Patience. You can’t re-build if you don’t have a trajectory just a ‘jam now’ mentality. To be constantly at the top is a pipedream in any sport, be it the Chicago Bulls, Manchester United or the All Blacks. When you are re-building do just that. There is no need to lose shape, form and experimentation in the pursuit of every game being a must-win. Look to building a positive trajectory and forward momentum. If your end point is your start point you have a flat line.

Lesson six. Be savvy and learn from others. If you see something working in another team break it down and look at how you can learn from it. Do it from post-match analysis and not pre-game bugging though. If you can only win by stealth when those crunch moments come the lack of physical fibre will be obvious because moral fibre will be missing.

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Lesson seven. Consider your brand. How do you look on-field? Perhaps more importantly how do you conduct yourself off-field? The Wallabies are one of the most slovenly teams I have seen in a long time. Wear a blazer, comb your hair, have a shave. Did you learn nothing from De Niro in The Intern? Also when you are the coach be mindful that lots of kids watching the game can see your reactions and they can lip-read. So too can your players on the field. When you as leader lose it what are they to think? Behaviours are mirrored and good and bad habits get reinforced. We choose which ones we want to be an exemplar for. That is leadership!

Lesson eight. A winning culture does not mean you have to always win. To be winners there are a number of KPIs to achieve and the final score is just one of them. Creating a positive culture is one that appeals to sponsors and spectators alike. A siege mentality might, for a short time, draw a team together but having a constant enemy (i.e. everyone else) saps energy and cannot be sustained for the long haul. Think about a broad range of parameters that define success not just the scoreboard.

Lesson nine. ‘Us versus them’ only exists when on the field. Think about a life after the game. Camaraderie will become important especially when the all too short sporting career comes to an end. Even though teams might be rivals, relationships are enduring.  Competitors in business will still meet at functions over lunch and get on; the same must go for sportspeople. Forge relationships that will empower you after your career. This is a lesson for players and coaches. Even the volatile Sir Alex forged friendships with coaching rivals such as Gerard Houllier, Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger.

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Lesson ten. Learning how to win humbly and lose with grace is a lesson for sport and a lesson for life. I’ve always been wary of the over-the-top post-try celebration; the swan-dive being a prime example. What say you do that but lose the game? You look a tool that’s what. Humility when scoring a la McCaw or Reid becomes a standard that other players emulate. There is a good rationale for keeping your emotions in check (or in Cheika!) because the opposition are coming right back at you and you need to stay focused. After the game the degree to which you are magnanimous in defeat or victory shows character and more often than not character wins games when it gets tight. To immediately blame the referee or cheating opposition in the aftermath of the game for your loss speaks volumes, not about the referee or opposition,but yourself.

Bill Shankly, famous Liverpool football manager, once commented. ‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’ That was very tongue in cheek from a sporting club that has had its fair share of tragedy over the years, but keeps a winning way about it despite not always being at the top. Perhaps Kipling’s lines from his poem ‘If’ are the best manifesto for sporting success? To me you are a real winner;

‘If you can dream – and not make your dreams your master;

If you can think – and not make your thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same.’

Quantum Mindfulness

20 Monday Jun 2016

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I had the real privilege to attend a masterclass with Dan Siegel recently who is the author of the best-selling book Mindsight. It was a long day and you had to have your wits about you to keep up. Siegel, a psychiatrist by training, ranged over psychiatry, classical (Newtonian) and quantum physics with a dusting of philosophy and neuroscience thrown in for good measure. What is more remarkable is he held us in his thrall from 9am until 4pm without recourse to notes or a whole bunch of Powerpoint slides. Siegel is big on mindfulness and it was a timely attendance for me as we, last week, commenced an 8 week mindfulness course for all the staff. Not only that,  we have extended the invitation out to our tenants as well. It’s all part of the ‘wholehearted you’ approach that underpins our Buildfitness concept embracing body, mind, heart and self.

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Dan Siegel

What I didn’t expect from a day with Dan Siegel was to consider my leadership style through the lens of physics. It would appear that basic rules of either classical or quantum physics apply to leadership and therefore management. Quantum physics is freaky stuff and you have to expand your mind to all sorts of possibilities when contemplating it. The Copenhagen Interpretation for example deals with a concept known as wavefunction collapse which, if my year 12 physics can hold up, is the notion that the act of measurement affects the system causing the set of probabilities to reduce to only one of the possibilities after measurement. Measurement and the human intervention whether by observation or equipment appears to distort the results. I’m not going to embark on holograms or string theory here not because it’s too hard to understand – it isn’t – but because it’s almost too freaky to accept.

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Not in the same league as quantum physics, but also in the freaky and hard to believe category is the benefits ascribed to mindfulness. For mindfulness we can read meditation. According to recent studies mindfulness has all sorts of benefits both in the workplace and in our physical and mental well-being. In terms of keeping your brain alert and responsive those who have partaken in a regular meditation regimen have shown improvements over a control group in the three key areas of adjusted grey matter volume, sustained attention scoring and improved reaction time. For those with a penchant for measurement this data comes from the peer-reviewed journal Neurobiology of Aging (2007). In terms of stress reduction, studies have shown a significant reduction in stress in a cohort that was exposed to mindfulness training. The Consciousness and Cognition Journal (2010) showed an improvement in memory amongst a group who undertook mindfulness. In terms of sleep enhancement mindfulness again seems to be a bit of a miracle worker. Without medication it would appear the science tells us that you get improvements in sleep quality, efficiency, latency, daytime dysfunction and sleep disturbance frequency. In this case the research was from 2005 in the International Journal of Behavioural Medicine. It’s easy to surmise from this that it might also have a positive impact on mood and – sure enough – it does! In terms of depression markers these were significantly reduced in a cohort sample exposed to mindfulness practice. It doesn’t stop there folks. Mindfulness improves our immune system with more antibodies in the blood, as measured by antibody titers, following mindfulness meditation according to a study in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2003. Blood pressure, too, that’s in there. High blood pressure can be lowered and continue to improve with mindfulness according to the Alternative Therapy Health Medicine Journal in 2007. Similarly there has been shown to be improved glycaemic control in those suffering from Type 2 diabetes.

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Elissa Epel

And here’s my favourite (given I’m on the wrong side of 50), mindfulness can reduce cellular ageing. A brief description of the ageing process might be in order here. Current thinking is that the shortening of our DNA telomeres is the reason we age. Ageing is dangerous. Aside from the fact it makes us less cool and wanting to dress like our Dad, about two thirds of all deaths are attributable to age-related conditions. Mindfulness has been shown to raise telomerase levels, the importance of which becomes obvious when we know that replaces telomeres. It’s thought that telomere length is associated with longevity and conversely that shortening of our telomeres ages us. Strangely though it appears that the opposite is true of rats…so next time that office two-face pops up look to see if they have crows-feet around the eyes. If you don’t believe me then the article by Elissa Epel et al  in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009. Epel is an Associate Professor from University of California San Francisco and her TEDMed talk is a real mindbender http://www.tedmed.com/talks/show?id=7252  (jump in about 5.00 minutes from the start). It may well get you thinking differently about psychological stress.

So next time you catch yourself watching some meaningless show on Netflix and wondering how you would ever get that 45 minutes back, just think that just a portion of that time (10-20 minutes) per day, rather than numb your brain will enhance it, plus enable you to live longer. After all longevity of life is about the only way to get back all that wasted Netflix time back!

 

Like a Sturgeon – Trumped for the Very First Time

17 Thursday Mar 2016

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You guessed it; I was at the Madonna Concert last night that is quickly becoming legend for the late arrival of the pop diva. Notified by the event management we arrived ‘fashionably late’ at 8.45 all geared up for the announced 9pm start. As it was, that meant a 12pm finish and a late (or should I say early) repose. Madonna graced us with her presence at a few minutes before 11.30pm and my head hit the pillow at 2.30am, pretty much blowing my productivity the day after and making me somewhat of a hazard driving home from work on a pretty meagre zzzz diet.

So there were two and three quarter hours we had to while away. Thanks to American Express this wasn’t as onerous as it might have been. Indeed, had it not been for access to the American Express cardholders lounge at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, we probably would have baled out before the concert started (like some people I know) throwing the $299 per ticket in the trash. So at a time when one person trashed their own brand – Madonna, another organisation – Amex once again stood out as a company that gets what it means to delight their customer.

Madonna on the other hand doesn’t seem to give a damn, or as she might more aptly call it ..a f*@k. It was a concert ridiculously punctuated with expletive ridden monologues which were Madonna’s forlorn endeavour to come across as some sort of freedom fighter, social evangelist and all round rebel with a cause. It didn’t work. The audience were treated to what amounted to no more than a cringe laden, school-girl giggly clichéd series of sexual innuendo (ooohh in your end Oh – you get the picture). The way she treated her two main protagonist dancers, both black, was heavy in racial stereo-typing and the production of a banana from the waist coat of one of them was to me offensive. Still it’s Madonna and she can get away with that, after all she is a freedom fighter right?

That made me ponder. Does anyone in her entourage vet this stuff and call it for what it is, or does she have a sycophantic coterie that tell her exactly what she wants to hear? Madonna, it appears to me, puts herself in the rarefied air of someone so special that she affords herself a license that few others would be given. She is the caviar of the music world – a multi-million selling recording artist who has successfully traversed the vagaries of musical trends across four decades. Amazing given she is actually a child of the 1950s. This seems to afford her certain rights not available to us mere mortals.

While spending time in the Amex lounge I went on Twitter and caught up with the day’s events which was pretty much dominated by the US Primaries. There were numerous news organisations reporting on the recent wins by Trump progressing him further and further towards winning the GOP nomination. What characterises Trump’s campaign is a kind of aggression that appears to appeal to a certain segment of the US population. This in turn is causing riotous behaviour at the various rallies associated with Trump. Trump has quite often suggested that someone should be punched in the face and on more than one occasion his ‘disciples’ have followed through on this. Why wouldn’t they? Here is a leader, possibly soon to be the most powerful person in the world, advocating a behaviour that they are only too willing to carry out if it is given sanction.

Leadership requires many things. We often describe it as the ability to take people with you, as well as persuade many to your particular point of view. Quite often successful leaders don’t make good leaders if success is defined by the size of the following you garner. Hitler after all had much of the German nation in his thrall but that did not make him a good leader. Madonna in her own way is a leader. She has influenced many generations of women, and has advocated a more direct approach on issues of sexuality and equality. That doesn’t make her a good leader. Other attributes are necessary to tick all the boxes in the leadership stakes.

To be honest I have never been a great fan of the leadership as a discipline in its own right brigade. Leadership to me is a subset of effective management. To take it away from management suggests that it is the preserve of a select few, an elite, and this propagates the view that leaders are born and not made. Leadership has a set of skills that can be learned and with practice true leadership results. Some of the hallmarks of good leadership are:

  • Humility – knowing when to take your foot off the pedal of self-promotion and narcissism;
  • Listening – to get advice and to shape this into the way you behave;
  • Followership – if you were never a good follower at some stage what insights do you have over your dominions?
  • Broad Shoulders – if you put yourself in front you need to be prepared to take on board the slings and arrows of criticism and to handle this with grace. People who do not agree with you aren’t necessarily stupid;
  • Being an example – knowing that people are watching means you have to do right and to be seen to do right; a plain fact so many in Office get wrong;
  • Sticking around – people want to see you there through thick and thin. If you bail out and move on then people do not get exposed to the true you;
  • Vulnerability – no-one is full proof and no-one is the complete person so showing the areas where you are not strong but get the necessary assistance to cover for this deficit provides comfort to those who follow you. This is not a prophet we follow after all; it is a human being;
  • Insight – you need to understand the power of your words and actions over those who have vested in you their hopes and aspirations;
  • Authenticity – if you cannot show the true you the audience for your ideas or leadership will spot it pretty easily and your following may well be based on fear and not a genuine desire to be led.

Neither Trump nor Madonna appear to display many of these characteristics. When Trump talks about people who decry his campaign he labels them, especially female reporters, as idiots and advocates they get beaten up. His rival Marco Rubio was ‘Little Marco’ in some strange reference to his genitalia. Last night Madonna made reference to genitalia on a number of occasions and also suggested that the audience should fight for the bouquet she was about to throw into the audience and that the person who got it should be punched in the nose.

Like and respect are the two emotions that followers afford their leaders. Neither I would give to either. Surely they know the impact of what they say? If not it is the responsibility of those around them to provide wise counsel. Blind adoration is not what we do when we anoint a leader. I suspect that Trump and Madonna wouldn’t be happy knowing this. When the Primaries get to the later stages where it really matters I don’t think the chorus in Cleveland are going to be singing to Donald ‘We’re Crazy for You!’ If upbraided for being late at concerts Madonna may well regale us with ‘Papa don’t preach.’ Here’s my response from a one-time admirer. ‘I’ve been losing sleep!”