Core Leadership Behaviours Are Not What You Perceive – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #954

Core Leadership Behaviors Are Not What You Perceive – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #954

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #954 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to aq.pharmaveterans@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Alena Darmel

Credit: Anna Tarazevich

Credit: Karolina Grabowska

This blogpost is inspired by a McKinsey article authored by Claudio Feser, Fernando Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan. link at the end.

Leadership is a buzzword which is thrown around a lot, particularly, these days. There is an unending discussion on essential attributes of leadership, what makes a leader, how should the leader think and act, leadership for change, and so on and on. It is a great transition from conventional management which was archaic, patriarchal, autocratic, and centralized. Management was about work and deployment of all types of resources to get work done. Leadership is about leading the team, not the project. Leadership recognizes that people are the most important resource who can make or break anything. Just like it is said that managers can make or break anything. 

Much has been said and written about types of leaders, which is good academically but not practically. Types are abstract and it may take a long time of interaction to understand the type of a leader; that time may or may not be available. 

I remember having been exposed to an Australian program long time back, which covered both selling and management. For profiling of the salesperson, her/his manager, and their customers, they focused on behaviors, not mindset or type. It was much easier to assess what was going on in that time and there was great flexibility in adjusting own moves. The Mckinsey article under review is also based on behaviors, actions through which leadership may be understood better. True, that recurring behaviors make it easy for the observers to understand the profile of their leader.

The article highlights following major points. We look at these and then go on to see our local landscape. It also has direct relevance to the leadership development programs offered by individuals and organizations. 

• McKinsey team identified 20 distinct leadership traits based on practical experience and literature survey.

• Next, they surveyed 189,000 people in 81 diverse organizations around the world to assess how frequently certain kinds of leadership behavior are applied within their organizations. 

• Finally, they divided the sample into organizations whose leadership performance was strong, and those that were weak. 

“What they found was that leaders in organizations with high-quality leadership teams typically displayed 4 out of the 20 possible types of behavior. These 4, indeed, explained, 89 percent of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness”.

4 Behaviors that Matter the Most

Solving Problems Effectively

Problem solving, in its various shades, is a daily affair. Problem solving should be seen in broader perspective, not just trouble shooting. The basis for problem solving and decision making are the same: gathering information, analyzing information, and drawing right conclusions. Problem solving actually comes before decision making, all kinds of decisions. Our conventional view is to treat the two separately, hence the courses titled ‘Problem Solving and Decision Making’. Remaining objective in analyses and inferences is a hard, deceptive task, as is evident from the huge number of wrong decisions taken every day. 

Operating with Strong Results Orientation

Leadership is not just about developing vision and sharing it with the teams, it is also about setting objectives and achieving these through execution and follow up. Leaders with strong results orientation give a strong message to all team members to improve efficiency and focus on outcomes. These leaders also do not waste time on initiatives that sound good but do not carry any practical outcome.

Seeking Different Perspectives

Change management is not integral to the job of a leader because of the rapid changes within and outside the organizations. Leaders alone cannot carry the entire burden of generating ideas and implementing them. Therefore, effective leaders encourage employees to contribute idea that would improve performance, accurately differentiate between important and unimportant issues, and give appropriate weight to stakeholder concerns. Such leadership decisions tend to be biases-free, owned by all, and implemented willingly.

Supporting Others

Supportive leaders understand and sense how other people feel. Their genuine interest in those around them gives them authenticity which helps them build trust and inspire their teams to overcome challenges. They have the ability to address concern sincerely, allay fears about external threats and prevent wastage of time and energy due to internal conflicts. They work with the teams and the teams work with them.

Where Do We Stand?

I can cite three major leadership related issues in Pakistan.

One, most owners of family businesses are neither leaders, nor leaders in the making. They have their own thinking which is usually rooted in clichés such as ‘all employees are lazy and shirk work’, ‘employees understand the language of power only’ ‘everyone is out to cheat you” and so on. Their behavior does not fall in any of the above four types. It is a different mindset which does not subscribe to management practices. Even their next generations are mostly following in their footsteps.

Two, the senior leadership corps comprises of old guards and their trained disciples. They are still pursuing the old theories of leadership and the trainings they received probably forty years ago. Keeping updated on new developments is our weakest area in all departments. Our teachers do not know the current knowledge, and our professionals do not upgrade their information. Book reading has dwindled to almost zero in Pakistan. Internet, the biggest source of information, is being used for cheap, short-term entertainment only. In this environment, new ideas and concepts cannot flourish. 

Three, our training houses, including the most expensive and elitist ones, are a hostage to their own syllabi and courses which they designed long ago. Case studies method is largely based on foreign case studies which are not relevant here. The programs and sessions are packed with one-way information doled out by people who have never been in leadership roles. The entire training and development landscape leaves much to be desired. 

Sum Up

Things can change, if the younger professionals learn about new ideas, develop themselves, experiment with various designs, and change the leadership environment.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intention to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, however, it happens unintentionally, I offer my sincere regrets.

References:

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/decoding-leadership-what-really-matters?cid=other-eml-cls-mip-mck&hlkid=59d3d35d8b0846c591d11ade8ae70dae&hctky=2208791&hdpid=c0698764-2676-420a-9a39-a2703b0474c0#/