Leadership - givin or can acquired?

Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill, regarding the ability of an individual or organization to "lead" or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. Wikipedia says, in US academic environments leadership is defined as "a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.”

Several years ago I attended the seminar about Leadership held by the global HR consulting firm in Japan. There were hundreds people attended and most of them were HR or people in the management position.

The speaker was a professor of the very famous MBA school in US. He has been teaching leadership for many years, and has been involved in the selection and development of CEO in the major US companies.

During the seminar, he introduced several leadership theories from well-known to neo-emerging. One of the theory he introduces is Situational Leadership theory developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in 1970-1980. I like it and utilize most personally. It says that the right leadership style will depend on the person or group being led. The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory identified four levels of maturity M1 through M4:

• M1 - They still lack the specific skills required for the job in hand and are unable and unwilling to do or to take responsibility for this job or task. (According to Ken Blanchard "The honeymoon is over")
• M2 - They are unable to take on responsibility for the task being done; however, they are willing to work at the task. They are novice but enthusiastic.
• M3 - They are experienced and able to do the task but lack the confidence or the willingness to take on responsibility.
• M4 - They are experienced at the task, and comfortable with their own ability to do it well. They are able and willing to not only do the task, but to take responsibility for the task.

Maturity Levels are also task-specific. A person might be generally skilled, confident and motivated in their job, but would still have a maturity level M1 when asked to perform a task requiring skills they don't possess.

A good leader develops "the competence and commitment of their people so they’re self-motivated rather than dependent on others for direction and guidance." According to Hersey's book, a leader’s high, realistic expectation causes high performance of followers; a leader’s low expectations lead to low performance of followers. According to Ken Blanchard, "Four combinations of competence and commitment make up what we call 'development level.'"

• D1 - Low competence and high commitment
• D2 - Low competence and low commitment
• D3 - High competence and low/variable commitment
• D4 - High competence and high commitment

In order to make an effective cycle, a leader needs to motivate followers properly.

I used this theory for my day-to-day management, and teach people as HR trainer sometimes. I believe it works while it is old theory. 

I don’t describe all theories introduced in his speech here, but I enjoyed whole his speech very much. But most interesting thing was, at the end of the speech, he mentioned that top of the top, i.e. CEO level cannot be developed. It is a Given talent. 2^nd level (CxO) leadership can be acquired by the development programs based on the various theories, but CEO level leadership is a Given. I think this is the honest feeling he got through his long experience as a member of CEO selection in major companies. It seems like the denial of his entire speech (he was laughing), but I understood very much what he said, and agreed with him. Even through my limited experience to work with such high level leaders, I feel it is true.. and it is true regardless of the nationality. In Japan we have similar saying that only the person who has "Utsuwa" (= a person of high caliber) should be the top. Utsuwa is not skills nor technique - it is more about personality or humanity. Each person has each size of Utsuwa, and should take appropriate level of responsibility based on Utsuwa.

 

Leadership is deep – no conclusion at this point, but I would like to continue to think if it is given or acquired. It is very interesting topic.

If you are interested in the Situational Leadership theory, you can see more details in the following link: http://situational.com/

 

High Context / Low Context Culture

As businesses continue to expand globally, employees are asked to partner with co-workers around the world. Building strong relationships is difficult enough when everyone is in the same location, but when separated thousands miles away, it requires taking time to understand cultural differences and adapt to those differences.

Recently I did a small research of “High context” “Low context”.
Wikipedia says, “It refers to a culture's tendency to use high-context messages over low-context messages in routine communication. This choice between speaking styles indicates whether a culture will cater to in-groups, an in-group being a group that has similar experiences and expectations, from which inferences are drawn. In a higher-context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain. Words and word choice become very important in higher-context communication, since a few words can communicate a complex message very effectively to an in-group (but less effectively outside that group), while in a low-context culture, the communicator needs to be much more explicit and the value of a single word is less important.”

Lower-context cultures are: Australian, Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Israeli, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Switzerland, United States.

Higher-context cultures are: Arabic, Brazilian, Chinese, Filipinos, French, Greek, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Indian, Indonesian, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latin Americans, Nepali, Pakistani, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Southern United States, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, South Slavic, West Slavic.

What I am interested in is that Indian, Chinese and Japanese are in the same category. I am working closely with Chinese and Indian employees across Asia in Genpact, and feel cultural differences. But it reminds me that we tend to focus on the differences rather than similarity. It would be good to have balanced view when we discuss about culture.

I will continue to discuss about how to work with co-workers in the world from various angles going forward.