Leading with Impact - Authentic Leadership - Daily FT - 12 November 2014

1. WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 12, 2014 12
Management
www.ft.lk
Leading with impact: Developing your authentic leadership
It continues to surprise us at CEE Global,
through our executive coaching engage-ments,
how many leaders attempt to be
one way at work while their true personal-ity
emerges outside of work. It is surprising
when these same leaders seem shocked or
confused when their employees do not trust
them, do not like them and cannot really wait
to work elsewhere.
Authenticity has been explored throughout
history, from Greek philosophers to the work
of Shakespeare. Authentic leadership has
been explored sporadically as part of modern
management science, but found its highest
levels of acceptance since Bill George’s 2003
book, Authentic Leadership.
Demystifying authentic leadership
But what is authentic leadership? How can
you become and remain an authentic leader?
Are organisations choosing and developing
the right people to lead?
Authentic leaders, according to Bill
George, genuinely desire to serve others
through their leadership. They are interested
in empowering the people they lead to make
a difference; more than they are interested
in power, money or prestige for themselves.
They are guided equally by the heart and
the mind, practicing heart-based guidance
grounded in passion and compassion, as well
as thoughtful leadership grounded in the
qualities of the mind.
They lead with purpose, meaning and
values and their people relationships are
extremely strong. People follow
them because they are consistent,
reliable and strong. When they are
pushed to go beyond their beliefs
and values, they will not compro-mise.
They are dedicated to per-sonal
growth and learning because
they believe that becoming a leader
takes a lifetime.
Authentic leadership encour-ages
individuals to investigate
their pasts, identify key defining
moments in their lives that helped
shape who they are and use these
as springboards to identify their
individual, authentic leadership
purposes. In fact, leadership is very
personal and different for everyone.
Authentic leaders are Level 5
leaders who demonstrate ontologi-cal
humility and are aware of their
strengths, their limitations and
their emotions. They also show
their real selves to their followers. They do
not act one way in private and another in
public; they don’t hide their mistakes or
weaknesses out of fear of looking weak.
They also realise that being self-actualised
is an endless journey, never complete.
Authentic leaders are mission driven and
focused on results. They are able to put the
interest of their people at the centre of
their business strategy. Highly engaged
and motivated employ-ees
make the difference
between a truly successful
organisation and a mediocre
entity and are the drivers
of customer engagement.
Authentic leaders are mis-sion
driven and focused on
results. They are able to put
the mission and the goals
of the organisation ahead
of their own self-interest.
They do the job in pursuit
of results, not for their own
power, money or ego.
Authentic leaders lead
with their heart, not just
their minds. They are not
afraid to show their emo-tions,
their vulnerability
and to connect with their
employees. This does not
mean authentic leaders are
‘soft’. They leverage on Socialised Power
and not Personalised Power. They are able
to demonstrate Social Intelligence compe-tencies.
When the situation warrants it,
they communicate in a highly impactful
and direct manner which is critical to suc-cessful
outcomes, but it’s done with empa-thy.
Directness without empathy is cruel.
Authentic leader’s purpose
and values
Rajeev Peshawaria in his book ‘Too
many bosses too few leaders’ clearly states
that the essence of authentic leadership
is to create a future that is better than the
present. Purpose and your values are the
guides that help you in pursuing it. Your
purpose and values define your leadership
identity and give you the energy you need
to stay the course.
The only way to define your purpose
and values is to ask yourself some tough
questions and answer them honestly.
Answers may not come to you right away,
so you have to keep asking the questions
until you find the answers that are right for
you.
Thus, firstly you need to have clarity of
personal purpose. After that, you have to
imagine a better future. Once a clear pic-ture
of a desired future takes shape in your
mind, determine the values that will guide
you while pursuing that better future.
Chances are you will be clear about the val-ues
and principles you would use to resolve
difficult dilemmas.
Values determine your emotions and
the energy created by emotions (emotional
energy) in turn produces great perfor-mance.
However, emotional energy can be posi-tive
or negative. +ve emotional energy =
memorable great performance, -ve = regret-table
performance and behavior.
Authentic leaders understand the impor-tance
of recognising and channeling their
emotions toward great performance and
away from regrettable performance. They
also understand that a prerequisite to man-aging
emotions is having clarity about val-ues.
How do values determine emotions? A
core trigger of emotions in life is either a
match or a mismatch between deeply held
values and the situation at hand. The degree
and type of emotion felt depends on the
extent of the match or mismatch.
[The writer is the CEO and C-Suite Master Executive
Coach of Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global).
CEE is a premier network for established human
resource development and consulting firms around
the globe which partners with our client to design
solutions for leaders at all levels who will navigate
the firm through tomorrow’s business challenges.
CEE offers human capital management solutions for
addressing challenges posed by a multigenerational
workforce including talent management and execu-tive
development programs (executive coaching and
leadership development) that help leaders develop the
skills and knowledge to embrace change and catalyse
success in today’s workplace. Website: www.cee-global.
com Email: sattar.bawany@cee-global.com.]
Guest
Column
By Prof. Sattar
Bawany
In a world with cutthroat competition
prevailing in almost every industry, from
telecommunications and FMCG to insur-ance,
outdoing rivals takes a front seat at
any cost. Companies’ insatiable appetite
to increase market share by initiating
price wars, massive discounts and buy-one-
get-one-free promotions, etc. will
really affect the bottom line by drastically
eroding profit margins.
This will be exacerbated by globalisa-tion
trends where the whole world is con-nected
and information readily available,
eliminating trade barriers among nations
and thereby increasing throughput (rate of
production) through imports and techno-logical
enhancements. All these mentioned
factors lead to a mammoth influx of supply
over demand.
In order to leverage one’s product over
hundreds of other similar brands of the
same product, the said product will have to
be distinguished by some distinct features.
No sooner the feature attracts consumers,
all other brands will also incorporate that
feature into their products thereby eroding
the specialty.
Furthermore, incorporation of more and
more features comes at a cost and due to
head-to-head competition the company
may not be able to increase the price as
well.
In a survey conducted in the US regard-ing
consumers’ brand loyalty, researchers
came upon the fact that for major product
and service categories consumer brand
loyalty will be challenged as they do not
particularly restrict themselves to a certain
brand and in its absence they simply move
to another brand without any hesitation.
Since all these main categories carry
almost all important features i.e. if a rational
consumer wants to buy Glaxo-Sensodyne
toothpaste for sensitive teeth, in its
absence, the same consumer will select
Signal Pro Sensitive-Unilever as all these
main brands are inbuilt with the same fea-ture.
In order to overcome cutthroat compe-tition
for the same shrinking pie at any cost,
W. Chan Kim and Renee Mouborgne intro-duced
a mechanism called Blue Ocean
Strategy after years of research.
Red Ocean and Blue Ocean
In the book, the authors divide the
whole market universe in two: Red Ocean
and Blue Ocean. Red Ocean comprises
the known marketplace where cutthroat
competition prevails. Blue Ocean refers to
the unknown market place where the rules
of the game are waiting to be set. A brief
snapshot of Blue Ocean and Red Ocean is
seen in table 1.
If you turn the clock maybe 20 years
back, the dominant industry available today
may not exist and those who predicted
and pioneered by now may be enjoying
the lion’s share of the market. For example
social networks such as Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, etc.
The founders of the above mentioned
social networks may not be the first to start,
however, they are the early birds and now
established themselves so firmly in the
market. Of course there is head-to-head
competition among social networks as
once this segment became attractive then
everyone in the tech industry wanted a slice
of the pie.
One such company is Google, which fol-lows
a do-a-little-bit-of-everything strategy
with their work in everything from self-driv-ing
cars and wearable computer devices to
balloons which transmit the internet.
In the same vein, our managers must
think maybe 10 to 20 years ahead in order
to carve a blue ocean where the competi-tion
is irrelevant rather than devising strate-gies
to stoke and immerse an organisation
in bloody red waters.
When considering the implementation of
the Blue Ocean strategy, initiators must be
particular about two things: Low cost and
the differentiation simultaneously. This may
be contrary to Michael Porter’s Generic
Strategies in which he argues that if a com-pany
tries to pursue either low cost and
differentiation, the organisation may end
up in with a stuck-in-the-middle approach.
However, organisations nowadays have
successfully proven this fact by practic-ing
both strategies simultaneously. This is
called Value Innovation, which provides
both the organisation and the consumer
with a low cost advantage and enhanced
value. According to the framework shown
in table 2, the organisation will be able to
focus on both cost-reduction and differen-tiation
simultaneously.
Now let me consider the
authors’ illustration of the afore-said
ERRC grid for the wine
industry in the US.
The wine industry is a very
sophisticated industry which
involves a lot of prestige and
technological jargon which will
put an average person in an
extremely uncomfortable posi-tion
when selecting a suitable
wine and sophisticated aging
processes etc.
The US market is flooded
with over 1,600 wineries com-peting
head-on and over 75%
of the market share is enjoyed
by eight major players.
Casella Wines (Yellow
Tail), which is an Australian-based
winery, managed to create a Blue
Ocean in the over-flooded wine market in
the US by mainly focusing on reducing
sophistication(see eliminate and reduce in
the grid) and attracting non-wine users like
beers and ready-for-drink cocktail lovers
(Create in the grid) also to their product.
This enables the wine producer to pursue
low costs while adding differentiation to
the product simultaneously. See table 3
for an application of the ERRC grid to this
company.
Casella Wines (Yellow Tail) became the
best imported US wine in 2003. However,
some critics had some concerns regarding
the quality of the wine due to the elimination
of aging qualities and the prestige point of
view.
However, it manages to
increase the pie by not only
limiting itself to wine lovers
but attracting other alcoholic
beverage consumers.
Practical issues
in adopting Blue
Ocean Strategy
Being in the brand activa-tion
industry for almost two
years, I have had the opportu-nity
to work closely with mul-tinational
and SME organisa-tions.
I hardly notice any Blue
Ocean initiatives taken by any
organisation. The most prob-able
reason would be the
organisation culture where
there is no room for any mis-takes.
There is an Old Russian saying that
“success has many fathers, while failure is
an orphan”. Therefore, no one takes any
initiative to think out of the box and follow
blue waters. Most of the time the managers
have been trained to follow rather than lead,
which kills innovative paradigms and as a
result they do slight extensions and modi-fications
to the predecessor’s plan to be
on the safe side without trying out any new
initiatives thereby getting immersed in the
bloody red ocean. I believe the red tape is
also playing a key role in discouraging Blue
Ocean initiatives as the same plate may be
going through so many hands with a cum-bersome
approval process.
To follow Blue Ocean initiatives, the
organisation will have to invest in resources
as this follows a different path than what
they used to be. Finally, the encourage-ment
of initiatives to follow Blue Ocean
should come from the top management.
The success of the strategy hinges on
the commitment of top management. To
unleash the maximum potential of out-of-box
thinking the companies like Google
giving their employees 20% of their working
time to experiment with their own ideas.
In the same way I believe there should
be an allocated time for independent think-ing
and to try out a different way of doing
things. This will come at a cost, however,
it may be worth investing in. And further-more,
companies can set up and allocate
separate resources for the implementation
of Blue Ocean strategy thereby bringing all
managers immersed in Red Ocean down
to earth by showing the other side of the
coin since immersion in the Red Ocean
does not give any sustainable or healthy
bottom lines.
(The writer can be reached via msdhanush-kafernando@
gmail.com.)
Guest
Column
By Sagara
Fernando
Adopting Blue Ocean Strategy
Table 1