The John Adair Lexicon of Leadership

The Definitive Guide to Leadership Skills and Knowledge

John Adair

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780749463090
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

From the world renowned leadership expert John Adair, comes this unique volume of all his classic works, including How to Grow Leaders, The Inspirational Leader, Leadership and Motivation, Not Bosses but Leaders, Strategic Leadership and the international best-seller Leadership of Muhammad. With his distinctive insight into how leadership is learned, John Adair presents six business books that cross boundaries into culture, history, strategy and motivation. Leadership Lexicon is an essential volume and an exclusive opportunity to own all of Adair's ground-breaking works that will help you transform your understanding of how leadership works and learn the skills to transform you into a leader.

Part One

Not Bosses but Leaders

Several months ago a young manager visited me with an unusual request. He told me that he wanted some guidelines that would enable him to lead a company with confidence. Some weeks before, on behalf of the large multinational that employed him, the young manager had approached a medium-sized company in the field in order to acquire it. But the family-owned firm decided to stay independent. Impressed by the young manager’s calibre, the chairman offered him the job of chief executive. After some reflection – for the company was almost on the rocks – the young manager said yes.

‘I want some kind of checklist of simple points to remind myself,’ he told me. ‘I know that I must lead and manage in my own way, but I want to avoid making the obvious mistakes. A few key principles – or even some rules of thumb – would be of immense help.’

Intrigued by the challenge, I suggested that we should meet four or five times and go over the ground of strategic leadership – the kind of leadership expected from someone operating at the level of a chief executive. He could then make notes on the keypoints arising from our conversations; they would serve him as the aide-mémoire he was seeking.

Some weeks after our meetings he telephoned to thank me for my help. He said that he had found it a help to clarify and crystallize his ideas.

He mentioned the keypoints as being especially valuable. ‘They are enabling me to lead more and manage less. I don’t feel now that I have to try to be the boss all the time.’ After a pause he added: ‘It’s amazing how everyone in the company has come to life. We are beginning to surge forwards in the right direction. They are a great bunch of people.’ In short, he was beginning to lead the way to success.

Sceptical that so much could have come from a series of information conversations I visited the company and met a cross-section of those who worked there. The young chief executive had not been exaggerating: the new spirit of the company was very evident and the results of that fresh sense of purpose were impressive.

What I have done here is to write in a slightly paraphrased form the substance of our conversations. I hope that you will find this book equally useful. Its message is both simple and important. Leadership matters – it matters to you. It matters at every level. Leadership at the top makes the difference.

As you will see, nothing we discussed was really peculiar or specific to industry or to the private sector. Leadership is, after all, largely an issue of people and their ability to communicate effectively with one another. It is equally important in the public sector, where senior civil or public servants may not be as concerned with profits or returns for shareholders, but where they certainly do need somehow to inspire their people to ever higher standards of service delivery through strategies for continuous improvement.

There is no one who cannot greatly improve their leadership through a little extra thought and practice, as the young manager in this book has proved. Moreover, it is such good leaders – and leaders for good – that society is now seeking. It was an outstanding General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress in Britain, Vic Feather, who gave me the title of this book when he said to me prophetically:

What industry needs now is not bosses but leaders

Chapter One

Qualities of leadership

‘Tell me about leadership,’ began the young manager. ‘What actually is it? I have recently read two books on the subject and I am none the wiser.’

‘Forget about the books,’ I replied. ‘Look back upon your own experience. You have been both a leader and led by others. What do you think makes a person a leader?’

The young manager looked out of the window and thought for a few minutes. ‘I suppose that it’s the ability to influence others to achieve a common goal.’

‘That’s not a bad definition, but what constitutes this uncommon ability you have just identified? Why does one person emerge as the leader in a group rather than another?’

The young manager had some ideas about that. He mentioned several qualities that he felt were significant, such as courage and perseverance. He stressed the importance of knowledge. After listening to him I suggested that it might be interesting for us both to look at the research relating to the subject of leadership.

‘Not that it will tell you much that is new,’ I added, ‘but it may help you to put into better order what you know already – so that you can make more use of it in your own career as a manager, and – perhaps – to develop leadership in others more effectively.’

‘That seems like a good idea. Where do we begin?’

‘As the King of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland said, let’s begin at the beginning and go on until we come to the end, and then stop. Consider first the most widespread assumption about leaders, namely that leaders possess certain qualities that will make them leaders in any circumstances, such as initiative, determination, patience, and so on. Not long after research into leadership had got under way some 40 years ago, some researchers had the idea of looking at the various lists of leadership qualities that were beginning to appear in the studies. They found that there was apparently little or no agreement on what the qualities of a leader are.

‘When I was Adviser in Leadership Training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, for example, I reviewed all the lists of leadership qualities being taught in schools for young officer cadets throughout the Western world – the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, France, Germany, the US Army and the US Marine Corps among them. The only quality that appeared on all the lists was courage.’

‘But surely that doesn’t help much,’ interjected the young manager. ‘I imagine that all soldiers need the quality of physical courage, not just the officers.’

‘I agree. Physical courage is really a military virtue, not a specific leadership quality. That leads us to the second drawback of the qualities approach, as I call it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Even if a list of leadership qualities could be identified, the qualities approach does not form the best starting point for leadership training. It is often associated with the view that leaders are born and not made. You may have heard the story of the business executive who read in his annual report “Smith is not a born leader yet.” What do you suggest he should do about it?’

The young manager laughed. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘But does that mean the qualities idea has nothing more to offer? I noticed that a few moments ago you said there was only an apparent lack of agreement about leadership qualities. What did you mean?’

‘Well, I believe that we do know some things about the qualities of leaders. In the first instance, leaders should possess and exemplify the qualities expected or required in that particular working group. Physical courage, for example, may not make you into a military leader, but you cannot be one without it. You could apply the same principle to all working groups – engineers, accountants, academics, nurses, ministers, politicians…’

‘And managers?’

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘If you want to be leader of managers – a managing director or chief executive – you should personify the qualities that are expected or required in all managers. We should have to return to the question of what they might be. But leadership is more than possessing the qualities that are required and respected in your walk of life. There are certain qualities that are the hallmarks of good leaders. Let me write down some headings on the flip chart:

• Integrity

Integrity has been defined as the quality that makes people trust you. And trust is of central importance in all personal relationships. Integrity means literally personal wholeness. It also conveys the sense of adherence to standards or values outside yourself – especially the truth. Trust and truth are...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title page
• Imprint
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part one: Not Bosses but Leaders
• Part two: The Inspirational Leader
• Part three: How to Grow Leaders
• Part four: Leadership and Motivation
• Part five: Leadership for Innovation
• Part six: The Art of Creative Thinking
• Appendix A Checklist: Have you analysed the problem?
• Appendix B Checklist: Are you using your Depth Mind?
• Appendix C Answers to quiz questions and exercise in Use the stepping stones of analogy and Test your assumptions
• Full imprint