Case Study 5

Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?

By Rob Goffe and Gareth Jones

Introduction:

 You cannot do anything without followers.

 Leaders need vision, authority and energy.
 Additional Qualities:
 Show you are human.
 Manage employees with tough empathy.
 Dare to be different.
 Be a sensor.
 These qualities can be honed by almost anyone.

Why Should Anyone be Led by You?

 People want to be led by people that inspire them. The authors of this article have come up
with four ways for you to become an inspiring leader.
1. Selectively show your weaknesses.
2. Rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of action.
3. Manage employees with tough empathy.
4. Reveal your differences.

They Selectively Show Their Weaknesses (Reveal Your Weaknesses)

 When leaders reveal the weaknesses, they show the human being’s authenticity.
 Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, is a brilliant businessman, he often fells ill and also
fumbles incessantly while interviewed in public.
 Exposing a weakness offers a leader valuable protection (celebrities and politicians do that).

They rely on intuition to gauge the appropriateness of a course of action

 Inspirational leaders rely heavily on intuition.

 Franz Humar, the CEO of Roche, is an excellent sensor he judges cues and sense underlying
currents of opinion in the company.
 Oversensitivity for a leader can be a recipe for disaster.
 Sensitivity must always be formed by reality testing.
They Manage Employees with Tough Empathy

 Real Leaders care intensely about the work their employees do.
 Alain Levy, CEO of Polygram on one occasion helped his junior executive in Australia in
choosing singles off album.
 Empathy of inspirational leaders is not only the soft kind described in management
literature.
 Tough empathy means giving people what they need not what they want.
 CEO of Kalvin Klein Cosmetics say “you have to do things you do not want to do and that’s
hard”.

They Reveal Their Differences (Dare to be different)

 They capitalize on what is unique about themselves.

 The most effective leaders deliberately use differences to keep a social difference.
 Different dress style or different physical appearance.
 Sir John Harvey Jones, the former CEO of ICI had long hairs and moustaches but he was also
clever at exploiting to show that he was adventurous, entrepreneurial and unique.
 Most leaders don’t know about their differences.
 Leaders can over differentiate themselves in their determination to express their
separateness.

Conclusion (Leadership in Action)

 All four qualities described previously are necessary for inspirational leadership.
 Genuine leaders should not follow other leaders completely.
 Manipulate these qualities to come up with a personal style.
 Remember there is no universal formula.