1. “Spark-full” Leadership for
Challenging Times
Presentation to Hampshire Chamber of Commerce
Conference
November 2012
Stephen Gates
Managing Director
Denplan Ltd
Chair – Winchester Area Committee, CoC

3. Agenda
• Why should we care about “Spark-full” Leadership?
• The difference between good Management and “Spark-
full” Leadership
• Definable Characteristics that “Spark-full” Leaders need
to display
• Releasing „Discretionary Energy‟ from your team

4. Sunday Times “Top 100
Companies to Work For” 2002 -
2012

5. “Spark-full” Leadership – Why
should I care?

6. The Leadership Trust
• According to the Institute for Strategic Change, the "stock price of
'well-led' companies grew by over 900% over 10 years, compared
with 74% for poorly led companies"
• In research with Harvard Business School, executive search
consultants Odgers, Ray & Berndtson found that the quality of
leadership accounts for some 15-20% of the total variance in
companies' performance
• Ineffective leadership was found to be the cause for the removal of
CEOs in 73% of cases, exceeded only by financial or ethical
malpractice and mental or physical incapacity

7. It‟s not all about the money……
• Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine August 2008 (Dr.
Kuoppala Jaana of Finland);
• Workers with good leadership were 40 percent more likely to be in the
highest category of job well-being, with low rates of symptoms like
anxiety, depression, and job stress
• Good leadership was associated with a 27 percent reduction in sick
leave and a 46 percent reduction in disability pensions
• The findings support the 'job well-being pyramid model', a theory
suggesting that a strong foundation of leadership, healthy work
environment, and good working conditions reduces worker health
problems

8. Leadership
“Leadership is using one’s personal power to win the hearts
and minds of people to achieve a common purpose – the
minds by giving people a clear understanding of what
they have to do, why and how it might be done – the
hearts by generating feelings of challenge, involvement,
ownership, commitment and excitement.”
Paul Winter
Leadership Trust Foundation

9. The Leadership Gap – what
would your company say?
Preferred Experienced Gap
Inspiring 55% 11% -44%
Strategic thinker 41% 31% -10%
Forward-looking 36% 31% -5%
Honest 26% 21% -5%
Fair-minded 23% 25% +2%
Courageous 21% 8% -13%
Supportive 20% 21% +1%
Knowledgeable 19% 39% +20%
Chartered Management Institute

10. Inspiration
“It is fascinating to me that our respondents choose what, in
my view, is the most difficult quality to define in a general
sense.
The power to inspire goes far beyond the power to motivate,
which is more related to tangible rewards.
To inspire involves convincing people that the direction you
are taking is the right one, and one from which they will get
some personal satisfaction.”
Mary Chapman
Chartered Management Institute

11. Creating the right culture to
succeed….

12. Level 5 leadership
Jim Collins – Good to Great
• Level 1 = Highly capable individual
• Level 2 = Contributing team member
• Level 3 = Competent manager
• Level 4 = Effective leader
• Level 5 = Level 5 executive
• Humility + Will = level 5
• L5 leaders are a study in “Duality”;
– Modest and wilful
– Shy and fearless

13. Duality
• Modesty is a differentiator of level 5 leaders;
– Hardly talk about themselves
– Talk about the contribution of other executives, deflecting any
discussion of their own role
• Display tremendous professional will;
– Lack of pretence, inspired standards, iron-will and stoic resolve
– Have ambition not for themselves, but for the company

14. The Window and the Mirror
• Look out of the window to apportion credit to factors
outside themselves. If they can't find a specific person or
event to give credit to, they credit good luck.
• Look in the mirror to assign responsibility – never
blaming bad luck or external factors when things go
wrong.
“Spread the fame and take the blame”

15. Those who don‟t have the level 5
seed within them
• Never bring themselves to subjugate their own needs to
the greater ambition of something larger or more long-
lasting than themselves
• For whom work will always be first & foremost about
what they get, fame, fortune, control, power, adulation
..etc..
• For whom work will never be about what they build,
create and contribute to

16. Ken Blanchard
“Too many leaders feel that their main job is
making other people feel unimportant…”

17. The difference between good
Management and Leadership

18. “The key to being a good manager is
keeping the people who hate me away
from those who are still undecided.”
Casey Stengel
(1891 - 1975)

19. “Spark-full” Leadership ...
“The art of mobilising others to want to struggle for shared
aspirations”
The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes & Posner
“The ability to influence a group toward the achievement
of goals”
Abraham Zalezmik - Harvard Business School

20. Simply because you “are” the boss doesn‟t
make you a leader
“The right to lead is not something we are either born
with or granted with authority.
It is something intangible we are endowed and
bestowed with, by those we are responsible for.
It is these hearts and minds that make us great
leaders, and it is these hearts and minds that will
judge and condemn ...”

21. Why?
Murdock 1962

22. Looking inside at US!

23. Tired and worn out people make
mistakes....
“The researchers found the odds of injury were
1.9 times greater for fatigued respondents
versus their non-fatigued peers; the odds of
medical errors or adverse events were 2.2
times greater; and the odds of safety-
compromising behaviour were 3.6 times
greater.”

24. The meaning of success?
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of
intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn
the appreciation of honest critics and endure the
betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find
the best in others; to leave the world a little better
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a
redeemed social condition; to know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived.
This is the meaning of success."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

25. The one eternal truth!
No-one ever lay on their death
bed and said
“I wish I’d spent more time in
the office”

26. Hurry Sickness
Otis Lifts
• Average door dwelling time has reduced from 4
seconds to 2 seconds in last 20 years
• Stop pressing the button!
“Don’t press the lift call button more than once. It isn’t
a signal to the lift of how important you are.”
Knell & Reeves – The 80 Minute MBA

27. Guide to Life?
“Work like you don‟t have to.”
“Love like you‟ve never been hurt.”
“Dance like no-one‟s watching.”
Nigel Risner

28. Definable characteristics that
“Spark-full” Leaders need to display

29. Your teams watch you very
carefully – for the “subtle” signs of
leadership

30. Show Character
“Leadership is a combination of strategy and
character.
If you must be without one, be without the
strategy."
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
30

31. Understanding, and developing,
your team‟s dynamics

32. Seeing “the whole picture”

33. The ability to change your mind

34. Align your Values, Behaviours and
your Reward system

35. Let‟s keep it in perspective!

36. Discretionary energy
• “Discretionary energy is the energy an employee uses
when going above and beyond the call of duty to
complete a task or get the job done. Every employee has
discretionary energy.”
• “The amount of energy released and employed at work
depends on their attitude, how well they enjoy being at
work, how they are treated and how they feel about the
company.”
Effective Coaching Releases Employee Discretionary Energy
By Rick Johnson ezinearticles.com 2005

39. “The path out of darkness begins with those
exasperatingly persistent individuals who are
constitutionally incapable of capitulation.”
“Failure is not so much a physical state as a state
of mind: success is falling down, and getting up
one more time, without end.”

40. Can you be a “Spark-full” Leader?
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the
arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short
again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms,
the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy
cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high
achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never
be with those cold and timid souls who know neither
victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt,
"Citizen in a Republic", April 23, 1910

41. The End