1. KMT Leadership and Management Development
programme hand-out 1
Leadership theory and individual leadership
development work

2. KMT Leadership and Management Development programme
hand-out 1
Leadership
Most people, at some points in their lives, are leaders. They assume leadership in family situations
(children need leading!), on the sports field, and in many other situations, including work.
Leadership is not just about the qualities of an elite few, throughout successful organisations the
leadership skills of all people managers are of fundamental importance.
Leadership is currently much discussed, researched and debated. Entering ‘leadership’ into Google
provides around 503,000,000 entries worldwide. A similar search on Amazon UK gives 18,741 books
on the subject.
What is leadership?
There is no single definition that satisfies everyone. To attempt a broad, consensus definition,
leadership is very much about the ability to influence people by personal attributes and behaviour.
Such as:
1. Are always looking to the future and considering the big picture
2. Develop, facilitate and communicate the mission, vision and values, providing role models of
a culture of excellence
3. Motivate, support and recognize people
4. Encourage empowerment, innovation and creativity
5. Align the organisation with the delivery of policy and strategy
Why is leadership important?
There is a direct link between leadership capability and sustained high performance.
In a survey 55% of managers identified inspiration as one of the three most important
leadership characteristics, only 11% said leaders provide it.
Chartered Management institute (2001)
The most important attribute was to provide a vision, look to the future and handle change
– all of which were perceived as lacking
There is a mismatch between what people want from their leaders and what they are
getting
The research Council of Excellence in Management and Leadership (UK) (2000)
Studies of the impact of leadership
There is considerable evidence of the positive effect of leadership on organizational effectiveness
and employee satisfaction (Koene et al, 2002). The importance of this becomes clear when you look
at the top 100 fortune companies. There is a strong correlation between performance and employee
satisfaction. The best companies to work for in 2002 on average outperformed the rest of the FTSE
listed companies (Gill, 2010).
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3. KMT Leadership and Management Development programme
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A survey by the Accenture Institute of Strategic Change (1998) in the US found that the stock prices
of companies perceived as “well led”, grew 900% over a 10 year period versus 74% for companies
perceived to lack good leadership.
The Harvard Business School in 2001 found that the quality of leadership accounts for some 15 –
20% of the total variance in companies’ performance.
Leadership versus Management
There is on-going confusion about the different between leadership and management, but it is
helpful to look at the two roles and try to discover some differences.
Table 1. Differences between managers and leaders:
Manager
Leader
Administrators
Innovates
Maintains
Develops
Focuses on systems and structure
Focuses on people
Focuses on control
Inspires trust
Takes a short-range view
Takes a long-range view
Asks how and when
Asks what and why
Accepts the status quo
Does things right
Challenges the status quo
Does the right thing
People don’t want to be managed. They want to be led. Whoever heard of a ‘world manager’?
World leader, yes. Educational leader. Political leader. Religious leader. Community leader.
Business leader. They lead. They don’t manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your
horse. You can lead your horse to water. But you can’t manage him to drink. If you want to manage
somebody, manage yourself. Do that well and you will be ready to stop managing. And start
leading. (Bennis and Nanus, 1985).
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4. KMT Leadership and Management Development programme
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Recalling the Leadership/Management Continuum Exercise....
Leadership
Management
Where would your staff place you on the arrow?
If your staff had a choice would they choose you as their leader?
What would you have to do to be appreciated and respected as a more effective leader?
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5. KMT Leadership and Management Development programme
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Leadership is not about position or title. Leadership is you being at your best. Everyone can be a
leader and make a difference whether it is to your career, your performance, the relationships you
have with colleagues or the quality of life you have at home.
It is a natural, human activity that is part of us all.
How to turbo charge your growth
1. Make your practice conscious practice
2. Build your personal support team
3. Know and go beyond your limits
Make your practice conscious
Research on leadership is totally conclusive that you do most of your learning and growing as a
leader in real life situations, not on courses or reading books, and you grow fastest when you’re
taking on challenges that stretch you. Steve Radcliffe
The more you practice the better you get. Check on yourself:
How clear are you that you have opportunities every day to practice being a leader?
How regularly have you grabbed those opportunities?
What specific opportunities are coming up for conscious practice of your leadership?
Build your support team
Ultimately, your leading is completely down to you, but you need to build a support team to help
you.
Leaders who discuss their own improvement priorities with their co-workers, and then regularly
followed up with these co-workers, showed striking improvement. Leaders who did not have ongoing dialogue with colleagues showed improvement that barely exceeded random chance.
A good way to approach this is to identify specific ways you want to grow as a leader, tell selected
colleagues and ask them to rate you in these areas now. Then ask them to watch out for those areas
because you would like to talk to them regularly about what progress you’re making. Do this in
addition to formal feedback.
A support group also gives you help when you are having a setback, or moment of doubt.
Know and go beyond your limits
Notice and then reduce ways in which you limit yourself.
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6. KMT Leadership and Management Development programme
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Limit one: not believing you’re a leader. People have digested too much accepted wisdom about
leadership that is both out of date and debilitating. At its worst this is how it goes:
Leaders are different from me – they are charismatic, probably heroic, perhaps even
explorers
In organisation they are older and in senior positions; they mayhave been helped in getting
there by going to the tight school or university
These leasers have few doubts or insecurities. They are very confident
To be a good leader you have to understand complicated theories and models and be very
bright
You have to know the right answers to problems
Leadership is solitary, you have to do it alone
Of course, this is not true. But check to see if you have been limiting yourself by how you think
about yourself.
What have you believed about leadership?
What have you taken for granted and not stopped and really thought about?
What do you believe it takes to be a leader?
To what extent do you see yourself as a leader?
You should be focusing on what you want to be as a leader, what you’re like when you are at your
best, and how you’ve been in those moments when you’ve been brilliant.
Transfer Learning Activity
Module – 1 Leadership
Consider what you have learnt during the module and decide what you intend to action in the
workplace to become more effective in your role.
Arrange a meeting with your line manager to discuss:
What was covered on the module and how this relates to your day-to-day role and
ongoing development
Clarify what different action you intend to take as a result of the learning
Agree the level of support you will require from your line manager in order to make
sure you are able to get the most from the development programme.
Summarise the key points from the meeting below:
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7. KMT Leadership and Management Development programme
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Further reading
Theory of leadership. Roger Gill
Leadership and management development. Gold, Thorpe and Mumford
Leadership plain and simple. Steve Radcliffe
www.cipd.co.uk
Good to great: why some companies make the leap and others don’t. James Collins
The allure of toxic leaders. Jean Lipman-Blumen
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