An interesting post from Tony Mayo, a Lecturer in the Organizational Behavior unit and the Director of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School who has spent the past five years, with Nitin Nohria studying great business leadership in the United States. In their research they sought to answer the question…
"What makes a leader great? Is greatness defined by financial performance, the capacity to innovate or implement, or the ability to set a strategic vision that galvanizes a group of followers?"
In their research they asked over 7,000 executives to define greatness in business by selecting from the following list or providing their own definition.:
- Ability to set a strategic vision
- Ability to be an innovator or pioneer
- Impact on the way an industry has evolved or functions
- Impact on society
- Financial performance
- Development of others
Their responses looked like this:
How would you define great leadership? Leave your comments below…..
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Greatness, Research, Management, Business, Questions, Vision, Innovation, Development
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Great Leadership is the ability to set the vision of whatever it is that is required, motivate and develop those who are needed to achieve this vision, not with threats, with the vision of what lies beyond, and to follow through with actions needed to get there, with a philosophy of lead from the front.
I believe great leadership is a combination of 2 qualities that are inseperable: ability to set a strategic vision and the ability to operationalize it. I’ve seen great visions flounder for lack of operational expertise, and I’ve seen great operational people deliver solid performance while being unable to lead the market in innovation. You need both to be great: having one is only half of greatness.
Anon, that’s an excellent point about leading from the front. Too much of leadership today is leading from behind. It’s a weak and uninspiring form of leadership, but it holds less risk, thus it’s extremely attractive in our pop culture today that favors safety over vitality and character. A good friend of mine characterized today’s leadership best with “running with the foxes and barking with the hounds.”
I’m having a problem with all these measures of leadership because they all point to WHAT a leader does as opposed to WHO he is. Financial performance, the capacity to innovate or implement, and the ability to set a strategic vision are all measures of WHAT a person does. Greatness, in my opinion, is measured by WHO a person/leader is. It is the inner substance of a man that determines how great they will be rather than the outer manifestation of what they can do. Values are more important than actions. The greatest leaders of all time have been those who had values which defined WHO they were as persons before it was manifested in WHAT they did – ML King Jr, NR Mandela, MK Gandhi, J Christ – who they were determined what they did.
Herman, you are completely right. However, it is in measure of what a person does that we acknowledge who they really are. – ML King Jr, NR Mandela, MK Gandhi, J Christ – Who and What, Where an Why, Yin and Yang.