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— Management conference 2011 —
the
manager
WINTER 2011
Business consultant Jeff Grout demonstrated at the LMA’s Annual Management
Conference just why he’s one of the UK’s top speakers on the subject of leadership.
The following is an extract from the presentation he delivered on the day
Everything, it seems,
from the
collapse of society to sporting success
can be put down to good and bad
leadership. Such is our fascination
with leadership that a quick internet
search will reveal more than 100,000
books on the subject. Most of these
cover theories and models, but it
seemed to me that it would be better
to learn about leadership from people
who knew about it at first-hand, so I
set out to meet with a number of
leaders from business, the military and
sport to ask them what it was that
they really did.
And what did I find? In essence,
great leaders do three things:
- They dictate the direction of their
organisation
- They narrow the vision of their
organisation down to a simple, clear
objective and a narrow and clearly
defined range of priorities
- They recognise that setting goals and
objectives is essential for success
On this third point, the former
world and Olympic 400 metre sprint
champion Michael Johnson put it
beautifully when he said: “I craft my
dreams into ambitions... I refine my
ambitions into goals... I turn my
goals into plans.”
The British Olympic swimmer
Adrian Moorhouse says much the
same thing when he tells the story of
how he worked his way to the top of
the podium. Moorhouse planned to
become Olympic champion at the age
of 12, having just watched the 1976
games. With the help of an
understanding coach, he worked out
the difference between his own best
time in the 100 metres breaststroke
(78 seconds) and the time he expected
the gold medal winner to achieve in
eight years’ time... which was 63
seconds. The coach explained to
Moorhouse that the 15-second gap
between these times would be closed if
the budding athlete improved his
performance by less than 1/5,000th of
a second per day over the next eight
years. Simple... all Moorhouse had to
do now was put the work in.
Moorhouse, it turns out, was using
a ‘goal-setting’ technique that’s been
employed by countless Olympians:
first set an outcome goal (in this case,
Olympic success) then attach a
performance goal (63 seconds). After
that, it’s all about focusing on the
process of delivering those goals.
To focus on this process, however,
your team needs to be motivated and
a key element of motivation is
communication. Leaders know that
good communication is ‘two-way’
➽
“Setting
goals and
objectives is
essential for
success”
What do
leaders
really do?