by Nicos & Koralia Timotheou

Real leaders lead for the corporate purpose. They realize it by executing productively their corporate mission. They believe in the organization and the value it creates. It is their commitment that attracts and retains followers. They succeed by delivering to their organization’s stakeholders the great value they create.

How does the successful leader create sustainable value?

Research⁽¹⁾ shows that successful leaders display specific key qualities:

• High IQ and strong analytical and synthetic capability  – a strong ability to conceptualize and model;

• Strong moral values and consciousness;
   
• Persuasive capability to not only present arguments in a comprehensible manner but also to turn them in their favour; and
   
• Speak and live the corporate values and win the hearts and minds of their people

What, however, makes the big difference is the way they combine these qualities?

• They use their intelligence to explain and present reality by integrating challenges, threats, demands, pressures and complexity that the organization faces in a way that wins respect, trust and followership – especially, in presenting opportunities and routes through demanding situations. They exhibit broad mental horizons, a natural curiosity and an insatiable hunger for learning and knowing the truth.

• They do not only speak and live their Code of Ethics –the values of the business but they frequently go through dilemmas in sensitive conversations helping their people acquire insight into their own integrity and an understanding on how to behave in difficult situations.
   
• They attract the attention of critical stakeholders by being part of the people –via a widespread network of followership and by knowing what is really happening in the organization and around it. They present and position comprehensively difficult arguments, handle criticism, manage expectations and rework the arguments until broad consensus is reached. In doing so, they cultivate a no-blame culture and avoid personal agendas and pet themes.
   
• They are capable of zooming in and out during consultation in a flexible way, so as to uncover hidden issues that may hinder alignment and need to be resolved before achieving engagement. They can zoom in and out on the character of the stakeholders and distinguish the post (job title) from the person. They can zoom in and out within the subject of a meeting from vision to strategy to ...budgets, from strategy to projects, from execution to deliverables, from mission to processes to ...KPIs and vice versa. They can also zoom in on divisional sub-cultures and zoom out on the corporate culture -and this on the basis of real evidence, in many cases in real time.

Unfortunately, for every successful leader who presents the above qualities, one encounters many “bad” leaders who do not! These leaders may fall in one or more categories: incompetent, rigid, explosive, unkind, corrupt, narrow-minded, isolated, self-centered or even evil.

Ineffective leaders fail to achieve what they commit to because they lack the necessary qualities.

Ethical leaders look after the interest of the common good, put the interest of their followers before their own and present convincingly personal virtues in contrast to the unethical leaders who do none of these.

Effective but unethical leaders are undesirable and dangerous.

In summary, the good leaders are the ones who are both effective and ethical. They establish a culture based on values, openness, real evidence and dissemination of reliable and complete information, interrogation of arguments until solutions are found, alignment, engagement and trust. They use independent advisors, systems with internal controls and go to the extent of appointing an independent ombudsman –especially when they occupy simultaneously the posts of Chairperson and CEO.

Do remember:

• Business success equals delivery of value!
   
• Value lies in the eye of the beholder, be it an organization or an individual!