Leadership = Character x Competence

Leadership is both complex and simple.

The complexities of leadership are paradoxical:

• it is art and a science
• it involves change and stability
• it draws on personal attributes and requires interpersonal relationships
• it sets visions and results in actions
• it honours the past and exists for the future
• it manages things and leads people
• it is transformational and transactional
• it serves employees and customers
• it requires learning and unlearning
• it centres on values and is seen in behaviours.

The outcome of effective leadership is simple.  It must turn aspirations into action.  Aspirations come in many forms: vision, strategic goals, objectives, and plans.  Regardless of the term, leaders create aspirations.

Successful aspirations have certain defining characteristics:

• They focus on the future by visualizing what can be
• They connect and integrate the entire value chain of a firm (suppliers, customers, and employees) rather than what goes on inside the firm
• They create energy and enthusiasm about what can be
• They engage employees’ hearts (emotions), minds (cognitions), and feet (action).

To turn aspirations into actions, assumptions about future leaders will have to change in five ways:

• From apex leadership to shared leadership
• From sporadic events to continual leadership
• From individual achievements to team victories
• From problem solvers to pioneers who take risks
• From unidimensional to paradoxical thinking.

For turning aspirations into actions, leaders must be trustworthy.  Trustworthiness is established by the concept character x competence.  Trustworthy leaders have the personal habits, values, traits, and competencies to engender trust and commitment from these who take their direction. 

Perhaps, one of the best examples of this personal credibility, or trustworthiness, is the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, who claimed, “My life is its own message”.  He said, “You must watch my life, how I live, eat, sit, talk, behave in general.”  The Mahatma believed that his personal life gave him the credibility that enabled him to be a successful leader.

While character is a prerequisite, successful leaders of the future must also be able to create organizational competence.  Competence comes from leaders who are able to shape, structure, implement, and improve organizational processes to meet business goals.  Further, competent organizations come from more talented and more committed employees.

Given the purpose, assumptions, and characteristics for leaders of the future, a simple question remains: Would I know one if I saw one?  The leaders of the future will be known:

• Less for what they say and more for what they deliver
• Less by their title and position and more by their expertise and competence
• Less by what they control and more what they shape
• Less by goals they set and more by mind-sets they build
• Both for personal character and for exceptional organizational competencies.

These are simple axioms that shape the leadership path for the future but they will require complex insights by leaders in order to stay on the path.