Develop Your Leadership Skills

Citation

Favre, J. (2010), "Develop Your Leadership Skills", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 577-579. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090591011061248

Book synopsis

This is a succinct, accessible, and practical handbook from the historical pioneer and leading authority of leadership studies. The book is an inspiring seven chapter guide inviting the reader to develop his leadership skills towards excellence. Recalling that a good manager is by definition a leader, the author asserts that leadership can be learnt principally by practice enlightened by knowledge and principles that people have to think about. Indeed, instead of natural and born leaders the author stresses that every single individual has a potential for leadership that should be developed with personal work.

The first three chapters deal with clarifying the nature and role of leadership. The author starts with the required essential qualities to be a leader, some are generic (including enthusiasm, integrity, and toughness) while others are situation‐related and necessitate flexibility to cope with a variety of different situations. Then, the leadership role is defined as to answer the three needs of the work groups: achieving the tasks, building, and maintaining the group and developing the individuals. Moreover, the author states that leadership is present at the different levels of the organisation: leading a single team (basic level), leading a unit (operational level), and leading a whole organisation (strategic level). And finally he presents the four different forms of authority (position, knowledge, charisma, and moral authority) that a leader can own and use.

Chapter 4 reviews the leadership abilities required to perform the eight functions of management, from defining what to do in the task and why, planning how to achieve the objective in encouraging creative contribution and high commitment, communicating efficiently (speaking and listening), getting the maximum results with the minimum use of resources in a timely manner by monitoring self‐controlled teams, organising systems and procedures, to evaluating the results and recycling for a continuous improvement.

Chapter 5 provides practical suggestions about how to develop as a leader: everyone motivated to become a leader has to take charge of his/her progression with a unique path of leadership. The proposed mindset to adopt is first self‐confidence, then to be proactive in catching and asking for the available opportunities to learn and experiment with leadership, and finally to be reflexive by withdrawing regularly, using feedback and accepting and learning from failure.

Chapter 6 analyses specifically the strategic leadership functions and qualities for the highest level of task complexity within an organisation. Here, the key duties are to provide direction for the whole organisation, to get strategy and policy right, to make it happen, to organise and reorganise, to release the corporate spirit, to relate the organisation to its stakeholders, to choose today's leaders, and to develop these for tomorrow. It is also said that courage is an essential ingredient to bring desirable changes within the organisation for the better.

Chapter 7 finally deals with the key duty of a strategic leader: to grow leaders in his organisation. The author presents the principles for setting a leadership development strategy: to select carefully the high potential candidates, and then to design training programmes and to monitor career development, to use line managers as leadership developers, to promote leadership as a key cultural value, and finally to keep this strategy fully headed by the chief executive.

Evaluation

The author presents, in a clear and simple way, a comprehensive and integrated approach of leadership as a key ingredient of management at all levels of the organisations. Very useful pieces of knowledge about organisation, management functions, and leadership characteristics shown with examples, together with exercises and testing checklists make this handbook a powerful action centred guide which can be used periodically in order to keep going improvement on becoming an effective leader.

By defining leadership as personal abilities required to manage and drive tasks, teams, and the organisation as a whole to the best, John Adair clarifies the expected added value of a leader that is to achieve the optimal effectiveness for the present and the desirable direction for the future of his organisation. He professes that everyone has some potential for leadership which can come into practice as a capacity and be strengthened with personal efforts and through a practical self‐managed developmental process. Nevertheless, he reminds top leaders of their strategic task to organise the right conditions for identifying and supporting the development of high potential candidates. His humanistic approach highlights the greatness of people and teams, their abilities and willingness, their orientation for self‐achievement and their ethics, all things that can make the performance of the organisation.

From a broader and conceptual point of view, leadership is considered here as a general organisational need for coordination which can be satisfied by the individuals potential to carry on managerial authority (a current dominant organisational theory); however, it does not cover entirely the process of influencing people and making them join a common project (a key element of the definition of leadership), nor it takes into account the regulation function of the rules of cooperation ensuring the persistence of each single organisation (a perspective of organisational sociology).

Finally, the John Adair's handbook is perfectly designed for all professionals looking to become leading managers, from those young and willing to grow within a management role, to those experienced enough to support the accomplishment of other people's potential within their organisation.

In the author's own words

In conclusion, developing future leaders is not a mystery. We know the laws of aerodynamics that undergird successful and sustained leadership development. The seven principles identified in this chapter are the foundations you are looking for, but it is up to you to apply them in the contexts of your organisation's needs and requirements.

So, it is going to take you some time, effort and money. Why bother? The answer is simple. The tasks that face us are ever more challenging. In order to respond to them, people at all levels need effective and inspiring leaders.

As John Buchan said, “The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already (p. 67).”

About the reviewer

Jean‐Paul Favre earned his Master in Psychology and his Doctorate in Sociology at Grenoble University as well as a Master in economics and finance at the Institute of Politics. A former international consultant corporate psychologist with RHR, Chicago, he now teaches business at the University of Savoie and at Lausanne Business School, and he consults with AMCI. His current research activity is in philosophy of social sciences. Jean‐Paul Favre can be contacted at: jean‐paul.favre@univ‐savoie.fr