Global Manager: Beware of Quick Judgments on Success

Andrew Likierman is dean of the London Business School

Q. What do you think makes a successful leader?

A. Success is about outcomes, not style. It’s about fulfilling stated objectives, and in doing so, comparing favorably to relevant peers. It’s about handling opportunities but also threats. Take Julius Caesar, who was successful both militarily and administratively, while Napoleon was successful administratively but not militarily and Hitler was a failure in both. But I think serving leaders are difficult to assess because you have to wait for outcomes and often there are no comparisons. So successful leaders are people who are seen not just immediately but in the long term as those who have achieved what they set out to do.

Q. How do you think you score on these issues?

A. I have set out to say this is what I’m seeking to do but I wish to be judged not now, perhaps not even when I finish, but a few years after that. Too often leaders are seen as people who need to be judged on the actions they take rather than on what they achieve. They are also judged too early. In other words, if somebody looks good on paper and how they run a business at this moment, then that’s fine, but a lot of what is being achieved at the moment at L.B.S., for example, is because of what my predecessors did. Of course I hope I have an influence on the current day to day actions. I hope I’m able to avoid disasters and steer us in the right direction, but there are long lags by the time one really understands whether leaders really are good leaders.

Q. Given that, how do you rate your achievements during the time when you first were in a leadership position?

A. I got my first management job quite soon after leaving university. It was in a traditional textile company in Manchester where I ran a management and control section. The job was very much about maintaining a set of financial procedures, which have grown out of many, many years of operation. One of the things I’m proud of is that I managed to push people and say, well, actually, what we’re doing is not good enough, and that we need to do things better and differently. In the past it had been assumed that this was something they would be carrying on doing forever. My aim was to change that assumption. My luck was that the procedures were so inefficient that it was easy to improve them and no one could really object to change. So I got everyone involved and we produced a new and better system.

Q. Thinking back to that first management job, what would you do differently today?

A. I was too cautious in many ways, and perhaps I wasn’t open enough with people. But then there was a much more conventional culture. I was operating in a manufacturing company of a very traditional organization. At the time and in that place, huge change was not commonplace. Still, my feeling today is I could have done more.

Q. What other leadership lessons have you learned over the years?

A. In some cases I made judgments that weren’t right. I put my trust in individuals that didn’t turn out to be trustworthy, and in some cases I felt I didn’t put enough trust in some people who would have deserved it.

Q. Why? What went wrong?

A. We tend to react instinctively when we meet people. Some people are better in portraying themselves as trustworthy, and others are more reticent or perhaps not as good at expressing themselves. Only over time does one see the better and the worse sides of each person. I hope I got better at looking past that initial judgment, but the ability to choose people well and to think carefully of them in relation to the organization seems to be something that differentiates good and bad managers. I spend a lot of time thinking about that.

Q. What have you found out about it so far? Any tips?

A. My wife, who is a psychotherapist, said it’s about listening very carefully to what people say. The temptation in many job interviews is that the interviewer talks a lot. He or she spends a lot of time thinking about formulating the next question rather than actually observing the way the other person expresses things and talks about issues. It’s about not just making sure that they got the right answers. So my tip would be to listen and to listen carefully.

Q. What other skills does a good leader need?

A. Leaders in any organizations face choices every day and all the time. With it, they face the choice to take those opportunities or not. That is something where the judgment of a leader is crucial, and that’s why you probably need somebody to be around for a little while.

As critical as taking an opportunity is realizing that you need to do something differently.

I am proud that, in my first leadership role, even though there was no pressure to change, I told the people at the textile company that we have to change because we’re not doing it well enough. The assumption that you somehow can reach a plateau that is one of perfection is a complete illusion. Organizations need to change all the time.

They need to carefully pace the level of change, but leaders need to ensure that they’re not missing the fact that the world is changing around them.

Q. What else is important for good leadership?

A. It’s important that you bring out the best in the people you manage. I learned a great deal about this from my colleagues. For example, L.B.S.’s professor for organizational behavior, Rob Goffee, supports the notion that leaders should be authentic and be themselves. I find that extremely useful. People respond much better to leaders who are open and behave like themselves rather than trying to be what they imagine a leader should be like. We are imperfect beings, and I hope that people feel that if I’m not doing something correctly, they have the chance to contradict it.

Q. What’s the best way to achieve that openness?

A. It’s all about treating people as adults and not as children, involving them in decision making and making sure that people understand what’s going on.

Having the chance to have a dialogue is really critical to being a good leader. We spend an awful amount of time at work, so it’s vital to create an organization that people are proud to be part of.

Q. Can you give an example?

A. Don’t withhold important pieces of information. You tell things as they are. My experience is that people appreciate being told the truth, even though the truth is sometimes uncomfortable. It’s still better than having a set of public-relations statements.

People should have all the facts, and there shouldn’t be a sense that there is some kind of gulf between the management and them.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/global/beware-of-quick-judgments-on-success.html?partner=rss&emc=rss