Day 4 - Leadership in today's society

One of the things that I often think about is leadership.

Partly because I've always had an interest in developing those kind of skills, but also because we're all exposed to "leadership" in our every day lives. Either through work, family life, or our every day lives through our politicians that lead our nations.

I'll focus for a minute on the family life aspect of leadership, because many people often don't consider that this is an aspect of life that requires leadership. I have a young daughter, so I basically need to provide her with leadership as she grows. Every family requires leadership, and obviously the strength of leadership and leadership ability will have a big part to play on how a child develops, or how the mood or success of the home plays out. I consider the leadership that I need to provide at home to be much more important to the leadership required in the workplace.

Workplace leadership is probably the most common form of leadership that people will think about when the topic arises. Most of us are answerable to somebody, and in my experience, more often than not, very little thought seems to go into the development or even the performance of that person as a leader.

I always think that the best way to judge a leader, is by not assessing that person, but assessing the people that fall within that person's leadership. If you want to know how good of a father I am, have a look at my daughter. Any shortcomings in her, or behavioural issues in her, are a reflection of the leadership that my wife and I provide her. No doubt all kids have issues and present challenges to their parents, but it is up to the parents to deal with these.

The same can be said of employees. Imperfections in an employee often reflect on their leader. Granted not all employee/employer relationships are successful, and it can often be due to the employee being irresponsible, or not good at their job, but overall, when there is a trend of a team or a workplace being unhappy, it almost always comes back to leadership.

In my own work I am often consulted by leaders relating to issues with certain individuals - and on one occasion I was cnosulted on a very minor issue. This person was arriving at work usually 10-15 minutes after 9am. The job doesn't have a very strict time requirement, and is generally flexible. It was accepted that this person was doing the correct hours (by staying back that extra 10-15 minutes), but that this was causing an issue with "perception".

My response to this was that by raising this issue, you're causing an issue with my perception of those people that are "perceiving" this to be an issue. If someone who calls themselves a leader wants to take exception to somebody coming in 10-15 minutes late, when they still work for the required amount of time, and in addition to that, often stay out of hours, or even work from home on the weekend to address vital issues, then the issue is with the leadership and not the person who might have trouble battling traffic in the mornings.

In a similar theme, I remember a long time ago when I was in the earlier days in my career - I discovered an issue that was quite severe, and it was apparent that this issue was caused by somebody. My manager had asked me at the time "who did this?" My response was "it doesn't matter who did this. What matters is that it happened, and it got through our processes that should be in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening".

Quite often Managers in this day and age just aren't equipped to deal with development and well being of those that they're responsible for, or quite often probably just don't care.

I think that this is rife these days - and it's not only in our workplaces. Just look at the state of politics these days? Politicians are quite often being exposed as bullies, and incompetent, and many of the public statements they make are ignorant and decisive - and these are the people that are supposed to be leading our nations.

The president of the largest nation in the world is somebody that I wouldn't see fit to share a cup of coffee with, yet I have always grown up thinking that having conversations with strong leaders is always the best way to learn. What would I learn from speaking with Donald Trump? How to get ahead in life while being an incoherent twat?

Even in Australian Politics there is no leadership - we've seen the last 5 Prime Minister-ships either begin or end with them either being knifed by their subordinates, or knifing their superiors. That is 5 Prime minsters that either didn't believe in their leader, or didn't have belief of those that they lead. That is damning. Yet these are supposed to be the people leading our country.

Is it that leadership is just naturally harder these days? A workplace of the 1980's was probably a lot easier to control than a workplace in 2018. Employee's have many ways of communicating with eachother without being monitored or censored. I often text one of my workmates when I see something stupid at work, and no doubt this kind of thing happens all over the workplace. Similar to this, Politics would be a lot harder today with the flow of almost instantaneous and uncontrolled news. A Prime Minister in the 1980s could have a lot greater control over their party room - who communicates with who - who meets with who - or control over the nation - what news gets out - who gets it out - when it gets out. All of this stuff is completely out of everybody's control nowadays.

I guess you could almost consider that leadership is undergoing a transition period - stronger leaders will hopefully emerge that don't mind transparency, because they're happy to be accountable for their words and actions, and know how to lead and influence the words and actions of those within the umbrella of their leadership.

Funnily enough, one of the best ways I've found of observing leadership is in Sport. Let's focus on AFL for example - It is very easy to work out which clubs have good leadership, and even to observe changes in leadership - and whether those changes are successful or not.

Looking at a club like Richmond - who won the 20187 Grand Final - it is obvious to say that they seem to have good leadership now - They made big decisions a couple of years ago when things weren't so good on the field - Weaker leaders would have dismissed the coach due to non-performance - and they almost certainly would not have gone on to win the premiership last year. Strong leaders identified issues in their setup - and identified ways to improve this without making a change at the top as so many often seem to do. Compare that to how Richmond have performed for the past 30 years - Hiring and firing coaches on a Whim has had the club stagnate for decades.

Club leaders (Coaches and presidents) are also very accountable for what they say, as they are often required to speak to the media - and it is very clear to identify which coaches back their players, or have the belief of their players - and quite often it shows in performances. That's not to say that every poor on field team has poor leadership, but over an extended period of time it's almost always true.

I hope to have more opportunities to display leadership in the next few years of my career, and I hope I can do a better job than the leaders that I've been exposed to - for now i'll work on my leadership skills with my daughter (and my son who is not yet with us)