LEADERS: BORN OR BRED?

One can empathise with HR professionals who seriously consider the notion that great leaders are simply born that way or that it is a lot easier to recruit these great leaders than to nurture and develop them in‑house. We invest millions in the skills development of our leaders, sending them off to business schools and training institutions by the thousands and giving them many opportunities to grow and develop their potential.

Sadly, in most cases we are left with unfulfilled potential, perpetual vacancies and a negative return on investment.

The question then is: what is missing in our development strategy? If we assume humans are process beings, able to transcend their genetics and environmental influences, why do so many organisations fail to grow and develop effective leaders?

This is a crucial question for South African companies, which have the added responsibility of righting the wrongs of the past and developing a new generation of leaders that must create the African Renaissance.

The answer is of course not a simple one! Complexity is the name of the game when it comes to leadership competence. There are many variables that influence the effectiveness of leaders.

It is well known that the same person with the same competencies who is wildly successful in one organisation, can fail dismally in the next company. Clearly context plays a major role in the success or failure of leaders. What works in one organisation as a leadership style and strategy won’t necessarily work in another.

Important as it is, this fact alone does not explain the large‑scale failure of many leaders out there. If one assumes that our business schools and training institutions are successfully equipping our leaders with business skills and knowledge, as well as skills related to EQ, AQ, SQ and especially leadership competencies, then why are they still not delivering the goods?

To answer this question, one has to focus on the higher levels of human functioning.

These higher levels (called meta‑programmes) include identity, beliefs, values and a whole assortment of thinking preferences and filters.

What we want to focus on is the impact these meta‑programmes have on the effectiveness of leaders.

We call them meta‑programmes because they are meta (above) to our conscious sensory experience; they are habitual neurological pathways in the brain that dictate, distort and filter our perceptions and behaviour. They are the hidden software that determines how we experience the world and what we focus on or not. Meta‑programmes develop slowly over time and mostly we are not even aware of their existence. However, they play a major role in our effectiveness as leaders.

There are over 60 meta‑programmes that have been discovered so far and every human has a unique “fingerprint” of meta‑programmes for every context.

The million dollar question is: What are the meta‑programmes that correlate with effective leadership?

How great leaders think Sensory channel: seeing, hearing, feeling; Perspective: own, partner, observer; Motive: influence, affiliation, achievement; Reference: Internal (with some external); Information size: global; Convincer channel: looking, listening, reading, doing; Convincer strategy: trustful (empowerment); and Management style: self and others.

Effective leaders have the following typical thinking preferences (meta‑programmes). There are many more that may influence leadership effectiveness, but we only list some of the more common ones:

1 Effective leaders are able to process information on all sensory modalities. It means that they tend to process information by seeing (visual), hearing (auditory) and feeling (kinaesthetic) means. This makes them excellent communicators as they can connect with people with different preferences for sensory input and processing.

Effective leaders are able to take different perspectives on a situation and switch quite comfortably between these perceptual positions. They can connect with their own emotions, values and thoughts, but they can also stand in the shoes of another and experience the world from their thoughts, feelings and viewpoint. They can then also switch to a third position, where becoming like a fly on the wall, they can survey the situation in a less emotional and more analytical way.

Effective leaders can easily switch between different drivers or motives for engaging the workplace. They can influence people and get others to do what they want (influence/power), and, when necessary, they can focus energy on being popular (affiliation). They are also focused on achieving outcomes and performing to the best of their abilities (achievement). The vital distinction is that they can, at will, and when necessary, pay attention to all three of these meta‑programmes.

Effective leaders have a clear and definitive sense of what is right and wrong, what is good quality and what is not. They have an internal benchmark whereby they measure results and experiences against their own value and belief system. They do not need others to tell them what is right or wrong or whether they have done a good job or not. However, the most effective leaders are able to combine the internal benchmark with an external meta‑programme of asking for, and paying attention to, feedback from others.

Effective leaders process information by way of a global meta‑programme. They focus on the big picture and can see the interaction and relationship between different parts. This enables them to delegate effectively compared to individuals who have a driver meta‑programme for details. They are also able to think more strategically and scan the horizon for threats and opportunities.

Effective leaders utilise all four convincer channels when they communicate their ideas to others or try to influence them. They ensure that they present their viewpoints in a way that is visually stimulating (including demonstrations), engage in a lot of discussions with others, prepare sufficient and stimulating reading material and allow their target audience to test run their ideas and become convinced through experience. This makes them masterful at persuasion and influence, because they are able to match the preferences of others.

Effective leaders have a convincer strategy of being trustful. It means that, in general, they trust people without needing to have excessive evidence of competency or character upfront. This enables them to empower others with decision‑making authority and to share the information necessary to make those decisions.

And last but not the least, effective leaders have a management style (norming structure) of self and others. This means that they have a very clear sense of how to attain success in their organisation. They believe that others can follow the same strategy as they do and also be successful. And they are more than willing to tell others what this strategy is and that they should follow it.

All the leadership programmes, coaching, mentoring and motivation in the world cannot transform a person into a great leader, if the individual has meta‑programmes that sabotage their leadership behaviour or are the opposite of the above eight categories. The effect would be the same as having only first gear on a car – you rev the car in the red all the time, going very slowly towards your destination, and eventually overheat or seize the engine (burnout in human terms).

The key question is: how do we identify and measure the driver meta‑programmes of a particular leader and how do we change them or create more flexibility of use?

But that is a story for another time.

Larry Erasmus heads up Training and Coaching Change at the Institute of Neuro‑Semantics Africa (www.INSAfrica.com

This article was published in the February issue of HR Future Magazine 2007 (www.hrfuture.net



LEADERS: BORN OR BRED? - To learn more about this author, visit Alan Hosking's Website.

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