adminProsper Munyedza Business Correspondent
THE human body has a number of organs. Some are exposed, some are not.
Without exaggerating the parallelism between the roles played by key parts of the human body to the functional structure of an organisation; one is tempted to draw similarities between the role played by the brain to that played by a leader on a human being and in an organisation, respectively.
The brain is the organ of the body that controls thought, memory and feelings, among others. It consists of a mass of grey matter inside the head. It’s the organ that controls the functions of many other key organs.
If a person were to step on hot embers barefoot, without necessarily sounding medically technical, a signal is received from the brain to the feet, legs and all else involved to promptly jump out of the fire. Such a message would come from the brain!
That way the brain would have steered the whole body out of discomfort and danger. Leaders are also expected to constantly steer organisations out of extinction dangers and the discomfort of poor performance. There are a few traits of the brain that I will focus on in this article which I deem appropriate learning material to senior leaders, such as chief executive officers, directors and the like.
First, the brain focuses on the most important things. As a leader, your focus must be on the organisational strategy. The world is replete with leaders who “major on minors and minor on majors”. I shudder to imagine what would become of the body if the brain were to major on minors like some leaders do.
Second, once the brain has resolved what it considers the best course of action, most of the time it carries such through to completion. This implies that the brain is operationally resolute.
The brain remains firm, not hard, in spite of the forces beating against the human being. Crises may thrust pressure on the leader to lose their cool and veer off the path to critical goals’ accomplishment, but a true leader refuses to let crises have the final word in their quest for the accomplishment of worthwhile goals. Leaders may be beat down in crisis times, but real leaders like the brain, quickly recover and deliver mission critical results through healthy relationships with their teams.
Leaders must always be firm and not hard. If something is hard, nature teaches us that such a thing can break easily. However, firmness is a quality which makes something sturdy. Firmness in this context implies the ability to remain unyielding when pressed by contrary forces.
The crux here is the leader, from the onset, must have a vision that is worth rallying behind. Once they have that, they then should not be easily swayed by the contrary winds which will inevitably beat upon their visions. True leaders realise their visions if God gives them the grace to live long enough!
The brain is not derailed from its functional excellence by the knowledge that some body parts “unfairly” receive the glory which should be going the brain’s way.
Obviously, well-developed biceps on a man are a marvel to behold for those who love seeing such. This is because the biceps may easily be exposed. Unfortunately, the brain that would have been the controlling force of all the motions which led to the development of such biceps receives no acclaim at all.
It would be a great shame, at the least, were the brain to demand that all glory should be directed at it. True leaders are not intimidated by the accomplishments of their team members, even when such accomplishments are a direct offshoot of the leader’s style which creates the enabling environment for the glory to be directed at the former!
Unfortunately, real examples abound of leaders who go to any length just for the sake of glorification. Real leaders create and nurture other leaders. The brain is generally not physically exposed and is not easily identifiable to the populace.
However, excellent brains are normally identifiable through their effects. Leaders must fight the temptation of incessant glory seeking and its trappings. Sometimes physical over-exposure of a leader especially in the corporate world (with the exception of those leaders who, due to their functions, ought to always be in the limelight) adversely affects the leader’s ability to strategise.
Given, there are some fields where the leader’s over-exposure is inevitable, every leader must at least create space for themselves and their strategy-formulating and implementing teams.
Leaders must do what leaders must do most of the time that is: Leaders must think! Then re-think and formulate winning strategies for their organisations. Strategies must be well-thought out and the leaders must always be monitoring the strategy’s continued relevance and hence value addition in the face of the ever-changing business environment.
The leader must act like a conscientious crop farmer who constantly monitors their crop fields to ensure that they pull out those plants whose virtues are yet to be discovered (generally referred to as weeds) before the weeds choke their plants or before they whisk away the available water and nutrients.
Fourth, the brain, at best is probably the most disciplined organ of the body. Discipline brings to mind traits like obedience, self-control and skill. A person is not worthy of a leadership role if they lack the discipline to bring themselves to strictly submit to the cause for which everyone would be working towards as driven by the vision.
A leader must be a servant of the vision. A leader devoid of self-control, aptitude and skill is an accident on its way to happening or an accident already happening, albeit, in instalments! Self-control helps the leader to stay clear of malfeasances like corruption and time wasting on petty issues. Self-control also safeguards a leader from the proclivity to abuse the power that leadership normally bestows upon the leader.
Fifth, the brain is open to new ideas. When well developed, the brain usually does not shut out or begrudge new ideas or the bearers thereof. Kinetic leaders are open to new ideas.
Without doubt, the worst kind of leader under the sun is one who thinks they know it all and no one else on their team knows anything better than they do. At their best, this type of a leader is toxic to the organisation. For starters, they shut out potentially game-changing innovations and ideas from others.
Often these leaders stereotype everyone below them on the organisational hierarchy as being intellectually inferior to them in every way and therefore not worthy to be listened to.
Being a leader does not necessarily mean that the leader knows more and better than all those below the leader. Human beings by nature have a need for respect.
Once people realise that their leader does not respect them, the majority automatically transform themselves into ready audiences and spectators of the leader.
Such a scenario ushers in a sad development of potent corridor critics of the leader’s ill-informed decisions to the detriment of the organisation. Kinetic leaders respect those they work with.
Unfortunately, a number of non-natural leaders, particularly leaders by nurture, tend to assume that they are a superior lot of people and are a gift to humanity and have the sole right to the ability to formulate winning strategies.
There is a great danger there. A leader (no matter how much she/he tries) will never get to know everything there is to know about everything worthwhile under the sun!
Everyone is given a 24-hour instalment in their daily existence, leader or not. A leader cannot be updating his/her knowledge on financial management, human resources management or marketing management as much as those who regard these areas as their functional areas would while adding significant value to their organisation in the greatest possible way. Kinetic leaders leverage others’ knowledge and thereby unlock the greatest value for their organisations.
Leaders who believe they know everything better than everyone normally have serious problems in delegating authority to their team members.
One will find such leaders spending a lot of valuable organisational time meddling in low value decisions to the detriment of strategy formulation. I believe readers are familiar with non-catering firms’ CEOs who may want to be the ones who determine how long water should boil before a tea bag could be thrown into the tea pot when they themselves do not drink tea. The fact that leaders get the highest hourly rate of pay in an organisation should serve as an indicator of the types of decisions the leader should be focussing on for the greater part of the day.
Leaders who concentrate on minor issues waste valuable organisational resources. They waste time and they delay the decision-making process and most often than not, cause the implementation of sub-optimal decisions. These are the kind of leaders I refer to as non-kinetic leaders.
Most leaders may not have the skills and necessary background knowledge to handle lower level organisational challenges which require expertise at that level.
Unlike in academic disciplines like mathematics where someone higher up the educational ladder would most likely be expected to be able to solve lower educational level mathematics problems, the corporate world is not that simplistic.
Being the CEO of a bank, for instance, would not necessarily ex officio give the CEO superior knowledge on the latter to that possessed by the chef on how to meticulously resolve culinary issues within the canteen, unless the CEO had the privilege to have been schooled in culinary arts as well as having skills and the necessary background information thereon.
Leaders must know that knowledge is ubiquitous and the acquisition thereof is not a preserve of leaders only. Hence, the leader may not be the most knowledgeable person in an organisation. Leaders must value the people around them.
Kinetic leaders are inspiring leaders. They are largely men and women of integrity who are driven by a strong desire to accomplish worthwhile goals. Such leaders are generally hardworking individuals who respect others’ views even when they do not necessarily agree with the import of the viewpoints!
Prosper Munyedza is the head of the Graduate School of Business at Bindura University of Science Education. The views contained above are his own and those of fellow researchers none of whom is based at Buse. Hence, the views are by no means those of Buse. For feedback, email [email protected]
Online Reporter