Develop Good Leadership Qualities by Learning from the Best

Essential for developing good leadership qualities is a leader’s ability to learn and to learn from the best. But is that the case, why should we bother, does learning from the best matter? If it is worth bothering, and it does really matter, then how do you bring the best of the ideas of leading thinkers to be effective in your situation? This three part series of articles provides some answers to these questions, and a tool to use to learn from the best, and so develop good leadership qualities.

In the first article about how good leaders learn from the best, we looked at the makeup of a guru, what makes someone a guru and secondly who are the best and how would we determine if they were any good? In this our second article, focused on developing good leadership qualities, we ask do Gurus provide any value, why should you bother to learn from the best. We suggest six reasons why learning from the best matters.

In our third article we suggest a tool to apply the ideas and use effectively in your organisation. It will help you to evaluate the ideas in the context of your business, to combine with the ideas of leaders and managers in your organisation and produce better work practices; essential to developing good leadership qualities.

So why bother with the ideas of leading thinkers?

Why Bother with the Ideas of Leading Thinkers?

Management is one of the most difficult tasks you can ask anyone to do. Too often we miss the nuggets and excellent advice already out there. The plethora of articles, papers, and books makes knowing where to start difficult and can result in much wasted time, and frustration.

An aim of this site is to bring some of the best leadership and management thinking together, both that which has stood the test of time, and that which is shaping the future. A helping hand to developing good leadership qualities

So why bother? Some would argue that Guru’s only complicate or embellish things, and that we would be better without them. Phil Rosenzweig in his book “The Halo effect… and eight other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers” gives the game away with his title and points out that “for all the self-proclaimed thought leadership, success in business is as elusive as ever.” He further argues persuasively that Managers’ who are under constant pressure and extremely busy “naturally search for ready-made answers, for tidy plug-in-and-play solutions that might give them a leg up on their rivals. And the people who write business books – consultants and business school professors and strategy gurus – are happy to oblige.” At the very least, then caution should be exercised in adopting ideas from thought leaders or gurus.

Interpreting and Spreading What Seems to be Working

Lets remind ourselves of Handy's argument:

‘Great ideas lie wasted unless someone turns them into a viable activity or a business, through management.’ Perhaps this is reason enough to explain why good leaders should learn from the best!

Handy goes further though, explaining that the role of a guru is “to interpret and spread around what seems to be working, helping managers to cope in a world that changes fast.”

He suggests that they “often use common sense, but they see the sense before it becomes common and that's what can give companies and their managers the competitive edge. The insights and methods of the gurus can make a big difference to the way we manage our organisations.”

Some of the benefits of learning from the best are that we can gain an advantage by applying ideas ahead of their time. We can gain insight from their ability to interpret and clarify ideas. Crucially, great ideas which otherwise may lie dormant can be made actionable and viable through a leading thinker showing how they might work.

Can you develop good leadership qualities from learning from the best? Here are 6 reasons why we think this matters.

6 Reasons Why Learning From the Best Matters

1. Because some knowledge has a shelf life. But how do you distinguish fad from fact?
• What evidence is there that the idea works? In what situations did it work? Why would it work in your organisation? How would it work for you? Can you pilot and test ideas? Where else has it worked, and why (pay careful attention to why an idea has worked)?
2. Because some knowledge has stood the test of time
• What ideas have stood the test of time? Where are the older ideas which are still not often applied? How well have we learned from the past, or does the past repeat itself?
3. Because there is a wealth of knowledge as yet untapped amongst your friends, colleagues and in your organisation
• Find the best from around you, learn from them, ask questions, and seek to understand. Find those who think, challenge and lead in their areas of expertise – learn from them. Find the managers, who best support and encourage learning, learn from those.
4. Because learning is more about setting a course than taking one.
• What have you put in place to encourage yourself to continually learn? Be inquisitive; learn as much as you can about your area, and related areas. Set yourself areas to learn more about. Plan to find out more. Read often and in a disciplined manner.
5. Because what we need to lead and manage is changing
• What is managed and who is managed and how we manage are all changing. Knowledge workers know more than their managers about their area. They manage their own work. Do managers supervise people or do they manage value for the organisation? Investigate the boundaries. What is changing about management? How will you need to adapt?
6. Because we learn faster and see further “on the shoulders of giants”
• Learn from the best enables faster learning, and can prevents mistakes from being repeated. Build on what has gone before. Find out more about the ideas which have helped form businesses. Find out where the debate is about the future of management and business. Be informed.

Fresh Ideas, Insight and Innovation

Learning from leading thinkers can help bring fresh ideas, insight and innovation to our practice. Our start point doesn’t have to be ground zero, we can trace through where leading thinkers have already gone and build on that. However this should not be done in an uncritical manner. What worked in one context may not in another.

Crucially, leaders needs to develop good leadership qualities not just in themselves but in others. As Peter Senge has said " In a learning organisation, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers. They are responsible for building organisations where people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models - that is, they are responsible for learning."

How do you develop good leadership qualities? You learn from the best.

But how do you do that? How do you learn from the best?

That is the subject of our next article: leadership exercises to learn from the best.

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