What is your definition of leadership?  I have heard so many over the years.  Many definitions focus on the personality or qualities of leaders, but results are really what separate great leaders from the ordinary.  Personal qualities may help leaders get where they want to go, but they are not what defines leadership.  Leadership has to have purpose.  That is why this is the best definition of leadership I have ever found:

“Effective leaders take their company (or their team) to levels of performance where they have never been before.”

If leadership means anything, it means leading the group you manage somewhere new, somewhere better.  That’s the prime function of the role.  You’re not really a ‘leader’ if you don’t do that.   

Generally managers ‘manage’ the resources they’ve got, whether it’s people, equipment, space, materials, buildings, methods etc. to get the best out of them.  They plan, they organize, they solve problems, they keep things going – largely they maintain but they don’t necessarilyimprove.  And that’s the key definition of the leader – they take you somewhere better. 

And they don’t just exist at the top  – they can and do exist at every level in an organization.  Interestingly, one Japanese company tells new front-line managers : “If in six months’ time your team is still doing things well, but exactly the same as before, see that as a failure.  What we want you to do is to spend at least half of your working time focusing on improvements.”  Of course, the leader of the company is in charge of pointing the whole business in the right direction, but at every level manager-leaders can be taking their teams to ever-better levels of performance.

*   *   *

There‘s always been a drive in management circles to try and capture the essence of good leadership.  Indeed, some years ago the Mars Group undertook a study to look at all those who had become chief executives in their various companies round the world, to see if they could identify the key characteristics that made them successful in the company.  With that information, they thought they then might be able at the recruitment stage to select candidates with these same tendencies.

After a year of observations, the study team found it difficult to isolate any key characteristics which were common to all the CEO’s.  Indeed, they all seemed different.  Some were older, some younger; some tall, some short; some were overt personalities, some quiet; some dominant, some collegiate; some came from a marketing background, some from manufacturing; some just happened to be the best available for the job at the time.

However, even if there appears to be no one set of characteristics that define good leaders, we might gain some useful insights by looking at some well-known business and political leaders.  Here are a few.

• Good leaders often have quite different personalities.

Take for instance Sir Terry Leahy, who became Chief Executive of UK grocer Tesco when it had a 16% share of the market.  During his eleven years in that role, the company surged to a 36% share of the market, twice as big as any competitor.  That meant UK citizens were spending as much as one-third of every grocery pound in their stores.  A quite remarkable achievement.  But Terry is not some dominant, flamboyant personality, he plays a steady game. 

On the other hand, Steve Jobs was quite a different character – a real dynamo overflowing with ideas. But these ideas meant Apple could turn out products which set the standard for others, and for which their customers were prepared to queue up in their thousands at midnight to get their hands on.  Steve was not the easiest manager to live with, but the company’s success has made it (at least for a time) the most valuable company in the world.

What distinguishes great leaders from the ordinary is not their personalities, but their results.  That is the acid test.  And there are other interesting observations we can make.

• Leaders may be dominant, but they’re not always right.

Take Saddam Hussein for example.  Looking at the turmoil there has been in Iraq since his fall from grace, some might say that at least there was some degree of stability while he was in charge.  But his methods were often vicious and brutal, and his personal security had to be of an exceptionally high level to ensure he stayed in power.  Eventually his overweening personality and territorial ambitions led to his downfall, to a completely devastated country, and internecine war among its citizens.

Different, but similar, has been Fidel Castro.  Strong leader, dominant personality, but a country whose citizens have had to suffer deprivations, isolation, rationing, and lack of development for decades.  It seems that the price of isolation due a dominant leader is eventually paid by its ordinary citizens.

• Inspiring leaders don’t always make good managers

Nelson Mandela would certainly feature in this category.  A trained lawyer and prominent member of the African National Congress, he was a fierce opponent of apartheid in South Africa.  Later he spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of sedition.  However, his example and his name became a true inspiration for millions of South Africans.  His influence was a large factor in keeping the peace in the country post-apartheid. But the economic and security policies adopted by his new government have signally failed to produce for the vast majority the improved living standards they hoped would follow.

Similarly, Mao Tse-tung was a great inspiration to millions of Chinese citizens, and his little red book is still revered by many.  However, the great suffering of many millions under his regime, especially during the so-called cultural revolution, stands as a great blot on his record.  It is perhaps looking at the poverty-stricken lives these same millions were then forced to endure, and comparing what has been achieved by China in recent times through good management, that we can see the clear difference.

• Some leaders seek power above all else.

Robert Mugabe is an obvious example here.  There have been many accusations of deep and widespread fraud in many of Zimbabwe’s elections over the years.  To consolidate his power when in office, Mugabe decided to turn the country into a one-party state (Zanu), abolished the role of Prime Minister in favour of Executive President (himself), and transferred the ownership of hundreds of white-owned farms to black owners with little or no compensation.  Mr Mugabe continued to cling to power determinedly throughout his later years, only reluctantly stepping down at the ripe old age of 93.

Even more extreme has to be Kim Jong-un of North Korea.  The country has army-controlled borders night and day to prevent citizens escaping.  Those who make the attempt know their families left behind will all end up in concentration camps.  Although a relatively young man (34 in 2018), and schooled in Switzerland, Kim made his authority crystal clear in 2015 when he had his own uncle executed publicly by anti-aircraft gun.  Meantime the economy struggles, and in the past, with poor food production, the government warned citizens they might again have to eat the roots of any plants they can find just to survive.

• Other leaders are driven by the need for achievement.

Jack Welch, former Chief Executive of the American company General Electric would certainly fall into this category.  Engaged in a variety of industries when he took over in 1981, Welch declared they would not stay in any business in which they could not be number one or two in their market.  He was somewhat ruthless with his policy of every year awarding bonuses to his top 20% of managers, and firing the bottom 10%.  However, in his twenty years with the company, GE acquired some 600 companies, and the company’s market value increased from $12 billion to some $280 billion in the process.

Jeff Bezos, founder and Chief Executive of Amazon, the online retailer, is certainly another example here.  Jeff started back in 1994, merely selling books on the internet.  Now the business sells such a variety and volume of all sorts of products, it has become the biggest online retailer in the world.  Jeff wants the company to be “the most customer-centric company in the world”.  Looking for yet other worlds to conquer, the company is already into the business of electric cars and space travel.

• Some leaders are just right for their time.

In business and politics, some individuals simply have the mix of characteristics that make them right for the job at the time.  In 1979, Britain was suffering greatly from strike activity when Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister in British history.  Margaret proved she had the strength of character not only to restore a better business-Trade Union balance, but militarily to defend the sovereignty of the Falklands against invasion by Argentina in 1982.  However, she later overstayed her welcome and was voted out in 1990.

A similar fate befell Mikhail Gorbachev.  He understood the readiness of the Soviet Union for change in the late eighties, when the Communist party was effectively dissolved, the Berlin wall fell, and his emphasis on ‘perestroika’ (restructuring) and ‘glasnost’ (open-ness) helped the country engage in more peaceful relations with the Western world.  However, he was much opposed by so-called ‘hardliners’, and lost power in 1991 as Soviet republics declared unilateral independence, and Boris Yeltsin assumed a leadership role.

Whatever your views about leadership, observation of the realities allows us to reach some interesting conclusions, namely:

• Good leaders come in all different shapes and sizes, and can have quite different personalities.
• Inspiring leaders don’t always make good managers.
• Leaders may be dominant, but they’re not always right.
• Some leaders seek power to the exclusion of all else.
• Other leaders are driven by the need for achievement.
• Some leaders are just right for their time. 

[Could Donald Trump just be ‘right for his time’ in the USA?]

It is easy to become ‘seduced’ by ‘qualities’ or personality characteristics when considering what constitutes good leadership, and many writers on the subject do just that.  But in the business context, the only useful question when choosing a future leader is : “Can this person take us to new and better places – in terms of growth, innovation, quality, productivity, customer service?” And personality characteristics only matter if they fit the demands of the organization  –  at that time.  That is the deciding factor.