Leadership vs. Showmanship

Issues associated to leadership have long been a focal point for HR managers. And in recent years, with the human resources sector fuelling itself to become more and more integral to the mechanisms of a company's genetic make-up, leadership has taken on a whole new dynamic.

But what really makes a good leader? In a series of reports investigating what defines leadership - culminating in a week-long special report - HRM will explore the concepts behind being a leader, and ask questions as to whether leadership is something that can be taught or instead requires a predisposition to actually want to take control?

Today though, we begin by exploring the differences between "leadership" and "showmanship" and ask whether being a leader really requires you to "play a certain role?"

Playing the part

The first assault on the the showmanship versus leadership debate really comes courtesy of political opinion and research website The Daily Caller, on which columnist Benjamin Domenech explores whether President Barack Obama - undeniably the world's greatest leader, at least in a political sense - is really leading at all, or simply just putting on a spectacle to appease the US.

Not to over-simplify Domenech's fascinating argument, but he's some of what he writes: "The announcement over the weekend of Obama's latest gambit to restart his stalled health care legislation came in a live interview with Katie Couric before the Super Bowl [...] There was no shift in policy, no offer to begin from the beginning, no sign he had learned the lessons of Massachusetts. Obama merely offered the Republican minority a vague opportunity for a televised summit on health care and reiterated his commitment to get something - anything - passed."

Essentially, Domenech argues that Obama is relying more and more on spearing to lead, instead of actually leading "Obama and the Democrat leadership will once more troop before the cameras" he writes.

His argument is strictly political, but does correlate closely with the business world. Domenech writes, "Obama could have inserted himself into the decision-making process on health care policy at any time [...]  Instead he chose to give speeches long on platitudes and short on details and leave the hard work to Congress."

True or not, the same problem stands for business leaders who may well lament about getting the job done but then kick back and let underlings and co-workers actually accomplish the task. And there is clearly a fine line between delegating and shirking all sense of responsibility.

Performance Innovation

The significance of workplace leadership can probably be best summed up by the recent study conducted by Psychometrics Canada, a leading assessment publisher and consultant for the development and selection of people in business, government and education.

According to their recent study, which involved a poll of 517 HR professionals across Canada, leadership is seen as an important area of organizational functioning and development. In fact, the majority (63.2 percent) see leaders as having a lot of influence over their organizations' success, with only 2.5 percent reporting that leaders have very little influence.

The study also found that the most common effects of good leadership are increased motivation (85.5 percent), improved working relationships (85.1 percent), higher team performance (80.7 percent), better solutions to problems (68.9 percent), and major innovations (41.6 percent).

What's more, the study also explores the negative side to leadership, reporting that HR professionals have witnessed good people quitting and a lack of morale (91.7 percent), employees’ skills not being utilized (87.2 percent), feuding staff members (68.3 percent), and failed projects (60 percent).

While such findings don't necessarily hint at the showmanship/leadership debate, they do hint at the idea that without solid leadership, morale can slip and a workforce can be divided. The full Psychometrics Canada report can be viewed here.


More on leadership next week.

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