Alex was the founding Director of Mango, a UK charity that is the leading international provider of financial management services to NGOs. He has played a leadership role in aid work on the ground as well as in efforts to improve the accountability of aid agencies. His blog, www.ngoperformance.org, provides expert commentary on managing the performance of NGOs. Alex is about to take up the position of Director of Programming and Effectiveness for Plan International, the UK's largest aid agency.
1. What is the key to great leadership?
Setting ambitious but realistic goals and knowing - or working out - how to achieve them. Bringing people together behind the shared endeavour, making sure each person's contribution is valued. Living the values you want to encourage in others: commitment, compassion, customer service, listening, considered judgement and an endless desire to understand and improve.
2. What is the secret of motivating a team?
Making sure everyone believes in what you aim to achieve together and knows what is expected of them. Creating personal incentives that are aligned with overall goals. Providing people with the space to get on and do their jobs. Constantly creating opportunities for communication across the team. Celebrating good performance and dealing with poor performance.
3. What is the most important lesson you have learned?
Listen first. As a leader, resisting the temptation to start a conversation by offering advice or jumping to conclusions. Listen carefully to what people have to say and demonstrate that you value their views. Then take a decision, considering what they say but not necessarily bound by it.
4. What are the key ingredients of success in business development?
Develop great products that your clients want and set stretching strategic goals. Recruit people who share your goals and values. Nurture the team. In the charity sector, build alliances and collaboration with others working in your field, not enmity and opposition.
5. What book(s) would you like everyone to read?
The Elements of Styleby Strunk and White. It's a bible of how to write clear English.
I have asked a selection of successful leaders to share their insights on leadership and motivation.
Phil Sampson has learned leadership the hard way as an officer in the Royal Marines for 32 years. He has lead organisations on operations and has been involved in leadership development and coaching as a trainer throughout his career. Now a partner at Sampson Hall, he has delivered to conferences nationally and internationally. He brings a wealth of leadership experience and some novel leadership perspectives to business along with the Sampson Hall Gordian Model.
1. What is the key to great leadership?
I am a firm believer in empowerment as the speed of life increases. So for me the key is listening in order to gain understanding. For if you know where you are and who you have, you can set out a credible vision for the future that wins buy in and understanding from all your team. After all it is vision that differentiates leaders from managers. Vision cannot be imposed it has to be voluntarily owned by every member of a team as they build their trust in their leader.
“Nothing energises an individual or a company more than clear goals and a grand purpose. Nothing demoralises more than confusion and a lack of content” Tony OReilly, CEO Heinz
2. What is the secret of motivating a team?
For me motivation is about ownership and when it comes to the team, group ownership of the outcome. For if people own something they take pride in it and feel responsible for the delivery of that outcome and therefore they will try their utmost to deliver above expectation. “People who produce good results feel good about themselves” Ken Blanchard said and when a leader enables that they have created an environment of continuous improvement.
“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work” Aristotle
3. What is the most important lesson you have learned?
Most problems in terms of leadership and followership come about through a lack of clear communication. When boundaries and expectations are not communicated then inevitably something falls short. Trust is key in the dynamics of leadership and if someone is perceived to have let either the leader or the follower down that trust is eroded. If it continues that way the relationship breaks down. I learned early in my career to always gain mutual understanding of expectations and boundaries when contracting an individual to perform a task.
“The biggest problem with the communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished” George Bernard Shaw.
“The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and the self restraint not to meddle with how they do their jobs” Author unknown
4. What are the key ingredients of success in business development?
Modern business is about speed and efficiency for in this information age, if you study paradigm shifts, it is not the big that eat the small but rather the speedy that consume the plodders. The days of authoritarian leadership and tight control are passed. Modern businesses have to trust their people to deliver through empowerment. To do this they have to select, train, develop and talent manage their people and be prepared for the odd mistake. For empowerment is about investment and it is about progress and not maintaining the status quo. Progress is about pushing the boundaries to continually develop because if you don’t someone else will and who gets left behind?
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Alva Edison
Yesterday morning I had a meeting with a company which has developed a very neat personality profiling tool which uses psychological characteristics to understand people's values and attitudes. The tool divides people into 8 categories based on their values, and is potentially a great benefit to marketeers since it adds another layer of insight to conventional behavioural profiling. Categories include Aspirer, Thriver and Belonger. I'll post more about this when the company goes public with its service offering.
In the evening I met up with Sean Brady, an old friend who is now a senior officer in the Royal Marines and an MBA student. In fact Sean is blogging for the FT about his MBA experience. We discussed the Myers Briggs Type Indicator assessments that we have both used (and found that our profiles are very similar), and the role of self-knowledge in motivation, a subject Sean has agreed to guest-blog on here shortly.
In the meantime, I have developed a personality profiling tool of my own. Having lived in London for several years now, I suggest that you can divide people into 4 personality types on the basis of how they behave on the escalators bringing them up from the Tube. Convention dictates that people who wish to stand should stand on the right side so that those in a hurry can walk or run up the steps on the left side.
So, the chart above divides people according to whether they walk or stand, and which side of the escalator they use:
A - walks or runs up the left side of the escalator
B - walks or runs up the right side of an empty escalator so faster As can overtake on the left
C - stands on the right
D - stands on the left, blocking the progress of A and B
I've suggested some percentages based on observation, but I'm looking for names to describe categories A-D - what do you think? And where do you fit in the chart yourself?
by Strunk and White. It's a bible of how to write clear English.
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