• Friday, March 29, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

Beyond influence and result, leadership is behaviour

leadership

 It was another new call from an ardent reader of this column on Monday. The call turned out to be one of the most interesting responses I have received from the readers of this column. The caller wants me to focus on leadership and organisational development topics. He was surprised I wrote on INEC and business process continuity, on the job for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and the lessons from Rwanda. Babs, don’t be distracted, focus on your core area as a leadership and organisations’ culture consultant and expert he advised. He concluded by making a demand. He asked, what’s leadership in one word? That’s what I want you to write on this Thursday. I replied with the word ‘yes sir’.

I appreciate the time and the opinion of Mr Bashir Mohammed. It’s good to know that people who read your column have something to say to you even if they are shy from writing their comments. I run a blog, and most of the hundreds of comments in response to my articles are from readers outside Africa. I wonder if Nigerians or Africans, in general, appreciate the fact that sharing their views based on the author’s position is invaluable and goes a long way to enriching the knowledge base of the topic of the discussion. My assertion is not the same for gossip news on print and social media platforms.

Just like Mr Mohammed, I equally love my article on the culture where I positioned that culture eats strategy for breakfast or lunch. I love the result-oriented leadership, culture-the executive integrity under audit, the anathema in the workplace and a host of business-related topics published in this column. I strayed into writing on Nigeria and the sustainable development goals, INEC, the culture of Sycophancy and others in an attempt to be a social commentator and contribute to trending issues. Perhaps, someone might learn from my messages and apply their contents to improving our public organisations and make them sustainable institutions.

Be that as it may, I appreciate the fact that organisation and leadership development is my strength based on the call from Bashir and other dedicated readers of this column. I have worked and consulted for organisations with one view in mind. To make an institution of every organisation by engaging and developing people who are capable of producing sustainable results within a short time.

Leadership is a broad topic with many people claiming to be experts or coaches in it. We have heard many views on leadership: what it is and what it is not, the type or level of leadership and how to be a good leader or what not to do as a leader. I have followed some schools of thought which claimed leadership is all about influencing others. Some claim it is about results or the legacy that leaders leave behind.  I agree with all these opinions on leadership. To be a leader is, however, a journey, not a destination. Anyone who sees leadership as a destination is likely to be seeing the act of leadership as positional.

Leadership is an influence on others. The starting point to having followers is your ability to make them believe in your ideology and reason with you in the pursuit of a worthy goal. Influence is an essential part of leading especially for leaders who are in the front of volunteers. Volunteers are the most difficult people to lead. If you can lead a voluntary organisation successfully, you can run any organisation as you would have developed a high ‘influence quotient’ in the process of leading volunteers. Influence in a business organisation can be gained by what the followers’ stands to gain or lose if they do not follow the leaders. The fear of sanction or failure to get rewarded can make people adhere to the dictates of the leaders at the expense of their will. If your influence as a leader is based on fear or for the sake of compliance, then you are leading by a borrowed influence. Real influence is gained when people follow you voluntarily.

A resulted-oriented leader will focus on the result and mostly use the official influence to attract followers. In a few rare cases, followers are motivated by the impact of the leaders. Voluntary and committed influence is prevalent where the people see the financial, emotional or other associable benefits of achieving result together with and through the leaders. For example, where a profit target is given to leaders and the reward shared with the team base on contributions or other parameters perceived as fair or equitable, the team members are motivated to fight for the outcome and submit to the leaders’ direction in the quest to achieve the set target. The team tends to behave like lions going on the same mission in a row and with the determination to crush any opposition on their way.

Influence is essential. It can be ‘gained or borrowed’ as noted in the above analogy. Influence is the starting point for leaders who are to produce results. The results leaders produced can be short-term or sustainable results. Where leaders produce results to meet their expectations and get rewarded for the teams’ efforts without a sense of worth or belongingness to the followers, the result tends to be difficult to sustain. The scenario is reflected in the financial performance some organisations delivered compare to their peers in the same industry. A company might have employed some staff, with more branches and advertising costs but have a profit before tax (PBT) lower than another company with a smaller but highly productive teams within the same sector. The staff productivity ratio is an indicator of whether the influence quotient in a company is voluntary or compliance based.

In between influence and result is behaviour. To me, leadership is about behaving in a certain way to influence people toward making progress in the realisation of a worthy idea or objective. Whether the leader is gaining positive influence or not is a function of his or her behaviour.  If the result is going according to plan, the action of the leader and the team is in sync with the strategy for the business. If the strategy is appropriate for the market segment and the leader’s behaviour is not influencing the people to implement the key strategic actions, the result will show the lack of synergy in the people’s emotions and the potency of the strategy adopted. Leadership is influence and result but more importantly, is the behaviour of the leaders and his team in a given scenario to enforce the desired outcome.

Behavioural leadership is so essential for the sustainability of the organisation result, continuity of commitment of staff and value given to the stakeholders. It is the failure to behave in line with the crafted vision, mission and core values envisaged for organisations that make the level of result and influence fall below the brand value and perception. I have seen organisations with the best human resource persons yet with lower productivity and staff engagement because the behaviours of the leaders are not in tune with the vision of the founders or the past success derails the founders. A potent medicine to curing low productivity, disengagement and high attrition is the audit of the culture of the company with sincerity of purpose and the business ‘will’ to correct the divergence in the behaviours of the leadership and the organisation founding ethos. The audit of culture is a review of the set of behaviour allowed and exhibited by the company’s leadership.

If leadership is behaviour, what are the types of actions that build a great place to work? How could the leader’s behaviour create an influence that produces sustainable results? How will a shift in behaviour affect people’s emotions and commitments?

Before I provide answers to the above questions next week, be mindful of your influence, approach to achieving results and behaviours as leaders in the workplace.

  • To be continued.

Babs Olugbemi

Olugbemi FCCA, the Chief Responsibility Officer at Mentoras Leadership Limited and Founder, the Positive Growth Africa. He can be reached on [email protected] or 08025489396.