Leadership

The famous General Electric (GE) CEO Jack Welch once said, “When you were made a leader you weren't given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.” 1 Welch, like the many other successful CEO’s of GE, understood the importance of developing leaders within the company and, in turn, those leaders developing others. At GE, leaders are the critical players necessary to create and sustain a culture that aligns with the company’s long-term objectives. Leaders innovate, change, demonstrate, regulate, and empower in their own styles to pave the way for a company’s success. In research conducted in 2013 by Right Management, a talent and career management firm, approximately a quarter of the 2,000 senior human resource executives from 14 countries voiced a concern for a lack of future leaders2. Leadership is fundamental to stay ahead of the competition and with future shortages in leadership talent, companies must work on creating a culture to allow leaders to emerge from within to work towards a long and healthy future in the marketplace.
Leadership comes in many styles but it is critical to hire or cultivate senior leaders with similar values and an overall vision in line with the company’s mission to ensure success. Every employee in a company will always be unique: they come from different backgrounds, experiences, objectives, strategies and systems. In a study performed by Hay/McBer Consulting, a random sample of 3,871 executives found six distinct styles of leadership emerge which individually had a direct impact on the working atmosphere of a company, division, or team3. The most compelling information deemed from this research was that the best results are obtained when multiple styles are utilized rather than just one. Current leaders must find ways to harness these different leadership styles within the management team and use them collaboratively to guide them to a common purpose and to drive performance. A recent study