Developing Global Leaders:

“The most important leader you will ever study is yourself”

Professor Tudor Rickards2012

Twenty first century leadership challenges

• Today’s organisations face new challenges requiring different leadership responses• Developing new leadership ‘maps’ will be vital• A promising approach involves ‘learning while doing’ and exploring the dilemmas

confronting leaders

• Source: Dilemmas of leadership (2005; 2011 editions)

“A luxury cruise liner hits the rocks with 32 fatalities. Within weeks, another ship from the same company suffers another serious incident, and is towed to safety. The company faces serious dilemmas of retaining credibility in the marketplace and of finding a way of dealing with its corporate reputation.”

Source: Costa Rebrandia: A study in strategic leadership and governance, Leaders we deserve, Feb 2012

Leadership is dealing with the unexpected

Today’s business leaders face unprecedented challenges ofrisk management many arising from technological, economic and social upheavals…

Global risk themes

Leadership talent developmentCredit and growth GlobalizationResource squeezeSocietal valuesCSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)

Source: Modified from Ernst & Young’s annual risk assessments (2010-2011)

Beliefs about the nature of effective leadership are changing

One successful global organization announced recentlyThat it was considering how it could develop its employees Into 50,000 leaders …

IBM’s globalisation strategy

Samuel Palmisano reorganized IBM into an “integrated global enterprise” based on leading by values and collaboration. Its former chief learning officer recently estimated that the company will need 50,000 leaders in the future.

The importance of leadership today is confirmed in claims made by organizations in various professions such as health, government, leisure , engineering and finance

Medical leadership

“Medical leadership requires acknowledgement that all doctors require management and leadership competences to be effective practitioners.”

NHS Institute for innovation and improvement. (2008)

This modern world has brought new and difficult leadership challenges to every firm now involved in credit markets …I want to emphasize enterprise leadership: responsibility for both results and viability of the financial institution, and not just transactional leadership.

The test of enterprise leadership is whether the firm is stronger a decade after a leader departs than while he or she was in charge.

Source: Robert Joss, Professor and Dean,Stanford Graduate School of Business (Dec 2007)

Financial leadership

Technological leadership

We are on the threshold of a new era. The century of oil is ending, and the world's energy supply must be put on a new foundation.

That's why researchers, inventors, and engineers need to be more creative today than ever before. Computers as medical assistants, household robots, sensory cars, power plants in deserts, virtual universities, online factories … are becoming realities in laboratories all over the globe.

Source: Ulrich Eberl, Siemens

Global Events and Leadership(GEL)

The Global Events and Leadership module (GEL) introduces the Manchester Business School’s Executive MBA programmes around the world.

GEL emphasizes the dilemmas of contemporary global leadership, and ‘learning through doing’ to achieve creative and innovative goals

Leadership development programmes at MBS are built around an educational innovation known as The Manchester Method, a form of ‘learning while doing’

Project teams develop awareness of personal leadership ‘maps’ while tackling real business projects.

Creative leadership

Evidence from workshops with over 6000 participants confirms that global leadership skills can be developed though programmes which involve participants actively in the dilemmas facing today’s international organizations.

Source: Rickards & Moger, Handbook for creative team leaders

To develop skills at business analysis of complex issues with global implications

To identify dilemmas within leadership challenges

To use ‘map reading, map testing, and map making’In order to improve personal leadership beliefs and actions

To work in teams and understand leadership and team dynamics under complex realistic conditions

Source: Global Events and Leadership study guide, MBS

GEL’s development goals

Impact studiesImpact studies have been reported using information collected during workshops and in follow-up surveys.

Participants apply learning to their subsequent workplace challenges.

Two specific aspects have been identified over time: the benefits of searching for dilemmas confronting business leadersand application of an approach for examining and refining conceptual maps

Sources: Rickards (2011); Rickards & Moger (2012)

Creative leadership

An important finding from the work at Manchester Business School has been recognition that effective leadership and creativity overlap strongly,

This leads to the conclusion that: ‘creativity is a leader’s secret weapon’

Creative leadership is one way of differentiating leading from managing [Abraham Zaleznick]

More about maps and dilemmas

Leadership ‘maps’ are changing presenting different dilemmas

Differing leadership styles co-exist:

The charismatic leaderThe authentic leaderThe creative leaderThe ‘level five’ leaderThe rational leader

Distributed leadership involves multiple leaders

The dynastic dilemma

Dynasties can still exist all over the world. They all share the (charismatic) founder’s dilemma…

…the genetic lottery

The right to lead

A Maratha general, Pilaji Rao Gaekwad, conquered the Indian state of Baroda in 1734. The dynasty he founded ruled there until 1947. The great Palace of the Maharajahs still stands in the city of Vorodora. There is also the ‘Little Palace’ where the heir apparent learned the arts of leadership…

Leaders all the way downDynastic leaders were always influenced by a small group of trusted and influential confidants.

In the modern organization, leadership responsibilities are distributed widely throughout the company, permitting development and appointment of future leaders.

This is the central idea behind the distributed leadership map

Other 21st Century dilemmas

Dilemmas of power and discrimination

Ethical dilemmas

Dilemmas of trust and vulnerability

Dilemmas of strategy and implementation

Source: Rickards, (2011) Dilemmas of leadership

Summary

Effective organizations are accepting that leaders can be identifiedand developed

Older 20th century ‘maps’ overlooked ethical and creative aspects of leadership

An effective way to develop leaders is to encourage ‘learning through doing’

Leadership is increasingly seen as distributed widely across social andorganizational networks

Complex challenges conceal dilemmas as well as alternatives to obvious strategies

“The most important leader you will ever study is yourself”