Courageous Leadership Required

Recently in the news, major UK manufacturing companies have announced that huge numbers of people are to be made redundant in order to cut costs; effectively using a blunt tool to indiscriminately cut swathes of workers and in doing so lose huge amounts of skill and experience that had taken decades to develop. We have also seen numerous cases of companies with long and proud legacies being sold to larger organisations for short term profit in order to appease the ‘share-flippers’- only for these centuries old companies to be asset stripped and their profits moved off-shore. Their founders, men from a different time where honour and integrity was valued above all else; men who truly cared for the welfare of their workers and for the long term success of the organisations they created, must now be turning in their graves.

All this worries me greatly

Since becoming the CEO at SEVEN I have constantly strived to prove to myself and my team that I am capable of leading, and the one thing I have learnt more than anything else is that if your goal is to build a truly great company, then the one thing you will need in bucket loads is ‘courage’.

However, courage is something I rarely see in leadership; too often people are afraid to put their head above the parapets; too scared to make a wrong call, upset members of staff or the unions.   Rather than face issues head on and make the tough calls, they avoid them; hoping the issue goes away or others sort it out. Leaders need to understand that they set the culture of the business, and that their actions dictate the guidelines as to how others should behave. Want a bold, innovative, growth minded company?  Then be bold, innovative and growth minded.

It is not a case of ‘too many chiefs and not enough Indians’ – it’s a case of ‘too many people with the position of chiefs, and not enough actual ones’

Now more than ever, business leaders need to be courageous; to not react to short term pressures but to focus on delivering value to the customer, and to invest in the future. They need courage to pause under fire, to resist taking the easy options, and to act in an informed way that is best for the long term success of the company – and not in a way that simply makes them look good.

Courage, faith & discipline

Then they need to act with urgency, and have the courage, faith and the discipline to keep to this path, whilst ensuring they are always in possession of the ‘brutal facts’ of their current situation. Great leaders never, ever give up and would never sell the future of the organisation for a quick return.

Great leaders

Throughout history people have been drawn to courageous leaders because they inspire them. Great leaders never need ‘sticks’ or ‘carrots’; great, courageous leaders automatically motivate the people around them to volunteer their best efforts willingly. Given the difficult economic environment we are currently facing around the world, people need this inspiration more than ever.

So – do the actions of your leader inspire you?  Do your actions inspire others?