Adrian Gilpin is chairman of the Institute of Human Development and a leading authority on leadership development and peak performance coaching for business executives
The challenge of creating an inspired enterprise: how leaders and managers can best inspire people with a passion for what the company does. There is a malaise among management and a lack of integration between the board, management and staff. This is partly due to the different ways in which they are coached which leads to a mix of incompatible philosophies driving how people work. At a lower level, the focus is on skills; middle management tends towards behavioural learning while the top level rarely engage in training. I’ll be exploring how we can create cohesion across an organisation by integrating beliefs and value systems across the company.
Why do companies lack effective leadership?
It is a legacy of our education system. This system is effectively only one hundred years old and was primarily designed to create a supply of candidates for either the factory floor or the armed forces. Nowadays, it can be seen as one long, drawn out application for university – designed by academics to create future academics.
This does not serve the successful management of a modern enterprise. Businesses instead tend to reflect the hierarchy and values of school. So you find similar structures of authority and discipline which are inappropriate in the modern workplace.
How can you modernise an organisation when the behaviour is so entrenched?
It takes inspirational leadership to transcend conditioning. Good leaders can step beyond current boundaries and limitations and inspire their workforce to deliver more. With an extra 10% sweat, passion and intellectual application, you can transform the way a business operates.
Pret á Manger and Carphone Warehouse are excellent examples of a more conscious generation of leaders who take a radically different approach to recruiting, managing and retaining staff. Their leaders truly believe that the easiest way to success is tapping into the potential of staff and emotionally engaging with them.
What practical changes can a company make?
I’ll give you an example of how a company can change paradigms. Interface Carpets is one of the largest carpet manufacturers in the world, operating in one of the most ecologically damaging industries in terms of pollution. One morning, the CEO, Ray Anderson, had a damascene conversion and realised he was plundering the planet. From that moment he vowed to turn Interface into a business with a carbon footprint of zero.
He demonstrated you can change even the most entrenched of businesses. He also was able to engage with his employees’ hearts and minds in a way that he never did before by leading on values and passion rather than shareholder value and the bottom line.
What qualities does a good leader have?
Good leaders do not necessarily have a lot in common except a deep authenticity, passion and courage. There is also a new theme emerging: the greatest currency in leadership is learning how to coach other people. There has been a surge in the psychology of coaching as a manager and how to achieve through other people.
Can anyone learn how to be an inspirational leader or manager?
Absolutely. More people are picking up on work-life balance, self-help and how to feel fulfilled at work. The popularity of gurus like Paul Coelho and Paul McKenna is testament to this increasing awareness and enthusiasm for changing the way we work and live. As more people begin this journey, others follow suit so you find a large community of people actively looking for new ways to engage with the workplace.
The key is to engage people at every level – reconnect with a sense of meaningful work, personal value and self-confidence. If you can do those three things, people are capable of extraordinary things.