The author of this article, Dr Prasad Kaipa, is a faculty member at the Centre for Executive Education (CEE), ISB. He coaches and advises Fortune 500 C-suite executives on leadership, change, innovation and personal mastery..

 

Leadership Crisis
Imagine a scenario where leaders are authentic, trustworthy and have high integrity. They are innovative, open and flexible, make quick and effective decisions, have passion and energy to inspire and influence, are self confident and self-aware, and deliver extra-ordinary results in any field that they work, globally.

Why is this imagination? What is amiss among today’s leaders? A recent issue of US newsmagazine has a cover story titled, “America’s Best Leaders.” In it, a survey report based on the second annual poll on leadership conducted for US News (“America’s Best Leaders”; US News and World Report; October, 30, 2006) and Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership states: “More than half of Americans — 56% —say they’re not proud of the country’s leaders. Two thirds and more say the country is in a leadership crisis. Nearly three quarters say the nation will decline without better leadership.”

This is not just an American crisis. There are thousands of books, articles, consultants and professors offering wisdom on developing leaders. Still, the leadership crisis continues to escalate around the world.

Two sides of Leadership
What is leadership, and who is a leader? According to experts and thinkers who worked on the US News special report, “A leader is a person who motivates people to work collaboratively to accomplish great things.” Peter Drucker (“Peter Drucker on Leadership”;

http://www.forbes.com/management/
2004/11/19/cz_rk_1119drucker.html) once said, “The only thing you can say about a leader is that a leader is somebody who has followers. The most charismatic leaders of the last century were called Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini. They were mis-leaders!” There must be more to leadership than motivating people to produce results.

I believe that there are two sides to leadership: One is about creating value (results, innovative culture, next line of leaders, passionate employees), and the other is about living the values (integrity, honesty, accountability, perseverance, self- awareness, etc). Both value creation and living the values are important for a leader to build a successful and sustainable organisation . Let me elaborate.

What Creates Value?
Employees who are inspired (tap into passion and commitment resulting in taking leadership roles); able to innovate (leading to competitiveness and sustainability); and can communicate and collaborate (making large projects successful) are the highest value creators in today’s globalised organisation. In other words – employee “engagement” is critical to value creation. But how engaged are employees today?

Employee Engagement
The Gallup Management Journal’s Index puts the percentage of truly “engaged” employees in the US at 29%. A majority of workers, 54%, fall into the “not engaged” category, while 17% are “actively disengaged.”