Market Leader 3rd ed Intermediate Unit 11 Listening: Qualities of leadership
Topic: Qualities of leadership
Listen to Elizabeth Jackson, Managing Director of DirectorBank, an executive recruitment company
What are the qualities of a good business leader?
I'm going to highlight five, um, areas which I think are important, and I don't think that they are as complicated as many people believe. The first that I would highlight is, erm, a sense of direction.
A business leader needs to know where they're planning to go to and how they're planning to get there. The second point I would want to highlight is courage. You need to have the courage to understand, um, when to make the right decision and how to, to push yourself forward - otherwise indecisiveness floods in. Thirdly, communication, um, because without that, you have no ability to take people with you, um, and there's no point at all in plotting a course, arriving there and finding that you've left the troops behind. The next point that I would highlight is respect. The communication with the people that you are, um, working with and the respect that you have, whether those are people within the top level of individuals or indeed other people lower down within the organisation, is very important in order to take people with you and to carry everything through. The last point that I would highlight is emotional intelligence, and that's the sensitivity that you have with the people around you. So that you are able to, um, understand where they are in the organisation, how they behave in the way that they do within the organisation, and yet have the, um, the coldness ofhead to be able to bring the shutters down if you need to.
Do you think great business leaders are born or made?
Well, there's a, um, ... It's a very big question, that. Er, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there are natural born leaders in life. And yet equally, there is, um, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that one can learn a great number ofthose skills. What I would say is that, when um, you're competing against a natural born leader, the person who has acquired the skills will, I think, fail every time. And the things that a natural born leader possesses, erm, are things like charisma, intelligence, the ability to influence other people - those are very difficult skills to learn. Um, and I think it's perhaps interesting as an anecdote to say that I believe 20 of the first 23 astronauts in America were all first born. Now, it may be a huge coincidence, but Iny, um, sense is that it probably isn't a coincidence and there is something about natural born leaders which, as I say, can be learnt from, and people can improve their skill set, but they're unlikely to compete and win against them.
Which leaders have impressed or influenced you, and why?
The first of them is, is actually my husband. I've been privileged, um, to share a business life alongside a home life, and my husband is a few years older than me and therefore has paved the way if you like, um, in terms of his business successes. But what I've seen in him is, um, is a tremendous tenacity, and the ability to fight like a cornered rat when he needs to, and that's, that's really rare and very,very powerful when you see it. Um, I also see in him the ability to, um, to strike a chord with people, just by walking in the room. He possesses, um, a level ofnatural leadership and, and power, if you like. He also has an innate ability for inspired thinking, he works ahead ofthe pack, um, and I've learnt a lot from that, so I probably am not a natural born leader, but I have learnt an awful lot of skills from the likes of the individuals I've worked with, particularly my husband. And his strategic thinking and being able to work outside the box, I think, has been very, very powerful.