Leadership Concepts

Definitions

There is no universal definition of leadership and indeed many books have been devoted to the topic of leader-
ship. In his book Leadership, James MacGregor Burns describes a leader as one who instills purposes, not one
who controls by brute force. Aleader strengthens and inspires the followers to accomplish shared goals. Leaders
shape the organization’s values, promote the organization’s values, protect the organization’s values and
exemplify the organization’s values. Ultimately, Burns says, “Leaders and followers raise one another to higher
levels of motivation and morality . . . leadership becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and
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ethical aspiration of both the leader and the led, and thus has a transforming effect on both.” Similarly, Daim-ler
Chrysler’s CEO Bob Eaton defines a leader as “ . . . someone who can take a group of people to a place they
don’t think they can go.” “Leadership is we, not me; mission, not my show; vision, not division; and commu-
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nity, not domicile.” As the above illustrates, leadership is difficult to define in anything other than lofty words.

1 James M. Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).

2 Rick L. Edgeman, et. al., “On Leaders and Leadership,” Quality Progress (October 1999): 49–54.

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According to Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys “A great leader is one who is not only
good in creating vision, creating the big picture, but also ensuring that he goes into the nitty-gritty, into the
details of making sure that his vision is actually translated into reality through excellence of execution. In other
words, great leaders have great vision, great imagination, great ideas but they also implement these ideas through
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hard work, commitment and flawless execution. In doing so, they motivate thousands of people.”

The criteria of Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Award (RBNQA) are based on Malcolm Baldrige Award.

These are built upon the following set of interrelated core values and concepts:

• visionary leadership

• customer-driven excellence

• organizational and personal learning

• valuing employees and partners

• agility

• focus on the future

• managing for innovation

• management by fact

• social responsibility

• focus on results and creating value

• systems perspective

These values and concepts are embedded beliefs and behaviors found in high-performing organizations.
They are the foundation for integrating key business requirements within a result-oriented framework. A
framework, that creates a basis for action and feedback. As stated in its core values and concepts, visionary
leadership is:
 “The organization’s senior leaders should set directions and create a customer focus, clear and visible values, and
high expectations. The directions, values and expectations should balance the needs of all your stakeholders. The
leaders should ensure the creation of strategies, systems and methods for achieving performance excellence,
stim-ulating innovation, building knowledge and capabilities and ensuring organizational sustainability. The
defined values and strategies should help guide all of your organization’s activities and decisions.”

Senior leaders should inspire, motivate and encourage your entire workforce to contribute, to develop and
learn, to be innovative, and to embrace change. Senior leaders should be responsible to your organization’s
governance body for their actions and performance. The governance body should be responsible ultimately to all
your stake-holders for the ethics, actions and performance of your organization and its senior leaders. Senior
leaders should serve as role models through their ethical behavior and their personal involvement in planning,
communicating, coaching the workforce, developing future leaders, reviewing organizational performance and
recognizing mem-bers of your workforce. As role models, they can reinforce ethics, values and expectations
while building leader-ship, commitment and initiative throughout your organization.”4

Leadership can be difficult to define. However, successful quality leaders tend to have certain characteristics.

3 Interview of Narayana Murthy by Yasmin Taj published in The Times of India Ascent on 14 October 2009.

4 RBNQA Criteria 2009.

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Characteristics of Quality Leaders

There are 12 behaviors or characteristics that successful quality leaders demonstrate.

1. They give priority attention to external and internal customers and their needs. Leaders place them-
selves in the customers’ shoes and service their needs from that perspective. They continually
evaluate the customers’ changing requirements.

2. They empower, rather than control, subordinates. Leaders have trust and confidence in the performance of
their subordinates. They provide the resources, training, and work environment to help subordinates do
their jobs. However, the decision to accept responsibility lies with the individual.

3. They emphasize improvement rather than maintenance. Leaders use the phrase “If it isn’t perfect,
improve it” rather than “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” There is always room for improvement, even if
the improvement is small. Major breakthroughs sometimes happen, but it’s the little ones that keep
the con-tinuous process improvement on a positive track.
4. They emphasize prevention. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is certainly true. It is
also true that perfection can be the enemy of creativity. We can’t always wait until we have created
the perfect process or product. There must be a balance between preventing problems and developing
bet-ter, but not perfect, processes.

5. They encourage collaboration rather than competition. When functional areas, departments, or work
groups are in competition, they may find subtle ways of working against each other or withholding
information. Instead, there must be collaboration among and within units.
6. They train and coach, rather than direct and supervise. Leaders know that the development of the
human resource is a necessity. As coaches, they help their subordinates learn to do a better job.
7. They learn from problems. When a problem exists, it is treated as an opportunity rather than
something to be minimized or covered up. “What caused it?” and “How can we prevent it in the
future?” are the questions quality leaders ask.
8. They continually try to improve communications. Leaders continually disseminate information about
the TQM effort. They make it evident that TQM is not just a slogan. Communication is two way—
ideas will be generated by people when leaders encourage them and act upon them. For exam-ple, on
the eve of Desert Storm, General Colin Powell solicited enlisted men and women for advice on
winning the war. Communication is the glue that holds a TQM organization together.
 9. They continually demonstrate their commitment to quality. Leaders walk their talk—their actions,
rather than their words, communicate their level of commitment. They let the quality statements be
their decision-making guide.
10. They choose suppliers on the basis of quality, not price. Suppliers are encouraged to participate on
project teams and become involved. Leaders know that quality begins with quality materials and the
true measure is the life-cycle cost.
11. They establish organizational systems to support the quality effort. At the senior management level a
quality council is provided, and at the first-line supervisor level, work groups and project teams are
organized to improve the process.

5 Adapted from Warren H. Schmidt and Jerome P. Finnigan, The Race Without a Finish Line (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers,
1992).
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12. They encourage and recognize team effort. They encourage, provide recognition, and reward
individ-uals and teams. Leaders know that people like to know that their contributions are
appreciated and important. This action is one of the leader’s most powerful tools.

Leadership Concepts

In order to become successful, leadership requires an intuitive understanding of human nature—the basic
needs, wants, and abilities of people. To be effective, a leader understands that:

1. People, paradoxically, need security and independence at the same time.

2. People are sensitive to external rewards and punishments and yet are also strongly self-motivated.

3. People like to hear a kind word of praise. Catch people doing something right, so you can pat
them on the back.
4. People can process only a few facts at a time; thus, a leader needs to keep things simple.

5. People trust their gut reaction more than statistical data.

6. People distrust a leader’s rhetoric if the words are inconsistent with the leader’s actions.

Leaders need to give their employees independence and yet provide a secure working environment—
one that encourages and rewards successes. A working environment must be provided that fosters
employee cre-ativity and risk- taking by not penalizing mistakes.

A leader will focus on a few key values and objectives. Focusing on a few values or objectives gives
the employees the ability to discern on a daily basis what is important and what is not. Employees, upon
under-standing the objectives, must be given personal control over the task in order to make the task their
own and, thereby, something to which they can commit. A leader, by giving the employee a measure of
control over an important task, will tap into the employee’s inner drive. Employees, led by the manager
can become excited participants in the organization.

Having a worthwhile cause such as total quality management is not always enough to get employees to
participate. People, (and, in turn, employees) follow a leader, not a cause. Indeed, when people like the
leader but not the vision, they will try to change the vision or reconcile their vision to the leader’s vision.
If the leader is liked, people will not look for another leader. This is especially evident in politics. If the
leader is trusted and liked, then the employees will participate in the total quality management cause.
Therefore, it is particularly important that a leader’s character and competence, which is developed by
good habits and ethics, be above reproach. Effective leadership begins on the inside and moves out.