Sport can teach us much about a leader’s qualities
The recent news of Sam Warburton’s retirement from rugby brought well-deserved praise for his leadership skills, with Warren Gatland saying: “His leadership, attitude and demeanour, along with his performances, have placed Sam up there as one of the best and most respected players in the world.”
This news made me realise there’s been a lot of comment this summer about leadership – especially in sport. From tennis to the football World Cup to rugby, the spotlight has fallen on a new generation of inspirational sporting managers.
While Wales, of course, was not at the 2018 World Cup, hopes are high for Ryan Giggs to lead us on to qualifying for the Euros 2020 and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Back in 2014, Giggs said in an interview that his training to secure his UEFA Pro Licence has taught him how to be “a better leader, with greater organisational skills and more confidence when speaking in front of players”.
Training and development is clearly a significant part of the leadership equation. While it’s often thought that management talent is innate, leadership skills can be taught. Great leaders learn all the time – they learn from mistakes and successes alike, to build resilience. As Giggs will hopefully show, professional training and development makes for a great leader.
But what defines leadership? What makes a great leader?
Peter Drucker (1909-2005), an American consultant, is still considered the father of management thinking. He wrote nearly 40 books on leadership and his thinking has influenced business and the public sector alike.
He defined leadership as “lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations”.
Creating leaders and managers is a challenge. As Gatland said about Warburton, it’s a mix of leadership, attitude and demeanour. Emotional Intelligence, having a strong emotional quotient (or EQ) has also become an increasingly important part of the management mix. EQ is about identifying your own emotions and those of others, to harness and apply them to tasks, and then manage them.
Handling a team’s wellbeing is essential. I recently took part in a hackathon for finance and professional services, held in Cardiff and organised by Sweetmans and Partners. Alongside businesses including PwC, Capital Law, Hodge Bank and the Development Bank of Wales, we took part in this collaborative and fast-paced event to find solutions to wellbeing challenges.
The focus was on solving problems related to the Future Generations Commissioner’s work and how we can meet the grand challenges of wellbeing in Wales – in business and society.
For the wellbeing challenge to succeed, we shared the view that leaders need to develop so-called soft skills alongside strategic thinking, to be emotionally aware and nurture their own EQ. EQ is just one of the leadership skills we’re looking to develop among our students and members through our qualification and continuous professional development (CPD).
Being inspirational is a leadership quality. But there are warning signs on the horizon. A recent UK-wide poll conducted by ACCA revealed that British workers are concerned companies are “failing” to produce inspirational bosses.
Our poll showed that employees are failing to identify the next generation of leaders, with a third believing their employers aren’t doing enough to spot potential leaders and then encourage them.
What this shows is that firms are failing to invest in the next generation of leaders, an issue too important to ignore. More than a fifth said there are no support structures in place for people who want to move into management.
According to Investors in People, poor management costs the UK economy £84bn each year. And for Wales, the recent Economic Action Plan needs inspirational leaders to make it work and to address the challenges facing Wales
The introduction in April 2019 of the new employability programme, Working Wales, will need leaders with strategic insight, emotional intelligence and an innovative approach to make the plan a reality.
Training and development needs to be part of this economic strategy, so it’s heartening to see the promotion of skills and learning in the workplace placed so prominently in these Welsh Government plans.
Ultimately, this is where business can learn from the leadership and coaching tactics used in sport – the need to care about our teams, to be inspirational, to encourage their learning and development as well as our own. To be clear about shared goals and to ultimately win.
In that way, we can raise Wales’ performance to a higher standard and beyond limitations.