The Empowering Leader

By Bruce Msimanga

Leadership is a rich and meaningful word. It stirs up a sense of idealism, excitement, hope and courage. It is a word that inspires us to be our best, a word that we associate with those who have made the greatest difference in our lives. In short, leadership is a significant part of the answer to whatever challenges our organizations may face. The Empowering Leader will teach you how to be an outstanding leader within your organization. The principles and practices you learn in this book are based upon observation and research from the foremost authorities in the field of leadership. From the book you will recognize leadership qualities in yourself, and understand the five practices of the world’s greatest leaders, as well as how to find an appropriate balance between the five major leadership roles (technician, manager, trailblazer, architect and coach). How to create a clear and compelling vision of the future. Become a leader who empowers others and brings out their best. Learn how to organize and manage your priorities so that big things control little things.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Msimanga
• Release date: May 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798537369608

Bruce Msimanga

Bruce Q. Msimanga is a leadership expert who delivers highly engaging and interactive training presentations that challenge audiences to identify and leverage their strengths and experience shifts in their attitudes and thinking.Msimanga is a certified Organisational Design expert, a certified NLP and Emotional Intelligence Master Practitioner and Social Psychologist with 14 years of experience helping leaders, teams and organisations to achieve high performance.You can expect an engaging and interactive session, with Bruce.

Book preview

THE EMPOWERING LEADER

Practical tools for high performing leaders

Copyright © Bruce Q Msimanga, BlueWave Strategic Consulting (Pty) Ltd 2022

Johannesburg, South Africa

ISBN 9798537369608

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those courageous men and women who have ever dared to step out of the dominant culture of resignation and mediocrity and endeavoured to create the life of their dreams.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Principles of Leadership

Misconceptions About Leaders

Management versus Leadership

Two Types of Leadership Styles

Passion for your Vision

Egoless and Humble

Trust

Motivated and Committed Followers

Acting from Positive Beliefs

Five Universal Leadership Roles

Leadership and Success

Goal-Setting

Leading High Performance Teams

Managing Performance

About the Author

Introduction

There are many definitions of leadership. However, at its essence, leadership is influencing others to achieve results. The purpose of this book is to help you become an effective leader in your organisation.

I am pleased that you decided to invest your time in this book to improve your leadership. I want you to know that I do not take for granted the trust that you are placing in me to guide you in this important journey.

In this book, I share with you the idea that success in leadership is not by luck and that leaders are not born. You have what it takes to be a Champion. Napoleon Hill said, When you are ready for a thing, it will make its appearance.

It has also been said that When the student is ready the teacher appears.

Just a little bit about me.

I have spent over a decade of my life providing consulting and training services to many types and sizes of organisations helping them to develop their leaders and create cultures in which each employee is a contributing partner in the mission of the organisation. I have been able to do this through a company that I founded in my youth.

Let me also take this opportunity to be crystal clear that my purpose in this book isn't to teach general theories of success in leadership, but rather to give you a set of tools or practices that will improve the performance of your team and increase the engagement of your team members. These are the same tools that I have shared with lots of leaders in my career.

Here is a suggestion: Give a few ideas in this book a try. If even one idea works for you, great! Use it. It is yours.

Understanding the concepts outlined in this book will make you a successful leader by making the development of your team or work-group feasible, not theoretical.

Most employees want to make a difference. They want to contribute. They want to succeed, and it is our job and purpose as leaders to make this possible. Leading people is not about what you do on your own, but it is about empowering other people, and how you create a climate in which other people give their best.

The emotional investment that employees make in their organisations is called employee engagement. It has to do with the passion, involvement, and commitment that the bring to their work. Engaged employees care about their work. They care about their team and their organisations. They want to do their best and make a difference to their organisations and to the customers that they serve.

There is a lot that organisations can gain from leaders creating more engagement in their workforce. Research conducted by the Gallup organization suggests that highly engaged workers have 37% less absenteeism, up to 65% less turnover, up to 41% fewer quality problems and complaints, 10% higher customer ratings, 21% higher productivity and 22% higher profitability.

Yankelovich and Marois recently reported that in the U.S. only 23% of employees say they work at their full potential. 44% report that they only work hard enough to keep their jobs. 44% and 75% say they could be significantly more effective in their jobs.

The Gallup organization has conducted many surveys on employee engagement every year since the year 2000. Their surveys suggest that on average over the last 20 years, only 30% of employees are emotionally invested in their work. 53% of employees are disengaged i.e., that they come to work to collect a pay check, but really lack commitment. Almost 1 in 5 (17%), are actively disengaged i.e., that they may say and do things that are harmful to the organization they work for. These actively disengaged employees often create a toxic environment for other employees.

Leadership is not so much about what you do and achieve on your own, but it is about what you are able to help others accomplish. If you are going to improve as a leader it is important that you assess your ability to inspire other people to elevate their level of performance to new and better heights and contribute more than they previously thought possible. There are leaders who impose external control on their followers and view their own ends as more important than those of others and see others as objects who are either desirable because they are instrumental in helping them gain what they want or interfere with what they want. Although these leaders are able to get results in the short run they do so at a high price. At best their tactics result in unthinking followers who learn to keep their heads down and do the minimum possible to avoid getting into trouble. At worst these leaders create an environment of smouldering ill-will or even malicious compliance.

Some leaders, on the other hand, are different, and they care about the needs and interests of their followers as well as their own. These types of leaders create an environment that elicits motivation and commitment. They also view people as capable human beings with their own needs, feelings and opinions. These unique leaders seek mutually beneficial goals and raise their followers to higher levels of motivation, behaviour and even morality. Furthermore, they judge their effectiveness not by their press clippings but by actual social change or the makeover of individual and organisational attitudes and behaviour.

This book intends to help you become this kind of leader.

Thank you,

Bruce Q. Msimanga

Chapter 1

Principles of Leadership

According to an ancient legend, there was a time when ordinary people had access to all the knowledge that exists. Yet time and again, they ignored this wisdom. One day, their Master grew tired of so freely giving a gift the people didn’t use, so He decided to hide this precious wisdom where only the most committed of seekers would discover it. He believed that if people had to work to find this wisdom, they would use it more carefully.

One of His advisors suggested that they bury it deep in the earth.

No, the others said – too many people could easily dig down and find it.

Let’s put it in the deepest ocean, suggested one of the advisors, but that idea was also rejected. They knew that people would one day learn to dive and therefore would find it too easily.

One of the advisors suggested hiding it on the highest mountaintop, but it was quickly agreed that people could climb mountains.

Finally, one of the wisest advisors suggested, Let’s hide it deep inside the people themselves. They’ll never think to look in there. And so it came to be – and so it continues today.

For many of us, our training and early education focused on looking outside of ourselves for the answers to our questions. Few of us have had any training or education on how to look inside. There is leadership potential lying deep within you. It’s time to explore!

There are many definitions of leadership. Dwight Eisenhower, once President of the United States is quoted to have said, Leadership is the ability to decide what is to be done, and then go get others to want to do it. For Harry S. Truman who was also President of the United States a leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do, and like it. Some authors have identified leadership as a process of influencing others to achieve certain goals. However, there is often no mention of the values, ethics, morals, or goodness involved in leadership in most of these definitions, and somehow some of these authors seem to suggest that leaders use some kind of manipulative or persuasive strategies to get certain objectives accomplished. Recent leadership movements have proposed that power depends on a leader’s capacity to create positive and challenging visions of an organisation’s future and articulate ways for followers to accomplish this vision (Bass, 1990; Bennis & Nanus, 1985; Burns, 1978; Tichy & Devanna, 1986). Despite these differences in definition and perspective, all leadership definitions emphasize the primary characteristic of leadership: influencing others. Leaders are ordinary people achieving outstanding results.

It is becoming more and more difficult for businesses, whether large or small, to survive in today’s market place. It is repeatedly said that more than half of new businesses fail during the first year. The Small Business Association (SBA) states that only 30% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being founded, 50% during the first five years and 66% during the first 10 years. The SBA goes on to state that only 25% make it to 15 years or more.

Why Do Businesses Fail?

Let us briefly go through some of the biggest and common challenges that most businesses, whether large or small, face.

#1: Not Understanding the Market:

Like all living systems, organisations can survive only to the extent that they live in harmony with their external environment. Organisations need to be sensitive to the evolving needs and perceptions of customers, to understand changes occurring in the environment in which they operate. This means understanding changes in technologies, knowing the competition and understanding the legal, social and political climates as well as their markets. If you have always wanted to open a car dealership business, and you finally have the means to do so. What does the playing field look like? If you do not take the time upfront to investigate and research your industry and understand your market, you will most likely fail. What if the market is in a recession? What if the area you want to cover is already saturated with car dealerships? If you fail to investigate and find out all these factors about your market and develop a proper strategy you may fail from the beginning. Home movie and video game rental services giant, Blockbuster Video, was founded in 1985 and arguably one of the most iconic brands in the video rental space. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster employed 84,300 people worldwide and had 9,094 stores. Unable to transition towards a digital model, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010.

In 2000, Netflix approached Blockbuster with an offer to sell their company to Blockbuster for US$50 million. The Blockbuster CEO was not interested in the offer because he thought it was a very small niche business and it was losing money at the time. As of July 2017, Netflix had 103.95 million subscribers worldwide and a revenue of US$8.8bn.

#2: Lack of a Business plan or clear Strategy:

There are two parts to strategy, business strategy and organisation strategy. Business strategy is a set of conscious choices that have to do with how your organisation will add value to customers and differentiate itself from its competitors, including performance targets and a strategy for growth. An organisation strategy is a set of conscious choices that have to do with the character of the organisation and has to do with who we are and not just what we do. It includes the mission, the vision of the future, as well as the values and guiding principles. A solid and realistic business plan on the other hand, is the basis of a successful business. Most entrepreneurs do not see the value of a business plan or fail to create a sound plan that they can follow. Your business plan is like your recipe for a meal you are about to prepare. It gives you an opportunity to outline not only realistic goals for your business, but also how your business can meet those goals. When working on your plan you can also anticipate possible challenges and solutions to those potential threats. A clear plan will also help you figure out if there is truly a need for this new enterprise you intend to create through research and surveys. It is this plan that will help you figure out the costs and inputs needed for the venture to succeed as well as the strategies necessary and the timelines that should be implemented and met.

#3: Undercapitalization:

If you have started a company and things are not working out – you don’t have enough capital and your business is struggling – you're not in a good position to receive additional loans or funding. Most entrepreneurs are not realistic at the beginning and start without enough money and resources to last them to the point where their businesses are up and running and have a healthy cash flow. Most businesses never really get off the ground because the owners try to stretch their limited finances at the beginning.

#4: Poor Positioning:

Location is everything if your business relies on foot traffic. Just as important, however, is your presence on the internet. In today’s world and as has been seen during the recent worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, your web presence and social media presence can be just as important as your company's physical location. People shop, search and research online for everything these days. So, if you have identified that the needs are already there, the virtual availability and visibility of your business is crucial.

#5: Inflexibility:

Having done the planning, the establishment of their businesses and gained a customer base, most entrepreneurs become complacent. The need that you're fulfilling may not always be there. Most businesses fail because the leaders fail to predict change. They do not have a way of monitoring their market in order to make changes to their business plan when necessary. If you don’t know what the playing field looks like right now, what your competition has been up to, what you have been up to, what’s around the corner, and what your winning move is, you will fail. Staying on top of key trends enables you to anticipate change and gives you time to fine-tune your strategy so you can stay relevant and successful. Think about the long run, and always be ready for change.

#6: Scaling Too Fast:

Now that your business is established and successful, it's time to expand. Most unsuccessful entrepreneurs fail to treat these expansions as if they are starting all over again and therefore experience business failure. If you are physically growing, make sure that you understand the new areas and markets into which you'll now be reaching. If you're expanding the scope and focus of your enterprise, be sure to practice due diligence and understand your new products, services and intended consumers as much as you do with your current successful business. When a business expands too fast and doesn't take the same care with research, strategy and planning, the financial drain of the failing operations can sink the whole enterprise. Reflecting on the challenges facing a company like General Electric, CEO Jack Welch stated that the first step – before all steps was for G.E, "to become #1 or #2 in every market we serve and revolutionize this company to have the speed and agility of a small enterprise.’

Note on Failure

Life means risk. Speech writer Charles Parnell observed, Too many people are having what might be called ‘near-life experiences.’ They go through life bunting, so afraid of failure that they never try to win the big prizes, never knowing the thrill of hitting a home run or even taking a swing at one.

French writer, poet, and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire wrote,

Come to the edge.

No, we will fall.

Come to the edge.

No, we will fall.

They came to the edge.

He pushed them and they flew.

Those who fly always first get out on the edge. If you want to grab an opportunity, or build a successful business, you will need to take a risk. If you want to grow you will need to be ready to make mistakes and learn from them. If you want to tap into what you have the potential to be, do, and have, you will need to be willing to take chances. Don’t be afraid to fail. If you don’t take chances, you will be resigned to a life of mediocrity. Those who don’t make mistakes end up receiving a paycheck from those who do. Sportswriter Grantland Rice also once observed, Failure isn’t so bad if it doesn’t attack the heart. Success is all right if it doesn’t go to the head. If you want to become a successful leader, you cannot take your failures – or your successes – too personally. Your failures aren’t fatal and your successes don’t completely define you.

Through proper planning, funding, nimbleness, and effective leadership businesses can improve their chances of success.

The Most Important Factor

As organisations continue to compete in today’s world of open markets in which they must deal with aggressive competitors and increase the quality of their performance with fewer resources, leaders play an important role in helping them prosper or simply survive. The world of business is an ever changing and challenging environment. It is imperative for organisations to understand that leadership development is one of the most important strategies they can adopt in order to succeed. As I write this book, I have been working with leaders in many organisations throughout South Africa in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns. I have experienced first-hand the inspiring work of leaders in organisations, doing their best to thrive in an uncertain environment.

Leadership is the most important factor in the success or failure of businesses. Factors of production are grouped into four categories: land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. Leadership is the major factor that makes everything work together impeccably. Without leadership, all other business resources are ineffective. Leadership is really the enabling art, as the late Stephen R. Covey wrote, in his book, The 8th Habit. The purpose of schools is educating kids, but if you have bad leadership, you have bad education. The purpose of medicine is helping people get well, but if you have bad leadership, you’ll have bad medicine. We could give illustration after illustration to demonstrate that leadership is the highest of the arts, simply because it enables all the other arts and professions to work, Covey continues.

Leaders have the power to make things happen and influence the organisation. Irrespective of the position in the company or the title they own, leaders can surely help an organisation to succeed. They can provide the vision, the inspiration, and the direction needed to attract and inspire their colleagues to succeed. They are the ones who have the ability to create or inspire the creation of the infrastructure of the organisation such as systems, structure and processes that can help an organisation to succeed. Switched-on business leaders are