Sep 25th 2009
Loading ...Elite leadership: UnAustralian?
Arriving in Australia as a foreigner Giam Swiegers was amazed to find that our enthusiasm for elite training in pursuit of sports does not extend to management or leadership. Now, as Chief Executive Officer, Deloitte Australia, he is working to change that.
http://www.vimeo.com/6604508One thing that struck me hard when I came to Australia some twelve years ago was the number of foreign accents in key leadership roles around the country. One the one hand, it indicated an extremely open society willing to welcome outsiders. On the other, I wondered why outsiders seemed to perform disproportionately stronger than Australians.
In their book, Managing in Australia, Bob Joss and Frank Blunt noted that very few firms in Australia have rigorous, well thought out leadership development programmes.
Deloitte was the same. Our senior level partners had no formal approach to their personal development as executives and as people. They were expected to take on the mantle of leadership without any careful scrutiny of themselves or the way that they were expected to inspire and engage their people.
We moved to introduce such a programme, designed as an elite course to develop the upper echelon of the firm into high performing, focused leaders who could inspire others to follow, and who would take them in the right direction. Surprisingly for me, on its introduction, we encountered enormous pushback from those who felt it was inequitable, unAustralian even, to single out a class of potential leaders against others.
It was especially surprising to me because Australia is not a country that shuns excellence. We proudly support the Australian Institute of Sport which, by its very nature, singles out a class of extremely talented individuals to compete on the world stage. Yet, when it comes to the pursuit of management and leadership, Australians are surprisingly reluctant to commit.
At Deloitte we have worked hard to instill a culture of excellence in our leadership class. We have also worked hard to communicate the message that not everyone can or should lead. Many don’t want to. Many do not have the right skills. Others simply are not committed enough to make the sacrifices leaders must.
But those who want to lead, and are made of the right stuff, should have the full backing of the firm to build their capabilities to meet their own potential, and to enable their own people to fulfill theirs.
One result of this is the establishment, within Deloitte Australia, of a global centre of excellence for the study of collective action and directional intensity. Collective action is the ability for a large group of people to work together towards a shared goal. There are many different ways in which organisations can do this – and in fact our research has identified eight models of collective action – from the hierarchical operation of the military through to the free form collective improvisation of the jazz band. Directional intensity is the ability of leaders to formulate the common goal towards which the organisation should work.
Australian business systems do fail its best people by failing to actively engage with their leadership development. Through active, original research, thought and discussion, we are working to change this.
This is a summary of a presentation made by Giam Swiegers at a panel presentation ‘Do Australian Business Systems Fail Our Best People?’, hosted by UTS on 10 September, 2009.
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