Andrew Cranston, Senior partner KPMG Russia and CIS, named a set of competencies which he thinks are the most important for him - that is an IQ, EQ and DQ competencies. And in his opinion the first two cannot exist without this third component. Besides, bringing energy to the situation is also very important for a leader.
1. What is your strongest leadership trait?
It's an interesting question to whether it's about one competency, or whether strength comes from a balance of a number of competencies. My feeling is that my strength is in having a balance. I've always thought that it's important to have a mix between the IQ type of skills, EQ type of skills and what I call DQ type of skills (which are all about getting things done). My feeling is that you need to have all three things, and if you don't have one of those three, you're not going to be effective.
For me the emotional intelligence is the most important, especially in our type of company where we're dealing with people all the time. And if I was to take the most important part of this emotional intelligence, I think it's about having a mindset of positivity and enthusiasm in everything you deal with.
For me, this is one of the key traits of the best leaders that I have worked with, and is a very important part of my approach to leadership.
2. What do you mean by the positive mindset?
Firstly, to note that it is a real question as to whether positivity is something that can be learned or something that just exists naturally within a person.
It is about approaching issues, whether ones relating to clients, people or other matters, with an attitude that there is a way to find a solution that will bring results and satisfy the people involved. It is very much about bringing positive energy to the situation, as opposed to sucking energy away from it.
Bringing such positive energy is a huge part of leadership.
3. Could you give any concrete example?
If you talk about clients, whether a client chooses you or not to do work for them, it often less depends on the technical content of the proposal you give, but depends more on how they feel about you as person - whether you're somebody who they think is really going to help them.
For me, when I'm choosing somebody to work with, positive attitude is almost the most important thing. Someone who tells me - "yes, there may be problems, but I'm going to find a way through these problems to help you". I feel that such positivity is well received and is decisive in terms of winning clients.
We're in a people business here, and if I look at where I spend my time - most it is on people matters, dealing with 3,000 people in our company in CIS. And what I see very often is conflicts and problems arising because people do not show sufficient positivity. In particular people don't do enough to put themselves in other people's shoes. I think that if you can put yourself in the position of the other person and look at the situation from that angle, almost always you will begin to find the way to reconcile differences and resolve issues that you face.
It starts and ends with having a positive attitude - starting by saying "there's a way through this". I often start when mediating in conflicts by saying "you are both good, intelligent, well-performing people - we need to find a solution here - let's find it".
4. How can you tell whether the person is genuine or not?
One way of measuring the performance of our people is by taking 360 feedback from other people in our firm and from clients. Typically you find that a true picture comes out from such feedback. People can put on a very convincing mask during interviews or even in the way they're dealing with their boss. It's important not to be fooled by that. But having 360 feedback from people above and below you and on the same level and having feedback from different levels within clients gives a clearer picture of what people are really like. For us, such feedback is a very important part in determining a) how a person is rated; b) whether they progress. And the higher you are in the organization, the more important it becomes.
5. Do you have any examples when your level of energy helped you in some case?
I can give a lot of examples, especially in winning clients - where that resilience and just keeping on going and going and going has been the most important factor.
You can almost never do enough in these situations to show the clients that you want the job - even in situations where the job seems to have been awarded to someone else - not stopping and keeping trying to get a positive decision. There's always a point where you feel that you should give up - but you have to keep pushing and you mustn't give up - it will pay off. Having the resilience to keep on going brings amazing results.
6. What should be paid attention to when dealing with clients?
You've got to put yourself in the clients' shoes - you have to understand what you would expect if you were a client, what would you value the most. And then you have to focus on that from every single angle possible.
But it is very important not to harass a client or ask the same thing again and again. It's not about asking the client all the time whether he's going to give you a job, but it's really trying to show them how life is going to be with you as a supplier.
If a client is considering a major advisory project with us, then I would focus hard on showing them how it will work - spend plenty of time taking through the process, using references to show how such projects worked in the past in real life, find ways to provide smaller pieces if advice (for free) to show how it will work and what the results will look like. The extra effort helps give a comprehensive picture. And through the process of doing this, you're are trying to build the chemistry with the client.
But there is a fine line, and I am like anybody else - if somebody keeps pushing me and keeps calling me without adding anything each time, it just becomes annoying.
7. Is there any other example?
We try to bring positivity whenever we can - to bring it to bear in to any proposal we make. An example is a major proposal we did not long ago. We thought through what would impress the client - what would make them even more convinced about our service?
In this case, we assembled a team of worldwide global experts within our firm to act as an advisory board for the duration of the project, all of them were enthusiastic and all with specific industry expertise to be able to add something to the knowledge of the senior people of this company. By doing this we were able to build further on our own positive momentum. That extra push and extra effort really made an impact.
8. Is it about winning a client?
It's not about just winning a client - it's about keeping them happy - the best way to win new clients is for a potential client to hear a positive reference from an existing client. Our aim is that our existing clients are not ‘just' positive about us, but are happy to go and fight for us in terms of winning new work.
Coming back to positivity - we're in an industry where we often have problems to deal with. As auditors we go to the companies where very often we have very bad news to give, - for example we don't agree with the company's position on a specific issue. At such times, attitude is very important- coming with an attitude where you immediately say "you're wrong and we're right" leads to a conflict.
Instead, we need to go in with an open mind - spend some extra time to understand why the company got to their position, listen to their side of the story - look for things that we may have missed. Only then should we reach our conclusion - if the client sees that we have approached the problem in a constructive and thoughtful way, then our conclusion will be more acceptable. There will always be differences of opinion, but we have found that a key factor in whether a client will recommend you to others is whether you have dealt with the toughest issues with a positive and constructive mindset.
9. Any more examples?
There's a story where a very significant company was at the edge of bankruptcy - the news came late on Friday or even Saturday morning. Many people would have waited till Monday to do something about this, but we decided to go to work on the weekend and make contacts.
We found that we were able to make contact, that the parties were keen to speak and help us understand the issues. In turn we were able to suggest what was needed and how this could be done. In this specific case, time was of the essence and on Monday a tender was launched - but we were already far ahead given the time we had spent on the weekend and it was a relatively straightforward job to demonstrate this in our proposal and win the tender.
If you sit and wait for RFP's, you will typically be behind the winners or will even miss opportunities altogether as another firm will manage to preempt the tender process and be appointed without competition. The winners are the ones who spot the opportunities early and spend time with the company on the issues before a tender is announced.
Occasionally you win when you go in totally ‘cold' and ‘blind' but if you want to increase your chances of winning it all starts a long time beforehand.
