Gene Klann, Senior Program Associate at the Center for Creative Leadership, believes that courage is one of the most important leadership characteristics, that a good leader should do what he thinks is right regardless of popular opinion and that all good leaders have to be organized and be the hard workers if they want to be successful in life.
1. Are there any other traits that a good leader should have?
Another characteristic is, we talked about communications, and another one is courage. You have to be able to crisisly stand up for a difficult situation. Winston Churchill said that of all the leadership characteristics courage is the most important because all other leadership characteristics and traits are built on courage: how people communicate, how people solve problems, how people build teams, how people make decisions, how people look in to the future - it's all based on courage. Clare Booth Luce, the American writer, said that courage is like a letter on which all other leadership characteristics clime. John Kennedy said that when he picked people to be in his administration when he became president, he always looked for their record of courage, he said because you can count on people who have displayed a record of courage in their life.
2. What, in your opinion, is courage?
Well, it's doing what you think is right regardless of popular opinion. Courage is not looking at the opinion pools and say ok, the pool say this, so I better make my decision like this. You have a certain value system and regardless pressure you receive from your employees or from the media or from your community, you do what you think is right regardless of the criticism. For some people you can actually lose your job, I mean you can lose your position. I think that from the people that I've seen that are craggiest if there is one characteristic that people admire and respect, it's people that are not afraid to make a decision and that are people who stand up for what they believe. People really admire it and respect that and they will work for people like that, and, whereas, people who can't make a decision or always look at the way that wind is blowing - people like that don't get 100% respect from their employees. So, I think that courage if you're looking at another characteristic is huge and the whole idea of leadership.
3. What do you think of people who don't have enough courage?
You know, when things are normal that doesn't require a great deal of leadership. Ok, things are going fine, everyone making their 3% growth or working on 4% - whatever, but when you really need leadership is when a difficult time occurs - crisis. That's when a leader needs to stand up and provide the focus, provide the objectives, provide the vision, and provide information - ok, how we're going to get there. The idea of vision and than get people aliened in to same vision. So, when there is a crisis those things - having a vision, clarity is to where you're going, and than getting people on board, getting people aliened towards this vision - that's huge. In crisis it's actually maybe more important than in normal operations. During the time of crisis - that's when leaders actually need to stand up and provide leadership. The thing is, just because the person is in a leadership role that doesn't mean that number one - they are a leader, or number two - that they are providing leadership. There is that myth that just because somebody is in that leadership role that they may be a leader. I think that the challenge in our society or worldwide is that the problems and situations that leaders are facing are much more complex than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. So, person's leadership must be much more advanced than it was some years ago. That's why the Center for Creative Leadership that's kind of what we do - we take leaders, we have a certain expertise than a certain level of performance and we help them see more of their potential and the possibilities that they have and help them develop in to a potential that they have as a leader. That is kind of work that we are doing.
4. Do you think that leadership can be learned?
Well, yes. It's still question whether or not leaders can be born or leaders can be developed. I would say it's both. Obviously, all leaders are born but some people are born with more natural talents for leadership than others. Now, that doesn't mean that because I only have a little amount of leadership natural talent that I can't take that talent and raise it to another level. I can do that. But somebody who has maybe just by nature more charisma, more personal physical presence - that person, obviously, have an advantage. So, if they further develop their talent, obviously, they are going to be more successful than a person that has lesser talent, assuming they both work as hard. But I've seen people with average talent but work real hard that actually became better leaders than people who had a lot of natural talent but didn't work very hard at all in terms of developing it.
5. Do you think that working hard is also a sort of leadership trait?
I think that one of the characteristics of successful people in general and to include leaders is, I use the word diligence, in other words, you do what you have to do when you have to do it, you don't put it off, you look at the future: ok, these are these things that I need for one year from now and these are the things that are need to be prepared for and know how to do. So, you work towards it. We talk about working hard, now what does that mean? Generally, I work with very successful executives and because of the responsibility they have they work a long hours, and that's part of their job. People found work-life balance, work-life harmony, work-life integration, well, that's great except that for people who have a lot of responsibilities it's more than eight-hour day. It's just the way it's going to be. Ten-twelve hours - fine, but you manage our time so that you can take care of your personal life but you are going to spend a lot of time at work if you have a lots of responsibilities. It's than how you handle you time. I always found that if you have a, I don't want to say a "list", but if you had - ok, today, these are some things that I need to achieve, so if you organize yourself, I think you can achieve a lot more in your eight-nine-ten-hour day than if you weren't organized. I think that's a big part of working hard. I think doing things, not pulling things off, if you're facing something - do it now, that's my working hard model - do it now; because if you wait till tomorrow there is going to be some other pressures that are going to come up. Do everything you can now and I think there is some sort of advantage if you do those kinds of things. I think working hard is a huge characteristic and trait of successful leaders.
Prepared by Katia Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on December 22, 2008
