No-nonsense, practical leadership wins respect

By Selwyn Parker

One of the most-quoted observations about the art of leadership - "You don't have to be intellectually bright to be a competent leader" - comes from a New Zealander.

It has gained a place in anthologies on the subject all over the world. You probably know who said it but, if you don't, here are a few clues. It was a he, and he's still alive. He has had a varied career, having worked for Encylopaedia Britannica, for the Government (in India), for an apiary, for the Royal New Zealand Air Force, for Sears Roebuck, though not in that order. He has also written best-selling books. His unlikely middle name is Percival.

If you still haven't got it, his main after-hours activity was climbing, more specifically, mountaineering.

Yes, Sir Edmund Hillary, the epitome of practical, no-nonsense leadership. The former Papakura bee-keeper is the archetypal Kiwi leader, the best-known example of a breed that executive recruitment specialists say is in short supply.

New Zealanders appear to like leaders who are what they would themselves like to be. They want leaders who do not big-note themselves, who give credit where it's due, who have high work rates, who do the job first and (reluctantly) talk about it afterwards, who shrug off setbacks, who rise to the occasion, and who like a few beers with the boys and girls. We gather around these people like moths to a flame.

But we are often uncomfortable with the other side of leaders.

The archetypal Kiwi leader gets mad at bureaucracy, is a tough bastard when required (Sir Peter Blake's nickname among one of his crews was "Captain Bligh"), and cannot stand whiners, politickers or empire-builders.

It is also typical of effective New Zealand leaders that they are impatient with theory. In fact, they often distrust it.

Instead, they are natural doers who prefer to learn from experience. Their legs start jiggling up and down at drawn-out meetings.

They have little time for complicated jargon.

These qualities have rubbed off on New Zealanders at large.

"We like to do and think at the same time," explains Maurice Ellett, managing director of Signium International, an Auckland executive search company.

"That's why young New Zealanders on their OEs are in such high demand. They have a high work ethic. They get on and do it."

Collectively, these are rugged attributes and might suggest that Kiwi-style leadership has no sensitive side. There is, however, a place for it, although not on the sleeve.

When Sir Edmund, who has described contemplating a mountain as "an act of worship", and Tenzing Norgay got to the top of Mt. Everest, they buried chocolate, lollies and biscuits as an offering to the Buddhist Gods, along with a crucifix.

According to the executive search industry, we prefer a different kind of corporate leader than do Americans, British and even Australians.

"We're egalitarian," says Mr Ellett. "The top is closer to the bottom. We don't like our CEOs to be in ivory towers."

New Zealanders like their bosses to have open-plan offices and shared car parks and to be on first-name terms with everybody. In fact, a New Zealand CEO who addressed staff by their last name would probably be ineffective.

The American way does not suit us, as many a manager from one of the US Fortune 500 companies has learned when posted to New Zealand. So have a few North America-trained New Zealanders.

Command-and-control works briefly, for example when a company must be turned around, but the style is not sustainable. After the job has been done, managers must win the support of staff quickly or the rescue mission is in danger of failing.

North American managers sometimes make the same bull-in-a-china-shop mistake in negotiations. A small and intimate society, we are uncomfortable with hardball tactics and executive recruiters often have to warn aggressive New Yorkers to tone down their style.

"We like a win-win style in commercial relationships, not win-lose," explains one veteran headhunter.

"Win-win facilitates trust." But we also like to know where we stand, and it has always been like that.

Francis Carter, founder of the forestry company that became Carter Holt Harvey, had certainly never read a book on leadership, but his forthright style helped him carve out an empire.

When a cook ran amok with a meat cleaver in the kitchen of one of his mills, "F.J." calmly sat him down, made him a cup of tea, told him he was fired, paid him out and drove him to the train station. The cook accepted his fate and everybody got back to work.

Today's leadership experts now quote deep research to point out the absolute necessity of taking action to uphold the company principles which the cook had clearly transgressed. Mr Carter, raised on a dairy farm, had never darkened the door of a secondary school, but knew this instinctively. And, you can be sure, so did the next cook.

The issue here is credibility. And, according to former South Auckland Healthcare CEO and now management guru Dr Lester Levy, you cannot be a leader without credibility.

"Credibility is the heartbeat of leadership," he says.

Sir Roger Douglas says the same applies in politics. He says MPs who pride themselves on their political skills but who do not bite the bullet are fooling themselves.

"Politicians can be politically successful while undertaking structural reform to benefit the nation," Sir Roger wrote in Unfinished Business.

"The lessons learnt from New Zealand since 1984 are clear: where policies of real quality have been implemented - taxation, financial market reform, state-owned enterprises and labour market reform - the polls show continuing voter approval."

Whatever style they might choose to use, we do, however, need leaders. As management guru Charles Handy points out, even the unlikeliest organisations - the cooperatives, local community re-development schemes and welfare organisations that emerged in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s - had leaders.

"The successful ones are always led by some charismatic, energising figure," Handy wrote in Gods of Management. "Organisations of consent ... have to be led - not managed." He says one of the problems with contemporary organised society is that it is "over-managed and under-led".

The same observation could almost certainly be applied to New Zealand.

Contributing writer Selwyn Parker is available at wordz@xtra.co.nz