WINNING TEAMS

Growth leaders (those individuals that will work towards the ongoing growth of the company) typically have the following essential leadership qualities:^Ref

• High enterprise tendencies;
• Strong leadership qualities;
• A growth vision; and
• Higher educational attainment.

Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience.

A growth leader must have strong leadership qualities: high enterprise tendency, a vision of growth and high educational attainments.

An above average enterprise tendency for the leader is essential if the organization is to survive (see Leadership Skill; you can also take a quick Enterprise Tendency Test). However, it will not indicate if the leader is a strong leader, or has a growth vision. Nor will it give an indication of the leader's level of education.

Team design is of paramount importance, that is, the characteristics of the team members. Their behavioural characteristics will not change so you must get it right from the outset; this includes the leadership quality of the CEO.^Ref

Research has separated leadership into two broad categories: leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness.^Ref Leadership emergence refers to whether (or to what degree) an individual is viewed as a leader by others, who typically have only limited information about that individual's performance. In contrast to being perceived as leader, leadership effectiveness refers to a leader's performance in influencing and guiding the activities of his or her unit towards achievement of its goals.^Ref Meredith Belbin also differentiated between what he termed elected and effective leaders, stating that important differences exist between them that is well attested in the literature. He goes on to state that of the two types, from a management standpoint there is only one option: the effective leader.^Ref

There are a number of psychometric tests that are available commercially and that claim to be applicable to team working and leadership quality. Possibly the best known is the 'Myers-Briggs Type Indicator' (MBTI).^Ref Cattell's '16PF Personality Questionnaire' is also very well known and widely used in industry.^Ref Unfortunately, both the MBTI and the 16PF instruments measure primarily personality types or traits, as opposed to behavioural characteristics, that is, they represent underlying behavior-generating tendencies, in contrast to surface traits which consist of observable behaviour.

However, Rushmer stated that in the area of team working, two dominant schemes tower above all others.^Ref They are the Team Management Systems (TMS)^Ref and Belbin's Self-Perception Inventory (SPI).^Ref Both the TMS (also known as TMPQ) and SPI instruments are used primarily to measure observable behavioural characteristics of team members in work and occupational settings. The TMS contends that leadership is a skill in itself and can be performed by any team member in addition to their ordinary team role, thus its usefulness for the measurement of leadership quality is limited. On the other hand Belbin's SPI measures nine clusters of behaviour that he called 'team roles', two of which relate directly to leadership, the Coordinator (originally called Chairman) and the Shaper.

A growth vision is also an essential attribute of the growth leader. Whilst there is no way of measuring the extent of a leader's vision of growth, it is possible to identify if his or her direction of vision is towards growth through analysis of their current behaviour (decision making etc) and past achievements. But beware of the narcissist who will claim credit for the achievements of others.

There is a significant body of research that indicates leaders with higher education qualifications are strongly correlated with growth organizations. Research by Bolton^Ref found that the educational attainments of owner-managers were generally lower than those holding managerial positions in larger organizations. These findings were supported by Burrows.^Ref However, these were findings taken across the whole range of SMEs, which incorporate a very high percentage of 'lifestyle' businesses. Work by Curran and others^Ref demonstrated that the level of educational attainment among small business owners is highly contingent upon the type of business they are running. When lifestyle businesses are removed and the educational levels of entrepreneurs are analysed, the link between a leader's educational attainment and growth and enterprise is irrefutable.^Ref

However, anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a significant minority of growth leaders who do not hold higher educational qualifications. It may be that the most successful growth leaders do not have time to fit in college courses, being too busy building the business from an early age, for example, Virgin Group's Richard Branson.^Ref In addition, many narcissistic leaders are reticent to take examinations for fear of failure. Their association with lifestyle organizations may have influenced the research findings. It is also possible that the growth leader without a high educational attainment may have a highly qualified close associate in the senior management team to compensate for his lower educational attainment level.