Successful Business Leadership

As I was thinking about Thanksgiving this year, I couldn’t help but to feel thankful for my career and the great experiences I’ve had thus far. Since this blog is intended to help you develop your careers, and it is Thanksgiving, I couldn’t help but do a little reflecting in this posting. Sorry, but here goes.

I’ve heard lots of young, aspiring business people express that success requires education at a good university, skill, opportunity, and/or experience at a top company. True, but only to some extent. In the past, I’ve been struck by what Warren Buffett, in his 2003 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders, says about his ideal business leaders: “The critical variables, therefore, are managerial brains, discipline and integrity.” Again, he expresses important things in a simple proposition.Recently, however, I met with a CEO who talked about people in today’s job market. He expressed that many people have great skill, education or experience, but concern that too many people do not have a strong sense of values, a positive attitude, and the appropriate behaviors to be successful. In other words, business success is also dependent upon your values, attitudes, and behaviors. Why?

1. Businesses are under great pressure to perform ethically. But ethical behavior is a personal process shaped by beliefs, experiences, values, motives, and engaging in the “right conduct”. Business leaders recognize that for a business to perform ethically requires hiring people with sound values and ethics to begin with, so that people respond appropriately when under pressure.
2. Innovation is crucial to the success of a business in highly competitive, global markets. One of the best sources for innovation is learning from failure (or others failures). But failure often times causes people to become risk averse and as a result, not be innovative. Today’s astute business leaders are becoming aware that they too have often times behaved in ways that create a risk-averse culture. A positive, confident attitude is simply required, though, to overcome obstacles and failures (which are going to happen) in any business culture. Businesses simply want to hire people who can overcome difficulty and solve problems.
   • “Executives are feeling the pain of employees afraid to take risks. This year, risk-averse cultures were the No. 1 obstacle to innovation. That’s a shift from last year, when executives ranked slow development times as their top concern. Meanwhile, finding enough great ideas isn’t seen as a problem.” Business Week CEO Survey, April 2007.
3. Business is also about teamwork and being able to work and communicate effectively with people. My personal best successes were when I was able to integrate the diverse personalities of people, and the different objectives of a business and its suppliers, into a solution that served the interests of all involved. And quite frankly, my failures occurred when I did not achieve the same. Only a positive set of behaviors and communications will enable you to succeed with difficult situations and people.But only you can develop the positive values, attitudes, and behaviors for yourself that employers seek. It is difficult to do as none of us are perfect, but it is worthwhile to develop your positive values, attitudes, and behaviors, to go along with skills and experiences.

Watch what Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO, has to say about values and character.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2007 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Career, Leaders, Personal Development and Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Print This Post