Avoiding the great pretenders

The next time you’re on Orchard Road, take a quick consensus of the brand-name handbags that you recognise. Then ask yourself: fake or real? From a distance, it’s difficult to identify an authentic Louis Vitton from an inexpensive knock-off.

Making a distinction between real leaders and fake leaders can be just as tough – that is, if you aren’t equipped with the right skills. Enter Ian Berry, HR Summit speaker and Executive Director of DifferenceMakers Community, an online network of socially-aware business leaders. This May, Berry will teach HR professionals how to spot real, leadership talent from the sea of pretenders.

Why is it so important to define a leader’s qualities in terms of authenticity? Berry outlines a number of reasons. “Artificial” leadership can have a detrimental domino effect on the organisation. The culture becomes destroyed as fake leaders are more likely to pursue their own interests rather than those of the employees. Employee engagement diminishes as a result, and retention problems arise.

Therefore, organisations that remain oblivious to the presence of a “fake” leader are more likely to see problems in all HR functions, not just leadership and sucession planning. Recruitment, induction, engagement, rewarding people and also holding them accountable for their actions all become more difficult when the leader is not on the right message. When HR functions are fraught with problems, businesses and services cannot thrive.

“Real” leadership, on the other hand, has many advantages. Real leaders are good at motivating, and able to gain the trust of employees quickly. Real leaders can also innovate, an essential skill particularly in times of change. “Without real leadership and real innovation, organisations risk extinction,” Berry says.

Weeding out the fake leaders is a move towards long-term success in any organisation, regardless of size or industry. One sign of a leader’s authenticity is the enthusiasm of his followers. Berry chooses an apt saying to illustrate this point: “If we think we are leading and no one is following us, then we are just out taking a walk.”

HR should be aware of the way people are following their leaders. Are they keen to take orders and collaborate, or are they dragging their feet? “If people are following reluctantly, then chances are the leader isn’t authentic,” says Berry.

Employers in different organisations vary on their approach to leadership but this notion of authenticity should be universal. “I define leadership as the art of inspiring people to bring out everything remarkable that they are, to everything they do,” says Berry. Creating a culture where workers maximise their greatest gifts and talents should be a leader’s foremost priority. If people are not performing at their best consistently, there is something wrong with the culture. “Creating cultures that inspire people is a key role of real leaders,” says Berry.

HR leading change

Business leaders and HR professionals attending Berry’s presentation to this year’s HR Summit will learn some unique strategies to manage people and their expectations. Trying as these tasks may be. Berry reminds his audiences that efficient management is a key to effective leadership. HR can distinguish “real” from “fake” by observing how easy it is for people to do their best work when the right systems and processes are put in place.

Berry acknowledges that HR’s list of challenges is complex, beginning with outside perceptions of its role in the organisation. Leaders don’t always appreciate HR as integral parts of their organisations, so HR professionals often need to work hard just to be seen. “To meet this challenge, HR people need to be leaders of innovation and change management,” says Berry.

Easier said than done? Perhaps.

But if HR wants to remain relevant, it must understand that innovation is about being ahead of the game. HR has to know what needs to change from a people practice perspective and have solutions for leaders that - when executed - create competitive advantage for the organisation.

HR also faces a challenge in ensuring harmony between the needs of the organisation and the needs of the people that make it up. This is often a difficult balancing act, particularly in tough economic times.

Another great HR challenge is maintianing development of that human talent within any organisation. “Much has changed in recent years and leaders want a return on investment, and rightly so,” Berry says. Therefore HR practitioners must be widely networked, both in the traditional sense as well as via social media, and be able to tap into the right training providers for their organisations.

The economic downturn has made Berry’s topic all the more relevant. Times of crisis often test the mettle of “true” leaders and expose the pretenders who do not act in the organisation’s interests. Fake leaders take the easy path and leave more messes for HR to clean up. “It is easy for leaders to slash and burn and reduce employee numbers in tough times,” Berry points out.

Despite the difficulties of retaining talents in a downturn, real leaders make every effort to keep those people that fit the company culture employed and engaged. They don’t wait for the bad times. “Obviously, remarkable HR people are integral to getting this right,” he says. “They should be the role models and leaders of culture in an organisation. They should be the go-to people for insight, ideas, and inspiration regardless of the economic situation.”

As a champion of HR, Berry is also keen to make another distinction. He sees too much overlapping of the words “information” and “insight” even though they represent dramatically different forms of knowledge. In the internet era, abundant information is readily available at no cost. Insight, on the other hand, is scarce and expensive.

“HR people must be ‘insight-preneurs’,” Berry says. This new buzzword aims to describe people who turn information into insights, and inspiration into ideas which are successfully implemented. This, Berry says, is considered “real” innovation.