Leadership requires taking responsibility, awareness, acceptance and practice.

By MENSO FERMIN
To be successful in leadership towards others, it is essential that one is able to give leadership to oneself. This was the thesis of Karel Noordzij opening a discussion on leadership in a joint meeting of Caux Initiatives for Business and the Caux Round Table, in The Hague, the Netherlands on February 24, 2005. His message: leadership requires taking responsibility, awareness, acceptance and practice.

Karel Noordzij is currently the chairman of the board of one of the main Dutch pension funds, PGGM. He started his career with McKinsey and has subsequently been a director of Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport, General Manager of Transport & Logistiek Nederland and interim CEO of the Dutch Railways (NS). Currently he is also a member of the Caux Round Table Global Governing Board. In his speech, Noorzij built a bridge between the theory and practice as he experienced it in his leadership of these companies.

Noordzij started his talk analysing the current situation of organised life. We are, he said, in the top of Maslow’s Pyramid. Self-actualisation is what drives most of us: in companies, in associations or while exercising hobbies. But, citing a German study, only 15% of people go to their work with pleasure. This means 85% of people do not find any form of self-actualisation at work.

In addition, we are moving from a world of trust to a world of control. Every time something goes wrong, new rules are being added. And once introduced the rule almost never disappears again. This does not fulfill the need of self-actualisation.

We need new leadership to deal with the demands of leading people in the self-actualisation phase. Noordzij offers three ingredients of the new leadership style: fair process, the box and integral consistency. Fair process means the end result isn’t enough. It means that one has to have heard the other person. It does not have to mean compromise, but is does mean others have been treated correctly. The Box is the area where people can move safely. A safe playground if you like. The third ingredient is integral consistency. In providing leadership one has to be consistent, but also to take all aspects into account. Structure is only one part of the solution.

The new leadership means moving on from span of control to span of support. It means it is no longer relevant to answer how something needs to be done, but to answer the question of what should be done. To do this, Noordzij offered four principles. The principles, aimed in the first place at leading yourself, are:

(1) Take responsibility (it is not always someone else’s fault)

(2) Awareness (do you respond to the who, or to the what?)

(3) Acceptance (do not judge yourself, you can love yourself even if you make mistakes)

(4) Practice (you keep on learning from your mistakes)

Menso Fermin is the European Regional Director of Caux Initiatives for Business. He lives in the Netherlands.