Leadership Coaching

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Can leadership be a competitive advantage in today's business environment?

As a company, you could possess the most superior products, technological differences, services or even price. But - if your leadership is not  of the highest standard, then the company is doomed to fail in the long run. Your intellectual capital will be severely hampered if not completely hamstrung. 

You will be at a competitive disadvantage and in the highly competitive cut-throat markets that organisations have to operate in today, that’s the last thing anyone can afford.

Take for instance the Dubai-based Majid Al Futtaim Group has its roots in the asset-heavy world of real estate. Since opening its first mall in 1995, the group has become a leading developer and operator of shopping malls in the Middle East. It also owns VOX Cinemas, the region’s largest movie-theater chain; several leisure and entertainment centers; and the Carrefour franchise in 38 countries.

Their CEO Alain Bejjani believes the long-term success of the business depends on its ability to develop not only compelling retail and entertainment destinations but also effective leaders. “If we want to succeed in business we have to succeed in our people agenda,” he said in an interview with McKinsey Publishing’s.Majid 

He continues: “Al Futtaim is a lifestyle conglomerate. Our business is all about adding value to the customer from the lifestyle standpoint. What this means in practice is [developing and managing] shopping centers that are more like “experience centers” where we stage the whole experience, not just the act of shopping.

“We spend a lot of time looking at the monetary/commercial aspect of our businesses. We manage it. We analyze it. We understand it. We try to read it in as granular and effective a way as possible. But the element that allows all of this to happen is people. And when you look at how much we spend on people versus how much we spend on the asset side of the business, you see a huge imbalance.For example, we might spend three years looking at a project. 

“By the time we decide to go ahead, we will have cut it, sliced it, and diced it in every possible way. We will have analyzed it, understood it, and it’s under our skin. Then it might take us a week to determine who’s going to lead the project. My point is that the element that is going to determine whether the project is a success or a failure takes up the least amount of time.

“The problem is not what we’re doing on the monetary side. We should continue to do it and do it better. But we should be at least as good on the people side.”

Bejjani makes a good point. If you’re not spending a lot of time and money on leadership. Yet he adds: “If you look at the business community today, the amount of investment in leadership is not going up; it’s going down. Yet the biggest issue [we are facing] is leadership, not technical skill set.”

The only constant in business today is rapid change. If you’re not changing you’re getting left behind. That includes in the leadership stakes. If your leaders are not grooming young emerging leaders, sending them for the necessary training, mentoring them and allowing them to develop as leaders, then you are definitely going to get left behind. This is good, progressive management and needs to be driven by leaders.

Leaders have a competitive advantage if they are able to do this as a matter of course. This will also mean that the organisation will be better at satisfying it’s customers needs and provide services or products. It will as a result harness it’s human resources far more effectively and therefore be more profitable for it’s owners, share and stake holders.

Is it not already obvious that leadership and it’s on-going identification, development and promotion is a strategy that is just way too important to ignore. 

You see with this course, we at Speccon lead the way. But we realise that we have to develop leaders and with this tutorial we are determined that many more companies set their path right and spend resources on this greatly ignored principle. 

Military forces have known and done this for years. Training, training and more training results in leaders who stand out. These leaders are identified, mined, coached, developed, inspired and they in turn are inspired to lead and to start the process again. The followers eventually become the leaders.

This was the way Napoleon did it and it’s still the process in armed forces the world over today. If structures such as these who are top down can get this right, can business, small and large not learn from it and apply the model more effectively so that leaders can emerge?

The reason why companies rely on good leadership is to ensure that the institution has to be/is focused on it’s tasks to provide what ever it is that they provide to their customers in such a fine, sustainable fashion that their competitors just cannot match them. 

This is a massive competitive advantage. Good leadership will always shine through. Think of any successful company that you know well? Now think of  it’s top structure and  who the leaders are. Inevitably the person at the top is a fine leader, who has surrounded him or herself with fine leaders and this has the domino effect of ensuring that the organisation is focused and tuned to it’s customers and almost as important it’s staff’s needs.

Good, effective, strong, competent leadership is without doubt one of the biggest competitive advantages a company can employ.  Capable leaders who are strategic and visionary guide their institutions in their pursuit of strategic objectives to grow and expand.   To top it all, this is not a difficult principle to master and with this Speccon course we’ll show you how. 

Related 

Leadership: How to manage your business during Covid-19 Pandemic?

Improve workplace relationships: How to turn negativity into positivity in the workplace.