Leadership the hard way: Part 1

Personal lessons in leadership

My passion for understanding the essence of great leadership was forged when aged 26 I turned down a job with IBM and joined an obscure machinery company. The next 7 years changed everything.

What defines a leader? Are leaders born or made? Which is more important - leadership (inspiring people, and doing the right things) or management (getting things done)?

These questions are often asked, and there are widely differing views which seem to get ever more polarised on what the right answers are. 

Decent leaders of varying, sincerely held principle are systematically discredited and vitriolically demeaned by opponents and others who frankly have no axe to grind but jump on the toxic bandwagon anyway, particularly on social media.

Populist leaders pander to prejudice and fear with misleading claims, inflammatory rhetoric and easy sound bite solutions. Their supporters gloss over the uncomfortable contradictions, lies and grotesque distortions, stressing merely the 'positive'. This insults our intelligence - for those of us willing to exercise it, that is.

We're told the world is black and white - so decide which side you're on - when in reality it is messy, inordinately complex, and full of awkward facts and paradoxes, including contradictory, sincerely held beliefs. Truth is fundamental, but we cannot see or accept that it is genuinely multi-faceted. Supposedly sophisticated human brains fail to cope with multiple realities and fall prey to cynical manipulators.

The behaviour of many leaders, in business or politics, shatters our cherished assumptions and securities. To borrow from Karl Marx with a twist, it seems that post-truth and spin is the opium of the people. To be an authentic, ethical leader appears thankless and psychologically if not for some physically dangerous. Unlike the movies the 'good' guys and gals don't seem to win often, certainly not in the short-term.

Contrary to what we might think, the evidence suggests this has always been the case. Humanity lives in a perpetual state of leadership vacuum and crisis because real leadership is tough, attritional, exhausting, lonely, sacrificial and often painful. Criticism, misunderstanding, anger and misbehaviour from others and failure along the way is guaranteed. Most people avoid it like the plague - why stick your head above the parapet and get shot at? Why put yourself in situations where your shortcomings are manifestly obvious to others and to yourself? Why even contemplate it? Much better surely to hide with the herd and stay out of trouble?

The 'branding iron' logo under which my business has operated for the last 11 years, which signifies the challenges of leadership - shortly to be replaced!

As a perennially aspiring leader in his mid-fifties I believe authentic leaders have one key quality above all else– resolve - sheer bloody-mindedness focused on building a better world for those around them. They exhibit a compulsive drive to keep learning and growing whatever the setbacks and the odds, they empower and encourage others, and they strive towards the goal of sustained great results. Unlike others they can never reconcile themselves to what I call BAUWAU - Business As Usual, Warped And Ugly - and in so doing leave their values, ethics and true selves at the door when they go to work.

I call this drive for excellence the incurable ITCH - an unending quest for Integrity, Truth, Courage, and Humility. It infuses meaning and purpose in life when all around you is VUCA - volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous. All of us are flawed, deeply so, but the ITCH inspires us to strive to become the best version of ourselves we can possibly be. For those who choose it, it's a lifelong journey.

Weaving loom (Picture credit - felixmacchinetessile.com) - the company I joined in 1988 developed a radical new electronic weaving technology

My own leadership journey began in earnest 30 years ago this year, when I turned down a sales job at IBM (they thought I was mad; perhaps they were right!) and instead went to work for a textile machinery manufacturer in the North East of England, unknown outside its narrow industry sector. I got an immediate taste of what was in store at my first interview, when the Managing Director requested that I meet him at 7am at their run-down, graffiti-plastered factory on a decrepit industrial estate. When I arrived, it seemed no-one was there – the initiative test set for me was to find the Managing Director’s office, where he was duly waiting for me.

My boss from 1988 to 1996 made Sir Alan Sugar look a soft touch - 'The Apprentice' TV show (Picture credit - professionalcvexperts.com)

As I came to understand over the next eight years Mike (not his real name) was a narcissist and a sociopath. He seemed to pride himself on intimidating people. He was clever, ruthless, moody, unpredictable, manipulative, had a violent temper and enjoyed subjecting people to long silences to see if they would crack and start babbling incoherently to fill the vacuum. He said there were only two things that motivated people – fear and greed. Perhaps he was testing us, but most of us took it at face value. He could turn on the charm with customers, the odd colleague whom he favoured (one in particular, whom he saw as his protégé), and women - especially attractive women, whom he regarded as potential conquests. He was a brilliant but unethical salesman who in his late-twenties and early-thirties had run the most successful sales office in Europe for a big US computer corporation which epitomised the relentless foot-in-the-door, ends-justify-any-means-whatsoever American sales culture. He had joined the third generation family-run textile machinery manufacturer in 1977 as Sales Director. The company also made diamond polishing machines, and the story was told of how Mike went to South Africa, secured a meeting with the Government Minister in charge of diamond mines, and persuaded him of the greater productivity of the company’s machines and thus the improvement they would bring to the country’s economy. Having secured Government ‘endorsement’ he went to one of the mining companies, told them they could be first to benefit from the new generation of polishing machines, and signed a contract. He then went to each of the other companies, one after another, telling them that their competitors had signed up to use the new machinery and they needed to as well so that they did not get left behind. He returned to the UK with contracts with all the mining companies he had visited.

I was recruited by the Sales Director, whom Mike fired 10 days before I started work in September 1988. I arrived on Day One not knowing if I still had a job. Six months later a new Sales Director arrived – David (not his real name either) – who thankfully became the best boss I ever had and still remains a good friend, now in his seventies.

David had his weaknesses and was not respected by all. But his fundamental make-up was that of a coach and a team player. He genuinely wanted to develop people and make them successful. Unlike Mike, his ego and need for control was not threatened by other people’s successes and different ways of doing things. In later life he became an executive coach; today he still co-runs a leadership group for business owners and leaders. 

In stark contrast to Mike, David focused on people’s strengths and how they could build on them. He gave me the confidence to believe that I could succeed, he gave me responsibility, and he developed my selling skills. Shortly after his arrival, at the tender age of 26, I was appointed UK Sales Manager. For 18 months I had a wonderful time in this role. Then one day in November 1990, out of the blue, Mike called me into his office. I thought I was about to lose my job; instead he told me he was sending me to America.

The Queen City - Charlotte NC (Picture credit - tourist-destinations.com)

Two years previously the company had stopped using a sales agent in North America and set up its own office in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its most senior sales manager, Jim, in his early-fifties, had been appointed to run the US operation. Jim was a wise old dog who built great customer relationships and knew the machinery inside out – like several of the other salesmen he had started out as a technician and draughtsman in the design office. He was popular with American clients, having visited the market and worked with the sales agent for many years, so he was the obvious choice to run the office there. Unfortunately, however, Jim’s family were native North East English – the community in that part of the world is close-knit. His wife and teenage children visited Charlotte and felt it was alien and much too far from home. They did not want to relocate to America. So for almost two years Jim commuted – two weeks at home, two weeks in the States. As the business in North America grew this gradually became unsustainable.

I never discovered why Mike took the chance with me, aged 28, in one of the company’s largest potential markets. Perhaps unfairly I always assumed that David, Jim and/or Mike’s protégé Charles, a longstanding friend of mine, had talked him into it. It was also clear that there was a Plan B in case I bombed. To start with I was to be a Sales Manager in the US, on the same footing as Ken, an American salesman the company had hired, a native of South Carolina, like Jim in his early-fifties, and steeped in the industry having been a mill manager and then a textile machinery salesman for many years. It was clear from the get-go that Ken resented this wet-behind-the-ears English upstart and thought he should be in charge. He was friendly enough – that goes with the territory in the Southern States – and I liked him, but he was also patronising, protective of his own turf, and as it eventually turned out, devious and untrustworthy. Whilst he wanted the business overall to succeed, at least to begin with, it was not in his personal interests that I succeeded.

Over the next five years the 'boy' became a 'man'. The States was a brilliant learning experience – unsurpassed for a first leadership role – it had everything. Much of it was great fun but it was also brutal, and it was an eye-opener. It changed me for ever, in good ways and bad. Above all, it forged my leadership style. The raw material was already there – I had always had a keen sense of fairness, justice, ethics and healthy competition, combined with a never-say-die attitude and a drive for success. What I saw and experienced in the States and in the immediate aftermath of my time there crystallised my views on leadership for ever.

Part 2 of these 'leadership memoirs' describes:

• the challenge of running a business nearly 4,000 miles from home for five years in a foreign culture (believe me, the Southern States is foreign compared to the UK) with no coaching, mentoring or development, just periodic criticism, meddling and undermining from Mike when he appeared every few months to close big deals and play golf with US customers
• how we grew the business in North America from $6 million to $20 million turnover from 1991 to 1994 and the team to support it, and what it ultimately taught me about sustainable versus unsustainable growth
• how I learned what Mike had done behind the scenes to gain control of the company in 1984
• my discovery that Ken had been taking 'backhanders' (unlawful commission payments) from a supplier for 2 years and what happened after I told Mike and gave him detailed evidence.