Why are Australians so bad at leadership?

Australians seem to over-achieve in many areas: athletic performance and per-capita carbon emissions are two that spring to mind. But are Australians any good at leadership?

This issue of poor leadership skills in Australia has been a subject of concern for many years. Back in 1995, the Federal Government commissioned a report led by businessman David Karpin which identified several key issues that were contributing to poor business leadership in Australia, including lack of basic management competence and poor communication skills. The report found that we “must improve significantly in the next decade if enterprises expect to even meet today’s world best practice standards.”

Jumping forward to 2011, and a follow-up report was commissioned, titled ‘The Karpin Report 20 Years On: What Has Changed? It is telling that the authors chose a rhetorical question for the title and, to summarise the report, I’ll answer that question: nothing. Nothing has changed. The report found the same issues from 1995 still existed and recommended that organisations prioritize leadership development and investment in programs that would help to identify and develop future leaders.

Progressing closer to the current time is another vital review of Australian leadership skills. The authors of this 2016 publication also chose to title the paper with a question – ‘Leadership at Work: Do Australian leaders have what it takes?’ I’ll also answer that rhetorical question: No. According to this review, Australian leaders do not have what it takes. To quote the authors, “Australian organisations should be concerned about the state of leadership…The findings reveal a pattern of mediocre leadership in many organisations that will likely impair their capacity to shift to a knowledge economy and impede their efforts to raise productivity…. painting a worrying picture of the ability of Australian organisations to address future challenges.”

We know that the consequences of poor leadership can be severe, with businesses experiencing reduced productivity, low employee morale, high turnover rates and poor financial performance. Yet, we don’t seem willing or able to address the issue collectively.

Why are we failing in this area?

Informed by my experience of leadership in many organisations, combined with my own reflections, study and explorations, I’d like to offer three reasons why we might be struggling with leadership:

1.     We struggle to define leadership. 

I was in a Zoom call recently with around 30 leaders across Australia, all of who were working in positions equivalent to Regional Manager or above, including many State Directors and CEO-level positions. The group was asked to define leadership, and they couldn’t. This worried me, as this shouldn’t have been a difficult question for this group. Without a clear definition, it is perhaps no surprise that we struggle to embody and excel at leadership behaviours.

A thought leader and academic phrases it this way. Leadership is “…the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.” Gary Yukl (2010).

To offer a simpler phrasing that I currently use: Leadership is intentional positive influence in service to an outcome.

2.     Poor to no understanding of evidence-based models of practice.

Mainstream business literature seems to be driven by fads and fashion. There are various articles purporting to teach us how to ‘hack’ our life to shortcut to a better outcome. What I’ve noticed is missing from much of the popular literature is the exploration of what empirical research teaches us about effective leadership. It is not unusual for there to exist a disconnect or time-lag between evidence and shifts in practice in any discipline, but for leadership there seems to be little recognition that there is a science of leadership, and we have much to gain from reviewing the academic discourse on leadership efficacy.

For example, few people seem to be aware that the greatest predictor of positive workplace outcomes is a concept known as Psychological Capital (PsyCap). PsyCap has been shown to be one of the most reliable predictors of consistently high performance across numerous industries and conditions. The traits of PsyCap are composed of the behaviours of hope, optimism, resilience and efficacy. Leaders, and prospective leaders, have much to gain by familiarising themselves with the literature of PsyCap and the conditions by which it is built.  I’d also recommend examining the simple yet evidence-based concepts of Perceived Organisational Support (POS) and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX).

All of the evidence, at least in my reading, leads us to a current, evidence-based leadership model: the Authentic Leadership model. This construct has been studied in numerous ways and the literature demonstrates that Authentic Leadership reliably creates conditions that can lead to high PsyCap – creating the ideal conditions for team members to thrive and achieve.

The pillars of Authentic Leadership are:

·  Self-awareness. Effective leaders are aware of their personal characteristics, values, motives, feelings, and cognitions and how these shift, inform their behaviour, and impact others.

·  Unbiased processing. Effective leaders develop the ability to think clearly and objectively utilising personal knowledge, internal experiences, and external information. They proactively seek information, adopting a learning, self-developed approach over a self-validation, performance approach.

·   Authentic behaviour/acting. Effective leaders act in accord with their true selves as opposed to acting to please others, to attain rewards or avoid punishment. However, this is not a ‘this is who I am, take it or leave it’ type of attitude. This includes awareness of the impact of behaviour; a demonstrated sensitivity to the balance of expression, context and impact.

·  Authentic relational orientation. Effective leaders work towards openness and truth in relationships with the intent to build high levels of trust. This behaviour builds high-quality relationships and a willingness for reciprocal transparency; for one’s behaviour to be open to inspection to receive valid feedback.

3.     Leadership challenges us to actually change.

If we reflect on the evidence-based models above, we might recognise that they require leaders to operate differently, to learn some new skills and perhaps accept a level of openness and vulnerability that they haven’t previously experienced. It requires us to understand leadership as a ‘practice’. This means that we never arrive as a leader as some sort of finished product, that we are always growing and applying our skills to each new situation as it unfolds. All of this takes work and the willingness to get it wrong, and this process often feels uncomfortable. Self-awareness is frequently painful and learning requires a flexible ego that can handle making mistakes and not always being the best at something. Perhaps, rather unironically, effective leadership practice demands that we are not the ‘leader’ all the time, and instead allow others to influence us as we learn from them.

I think the biggest reason why we aren’t great leaders is that we fear, and so resist, the ongoing process of reflection and vulnerability that being a great leader requires. And this fear stifles our collective ability to develop into great leaders.

References:

Karpin, D.S., 1995. Enterprising nation: Renewing Australia's managers to meet the challenges of the Asia-Pacific century: Report of the industry task force on leadership and management skills.

Samson, D., 2011. Karpin Report revisited: Leadership and management challenges in Australia. East Melbourne, Australia: DEEWR & IBSA.

Gahan, P., Adamovic, M., Bevitt, A., Harley, B., Healy, J., Olsen, J.E., Theilacker, M. 2016. Leadership at Work: Do Australian leaders have what it takes? Melbourne: Centre for Workplace Leadership, University of Melbourne)

Avey, JB, Reichard, RJ, Luthans, F & Mhatre, KH 2011, 'Meta‐analysis of the impact of positive psychological capital on employee attitudes, behaviors, and performance', Human resource development quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 127-52.

Ilies, R., Morgeson, F.P. and Nahrgang, J.D., 2005. Authentic leadership and eudaemonic well-being: Understanding leader–follower outcomes. The leadership quarterly, 16(3), pp.373-394.

Yukl, G., 2012. Effective leadership behavior: What we know and what questions need more attention. Academy of Management perspectives, 26(4), pp.66-85.