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=========================================== Summary: So called "great" leaders are often worst leaders when they fail to leave a strong culture of leadership excellence behind after they depart organization. ===========================================

The "Greatest" Leaders Are Often The Worst Leaders by Brent Filson

It's a common occurrence, a CEO leads a company to record earnings, retires and in months, those once high-flying earnings are dropping like shot ducks.

Observers blame new leadership team. But most likely observers are wrong. It's not just new leaders who are screwing up. Instead, it was most likely former CEO. Yes, former, supposedly great CEO. Look to him for what went wrong — and what went wrong provides lessons for leaders at all levels.

The reasons are clear but seldom recognized. They get back to raison d'être of leadership — which is not performance of individual leader but improved results of those being led. The problems lie in definition of results. For when results are defined narrowly, i.e. in strict terms of share, margin, shareholder value, profits, organizations lose their elasticity.

And quality of organizational elasticity is linked to its culture of leadership, leadership with a broader vision of results, encompassing necessity to hire and develop people who lead others to get results.

So when decline follows departure of great leaders, safe bet is that those "great" leaders haven't hired and developed leaders — and so really weren't great at all, no matter what results they got. In fact, they were quite poor.

To paraphrase Vince Lombardi on winning, getting good leaders for your team isn't everything, it's only thing. The moment that you decide to hire, that very moment, is living, breathing future of your organization.

A curious chemistry takes place in hiring process. We don't just reach outward, we also reach inward. In hiring leaders, we invariably hire ourselves — our strengths and weaknesses. So hand we reach out to shake is not just other person's hand, it's our hand. Hire to our strengths, we hire strong leaders. Hire to our weaknesses, we hire weak leaders.

I know a brilliant, young executive in a multimillion dollar manufacturing company whose ambition to become CEO of that company may founder on his maddening propensity to hire leaders who may be good but who are none-the-less not very best.

But, as a b&b owner, do you think like your potential guests? Do you know how they go about arranging short breaks and holidays? And, did you know that it has now been estimated that for first time in decades, more people are arranging their own independent trips rather than using package tours (Mintel 2004)?

The rise of budget airlines such as Easyjet, Ryanair, and many other newcomers to budget airline industry best exemplify this changing scenario. Ryanair for instance, flies 161 routes and takes most of its bookings via Internet where it offers its cheapest fares. This means that traveller becomes their own travel agent and inputs their own travel arrangements and booking data into system. When combined with elimination of commission fees payable to travel agents, a process known as disintermediation occurs. It is disintermediation which terrifies travel agents!

Ryanair is a superb example of an organisation which has exploited Internet to come from nowhere to being largest capitalised airline in Europe. They were quick to see potential of Internet as a distribution channel and, as a result, Internet is now their main sales channel. What are lessons to be learned here by hotels and b&b’s? Foremost is that size doesn’t matter online. Ryanair proved that. More importantly for hotels, Ryanair and their like helped to create a new market which encouraged and demonstrated that travel could be done cheaply and efficiently. But how can independent hotelier and b&b owner learn from this?