“The elusive qualities needed for leadership”

Notes on leadership that improves performance

Being a leader in airline is not getting any easier. The pressure on leadership is also now affecting many more managers than in the days of a few ‘heroic’ leaders Hierarchies are being ‘de-layered’ so there are fewer in the management tiers, and the willingness of colleagues to follow the leadership is increasingly dependant upon the behaviour of the local leader, and less on the messages ‘from the top’.

The following notes are extracts from an article published in five years ago when airlines were emerging from the dark days following 11 September 2001 and the consequent decline in traffic.

This article postulated that airline management needed “to look to improve their leadership.” It then went on to suggest that at that time “Too often ‘leadership initiatives’ produce an intellectual interest and perhaps a ‘feel-good’ factor, but few sustained improvements in performance”. A question for today is ‘has this changed?’

The article then suggested four basic questions that might provide insight into the leadership capabilities of an airline’s management.

1. Is the top team leadership demonstrably different?

Executive management is not the same as functional management and too many airlines have had their cutting edge blurred by false teamwork. Top teams often have to make difficult decisions and consensus is not always achievable. It may also take too long. At the end of the day most people are swayed by what the top people do, not by what they say. The self-presentation of constant harmony at the top rarely accords with other’s views as to what is happening, or what is needed.

2. Is all training rooted in the business purpose, dealing simultaneously with group and individual actions and relationships?

Separating ‘hard’ business and professional skills development from ‘soft’ behavioural skills training may suit the trainers but may not benefit the airline. One indication of good leadership is when managers sometimes find it more effective to “follow” their subordinates. Such behaviour can feel risky, however, so any leadership discussions need to be firmly rooted in the purpose of the business and constantly ask ‘why are we doing this and how could we improve?’, and also deal with group and individual issues inherent in this simultaneously. The missing link is often the market and the competition.

3. Is there a strong link between business planning and human resource planning, with both focused on the future?

Without this it is hard to engage with staff and to ensure that both are open agenda topics, not the preserves of experts. Change may be driven by amongst other factors, growth, technologies, customer demands, competitors or the impact of regulation. Leaders need to constantly assess what future skills will be needed to embrace such change, and then manage the development of these.

4. is there strong cross-departmental management, rooted in the commercial reality?

Leadership improves more effectively when the work is at unit level, but improvement in one area may cause tensions elsewhere. It is in reconciling these that leadership has to live with management, and the leader’s speech, behaviour and action have to be aligned. Performance problems that result from change are common and need to speedily resolved. Such resolution has to be seen to be in the interests of the business, not merely exporting the problem to someone else – such as angry passengers to captive cabin crew. Similarly delivering network service promises, especially those dependent upon partners and suppliers demands great attention to process and systemic integration and immediate commercially based decisions when problems occur. It is the sum of these tactical decisions, often by first line supervisors, that form the leadership culture of the airline.

The article concluded.

As airline competition continues to intensify, success may well be dependent on the performance of every member of staff, every day, especially when things do not quite go according to plan. Such performance over the longer term will not be accidental and will require many skilled, quiet, possibly even self-effacing people. All of these need to be massively ambitious for their airline. They will also need to be found, to be well managed, and to be led.

The complete article is available from Aviation Economics: www.aviationeconomics.com ; published in Aviation Strategy: February 2004