Leadership

Leadership

The idea in brief: How can non-effective leadership bring one company almost to ruin? By analysing the Managing Director G. Ranieri of the company RCR, we will try to understand how this person may be responsible of the decrease in sales and the bad image the company is gaining on the International market, despite its exceptional breaking through potentials . Through the different leadership theories, I will try to define how the company is strictly related, with its up and downs, to the up and down of the chosen of self chosen leader.

The main points: RCR , even by being a "young company" was having until 2003 a steady growth and impact on international market. This company, family owned, as the greater part of the boat manufacturing companies in Italy, was "ruled" by three brothers, who are interacting by now, but for years have not been clear in their goals and qualities.

The basic problems is the leading style of the managing director , the harsh character which brought problems either with employees (one employee left per month in the last three years), with the dealers (dealer network structure is changing every year) and with banks (the company is not well estimated)

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Leadership is a trait which can be reflected in the organizations far more than actually expected. Organizations, actually, can be considered as a "complex evolving human system" and, therefore, is defined and changed by the traits hold and performed through the leaders or, as the case may be the leading managers.

RCR Srl, one of the leading companies on the Italian boat manufacturing panorama, gives a clear example of how leadership styles, can actually affect the company's performance, credibility and working mood.

Which leadership is the one, quoting Daniel Goleman , which is actually getting results?

Business is made on numbers and on results> the results are the measuring units of success and development and are also the ones who define if something goes right on in a proper way. Goleman reports and interesting question "What should leaders do?". They should get result. A singular and easy job maybe, but which is actually not everyone's job.

My perception is that nowadays more and more people do actually not have a clear vision of what a leader is and what a leading manager . James Pratt used to say: "The best way to realise if you are a leader and not a manager is to think about how people would react if you would not have any position. Would people still follow you?".

This may appear as a simple solution of the greater division Goleman is offering: A real leader is the one which is able to envision , and as also Tom Peters do say, a real leader is able to create in his followers a "passion for excellence".

The limits of the lack of emotional intelligence

My perception is that every person in a leading position does need to have a certain capacity: the capacity of understanding the emotions of the people surrounding them. For sure, by interviewing people in leading position, they would continue to argue that they do know what their followers want, what they do think, what they do like and what they do wish. Often however, this is only an assumption, because the greater part of people in leading position does not even know what people around them are thinking .

People in leading positions are so focused on achieving results , that they often do lack of the capacity of building relationships and establishing relationships which turn out to be useful in a long term perspective .

By now, I would say that a good leader should start to have:

- clear ideas

- a high EQ

- strong relational skills

- long term perspectives

But only these features only do not make the person a leader. So where we could place the difference?

It seems very difficult to try and define what makes one person excellent and other rather creepy, but, emotions do actually play an important and vital role. Emotions can not be simply switched off when entering a working place: they are part of our being, of our attitude and of our nature.

G. Ranieri was the 5th brother and the 7th kid of the big Ranieri family. As a kid he had to work in the factory, but did not have, actually, never had the "need to work". He was travelling quite a lot all around the world, taking the life as easy as possible and not even applying at school. He did never attend university and this is maybe the reason why he does not accept very much people with a university degree cause he suffers from this "lack". He is a person who does follow his owns rules, does not accept suggestions and who thinks to be the "best in the world" .

It would be necessary to understand if Mr. Ranieri is able to read his own emotions, to understand what he is doing, wishing or wanting.

Let's consider his primer :

* Emotional self awareness: Mr. Ranieri appears not to be able to read his motions, nor to relocate them to what is happening. It appears as if, he does not have emotions or if all the emotions are to considered something wrong

* Accurate self assessment: Mr. Ranieri thinks to have only strengths. He has been able to create one company with a billion turnovers with nothing, so there is not weakness. Better said> he has strengths, the people working for him only weaknesses.

* Self confidence: Mr. Ranieri appears to be over confident, not self confident. He is not, however, a real optimist : rather a dreaming optimist. A real optimistic would evaluate the situation, use the existing tools and possibilities and then proceed. he is more the kind of person who does follow the impulse of a moment, invest all the energies in it and who at the ends, reports the failure of his idea to other's incompetence.

* Self control: there is a absolute lack of self control. Mr. Ranieri tends to be aggressive, not only in words, with people having other opinions than him. He has also arrived to beaten other people for a simple divergence of opinions

* Trustworthiness: he had it, but he is losing

it. Even if was a person who could stand for the word given, in these last three years, more and more the word given did not reflect