Leadership in Business

Without principles and guideposts, we are all similar to bags floating in the wind.  Whatever your personal belief system may be, we all need a solid foundation on which to rely in uncertain times.  With the decline of the American economy in recent years, companies and corporations have also worked hard to present ways to further their professional image and improve results.  

Business is a lot like cooking in that you must have the right amounts of ingredients in the right places to succeed.  When you bake a cake, adding too much flour or baking soda will ruin the entire thing.  In the same way, businesses must find the right combination of marketing, accounting, research and development, information technology, and leadership to flourish especially during tough times.  

Leadership is the component of a business that I want to focus on today.  Instead of thinking of leadership as an outcome, it is more wise to think of leadership as a process.  In order to attain the results we desire, we must effectively engage the process of leadership.  At its core, leadership is using models of human communication to meet shared goals and needs on business issues that are important to the company.

Becoming an effective leader involves many components.  First, and counterintuitively, a great leader must be a great listener.  Part of what it means to engage the process of leadership is to take a given group’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences (called feedback) and then mold them into a plan of action.  In history, we see many authority figures who did not listen, and as a result, crafted plans that did not reflect the values of the group.  On the other hand, there are leadership ideas and corporate principles that focus on the shared values of the employees and management.  

For example, the Japanese word “Kaizen” refers to the business practices that focus upon continuous improvement in manufacturing, engineering, innovation, and management.  Like leadership, Kaizen is best thought of as a process which goes beyond simply improving productivity.  Effective leadership and Kaizen both emphasize humanizing the workplace by viewing a business as an interrelated system of components.  What I mean is that leadership is not necessarily a top-to-bottom, hierarchical process.  Instead, effective engaging the process of leadership using the principle of Kaizen involves the participation of everyone within the organization, which in turn creates a flexible business system instead of a rigid hierarchy. 

Now, while leadership through the lens of Kaizen can be very effective, we need to consider another element in the equation of a successful business--the customer.  Without customers, a business cannot exist.  The revenue that customers provide to a business can be likened to oxygen that allows the human body to function.  When you don’t have a customer base, a business cannot survive for very long.  Analogously, if a human cannot breathe oxygen, s/he will not survive for very long.  As a business, you should always focus on satisfying customer needs.  Trying to figure out those customer needs in a timely manner is the tricky part.  For instance, a sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry has about 2 minutes of a customer’s time to make a strong first impression and close the sale.  The only possible way the representative can make a sale in such a short time period is to come prepared with a positive mental attitude.  Positivity is a contagious force, and when a sales rep exudes confidence and devotion, a customer is more likely to pick up on those signals, and thus purchase a product.  Of course, the product you are marketing must actually be superior, but the job of a sales rep is to prove to the customer why their product is better than what the competitor is offering.

To wrap this up, I want to restate that leadership should be thought of as a process.  I gave an example of corporate leadership in the Japanese principle of Kaizen.  In order for leadership and Kaizen to be effective at a management level, the customer must be satisfied, which is why the job of the sales department is so crucial.  A human body cannot survive when it is starved of oxygen.  Similarly, a business cannot prosper if revenue is not coming in.