What makes a great business leader?
Lessons from international sport.
Effective leadership is a key pillar of success for any business and all successful sports teams. Panasonic has been talking to Sam Warburton, former British and Irish Lions Rugby Captain, to understand what he sees as the secret to success.
What makes a great business leader?
Lessons from international sport.Effective leadership is one of the key pillars of success for any business and all successful professional sports teams. So do the traits that make you a successful leader in sport transfer to the business world? We have been talking to Sam Warburton, former British and Irish Lions Rugby Captain, to find out and to understand what he sees as the secrets to leadership success.
Leading in business isn’t easy. Whether in good times or testing circumstances, you have to face up to whatever work throws at you. Inspiring your teams to perform. Influencing partners and clients alike and meeting every challenge your business faces. But with great leadership, you can gain a critical advantage that sets you apart from the competition.
So, what does it take to be a great leader? In a series of short recorded films with Sam Warburton, one of the greatest sporting figureheads in a generation, Panasonic TOUGHBOOK has been exploring just what it means to lead from the front. There may not be a blueprint to great leadership, but there are tools which can help you get there. Here’s what I took from Sam’s chats with Kevin Jones, Managing Director of Panasonic’s European Mobile Business Division.
As a young captain, Sam says he was asked to establish a leadership compass. The four most important traits that a leader needs to display. They seem to have stood him in good stead throughout an incredible career, so I thought I would share them here:
- Performance. Lastly, he said that above everything else, great leaders maintain a consistently high level of performance. Making sure they perform to the best of their ability, week in and week out. He believes that if you let those performance levels slip, others will quickly see and fail to follow. This, he said, is probably the hardest of the four leadership traits to consistently deliver but arguably the most important.
Aside from his leadership compass, Sam made several other important points that stuck with me.
- Focus on what you are good at. To be successful you need to find that point of strength, a point of difference and excel at it. He believes too many people focus on their weaknesses and become competent but then rarely excel at anything.
- Remember that leadership is not a solo task. He said that in successful teams there are always captains but very often there another 5 or 6 senior players that bring their own strengths to the team. By remaining humble and surrounding yourself with a team of sub-leaders with strengths in areas other than your own, it is possible to achieve almost anything.
These were just a few of the highlights I took away from the videos but I recommend you view them for yourself. They are fun, insightful and enlightening for both business people and rugby fans alike.
Check out the Lead From The Front series of videos.
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