4.1 What is Leadership?

The success of any organization depends on the performance of the workforce. Their performance depends upon their morale level and their relationship with the bosses, apart from their own skills, experience, etc. This employee morale level is created by good leaders. All managers starting from the CEO must show themselves as good leaders, create clear values and high expectations for performance excellence, and then build these into the company’s processes. They should strive to inspire and motivate the workforce. Leaders must create an order in the organization that is concurrent, predictable, and controllable. Leadership is the ability to positively influence people and systems under one’s authority, have a meaningful impact, and achieve important skills.

4.2 Definitions for Leadership

The following quotations from some authors would explain this concept better.

Perhaps the best of the explanatory definition is given by the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, as stated below:

An organization’s senior leaders should set directions and create a customer focus, clear and visible values, and high expectations. The directions, values, and expectations should balance the need of all the stakeholders. The leader should ensure the creation of strategies, systems, and methods for achieving excellence, stimulating innovations, and building knowledge and capabilities. The values and strategies should help guide all activities and decisions of the organization. Senior leaders should inspire and motivate the entire workforce and should encourage all employees to contribute, develop and learn, to be innovative, and to be creative.

Senior leaders should serve as role models through their ethical behavior and their personal involvement in planning, communication, coaching development of future leaders, review of organizational performance, and employee recognition. As role models, they can reinforce values and expectations while building leadership, commitment, and initiative throughout the organization.

From these definitions, we can represent the relationship between the leader and his subordinates as shown in Fig. 4.1.

4.3 Theories of Leadership

Because the concept of scientific management was developed during the postindustrial revolution period, the major and fundamental components of management theories have been the leadership theories. While the early theories can be traced to the early 20th century, the leadership theories related to quality management can be traced to the past four decades, especially after 1970. Whereas dozens of such theories have been developed, we will consider the following classification of leaders for the purpose of understanding the differences between various leadership styles and concepts.

The critical role played by senior managers in the quality movement is emphasized by the Malcolm Baldridge Award, where strategic management leadership is given priority. So is the case with other assessment frameworks like Deming Award, European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), Canada Award for Business Excellence (CABE), ISO 9000, etc.

4.4 Leadership Categories

The early management books have highlighted the leadership types and traits as:

● Autocratic, where the leader forces his subordinates to achieve the targets as he perceives them without giving any scope for thinking and judgment by them.

● Persuasive, where the leader does discuss with his subordinates and persuades them to achieve the targets either by incentives or by snoopervision, a word coined to imply snooping supervision.

● Democratic, where the leader gives high value to the feelings of the employee and gives prime importance to employee morale.

● Laissez-faire, where the leader is too passive and gives full freedom to the subordinates without having any control over them. This would sometimes cause miscommunication and disputes among the employees, but the leader makes no serious attempt to solve these disputes.

These categories are represented in the following Fig. 4.2.

To summarize, a perfect quality-conscious leader should be more of the persuasive type and democratic to a lesser extent and certainly neither autocratic nor a laissez-faire type.

4.5 Leadership and Goal Setting

The essentials of SMART goals can be explained by the first letters of the words comprising the acronym SMART.

SMART means:

● Specific

● Measurable

● Ambitious

● Realistic

● Time-bound

We can also say that the 5Ds of goal setting are:

● Direction

● Dedication

● Determination

● Discipline

● Deadline

This can be represented by the Fig. 4.3.

There can be three categories of managers with regards to the concept of goal setting:

1. Those who plan and write their goals and follow them systematically are successful in life with money and fame.

2. Those who have goals, but neither write them, nor follow them are just better off.

3. Those who have no goals and do not even know what is meant by setting goals.

There can also be three categories of managers with regards to their work commitment:

1. The first type does not work at all, but procrastinate their duties.

2. The second type work according to the rules, but no more.

3. The third type work, doing not only what is expected of them, but more.

Similarly, the success and failure of a manager can be attributed to:

Success

● Sense of direction

● Undertaking

● Courage

● Clarity

● Esteem

● Self Confidence

● Self-Acceptance

Failure

● Frustration, Futility

● Aggressiveness

● Insecurity

● Loneliness

● Uncertainty

● Resentment

● Emptiness

The above can also be represented by the Fig. 4.4.

4.6 Characteristics of Quality Leaders

Evans and Lindsay summarize the characteristics of true quality leaders as follows:

1. They focus on creating and balancing value for customers and all other stakeholders that serve as a basis for setting business directions and performance expectations at all levels of the organization.

2. They create and sustain a leadership system and environment for empowerment, innovation, agility, and organizational learning.

3. They set high expectations and demonstrate substantial personal commitment and involvement in quality, often with missionary-like enthusiasm.

4. They integrate quality values into daily leadership and management and communicate extensively through the leadership structure and to all employees.

5. They review organizational performance—including their own performance as leaders, to assess original success and progress and translate review findings into priorities for improvement and opportunities for innovation for the organization a whole, as well as their own leadership effectiveness.

6. They create an environment that fosters legal and ethical behavior and a governance system that addresses management and fiscal accountability and protection of stockholder and stakeholder interests.

7. They integrate public responsibilities and community support into their business practices.

Besterfield et al., add the following to these characteristics,

8. They emphasize improvement rather than maintenance. Leaders use the phrase, “If it is not perfect, improve it” rather than “If it is not broke, don’t fix it.” There is always room for improvement, even if the improvement is small.

9. They emphasize on prevention. “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” they say.

10. They encourage collaboration rather than competition. When functional areas, departments, or work groups are in competition, they may find subtle ways of working against each other or withholding information. Instead, there must be collaboration among units.

11. They train and coach, rather than direct and supervise. They appreciate the importance of human resource development and help their subordinates learn to do a better job.

12. They learn from problems. When a problem exists, it is treated as an opportunity for improvement, rather than something to be minimized or covered up.

13. They continually demonstrate their commitment to quality.

14. They recognize and encourage team effort. Rewarding of teams and individuals is important because people like to know that their contributions are appreciated.

The following acronyms can also explain other basic characteristics of a leader:

● Listening (learn by listening)

● Empathy

● Articulation

● Decision-making

● Empowerment

● Role model (be a role model for others)

4.7 Warren Bennis Principles of Great Teams

Warren Bennis studied teams that worked in organizations like Apple Computers, Palo Alto Research Center, Lockheed Skunk Works, and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He listed his findings in the form of Warren Bennis Principles of Great Teams. They are:

● Shared dreams: The great teams generally shared the dream to transform the world for better living. They are obsessed with what they are doing and do not consider their work as just a salary earning job. Their sharing this dream and belief gave them the cohesiveness and the energy needed to work.

● Mission is bigger than ego: Great teams placed mission way above individual egos as a building stone for success.

● Protection of the team members from external comments and criticisms would keep them satisfied and help in achieving the mission.

● Fostering enmity: Here enmity implies a healthy competition environment in an implicit mission, such as destroying the enemy in terms of competition is more motivating than an explicit mission.

● Dare to be different: As Bennis says, their sense of operating on the fringes feeds their obsession to succeed.

● Pain and suffering: The nature of the work would be such that the team members generally go through intense pain and suffering, but an ideal team leader keeps up their morale by his sympathetic involvement.

4.8 The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders

Stephen Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, highlighted the following habits that should be instilled by people who want to be highly successful leaders:

Covey, in his later book, The Leader in Me, added the 8th habit that states “Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.”

4.9 The Ten Commandments of cGMPs (Current Good Manufacturing Practices)

1. Have good SOP (standard operating practices)

2. Compliance to procedures

3. Document the work

4. Validate the manufacturing and testing procedures

5. Design and build proper facilities and equipment

6. Upkeep facilities and maintain equipment

7. Improve competency of the people

8. Cleanliness as a daily habit

9. Process control

10. Continuous monitoring by audits

4.10 Fifty Insights for CEOs

Gita Piramal and Jennifer Netarwala, in their book, Smart Leadership Insights for CEO’s, indicate the following fifty insights for a successful leader.

1. Begin with vision
A vision is a moving target and a target you set yourself.

2. Get buy-in
A vision without alignment is just a theory. Set in the organizational structure so that there is a personal goal for each employee aligned to the company’s vision.

3. Find leaders at all levels
A leader creates leaders, not followers.

4. Plan future leaders
The challenge is to identify leaders from the new crops coming in.

5. Spread leadership culture
It should be a part of the leader’s agenda.

6. Set an example
It is the CEO’s example that sets the tone.

7. Be in the know
People who are successful and become leaders are those who have their ears glued to what’s happening.

8. Create entrepreneurs
There is very little difference between an entrepreneur and being an entrepreneur in an organization.

9. Encourage innovation
Create as many connections inside the organization as possible to encourage innovation.

10. Reward innovation
Innovation is not about doing different things, but about doing things differently and better. When people do differently, they shall have to be recognized, rewarded, and the entire process supported.

11. Think regional but act local
It is always carried on with the local talent.

12. Get people to think strategy
It is imperative that people across the organization be encouraged to think out of their own mind that they can develop broader appreciation of the complexity of the problem and trade-offs involved.

13. Hire extraordinary people
Talented people are the key determinant of business success.

14. Discuss and debate
Every employee should be encouraged to speak out.

15. Encourage nonconformists
Organizations need their share of mavericks because they invariably account for a disproportionately large number of breakthroughs and creative ideas.

16. Park people
Learn how to deal with stagnating people.

17. Adhere to standards
Meritocracy is important.

18. Be fair consistently
Once you introduce meritocracy, people will start leaving gracefully.

19. Discuss changes
As a CEO, you should sit with subordinates and discuss what you are doing and why you are doing it.

20. Understand motivation
In any takeover of an organization, price is not the biggest concern.

21. Let go of ego
A lot of acquisitions go wrong because of the ego of the person at the top.

22. Let people adopt to their roles
While integrating people after acquisitions, it does not make sense to the management to ask people to leave immediately.

23. Address emotions
After an acquisition, first address emotions.

24. Be upfront
When a company is sold, normally there is a good reason for that, which should be well known to all concerned in the company.

25. Take time
While making decisions under uncertainty, do not hurry up. Take your time to consider all the facts before you. Adapt the Indian rule of “Nidanam Pradhanam.”

26. Don’t penny pinch
Training people and sharing expertise requires a lot of traveling and this can hurt the bottom line.

27. Share more
Free flow of information allows you to exchange technology, access strengths, and transfer expertise to the subsidiaries.

28. Have a good mix
You can’t sell a low-cost product with bad quality.

29. Set time limits
Set a time limit for every decision by having reverse sign-offs.

30. Don’t procrastinate
If you have an opportunity, don’t hesitate.

31. Get quicker
To be world-class there has to be continuous and quantifiable improvement in performance.

32. Anticipate
Anticipate everything. Success depends on how quickly you move into those places and that you can reach the target in anticipation of the needs.

33. Don’t wait for perfection
If you wait to get everything absolutely right, you ate not going to take off.

34. Give direction
When a company is in a turnaround phase, everyone from the lowest level to the highest level employees must work in the same direction.

35. Create ambition
For any organization, what is very important is that you first create an ambience, and then you create an ambition among people.

36. Initiate change
For change to happen there is a need to change the mindsets.

37. Impose mild penalties
Funding and budget is one way to reward and punish.

38. Manage conflicts
Maybe you have a point, maybe we can sleep on it, maybe we can talk about it tomorrow, and let us do some homework on it.

39. Handle controversy
In a controversy, the key thing is to understand the essence of the controversy and where does the organization figure in it.

40. Encourage teams
Remember “Together Everyone Achieves More.”

41. Stretch continuously
You have to see how you can stretch the boundaries. If you achieve the target, the target must be raised again.

42. Establish trust
Trust and fairness are the two most important values in an organization.

43. Take risks
Most of the time, people are not going to applaud when you take risks, but still you have to do it with gut instinct.

44. Incentives work
How do you help people be the best that can be?

45. Experiment
Create an atmosphere where one can have tough discussions and walk out of the meetings and come back the next day without sulking.

46. Manage performance
Have clear individual appraisals, where employees set out what they want to do in the next one or two years, and there shall be a continuous assessment of how they are performing vis-à-vis the goals.

47. Manage disappointments
When the benevolent and ever truthful king Harishchandra was forced to lose his kingdom, due to his verbal commitment given long ago to the cunning sage Viswamitra, his minister advised him.
Don’t worry about the failures, but know the causes.

48. Listen closely
If a person comes to you with a problem, don’t say you do not have the time. The problem does not disappear but the person disappears.

49. Establish a wavelength
Getting everyone on board is a democratic process.

50. Benchmark with the best
World-class benchmarks are impotent. Creating benchmarks also helps people to know what they will be judged against.

4.11 Fifteen Thoughts of Chanakya

Our own Chanukya in his Chanuka Sastra, had expressed these thoughts that should provide an insight into our mind to be adapted for becoming a successful leader.

1. Learn from the mistakes of others, you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

2. A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and likely so, honest people are screwed first. A classic example for this thought is illustrated below from Hindu mythology:

3. Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.

4. There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

5. Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions—“Why am I doing it?,” “What the results might be?” and “Will I be successful?” Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.

6. As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.

7. The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

8. Once you start working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.

9. The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the direction of the wind. But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.

10. God is not present in idols. Your feelings are your god. The soul is your temple.

11. A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

12. Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.

13. Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grownup children are your best friends.

14. Books are as useful to a stupid person as a mirror is useful to a blind person.

15. Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats beauty and the youth.

4.12 Wilkie’s Leadership Qualities

David J. Wilkie, in his contribution to management, Handbook for Plant Engineers, lists the general qualities required for a leader as:

1. Drive

2. High intelligence

3. Technical knowledge given by education and practical experience

4. Acceptability

5. Maturity

6. Management skills

7. Loyalty

8. Human relations

9. Leadership and responsibility

Of these, the most important is the leadership and responsibility. The following points further identify their characteristics.

● People take on the leadership role by giving satisfaction to others.

● The leader is obligated to achieve positive results.

4.13 Leadership Responsibilities

The website http://whj.hubpages.comsums up the responsibilities of a leader as:

1. Disseminating the idea of total quality.

2. Setting standards like zero failure.

3. Monitoring quality performance (quality costs).

4. Introducing a quality system based on “prevention” rather than detection.

5. Introducing process control methods like Statistical Process Control.

4.14 Moral Leadership

Today, professional ethics and human values are given high importance in leadership and the awareness of moral leadership is hence, quite significant to any leader. This leadership may take several forms and in general, it indicates the success story in moving a group towards the goal. This success is based on character ethics and it is the leadership attitude that distinguishes a good leader from a bad leader, as indicated by the following illustration.

4.15 Contributors for Moral Leadership

The main contributors to moral leadership are:

(a) Respect: Respecting other people irrespective of their position is the very basis of moral leadership.

(b) Behavioral pattern: As indicated in Chapter 7, as the leader ascends up the ladder of the hierarchy of needs, he is driven by this unconscious desire to win, to be loved, to be appreciated, to be perfect, and to be successful. If this desire in the leader to win takes precedence over the need to be fair and reasonable, which would adversely affect the moral leadership?

(c) Style: Every leader has his own style of functioning and dealing with his subordinates or peers, which will have direct bearing on the responsiveness of others, and consequently, his success as a moral leader.

(d) Habit: Habits are behaviors a man picks up over the years. He may not be conscious of these habits, but they certainly affect the way he interacts with others. They may be positive or negative habits. Examples are the use of certain expressions, jokes, or gestures.

(e) Intention: Here the leader consciously and intentionally acts in ways that harm the others, either physically or mentally. This can take two forms:

● Behavior in which harming others is accepted by the leader as necessary to achieve something valued by him.

● Behavior in which the leader has no bad intentions, but does not see or realize the harm his actions do to others.

4.16 Role of Top Management in Quality Management

Having discussed the qualities of leaders in general, let us now see what characters and attitudes a leader should possess to sustain the quality culture of an organization.

1. The CEO should have the commitment and take the lead in the process of change to infuse a quality culture in the organization.

2. The CEO has to establish continuous improvement in quality as the organization’s primary objective at all levels, starting with himself. Personal change is a prerequisite for organizational quality improvement.

3. Top management should learn and teach others on principles and managing for continuous improvement.

4. Provide guidance and steadfast determination to continuous improvement through teamwork.

5. Provide long-term stability to the leadership of the organization through building up the cadres down the line.

6. Inspire strong team spirit and orientation among all the employees, ie, from Top Management to grass-roots level employees.

7. Ensure change from the old system of “product and function driven” to “customer and process driven.” Production and Quality targets are to be oriented to Quality and Customer satisfaction.

8. Ensure free flow of communication and open management by sharing information on targets/goals so that there is one common language in the whole organization and everyone is motivated to work in teams/groups for common objectives.

9. Build positive working relationships with the workforce and trade union. Remove barriers.

10. Provide sufficient budget support for ongoing training activities and for implementation of new methods.

11. Redesign the organization’s motivation and reward systems to generate employees’ continued commitment to long-term goals of continuous improvement.

4.17 Leadership and Knowledge of Psychology

In July 2014, a blogger in ASQ’s quality management discussion in LinkedIn groups, the W. Edwards Deming Institute had blogged the following concepts on why the knowledge of human psychology is essential for quality leaders.

One of the four cornerstones of Dr. Deming’s management system is an understanding of psychology. Managers should be learning psychology to improve the management of the human systems in their organization and in working with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. We frequently have issues in our organizations that grow out of faulty theories about how people think (often based on beliefs of much more coldly rational thought than the research shows is really found in people).

4.18 Case Studies on Leadership Qualities

Two case studies on great leaders are cited below:

1. Go out of the way to help people, meaning do your duty plus something more.

2. Continuous learning and knowledge gathering is a never-ending process for the true leader. It is a system of profound knowledge as professed by Deming (see paragraph 1.14 of Chapter 1)

4.19 Some Quotations on Leadership

1. He who learns how to obey, will know how to command.
–Solon

2. Leadership is the ability to turn vision into reality.
–Warren Bennis

3. Leaders don’t create followers. They create more leaders.
–Tom Peters

4. One of the true tests of a leader is that he recognizes the problem before it becomes an emergency.
–Arnold H Glasgow

5. That some can achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve as well.
–Abraham Lincoln

6. The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting a too high standard and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.
–Michael Angelo

7. Action without study is fatal, and study without action is futile.
–Mary Beard

8. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
–Winston Churchill

9. If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization.
–Robert Noyce

10. The time is always right to do what is right.
–Martin Luther King Jr.

11. The difference between impossible and possible lies in a person’s determination.
–Tommy Lasorda

12. A failure establishes only this—that our determination to succeed is not strong enough.
–Christian Nestell Bovee

4.20 Conclusion

Leadership is a function which is important at all levels of management. At the top level, it is important for getting cooperation in the formulation of plans and policies. In the middle and lower levels, it is required for interpretation and execution of plans and programs framed by the top management. It is not an overemphasis to say that the role played by the leader of a group is the forerunner for the success of the group, as illustrated in this chapter.