In business, as in life, the skills required for good leadership are at least misunderstood and at most confused. Those who are expected to lead tend to manage and those who manage tend not to know when to lead. Andrew St George one of the UK's top leadership consultants puts it like this: Managing is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right thing.
Four years ago the then charismatic Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy Admiral, Sir James Burnet-Nugent asked Andrew to spend time with every level of the Navy staff, from subalterns in the engine room of an Aircraft Carrier to commanders of landing craft, through to lieutenants and captains right up to cabinet level, with the aim of creating a book which distils the leadership culture of perhaps the most highly respected and efficient organisation in the world. As Admiral Lord Nelson, the greatest British naval leader and probably the finest naval strategist and commander of all time, wrote: to succeed we must have: clarity of intent; a strategy; resources; a contingency plan; an emotional investment. These tenets still stand today in all walks of business and personal life.
"Admiral Burnet-Nugent carries two things with him at all times. Not a phone nor a blackberry nor a computer. He carry's his hat, 'so that when I walk into a room everyone knows who I am, which saves a great deal of time', and a small card with Nelson's lines on it 'so that when I walk in a room I know what I'm there for".
Author description
In the last ten years Andrew St George has mentored many FT100 company bosses, he lectures on the subject of leadership in business at universities, business schools and most recently at Sandhurst. He writes on the way certain clear strategies can make anyone's life more straightforward from every part of our working lives to planning a holiday to buying a house to dealing with a domestic crisis.
