PhilDourado's blog

It's that time of year when we look back on what for many has been a tough year and look forward to what kind of leadership we think will be most effective next year. We all lean towards a particular form of leadership, I think. My preference is for servant leadership models, dispersed leadership, leadership that brings people together around a common purpose.

But we all know that you need different forms of leadership in different situations.

I like David Taylor, author of The Naked Leader's, weekly emails. I recommend them. Here's David's email from this week:

Dear Phil

I've always had a problem with Harvard and other academic organizations' 'case studies' approach to learning how to lead and run a business. The problem is that people treat it as a blueprint or a recipe.

OK, I've long had a theory that is very unpatriotic of me as a Brit. British management style as it is traditionally practised sucks. My theory is that it's a hangover of the class system. My evidence was specific to one industry.

I used to work in the car manufacturing industry looking at how cars are designed and that took me to visit a lot of British car factories. I did not find the management impressive, with the exception of people like Sir Nick Scheele (who used to head Jaguar and then Ford globally).

Every day, President Obama reads ten letters from the public in order to stay in tune with America's issues and concerns. This clip reminded me of the importance of communicating, unmediated, with customers and employees to stay in touch with what's really happening. Yes, OK, from the clip you can see that there is some mediation going on in how the letters are selected.