With many of the so called successful global economies in the West still finding it hard to get on their two feet for want of an effective strategy and intervention, the reputation of some of those A grade universities that churned out those leaders/specialists who worked out those high powered interventions are finding it hard to protect their reputation as global intellectual power houses. One common criticism is that they did not teach their graduates how to read the environment, a set of values and how to excite ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Also the theory that business leaders are shaped in some of the best universities in the US and Europe and by attending in house company programs is also now in suspect. Certainly an interesting thought worth exploring? I have in this article attempted to answer three questions; a) is someone born a leader? b) can leadership be taught? c) what is the key to successful leadership?

In short what does a good CEO do differently to an average CEO? Is a successful CEO a man/women full of steak, vodka and red wine, surrounded by droves of worker ants dedicated to constructing whatever ideas may blossom in his/her imagination? Or is our person angry all the time, ready to kick butt and assemble names to get his work done or is it someone who has perfected the art of management by insult? In my view a good business leader is a person who is driven by an obsession to set new standards, inspires people to deliver those dazzling standards and demonstrates vulnerability and sensibility and brings people together for the team to win? This captures the core of Professor Rob Goffe ‘s (Professor of Organizational Behaviour, London School of Business) "Why Should anyone be led by YOU?". In the context of business turbulence good leadership is critical for corporate survival and to convey the mission and sense of purpose of the organization.

Many professional managers would argue with me that successful business leaders are made and self made successful business leaders like Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates would say they are born. The enormous research done by authorities like Warren Bennis , Jack Welch, Ram Charan, Tony Robbins to Jay Konga eludes our understanding that ‘Leadership’ is something that can be learnt and applied with great success in most businesses and society itself. This is a fallacy which had been exploited by many a management guru who have led hordes to packed auditoriums and conference halls, fattening their purse but not enriching the lives of these gullible multitude. The Fortune Magazine ran a cover feature under the caption ‘ How to be a Great Leader’ during the end of last year (October 2007) publishing what its described as the Secrets from GE,P&G, American Express And more . It opened with the universal truth that ‘Your competition can copy every advantage you have got except one! And the Worlds Best companies are realizing no matter what business they are in, their real business is building leaders. What is more important though was the realization that among the forces driving companies today to develop effective leaders, the most critical was the shift from dependence on financial capital to human capital.

When you look at the local business scene we have the euphoric larger than life model of leadership. . Mainly this was the legacy of the family owned mercantile tradition of businesses, which flourished, with the export of tea and the other two commercial crops, which made Sri Lanka famous in the early part of the last century. Today many of those family owned businesses other than perhaps a handful are biting the dust for want of leadership, a set of values and lack of innovation. A new group of first generation entrepreneurs with political or without political patronage have created business empires from next to nothing. In general research by authors like Mick Moore * (1990) and more lately by Dr. Kamal Weerapperuma (2001) made public some true secrets of which we cannot be happy about. Over reliance on domestic factors/home grown technology, poor inter firm cooperation, poor understanding of the customer, failure to forward integrate, tendency to retain ownership and control within family, and poor knowledge of the relative position of business/firm in relation to best of breed benchmarks among others. This is symptomatic of the failure of firms to develop good corporate leaders to take these businesses to the next level of competitive growth.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is what you can describe when one "regular" writer in the weekly education supplement of popular group of newspapers wrote in a feature titled ‘Challenging the Leadership Model: the Sri Lankan Context’ (Sunday Times 16 December 2007) that ‘managers get the right things done ; leaders get things done right ‘. He had the age old ‘Situational leadership model’ all mixed up (Hersey and Blanchard 1991) , where as the tag line should have read the other way about. The Situational Leadership framework maps relationship behaviour against task behaviour of leaders in various situations and was one the most practical guides for leadership development for a long time.

During the early part of the last decade a colleague used this framework to research the leadership styles of local CEOs/corporate leaders, under a paper titled "Success Factors in Organizational Change: Role of the CEO" presented at a seminar of the International Strategic Management Institute in Colombo. The sample had Ten Leaders including the late D.S Jayasundara (former Chairman /MD of Hayleys)

According to his findings the four core areas a leader should excel are;

So what are the attributes one needs to become an effective CEO? The answer can be found in the ground breaking work of Jim Collins, who researched 11 companies from a sample of 1435 Fortune 500 companies over a 30 year period (1965 -1995) and found a special brand of leader who produced the "Good to Great" companies. This type of CEO drove excellence in the organization to a level which not only grew market share and shareholder value but also sustained it over several decades to become truly great companies.

These companies had during their transition years ‘Level 5’ Leaders. The 5 levels of the leader behaviour continuum are as follows:

So the leader who leaves behind enduring excellence is one who is infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results, determined to do whatever it takes to move it from Good to Great. One who blends emotive magnetism with world-class processes, a potent combination that excites heart and head, and mobilizes spirit and sense, which facilitates a steady stream of profits. People like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been able to do this even during one of the worst economic crisis since the great depression.

So is some one born a leader or can leadership be taught? In my opinion it is a mixture of both. A CEO can be taught how to lead and shaped through coaching, mentoring by a good board. However, a successful CEO needs to have inborn qualities that demand respect, but the processes and the skills that are so important to run a company successfully can be taught in a good B school and by a good coach. Therefore, not every one can be a leader though. A CEO to succeed needs to have some essential traits. These traits do not include integrity, emotional maturity and intelligence to read the environment, which are essential requirements for any management position. They are given or must haves. Beyond that the CEO needs to have the positive energy, the ability to energize others, the ability to make those tough calls, the ability to make things happen, the passion to believe in what they are doing and also listen to those under their supervision. So what is the key to successful leadership? The leader has to command the respect of all those under his supervision and be open to those under their supervision. Effective leadership means having a lot of people working towards a common goal. And when you have that with no one caring who gets the credit, you are going to accomplish a lot. However those CEOs who just want the credit for themselves and only concerned about their well being, they are not going to get as much accomplished because instead on focusing on the right things, they get lost trying to boil the ocean, and propagates a culture where people believe greed is good.