1. Developing Global Leaders:
“The most important leader you
will ever study is yourself”
Professor Tudor Rickards
2012

2. Twenty first century leadership
challenges
• Today’s organisations face new challenges requiring different leadership responses
• Developing new leadership ‘maps’ will be vital
• A promising approach involves ‘learning while doing’ and exploring the dilemmas
confronting leaders
• Source: Dilemmas of leadership (2005; 2011 editions)

3. Leadership is dealing with the
unexpected
“A luxury cruise liner hits the rocks with 32 fatalities. Within weeks,
another ship from the same company suffers another serious
incident, and is towed to safety. The company faces serious
dilemmas of retaining credibility in the marketplace and of finding a
way of dealing with its corporate reputation.”
Source: Costa Rebrandia: A study in strategic leadership
and governance, Leaders we deserve, Feb 2012

4. Today’s business leaders face unprecedented challenges of
risk management many arising from technological, economic and
social upheavals…

5. Global risk themes
Leadership talent development
Credit and growth
Globalization
Resource squeeze
Societal values
CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)
Source: Modified from Ernst & Young’s annual
risk assessments (2010-2011)

6. Beliefs about the nature of effective leadership are changing
One successful global organization announced recently
That it was considering how it could develop its employees
Into 50,000 leaders …

7. IBM’s globalisation strategy
Samuel Palmisano reorganized IBM
into an “integrated global enterprise”
based on leading by values and collaboration.
Its former chief learning officer recently
estimated that the company will
need 50,000 leaders in the future.

8. The importance of leadership today is confirmed in claims made
by organizations in various professions such as
health, government, leisure , engineering and finance

9. Medical leadership
“Medical leadership requires acknowledgement
that all doctors require management and
leadership competences to be effective
practitioners.”
NHS Institute for innovation and improvement.
(2008)

10. Financial leadership
This modern world has brought new and difficult leadership challenges
to every firm now involved in credit markets …I want to emphasize
enterprise leadership: responsibility for both results and viability
of the financial institution, and not just transactional leadership.
The test of enterprise leadership is whether the firm is stronger a decade
after a leader departs than while he or she was in charge.
Source: Robert Joss, Professor and Dean,
Stanford Graduate School of Business (Dec 2007)

11. Technological leadership
We are on the threshold of a new era. The century of oil is ending,
and the world's energy supply must be put on a new foundation.
That's why researchers, inventors, and engineers need to be more
creative today than ever before. Computers as medical assistants,
household robots, sensory cars, power plants in deserts, virtual
universities, online factories … are becoming realities in laboratories
all over the globe.
Source: Ulrich Eberl, Siemens

12. Global Events and Leadership
(GEL)
The Global Events and Leadership module (GEL) introduces the
Manchester Business School’s Executive MBA programmes around
the world.
GEL emphasizes the dilemmas of contemporary global leadership,
and ‘learning through doing’ to achieve creative and innovative
goals

13. Leadership development programmes at MBS
are built around an educational innovation known as
The Manchester Method, a form of ‘learning while doing’
Project teams develop awareness of personal leadership
‘maps’ while tackling real business projects.

14. Creative leadership
Evidence from workshops with over 6000 participants confirms that
global leadership skills can be developed though programmes which
involve participants actively in the dilemmas facing today’s
international organizations.
Source: Rickards & Moger, Handbook for creative team leaders

15. GEL’s development goals
To develop skills at business analysis of complex issues with
global implications
To identify dilemmas within leadership challenges
To use ‘map reading, map testing, and map making’
In order to improve personal leadership beliefs and actions
To work in teams and understand leadership and team
dynamics under complex realistic conditions
Source: Global Events and Leadership study guide, MBS

16. Impact studies
Impact studies have been reported using information collected
during workshops and in follow-up surveys.
Participants apply learning to their subsequent workplace challenges.
Two specific aspects have been identified over time:
the benefits of searching for dilemmas confronting business leaders
and application of an approach for examining and refining conceptual maps
Sources: Rickards (2011); Rickards & Moger (2012)

17. Creative leadership
An important finding from the work at Manchester Business
School has been recognition that effective leadership and
creativity overlap strongly,
This leads to the conclusion that: ‘creativity is a leader’s secret
weapon’
Creative leadership is one way of differentiating leading from
managing [Abraham Zaleznick]

18. More about maps and dilemmas
Leadership ‘maps’ are changing presenting different dilemmas
Differing leadership styles co-exist:
The charismatic leader
The authentic leader
The creative leader
The ‘level five’ leader
The rational leader
Distributed leadership involves multiple leaders

19. The dynastic dilemma
Dynasties can still exist all over the world. They all share the
(charismatic) founder’s dilemma…
…the genetic lottery

20. The right to lead
A Maratha general, Pilaji Rao Gaekwad, conquered the Indian state of Baroda in
1734. The dynasty he founded ruled there until 1947. The great Palace of the
Maharajahs still stands in the city of Vorodora. There is also the ‘Little Palace’
where the heir apparent learned the arts of leadership…

21. Leaders all the way down
Dynastic leaders were always influenced
by a small group of trusted and
influential confidants.
In the modern organization, leadership
responsibilities are distributed widely
throughout the company, permitting
development and appointment of
future leaders.
This is the central idea behind the
distributed leadership map

22. Other 21st Century dilemmas
Dilemmas of power and discrimination
Ethical dilemmas
Dilemmas of trust and vulnerability
Dilemmas of strategy and implementation
Source: Rickards, (2011) Dilemmas of leadership

23. Summary
Effective organizations are accepting that leaders can be identified
and developed
Older 20th century ‘maps’ overlooked ethical and creative aspects of
leadership
An effective way to develop leaders is to encourage ‘learning through
doing’
Leadership is increasingly seen as distributed widely across social and
organizational networks
Complex challenges conceal dilemmas as well as alternatives to obvious
strategies
“The most important leader you will ever study is yourself”