The interest and coverage that Apprenticeship Week 2012 received last week showed me how much importance is being placed on continual development in the workplace – and not before time. While the country remains in a tricky economic period it is crucial that businesses constantly look for new ways to create environments that support learning and development, and while Apprentice Week may have passed for another year, I hope the values embedded within the traditional apprenticeship scheme are causing leaders up and down the country to consider just how effective and sustainable their own approach to development is.

I believe that the mark of outstanding leadership 'is not just how good a leader you are but how many leaders you develop'. As a senior prefect isn't that what you are attempting to do, either consciously or unconsciously? However, often the problem is that rather than demonstrating leadership, you may instead be trying to impose your will on more junior classmates, in line with school or college rules and regulations. I believe this is less about leadership and more about management and control.

 

For me, leadership and management are very different. My simple definition is: "Outstanding managers drive people to perform at the highest level they are capable of and it is very much about control; outstanding leaders inspire them to do it for themselves and it is more about freedom."

I wish, when I was young, I had learnt to understand the importance of three key things that I now believe are true in great leaders - being able to think at the highest level possible to enable the best choices (because action is only as good as the thinking behind it); understanding responsibility at a far deeper level; being aware of how they communicate and the impact of that communication.

Great leaders do not simply give advice - they listen, listen and listen more, encouraging others to find their own solutions, enabling learning and growth at every opportunity. Every time you give someone unnecessary advice it is disempowering and takes away ownership. How much of the time can you control the outside world – for example, can you make the recession go away - no? However, what you can control is how you respond to it – do you choose to whine and complain or do you ask yourself, "if I knew there is one thing today that I can do to help my organisation live its values and bring in more customers what might it be?" You have a choice as to how you respond to every situation, either in an empowering way or a disempowering one. The former response demonstrates really understanding and taking responsibility. How you choose to communicate in each and every moment is key to living those behaviours.

We took a group of sixteen year olds through our leadership programme and I met them a couple of months afterwards to discover what had changed for them. Much had, but I clearly remember one young man's story. His teachers explained that he had changed from a surly and extremely difficult person to someone open and considerate. He told me that his relationship with his parents, especially his father, had changed quite dramatically for the better. His Dad was now listening to his opinions, they had stopped rowing and it was altogether better. When I asked him what had changed he gave a very simple response - "I have!" 

Put simply, he had chosen to take 100% responsibility for that relationship and stopped blaming his parents - he had changed his behaviour and stopped telling his parents to treat him differently - over which he had no control. He had learnt a really important lesson - leadership is not about changing others, leadership is about changing yourself.

 

Apprenticeship Week 2012 showed that we have a choice. Shall we start by demonstrating management or leadership? By telling these young people in their first job what to do and continually driving performance or by encouraging them to focus on their strengths and think for themselves, take true responsibility for their own choices and where they put their attention and by listening to them and then listening some more, demonstrating the importance that we place on leadership. Developing their leadership skills and behaviours at the earliest possible opportunity, when they join our organisations and before bad habits creep in, can only lead to greater performance, harmony and, ultimately improve our bottom line - more than we could ever imagine. We then become instrumental in creating great leaders for tomorrow.