What Do All Great Leaders Have In Common: Matt Beeton (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Matt Beeton’s talk titled “What Do All Great Leaders Have In Common” at TEDxOxbridge conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

According to recent research, 80% of leaders today fail to impress in the first two years of their leadership roles. 70% admit to being incredibly stressed, and over 70% admit to not enjoying the job. Gone are the days when we used to have a job for life; today, people stay in a job for four years, and within the millennials, that’s only three years. When I saw those statistics, I was terrified; I’m in the middle of my career, but that doesn’t mean that great leadership isn’t around us, it’s all around us.

The Quest for Great Leadership

So, I’ve been writing a book about leadership, about emotional intelligence, trying to find what the common denominator, the X factor of great leadership is. I started this a couple of years ago, and I started where everybody starts research, and that’s on Google. And I typed in “great leadership,” and these are some of the faces that came up on the very first page of Google.

A couple of observations: firstly, you’ll know them all, probably. Secondly, if I’d have given you, an intelligent audience, the opportunity to think of a category or a heading where you could sandwich Captain Kirk between Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, I bet you couldn’t have done it. But there he is. So, these are all the people that we know and love. I’ve got twin boys, nine years of age.

And I asked them in the kitchen the other week, “Who do you think is a great leader?” And Oliver said, “Barack Obama.” Nine years of age, and he picked probably one of the most influential leaders of our time. William picked me. Fifty pages are searched in Google, couldn’t find a single picture of me anywhere, but I take solace in the fact that they’re twins, they’re pretty similar, and Oliver’s so right, William can’t be so wrong.

Beyond Fame: The Essence of Leadership

But great leadership isn’t reserved for those famous people that we see here. You all know great leaders. I’ve been privileged enough to work for a couple of great leaders. I’ve got friends and peers, and some of those are great leaders. I’ve had a great leader who’s worked for me.

So, what is the X factor of great leadership? Well, according to the research I’ve done, I’ll tell you what it’s not. Contrary to popular belief, great leadership isn’t IQ. It’s an entry point. It certainly helps, but it’s not IQ. I know some really clever people who have failed in a number of leadership positions.

It’s not privilege. Some of those people weren’t born into money privilege, they weren’t born into educational privilege. It’s not job title. As nice as it is to have CEO or chairman next to your name, job title’s actually listed as one of the top ten reasons why leaders fail, because they rely on that title for respect. So, within my research, I’ve been looking for the common denominator, and how do we categorise that?

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The Power of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence. And it’s frustrating, because it’s been stigmatised for so long. It’s woolly. It’s a black art. It’s soft management. You can’t measure it. Or maybe you can’t measure it. And just because it’s emotion doesn’t mean it’s not important. Some of the most significant events on earth happen because of emotion.

So, what I’d like to do today is pick three of those common denominators, just three, and offer it to you as an audience of pointers, three pointers for great leadership. And I’ll start with people. Now, people covers a whole spectrum of stuff.

The Three Pillars of Great Leadership

But what I’d like to do is concentrate on connection. Every leader needs a connection with people. But if you need a connection with people, you have to have a connection with yourself. You have to know yourself fully.

Self-reflection’s one of the cornerstones of great leadership. Understanding yourself, knowing what makes you happy, what makes you sad, what makes you motivated, what gives you those negative feelings that sometimes have a negative output. But self-reflection’s nothing without self-regulation. If you can’t regulate your response when your emotions tell you something else, well, then we have a problem.

So self-regulation is essential. Everybody’s got an ego. The great leaders that you saw there all have a pretty small ego, with the exception of Captain Kirk, who has a shoe, ironically, the size of a planet, actually. But everybody’s got an ego. I’ve got an ego. You all in this room have an ego. And sometimes it’s essential to take a tactical bruise on that ego for the betterment of an organisation.

So that’s self-reflection, self-regulation, and then we have to look at self-perception. Your perception of yourself has to be as close to other people’s reality as possible. If you think you’re great and open and honest and your team doesn’t, well, then you’ve got a disconnect and you’ve got a problem. If you think you’re really shy and you don’t really say what you want to say but your team thinks that you are quite outspoken, you’ve got a disconnect and you’ve got a problem. Your perception of yourself has to be as close to other people’s reality as possible.

So, we’re working on those three things. And it’s a never-ending journey. You’ll never master it. It’s something that you’ll carry on and on doing. And then you have to create a safe environment. And I’m not talking safe in the traditional sense, hard hat and boots. I’m talking about creating a climate where people are able to say and do what they need to say and do. But for leaders, that’s terrifying because it means feedback.

Now, we all know that feedback’s a gift.

But if we’re honest with ourselves, it also hurts. But it’s essential in great leadership. You also need to create this climate to share ideas. No leader should think that they’re an exhaustive list of ideas because nobody is. Create this climate, this open climate. If you can concentrate on those three things, have an open climate, then you have every chance of connection. And with connection comes creativity. And nothing amazing happens on this earth without creativity. So, that’s people.

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Second, vision. Nelson Mandela said, “Action without vision is passing time. Vision without action is daydreaming. But vision and action can change the world.” And Nelson Mandela changed the world.

If you want your company to drive, if you want your sports team to drive, if you want your performing arts centre to drive, you have to give them a destination. Driving without a destination means you just get lost. So, give a vision. Make it compelling. Make it out there. Make it exciting. Make it challenging. It can’t be easy. If it was easy, chances are people have already done it.

Put it out there. Design some stops and celebrations along the way. Because it’s hard to stay motivated for what might be three, four, five years. What a vision isn’t is meet your end of year results, your revenue and EBITDA and cash. It’s not beat Everton on a Wednesday night. It’s not dance your socks off in a matinee on a Saturday. They may be all essential things that you need in order to reach your vision. But that’s not a vision.

Your vision needs to be compelling. And when you have a vision, I always say to companies, draw it. There’s no secret as to why in a company Christmas quiz, you’ll always get that question, “Write down your vision and mission.” And everybody’s going, “Oh, God. I wish Bill was here. He’s revised that for three years. He’s probably just about nailed it.” Nobody remembers strings of words. So, write it down. Draw where you are today. Draw where you want to be tomorrow. Draw the path of how to get there. Frame it. Put it on the office wall or the sports centre or your dance studio.

Everybody will know what the vision is. They might verbalise it differently, but they’ll know what it is. I forget my birthday every year, but I can draw you a picture I saw ten years ago. So, that’s people, vision.

Final one, passion. A leader without passion and enthusiasm lacks credibility. You don’t believe them. And we’ve all seen them. They stand there in front of the board and they say, “I’m very passionate about this.” You think, “I don’t feel like it. It feels like you’re lying to me.” Give people that passion.

And there’s the thing. Passion and enthusiasm is an emotion like every other emotion. When you see somebody laughing on TV, you want to laugh with them. When you watch Titanic and you see that guy sink and he drowns, you want to cry. Those films are designed to play on your emotion. Give people emotion.

Martin Luther King didn’t say, “We’ve got the people who’ll get us to the promised land.” He didn’t say it like that. He belted it out. And I’ll talk about films being designed to trigger the emotion. “Braveheart,” he didn’t say, “They can take our lives, but they won’t take our freedom.” He shouted it and everybody shouted with him. And when you were watching it, you were compelled.

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Even Kylie Minogue belted out, “I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky.” We all felt lucky. And the final thought on passion, and it comes from a mindset. These leaders that you know, the leaders up there, all do strategic mental rehearsal. They’ve all imagined reaching the goal in their mind. They’ve probably done it 10 or 20 times. They’ve imagined the steps on the way, they’ve tasted it, they’ve felt it.

Research suggests people who do SMR are more likely to achieve their goals. You see sports people do it. I was talking to Duncan Goodyear; he did it before his gold medal. I flew into an airfield about six months ago with my uncle, and I was sitting there having a cup of tea, as you do when you’re British.

And there was an air display going on, and there was this guy, he was probably 60, experienced pilot, one-piece flight suit. He closed his eyes, he didn’t know we were watching. He put his arms out, closed his eyes. He started to move. He started to do this with his hands, altering the throttle, moving the yoke. He was rehearsing. It was honestly fascinating to watch. And I went up to him and I said, “You know, are you doing the display?”

On reflection, a crazy thing to ask a guy in a onesie pretending to be a plane with his arms out. But when we got over that, he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Do you do that often?” He said, “I can’t fly, I can’t do a display unless I rehearse it in my mind.” He’s probably done those moves 20 times before in the air, but he can’t do a display unless he’s rehearsed it. And that’s where he gets his drive and passion from, strategic mental rehearsal.

So, there are my three things: people, vision, passion. The great leaders that you know, the great leaders up there, are bold enough to be the people who they are, not the people that they think they ought to be.

And one last bit of food for thought is great leadership is a tipping point. So when you start your leadership role, you’re developing yourself and it’s necessary. You’re developing yourself, developing yourself. And then there’s a tipping point to where you start developing others. And you’re happy developing others. And you’re happy giving people the glory of success. And that’s where you start getting motivation.

And that’s when you start getting high performance teams. And getting high performance teams is great leadership. Thank you very much.