464. What is effective leadership?

Managing a veterinary premises require excellent leadership. Otherwise, the business may close down. What is effective leadership?

I read The Business Times, May 14-15, 2011, Pg 8-9, Raffles Conversation. Robert Hogan, president and founder of Hogan Assessment Systems.

Briefly, Mr Hogan said that leaders are made, not born. A good leader is one where employees will work for him on their own free will. The leader's performance is assessed on his ability to build and maintain a team. Employees evaluate the leader under 4 aspects:

1. Integerity. Whether the leader is honest and can be trusted not to play them out.

2. Judgement. He said that 50% of business decisions are made by bad judgement. A good leader is one who is able to repair the bad judgement rather than know how to make a good judgement.

3. Competence. Know about the business. I often call that "Know what to do" in your profession. Not a "blur" king.

4. Vision. Able to explain, justify and convince the employees that what they do is worth their while.

Therefore a good manager makes money. A poor one incurs unnecessary costs and is unable to maintain the good talent. A good one creates high turnover, low absenteesim, high productivity and high customer satisfaction.

It is difficult to be a leader when you are not fit to be one as the business just will not succeed as there are high overheads and low turnover, making the company bankrupt. That is why it is extremely difficult to invest in a veterinary premises and expect to employee vets to make money for the investors. It seldom works.