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WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 12, 201412

It continues to surprise us at CEE Global, through our executive coaching engage-ments, how many leaders attempt to be one way at work while their true personal-ity emerges outside of work. It is surprising when these same leaders seem shocked or confused when their employees do not trust them, do not like them and cannot really wait to work elsewhere.

Authenticity has been explored throughout history, from Greek philosophers to the work of Shakespeare. Authentic leadership has been explored sporadically as part of modern management science, but found its highest levels of acceptance since Bill George’s 2003 book, Authentic Leadership.

Demystifying authentic leadershipBut what is authentic leadership? How can

you become and remain an authentic leader? Are organisations choosing and developing the right people to lead?

Authentic leaders, according to Bill George, genuinely desire to serve others through their leadership. they are interested in empowering the people they lead to make a difference; more than they are interested in power, money or prestige for themselves. they are guided equally by the heart and the mind, practicing heart-based guidance grounded in passion and compassion, as well as thoughtful leadership grounded in the qualities of the mind.

they lead with purpose, meaning and values and their people relationships are extremely strong. People follow them because they are consistent, reliable and strong. When they are pushed to go beyond their beliefs and values, they will not compro-mise. they are dedicated to per-sonal growth and learning because they believe that becoming a leader takes a lifetime.

Authentic leadership encour-ages individuals to investigate their pasts, identify key defining moments in their lives that helped shape who they are and use these as springboards to identify their individual, authentic leadership purposes. In fact, leadership is very personal and different for everyone.

Authentic leaders are Level 5 leaders who demonstrate ontologi-cal humility and are aware of their strengths, their limitations and their emotions. they also show their real selves to their followers. they do not act one way in private and another in public; they don’t hide their mistakes or weaknesses out of fear of looking weak. they also realise that being self-actualised is an endless journey, never complete.

Authentic leaders are mission driven and focused on results. they are able to put the

interest of their people at the centre of their business strategy. Highly engaged

and motivated employ-ees make the difference between a truly successful organisation and a mediocre entity and are the drivers of customer engagement. Authentic leaders are mis-sion driven and focused on results. they are able to put the mission and the goals of the organisation ahead of their own self-interest. they do the job in pursuit of results, not for their own power, money or ego.

Authentic leaders lead with their heart, not just their minds. they are not afraid to show their emo-tions, their vulnerability and to connect with their employees. this does not mean authentic leaders are

‘soft’. they leverage on Socialised Power and not Personalised Power. they are able to demonstrate Social Intelligence compe-tencies. When the situation warrants it, they communicate in a highly impactful and direct manner which is critical to suc-cessful outcomes, but it’s done with empa-thy. Directness without empathy is cruel.

Authentic leader’s purpose and values

Rajeev Peshawaria in his book ‘too many bosses too few leaders’ clearly states that the essence of authentic leadership is to create a future that is better than the present. Purpose and your values are the guides that help you in pursuing it. Your purpose and values define your leadership identity and give you the energy you need to stay the course.

the only way to define your purpose and values is to ask yourself some tough questions and answer them honestly. Answers may not come to you right away, so you have to keep asking the questions until you find the answers that are right for you.

thus, firstly you need to have clarity of personal purpose. After that, you have to imagine a better future. Once a clear pic-ture of a desired future takes shape in your mind, determine the values that will guide you while pursuing that better future. Chances are you will be clear about the val-ues and principles you would use to resolve difficult dilemmas.

Values determine your emotions and the energy created by emotions (emotional energy) in turn produces great perfor-mance.

However, emotional energy can be posi-

tive or negative. +ve emotional energy = memorable great performance, -ve = regret-table performance and behavior.

Authentic leaders understand the impor-tance of recognising and channeling their emotions toward great performance and away from regrettable performance. they also understand that a prerequisite to man-aging emotions is having clarity about val-ues.

How do values determine emotions? A core trigger of emotions in life is either a match or a mismatch between deeply held values and the situation at hand. the degree and type of emotion felt depends on the extent of the match or mismatch.

[The writer is the CEO and C-Suite Master Executive Coach of Centre for Executive Education (CEE Global).

CEE is a premier network for established human resource development and consulting firms around

the globe which partners with our client to design solutions for leaders at all levels who will navigate the firm through tomorrow’s business challenges.

CEE offers human capital management solutions for addressing challenges posed by a multigenerational workforce including talent management and execu-

tive development programs (executive coaching and leadership development) that help leaders develop the skills and knowledge to embrace change and catalyse

success in today’s workplace. Website: www.cee-global.com Email: sattar.bawany@cee-global.com.]

Leading with impact: Developing your authentic leadershipGuest Column

By Prof. Sattar Bawany

In a world with cutthroat competition prevailing in almost every industry, from telecommunications and FMCG to insur-ance, outdoing rivals takes a front seat at any cost. Companies’ insatiable appetite to increase market share by initiating price wars, massive discounts and buy-one-get-one-free promotions, etc. will really affect the bottom line by drastically eroding profit margins.

This will be exacerbated by globalisa-tion trends where the whole world is con-nected and information readily available, eliminating trade barriers among nations and thereby increasing throughput (rate of production) through imports and techno-logical enhancements. All these mentioned factors lead to a mammoth influx of supply over demand.

In order to leverage one’s product over hundreds of other similar brands of the same product, the said product will have to be distinguished by some distinct features. no sooner the feature attracts consumers, all other brands will also incorporate that feature into their products thereby eroding the specialty.

Furthermore, incorporation of more and more features comes at a cost and due to head-to-head competition the company may not be able to increase the price as well.

In a survey conducted in the US regard-

ing consumers’ brand loyalty, researchers came upon the fact that for major product and service categories consumer brand loyalty will be challenged as they do not particularly restrict themselves to a certain brand and in its absence they simply move to another brand without any hesitation.

Since all these main categories carry almost all important features i.e. if a rational consumer wants to buy Glaxo-Sensodyne toothpaste for sensitive teeth, in its absence, the same consumer will select Signal Pro Sensitive-Unilever as all these main brands are inbuilt with the same fea-

ture. In order to overcome cutthroat compe-tition for the same shrinking pie at any cost, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mouborgne intro-duced a mechanism called Blue Ocean Strategy after years of research.

Red Ocean and Blue OceanIn the book, the authors divide the

whole market universe in two: Red Ocean and Blue Ocean. Red Ocean comprises the known marketplace where cutthroat competition prevails. Blue Ocean refers to the unknown market place where the rules of the game are waiting to be set. A brief snapshot of Blue Ocean and Red Ocean is seen in table 1.

If you turn the clock maybe 20 years back, the dominant industry available today may not exist and those who predicted and pioneered by now may be enjoying the lion’s share of the market. For example social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

The founders of the above mentioned social networks may not be the first to start, however, they are the early birds and now established themselves so firmly in the market. Of course there is head-to-head competition among social networks as once this segment became attractive then everyone in the tech industry wanted a slice of the pie.

One such company is Google, which fol-lows a do-a-little-bit-of-everything strategy with their work in everything from self-driv-ing cars and wearable computer devices to balloons which transmit the internet.

In the same vein, our managers must think maybe 10 to 20 years ahead in order to carve a blue ocean where the competi-tion is irrelevant rather than devising strate-gies to stoke and immerse an organisation in bloody red waters.

When considering the implementation of the Blue Ocean strategy, initiators must be particular about two things: Low cost and the differentiation simultaneously. This may be contrary to Michael Porter’s Generic

Strategies in which he argues that if a com-pany tries to pursue either low cost and differentiation, the organisation may end up in with a stuck-in-the-middle approach. However, organisations nowadays have successfully proven this fact by practic-ing both strategies simultaneously. This is called Value Innovation, which provides both the organisation and the consumer with a low cost advantage and enhanced value. According to the framework shown in table 2, the organisation will be able to focus on both cost-reduction and differen-tiation simultaneously.

now let me consider the authors’ illustration of the afore-said ERRC grid for the wine industry in the US.

The wine industry is a very sophisticated industry which involves a lot of prestige and technological jargon which will put an average person in an extremely uncomfortable posi-tion when selecting a suitable wine and sophisticated aging processes etc.

The US market is flooded with over 1,600 wineries com-peting head-on and over 75% of the market share is enjoyed by eight major players.

Casella Wines (Yellow Tail), which is an Australian-based winery, managed to create a Blue Ocean in the over-flooded wine market in the US by mainly focusing on reducing sophistication(see eliminate and reduce in the grid) and attracting non-wine users like

beers and ready-for-drink cocktail lovers (Create in the grid) also to their product. This enables the wine producer to pursue low costs while adding differentiation to the product simultaneously. See table 3 for an application of the ERRC grid to this company.

Casella Wines (Yellow Tail) became the best imported US wine in 2003. However, some critics had some concerns regarding the quality of the wine due to the elimination of aging qualities and the prestige point of view.

However, it manages to increase the pie by not only limiting itself to wine lovers but attracting other alcoholic beverage consumers.

Practical issues in adopting Blue Ocean Strategy

Being in the brand activa-tion industry for almost two years, I have had the opportu-nity to work closely with mul-tinational and SME organisa-tions. I hardly notice any Blue Ocean initiatives taken by any organisation. The most prob-able reason would be the organisation culture where there is no room for any mis-

takes. There is an Old Russian saying that “success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan”. Therefore, no one takes any initiative to think out of the box and follow blue waters. Most of the time the managers have been trained to follow rather than lead, which kills innovative paradigms and as a result they do slight extensions and modi-fications to the predecessor’s plan to be on the safe side without trying out any new initiatives thereby getting immersed in the bloody red ocean. I believe the red tape is also playing a key role in discouraging Blue Ocean initiatives as the same plate may be going through so many hands with a cum-bersome approval process.

To follow Blue Ocean initiatives, the organisation will have to invest in resources as this follows a different path than what they used to be. Finally, the encourage-ment of initiatives to follow Blue Ocean should come from the top management. The success of the strategy hinges on the commitment of top management. To unleash the maximum potential of out-of-box thinking the companies like Google giving their employees 20% of their working time to experiment with their own ideas.

In the same way I believe there should be an allocated time for independent think-ing and to try out a different way of doing things. This will come at a cost, however, it may be worth investing in. And further-more, companies can set up and allocate separate resources for the implementation of Blue Ocean strategy thereby bringing all managers immersed in Red Ocean down to earth by showing the other side of the coin since immersion in the Red Ocean does not give any sustainable or healthy bottom lines.

(The writer can be reached via msdhanush-kafernando@gmail.com.)

Guest Column

By Sagara Fernando

Adopting Blue Ocean Strategy

Table 1