Leadership is essentially the ability to influence a group of people towards the realisation of a vision. Former Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola, Apple’s late Steve Jobs and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, to mention a few, all possessed this unique quality.

He would never accept a statement like: ‘Perit, it is not possible’- Kevin-James Fenech

The business world can learn from the successes and failures of great leaders irrespective of the sector in which they ply their trade. In Malta we have a few of our own.

Former prime minister Dom Mintoff, who passed away recently, is one. Love him or hate him, he had vision and people followed him. He is a political giant of 20th century Maltese politics, architect of modern Malta, ridding it of its economic and psychological hand-ups after centuries of foreign rule. He gave the island the confidence, institutions and strategy to define its own destiny.

Three lessons stand out.

One is tunnel vision. By 1980, after decades in politics, Dom Mintoff arguably started to become rigid in his thoughts and perhaps adopted a myopic vision of the world. This weakness can also affect successful chief executives and people running a company for a number of years. Leaders actually become a victim of their own success.

They believe their methods, vision and strategy delivered past and current successes so it would be counter-intuitive to discard them. But discard they must.

Steve Jobs liked to quote ice hockey player Wayne Gretzky who said “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” Successful leaders, over time, stop going to where “the puck is going to be”. Business is fluid, times change, and so must you as a leader.

Fear, under check, is actually healthy for a leader. Lose it and you become over-confident. When you start to think that success is inevitable or that you can’t fail, you become reckless and take risks you should not. Mintoff undoubtedly made this mistake post-1979 and business people are no different. I have seen many a successful manager or business leader do this and very few manage to keep their confidence in check. Humility and will are always a better recipe than confidence.

If there was one criticism which Mintoff’s opponents repeatedly levelled at him – and they did so with great righteousness – it was his uncontrollable urge to teach and lecture. Successful entrepreneurs and business people eventually fall into this trap. They stop listening and looking, and probably over-obsess with one-way communication.

By doing so, leaders inevitably end up pushing away their best talent – people with a mind of their own and who challenge ideas. To make matters worse, the best talent can slowly be replaced with ‘yes men’, possibly the worst type of people to surround a leader.

Dom Mintoff had obvious successes. His sheer determination characterised many of his accomplishments. Someone once commented on how difficult it was to walk up the path to the Freedom monument in Vittoriosa. Mintoff explained the uneven surface was intentional – it symbolised how hard it was for colonial Malta to achieve real freedom. In business, no one is going to make it easy for you to penetrate a market or grow market share.

No one achieved anything in business without an abundant belly of determination.

You also need compelling vision if you want to be a great leader. Dom Mintoff wanted to challenge the status quo in the 1950s, 1960s and even 1970s. This meant the separation of Church and state, the creation of the welfare state and ensuring the Maltese economy was self-sufficient, based on manufacturing and tourism.

The same applies in business. You have to have a vision. You have to imagine and foresee a future and move your business towards that. You have to be able to formulate a compelling vision but equally as important you need to be able to communicate that it – to sell that vision in such a way as to inspire and mobilise co-workers.

Dom Mintoff possessed legendary oratory skills and he used his gift to persuade throughout his career. Great business leaders need to be able to explain their vision to persuade employees that the vision is right for the company and to inspire co-workers to go the extra mile.

The term ‘reality distortion field’ was used to describe the way in which Steve Jobs motivated or persuaded co-workers to do something which they felt was near impossible. People who worked with Jobs admit that such trait, as infuriating as it may have been, led them to perform extraordinary feats. In Jobs’ words: “You did the impossible because you didn’t realise it was impossible.” This certainly is a Mintoffian trait. He would never accept a statement like: “Perit, it is not possible”.

To Dom Mintoff, the sky was the limit. Be it the building of the largest drydock in the Mediterranean, surviving without the income of the British services post-1979, building a national airline from scratch. The same applies to business leaders who are trying to build a lasting business.

There will always be plenty of people who will advise you that something is not possible. Where there is a will, there is a way. If you have thought it through, done the research and taken independent business advice and genuinely believe it can be done, don’t let ordinary people hold you back.

To quote Apple’s ‘Think Different’ 1997 commercial: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

It is frequently said that Dom Mintoff, an architect by profession, was also an expert in macro and micro economics, finance, agriculture, world politics and international affairs, negotiation techniques, the art of story-telling, the Bible, strategic thinking, engineering, history and the list goes on. He also knew the brief of each and every ministry, at least as much as any of his ministers, yet he also had vision.

Great business leaders all have the knack of mastering both the big picture and the details. You need to know your business from a micro level – every little detail – and at the same time have one eye on the future direction of where your company needs to be going.

www.fenci.eu

Mr Fenech is director-consultant of Fenci Consulting Ltd.