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SkillsActive Scottish Conference 2008 – Inspirational Leadership
As part of its role as Sector Skills Council for Active Leisure and Learning, SkillsActive’s conference in Scotland will be focussing on leadership issues, with senior industrialist Nigel Crouch giving a keynote address on the issue.
William Pickering, SkillsActive - 28/03/2008
Employers report of lack of leadership and management skills, not just in our sector but across the board in Scotland and the UK as a whole. Inspirational leadership is a key part of the skills, innovation and management mix needed for organisations to be a success.
The Department for Trade and Industry (now Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) Innovation Report set out the challenge, “UK companies will have to compete more in the future on unique, high value-added and innovative products and services. This will require inspirational leadership, stronger management and leadership skills, a highly skilled workforce, a flexible labour market that promotes diversity and fair treatment, and high performance workplaces.”
Inspirational leaders encourage others to lead, develop a culture of sharing and teamwork, recognise the contribution people make, and use the tools of recruitment, development and reward creatively to motivate people and make the most of talent wherever it lies.
Effective management skills, and investment in developing managers, can lead to cost savings by ensuring resources are used more effectively and mistakes are avoided. The effects of inspirational leadership are often intangible and visible through other aspects of people management and development.
As a result the impact of inspirational leadership can be difficult to measure, but it is potentially at least as significant as that for people management and development. Certainly, the financial performance of the Sunday Times Top 100 companies - who score much better than average on staff perceptions of leadership – significantly outstrips FTSE-listed competitors over five years.
Nigel Crouch is a senior industrialist who currently runs his own investment business and spends part of his time working with the Management Leadership and Skills Unit at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. He is responsible for leadership issues as well as the Sunday Times "100 Best Companies to Work For" programme and also drives the Inspirational Leadership Programme for the Skills for Business Network.
Click here to find out more on the SkillsActive Scottish Conference.
