Leadership is about creating and articulating a vision to then inspire others

By Howard Gill, Partner at CMS

Howard Gill

A couple of weeks ago my fellow CMS partner Tanya Holt and I joined other judges around the boardroom table in our Manchester offices to assess the large number of entrants to the inaugural Northern Leadership Awards.

The finalists have now been published and the full list can be found here.

At a time when newspapers are full of commentary about the political leadership of the country (or lack of it, depending upon your viewpoint) as we brace ourselves for the most seismic shift since the end of WW2, it brought home to me just how important leadership is in general – for governments, for regions and for companies and organisations.

If the list of finalists is anything to go by, I’m delighted to report that Northern companies at least are in good hands.

Leadership is a fascinating concept; done well it inspires those being led to push towards a common and clearly understood goal, for the greater benefit of everyone being led.  Done badly, it creates chaos, discord and resentment.  Bad leadership is the antithesis of leadership.  It is an oxymoron. It is destructive, divisive and chaotic.

We will all have differing views on today’s political leadership, not just in the UK but around the world.  Thankfully, the Northern Leadership Awards judges were unanimous in their assessment of the quality of leadership we have in the North of England and the finalists selected are testament to high standards in this part of the UK.

Leadership is about creating and articulating a vision, and then inspiring – not forcing – the people you lead to follow you towards achieving that vision. Companies and organisations need that as much as countries. We left that boardroom confident that high quality leadership is abundant across our region and that Northern business is well positioned to face the challenges of the next few years.  Those challenges are significant.

Northern business and Northern business leaders are as good as any in the UK, or the world.  They will thrive and prosper on a level playing field, competing on the same terms as everyone else, with the same advantages and investment support.  Most particularly, Northern businesses will thrive and prosper if they enjoy the same connectivity to markets and suppliers enjoyed by their competitors elsewhere in the UK. Sadly they don’t, and quality road, railway and other transport links in the North remain unresolved.   For example, that it still takes over an hour to travel between Manchester and Sheffield by train and – often – two hours by car is damaging to business.

The Northern Powerhouse has helped.  People understand the concept and it as an excellent rallying cry.  CMS supports the Northern Powerhouse and recently signed up as a Northern Powerhouse Partner.  But it needs to be more than a rallying cry.  The North needs strong, consistent messaging backed by investment, not investment promises to be delivered at an indeterminate point in the future.  Just last week we heard that HS2 will likely not be completed until 2031 and will be tens of billions of pounds over budget. Talk of the Northern Powerhouse Rail project remains vague and in the meantime Northern companies are left to get on with their business as best they can.

A final point:  the Northern Leadership Awards celebrate leadership in the North.   Should we also be focusing attention on leadership FOR the North?  It’s easy to think of the North as a close-knit and tightly integrated region, sharing common aspirations, working closely together for a single purpose.  Unfortunately the reality is that each part of the North has its own set of unique challenges and each is competing with other parts of the region for investment, business and talent from the rest of the country.

Unless and until the various parts of the North learn how to work better together for a common purpose, it is hard to imagine Prime Ministerial promises of funding for Northern Powerhouse Rail being anything more than promises.  This doesn’t mean identifying a Northern leader, easily identifiable as leading the region as the ‘King or Queen of the Northern Powerhouse’.  However, there is a strong argument for a Northern leadership vision, one that all parts of our region can back and work collectively to promote.