Leadership and the Corporate Image

By FH Cooper | Leave a Comment

The late Leadership guru, Dr. Warren Bennis, defined a leader as “a person who knows who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to fully deploy their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. They know what they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what they want to others to gain their cooperation and support. Finally, they know how to achieve their goals”.

We think there may be more. For example, today’s leader must be able to follow and comprehend what is happening in the world around them in terms of science, technology, finance, politics, and marketing to name a few vital factors that can and often do affect the corporate image and the bottom line. Today’s leader must seek out any resources that can be imported and developed within a company that will ultimately lead to the creation of more value for that company. Leadership often plays an active role in assembling and setting direction for a company’s internal staff. It is this internal staff whose collective knowledge and experiences can affect the success or failure of a company.

Many of today’s leaders are known for their charisma that in turn, can and often does, boost their company’s fortunes. Some familiar names are Jack Welch, former President of General Electric and Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway. These larger than life persons can and do impact their respective companies in a positive way. They appear on business panels, on TV interviews, they author books, and keep their profile very high along with that of their company.

As far as compensation, one of the policies that more and more companies are instituting is making compensation commensurate with performance. This helps explain the definition of a dynamic leader as a bold mix of academics, experience, individual skills, common sense and a little passion thrown in.

Franklin Cooper © 2017