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Boardroom Despatches: Leadership
Why Beckham's call to Sven was about a lot more than football...

By René Carayol

Published: Wednesday 27 August 2003

What makes a good leader? Are we doing our best to foster them? Isn't the starting point identifying who our role models should be? Rene Carayol names the three men UK Plc should be learning from above all others...

Let's recognise one thing - in the UK we're not blessed with an abundance of good leaders. This isn't just the case in business, though that's the area where it shows the most. So let me this week focus on three of the most impressive leaders I have ever worked with and observed.

Now, before I go on, I know an educated audience will jump on me if I simply point out how many oversees CEOs there are in UK boardrooms these days. With companies such as BA, BT, Marks and Spencer and plenty of others bossed by foreigners, it would be easy for me to forget the success of Britons abroad. Take a look at Silicon Valley and Hollywood and witness the number of us at the top, as just two prominent examples.

No, a glance at all levels of UK Plc shows we lack depth. Our best are as good as the best in the world but how far does that quality reach? So let me focus on three individuals that show the way forward: Metropolitan police commissioner Sir John Stevens, Post Office chairman Allan Leighton, and England football team manager Sven-Göran Eriksson.

In the winter I had the privilege of making a documentary for Channel 4 about the Met's top officer, the man at the helm of one of the world's largest forces. I approached the project as a business advisor. And although I'd heard good things about the UK's longest serving police officer, what I learnt surprised me.

Sir John leads from the front. He is also a contradiction. He is a cop's cop who has risen through the ranks over a 40-year career yet at the same time a radical moderniser. How many other people can say they have been within an organisation for decades but are still a change agent?

When I first heard about Sir John and how he would tackle the problems that have blighted London's police force in recent years I was sceptical. I suggested it is easier for an outsider to deliver transformation. He told me: "You don't understand." And you know what? I didn't.

He has made a good, albeit controversial, start. His lesson is one for all business leaders too.

As is Allan Leighton's. This is the man who transformed Asda - from a second rate company going down the tubes into the UK's second most successful supermarket chain, subsequently bought by WalMart. But he's been successful everywhere he's been. He turned around BHS and, as chairman, has also put lastminute.com on an even keel.

Is Consignia - or the Post Office as most of us still know it - a bridge too far? He's facing poor industrial relations and took over the business last year when it was losing £1m every day. (Now it is losing £600,000.)

He's revamped the top team and is changing the culture, from the top down, as an outsider. He is simply respected - after growing up in a business world where every manager had to earn respect.

Will he do it? I wouldn't bet against him.

One of Leighton's generals at the PO is Adam Crozier, who coincidentally was the boss at the Football Association of Sven-Göran Eriksson. I've been doing some work recently with this calm Scandinavian and he's impressed me.

Of course the irony is that it has taken a Scot (Crozier) and a Swede to turn around England's national team. Despite a generation of fine young players, the side was stalling when Eriksson took over. But he got us to the last World Cup and, lest we forget, has only lost one competitive game.

What links Sven, Leighton and Stevens? Respect and a consistently positive mental outlook. These are fundamentals for being a top leader.

Eriksson told me that two months earlier he had received a phone call from England captain David Beckham.

"Boss, should I join Real Madrid?" Beckham asked his international manager, referring to one of the biggest transfer deals of recent years, which eventually went through in the summer.

The fact that Beckham sought Eriksson's counsel shows this leader is all about trust, respect and integrity.

Ask Sir John about transforming the Met, or any police force, and he'll say those attributes are imperative. When Leighton took up any of his posts what do you think he expected from all his staff?

By working with or observing the best we can become better at anything we do, including leading others. And success breeds more success. It's infectious - just ask any winning football team.

Rene Carayol is a former IT director and board member of IPC Media. He is now the CEO of consultancy Voodoo and co-author of the best-selling Corporate Voodoo and My Voodoo. He can be contacted at rene@carayol.com.