On a fairly regular basis I am asked about leadership, and one of the questions which tends to come up is, “how on earth was that person ever allowed to be a leader?”

I’m sure that you will appreciate that this question is not normally followed by an outpouring of gratitude for the leader in question, or a deep seated sense of awe and reverence. In fact the only thing that the questioner tends to revere is how lifelike their effigy of the leader is, and how inexpensive pins are to buy these days.

There can of course be many reasons why leaders can be so ineffectual at best, and destructive, at worst. However, I was also recently asked a variation of that question. The question was along the lines of, “why are professional practices generally managed so badly?”.

And in considering the answer to that question, I think that we can shine a light on one of the fundamental issues regarding leadership recruitment and promotion in general. That issue is I believe the balance between hiring or promoting for skill and knowledge, and hiring or promoting for the ability to actually lead.

Let’s consider an imaginary professional practice. And let’s call this profession “Legance”.

The people in this practice have all worked very hard to be there. Night after night, day after day, they studied and studied and studied. Now some of these “Legance” professionals are wonderful people, they wanted (and want) to change the world, they thought (and think) of things like “rightness”, “ethics”, “fairness”, “truth”, “justice”, and others. I’ll call them the “people people”. However, others thought (and think) about, “power”, “money”, “prestige”, and “self”. I’ll call them the “self people”.

These two types of people then pass their exams and begin their professional careers.

Now, if the company they join is headed up by the “people people”, then all will tend to be well. For these leaders will lead by walking about. They won’t settle for gossip, or opinions based on whispers, they will connect with everyone. There is a certain elegance to their approach. They will know their employees names and their likes and dislikes, their motivations, goals, aims and aspirations. They will communicate at a mutually respectful level, and they will quite regularly put themselves in the shoes of the people who work for them, and ask themselves, “how would it be if I worked for me?”.

However, if the company they join is headed up by “self people”, then things might be a little different. The tone may tend towards “Downton Abbey”, but without the compassion, or perhaps towards a slightly more fascist version of “Upstairs Downstairs”, where the Butler must butt lick, or be butt kicked. This type of company is led by the team from Egos R Us.

These leaders have come to the conclusion that they are deities sent to enlighten, or perhaps more accurately, to enslave. You know the type, their ego arrives in the room five minutes before they do. They have as much real warmth as Pluto (and obviously I don’t mean the dog). They view others as an inferior species, simply not capable of being as wondrous as themselves.

And unfortunately they are often…prats.

The mistake that has been made in this company is that skill and knowledge alone are not enough. You certainly don’t want the business run by Derek Zoolander, you’ve got to be good to be there, clever enough; but that is why the problems in our imaginary professional practice company can highlight the oft made mistake in other businesses as well.

So blinded can everyone be about the skill and knowledge base that a potential leader can bring to bear, that they forget about the medical conditions that the individual suffers from – the sense of humour bypass, and the macrocephaly; a cranial enlargement which is in this instance caused by an inability to metabolise humility.

Leaders aren’t just smart. I can hire smart. I can have smart working for me. I can buy an app. It is not about intellect on its own. In fact it may not even be about intellect. Wisdom is the operative word here.

Unless the people in charge can make genuine human to human connections with their team, they will never ever unlock the true potential of their business. Now is that smart? It really isn’t, is it? It sure as hell isn’t wise. So if it isn’t smart, and these people are super smart, how can this strange anomaly of under-utilised potential be allowed to exist? Well, because they are “self people”, it isn’t really about the business or others, it’s about them. Of course they can pretend, they can delude themselves (and often do) that they are a breed apart, that it is their divine right to be treated differently, that their super specialness has earned them the gold plated keys to the executive rest room. Newsflash: It’s still a toilet.

This lust, for what in others Abraham Maslow would have called self actualisation, but which is in them a lust for self aggrandisement, often propels them to become a partner in the firm. However sadly, they are often in reality, pratners.

And these issues are not of course simply in the domain of professional practice. Pratners can exist in any organisation, which is why it is so important to hire, and recruit and promote extremely carefully in every business; and also why it is essential to have proper leader development. Development of the leader as a person, not simply to give them another ‘quadrant’ to wax lyrical about.

I always remember something that a friend of mine said to me. He was then the very successful FD of a FTSE company, and when I commented that he really must know his stuff, he replied, “I’m by no means the best accountant on the planet, but I am good at working with my team, checking their energy and motivation levels, and ensuring that we are all heading in the same direction”.

There was of course quite a lot of genuine modesty at work there, but that comment has always stuck with me. You’ve got to be good to be there, but the rest is about everyone else.

Braver Leadership is about cutting through all the nonsense about leadership that is out there and helping to generate robust, fun, creative and successful businesses by helping to develop better leaders who are actually fit for purpose.