Aspects of leadership episode 3: Europe

AIMS Partners and Consultants around the globe work with business leaders in a myriad of different industries and company sizes on a daily basis. When it comes to successful leaders, we know that there is a list of competencies that might be relevant to most, however, the successful combination has a lot to do with matching the right competencies to the correct environment. Or does it?

Sanna Kröger has been working in executive search since 2001. She summarises important leadership competencies in the Finnish market as follows:

• Human leadership: this most important aspect of being a successful leader includes several competencies such as diversity, cooperation and networks, trust and integrity
• Change management or transformation leadership skills; this requires resilience, ability to handle distress and changing business environments
• Data management: a competent leader in today’s fast changing world needs to know numbers: analysis, agility and process control

Lefki Avdi has a background both in Operations and HR Consulting and finds that, in Greece the following aspects make for a successful leader:

• Visionary entrepreneurship: being able to create the desired culture in an organisation, shape its actions and rightly foresee what this business is going to look like in the future
• Decisiveness: followed by action and willpower
• Networking: nurturing long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with local decision-makers is key in the Greek market

The above key success factors should be well balanced and distributed as on an equilateral triangle formulating a golden mean proportional between the three.

Marina Stepanova who has over 20+ years of successful high level search consulting experience and represents AIMS in the Russian market, shares these thoughts:

Leadership is the next level of management. It’s a combination of management skills and people skills. For today’s leaders in Russia, the following is important:

• Agility: to be prepared for change at any time. Whether we are talking about within the business, the current team or the environment.
• Team player: the ability to work alongside employees and be ready to roll up top management sleeves and step in when necessary
• Situational leadership style: be a great communicator, coach, mentor or controller – depending on each situation

Look out for our next article in the series; Aspects of Leadership next week when our experienced Consultants continue to explore what makes our leaders great.