What makes a good business leader?
Bob Vecchiotti has come up with some pretty interesting insights on that topic from three decades of up-close involvement in the field, based on a combination of skills from business and psychology.
Currently senior vice president of leadership development and president of strategic initiatives at BeamPines, a talent management firm, Vecchiotti has advised organizations on leadership issues across a wide swath of industries including the food, health care, construction, military, manufacturing, transportation, and financial sectors. He has also coached men and women in leadership positions at companies small and large, including assignments at AT&T, Anheuser Busch, Chiquita Brands, Department of Defense, Edward Jones, Heartland Bank, H.J. Heinz, Maritz, Monsanto, and United Van Lines.
Vecchiotti shared his perspective on the quality of leadership with Travel Weekly PLUS Editor In Chief Diane Merlino. This is the first of two excerpts from their discussion.
Merlino: You’ve spoken with and advised hundreds of business leaders over the years. Based on your experience, how do you define leadership?
Vecchiotti: As a long-term, value-based process that encourages leaders and implementers to initiate action that contributes to achieving a common purpose and to willingly make significant contributions in meeting mutual objectives.
Merlino: That’s very comprehensive.
Vecchiotti: The key phrase is willingly. If you have willing participation, then you probably have good leadership.
Merlino: It’s interesting that you include both leaders and implementers as part of your definition.
Vecchiotti: There are many other definitions out there, and they all emphasize things like motivating and influencing others and setting direction. But today, more and more people are talking about leadership as a process, and that’s why I include leaders and implementers in the definition. It’s a well-integrated definition that survives changes in style and skill. That means styles can be different. Skill sets can be different, some more than others.
Merlino: What are the different leadership styles?
Vecchiotti: There are two basic styles. You have the transformational style, where the leader sets the example to meet a fairly high standard and gain the trust of the people they are working with. They set goals for the future and [make] plans to achieve these high standards. Under transformational leadership, the leader becomes a mentor and a person who empowers others.
Transactional leadership is a style that clarifies the follower’s responsibilities, monitors the work, and rewards meeting objectives and whatever behaviors are associated with those objectives. Both styles fit very easily within that definition of leadership. You can have a transactional approach that meets the goals of being a long-term, value-based process. It still encourages action that contributes to achieving a common purpose.
Merlino: Have you found that one leadership style is better than the other?
Vecchiotti: The one that seems to be the better fit today is the transformational style, where change is encouraged and the leader is a facilitator in making change happen. Women fit the transformational style just a little bit better than men. Men still have more of that transactional dimension to them. Now that’s a generalization. There are circumstances under which men have good transformational styles, and there are circumstances under which women have more of the transactional style.
Merlino: So what is leadership style associated with? Someone’s personality? Their business background? Their unique talents and characteristics?
Vecchiotti: All of the above. Sometimes we bring a particular style because of the expectations that other people have of us. And, for lack of a better term, we all bring some baggage with us as we try to become better leaders. We either shake off that baggage or we add to it and then suffer the consequences by not meeting objectives or not creating a team. It’s a very interesting dynamic to see the complexities of leadership in operation, because you do have to look at all the things that you talked about.
Merlino: Why do you use the term implementers in your definition of leadership as opposed to followers?
Vecchiotti: It was just a better term than follower, which has the connotation of just following along like sheep. Implementer has more action to it. You are doing something, creating something, making something happen.
Today the qualities of implementers are what we used to associate with the qualities of the leader; implementers are competent, trustworthy, tenacious, good team builders on occasion, hard working, sometimes decisive. That means we have to find new descriptors for the people who lead the implementers.
Merlino: What qualities are important for today’s leaders?
Vecchiotti: The list is long, so I’ll summarize some of the more important ones. Because of the complexities people have to deal with today, leaders have to be good conceptual thinkers. Leaders certainly have to be visionary to find a 
path to sustainable growth. Three years out is a good time horizon for a vision of what the future can be.
Leaders also need to be courageous in executing, despite some of the obstacles. They have to be persistent, but they also have to be flexible and adaptive in order to integrate the changes that will occur almost on a guaranteed basis.
Other qualities I find interesting are resilience and emotional maturity. In other words, you stay balanced in your reactions to things going on around you. Also, to be humble and humorous really gives people a great example to follow. These qualities all help in achieving that definition of leadership.
Merlino: Can those qualities be cultivated? Or have you found that they’re generally innate?
Vecchiotti: That’s always a debate. I think some of them are more innate than others. You could certainly train people to do some of them, but to have the readiness and the predisposition for some of these takes the leader a little further than trying to learn how to do these things. For example, emotional immaturity is part of personality, and personality is something that stays pretty fixed. Behavior can change, but personality attributes don’t change as much.
To meet the cognitive demands, the rapid changes that are going on today, I think leadership now is a job for more than one person. You’re seeing the CEO really depend on the chief operating officer, the chief information officer, the chief human resource officer, and the chief financial officer. That is the leadership team of an organization. The leader is the person who holds them together and keeps them focused, but it’s a shared responsibility.
Merlino: Bob, how often do you find all of these qualities, the complete package, in the leaders you’ve worked with?
Vecchiotti: Finding them all in one person the day they arrive on the job is rare. I have to admit, that is rare. When someone comes into a position of leadership, they don’t have all of these qualities. But if they show that they’re willing to learn, and they show that their plan is incomplete, so that others can assist and add value, and if they even show some vulnerability, the rest of the team picks up on that and adds their contribution willingly to make sure that the objectives are met. And in so doing, the leader picks up these qualities.
NEXT ISSUE: How millennials are changing leadership models in business.
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