Good Procurement Leadership

August 22nd, 2007 at 07:18am David Bush - Iasta

Recently, SupplyManagement.com ran an article called Know Your Type that offered some good advice on how procurement leaders can develop their leadership skills.

According to the article, a leader innovates, develops, focuses on people, inspires trust, learns, creates the culture that’s needed and has an eye on the horizon. The author, who notes that there are problems with developing an approach based on a theory that describes high-powered leaders whose daily experiences bear little resemblance to the daily world of work most leaders have to deal with, tackles the approaches and skills he believes are required for a successful purchasing leader. According to the author, it essentially comes down to personal skills, relationship skills, and a good leadership style.

The first skill-set mentioned by the author are the soft-skills like emotional intelligence. The author says that an effective leader is one who motivates others to work towards a shared vision and harnesses the skills and creativity of the team in a way that maximises productivity.

Leaders with soft-skills are generally more effective than those produced by the traditional, autocratic, directive schools - although these leaders wouldn’t have to do much acting to star on today’s work-related comedies like The Office.

The second skill-set addressed by the author is the ability to build and maintain effective relationships. If you understand your motivations, strengths, and weaknesses and have the ability to reflect on, and adapt, your actions and behavior, you will be better able to engage more positively and constructively with others.

The third skill set tackled by the author is leadership style. According to the author, a good leader is one who can understand and value the differences between team members, not one who easily feels frustrated by those who approach work, and life, in very different ways.

Basically, as far as I can tell, he’s describing an effective leader as one that is strong in soft skills, values their people, and focuses on collaboration instead of confrontation. I’d have to agree.

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Entry Filed under: General, Supply Management Best Practices