The Virtues of Transformational Leaders
They are a rare breed: transformative leaders earn that heady title by transforming not just companies, but industries. Charles Spinosa, Billy Glennon, and Luis Sota believe there are four virtues that such leaders manifest.
Great leaders grow extraordinary companies that make their whole industries highly valued. Consider John D. Rockefeller, who used vertical integration to stabilise the oil industry, including high-risk exploration. Consider J.P. Morgan, which transformed banking to bring stability to each of its clients and to markets. Consider George Eastman, who created popular photography. Not all industry transformations are so massive. However, consider the kind of growth shareholders seek today: only transformation of some size can achieve it.
We have found four core virtues critical to the success of industry-transforming leaders:
- Taking a stand to accomplish the impossible
- Seeing the personal transformation in others
- Setting the corporate style, and
- Listening for difference
“Transformational leaders connect the larger corporate vision to
those of the individuals needed to make the grand vision happen”
We have worked closely with three leaders who possessed these virtues. To speak intimately about the difficulties involved in adopting these values, we have disguised the identities of these three leaders. All started their industry transformations in the 1990s; two are still leading these transformations today. One is a telecommunications entrepreneur who has grown two companies each worth well over $1 billion, both facing rivals with dominant market share, good technology and competitive cost structures. Having displaced such Fortune 500 competitors as Verizon, his second company now dominates its entire region. Our second leader grew his credit card-processing company from nothing to take on such established rivals as American Express, Barclaycard, Capital One, Citigroup, GE Money, First Data, MasterCard and Visa. The third leader transformed a small, regional Latin American manufacturing company into a global titan worth multiple billions.
In each case, no one thought these leaders could grow their companies and transform their industries as they did. Thus, they provided the centre for our research; but we have also drawn on research of recent, successful leaders in over 100 other companies. The most transformative leaders in the very best corporate examples demonstrated four key virtues.
