This is a transcript of a lecture that I gave on Leadership by Consent at Lancaster University School of Management in May 2024 as part of the Entrepreneur in Residence “Fireside Chats” Lecture Series
Leadership by Consent
In all the leadership roles I have fulfilled, from my youth movement, through University, through communal leadership and now to my Chair roles in the sport and leisure industries, I have long believed, gathered through bitter experience, that leadership must be by consent.
I wanted to test, in this lecture, whether that holds up in many business situations. This lecture is the results of my research.
Consent amongst those you are leading is fine, and easy to achieve, when things are going well, when confidence is high, when results are positive and well received, when there is agreement to the course of action you have taken. When things are good, a leader can easily retain consent and has broad flexibility in what they can do.
But, when things are not going so well, questions and expectations can be levelled at you by stakeholders as to your entitlement to lead. “Who elected you?”. “You don’t speak for us”.
From the very earliest times, Leadership requires consent. A leader, and the organisation they lead, must establish their right to lead with their stakeholders, and the stakeholders must continually consent to their leadership.
So, how do you establish leadership by consent?
How do you lead by Consent?
My view is that you gain consent by displaying strong leadership qualities and by taking good decisions. It is by being personally, and ensuring the organisation you lead is, humble, responsive, transparent, accessible, authentic, honest, open and being available for your stakeholder base to talk to.
At all times, it is important that you and the organisation you lead, has and acts with integrity. If you make a decision, be answerable for it. Be prepared to explain your reasoning. Be open and transparent.
To lead with consent, a leader must display honesty, humility, show no signs of arrogance, be representative, responsive and inclusive.
I am glad to say that this is not just my opinion. Many leading academics, leaders and thinkers also support this concept of leadership by consent, even though they may call it something else. Leadership by Values. Leadership by Integrity. Stewardship.
A leader in any business should be available and accessible on a human level to those that are being led.
A leader should avoid giving the impression of being inaccessible or in an “ivory tower”. Leaders in today’s world face the challenge of earning the trust and commitment of organizational members if they expect to guide their companies to success in a highly competitive global context.
Leaders, like stewards, put their followers’ or constituents’ needs before their own. Leaders, like stewards, must always act in the interest of the common good. Leadership, like stewardship, is always about the benefit of others.
The key ethical imperative of leadership comes from the fact that leadership is not about the leader. Robert Greenleaf believes that the essence of leadership and of all forms of authority is the subordination of one’s self or one’s ego to the needs and desires of a community of others.
Your only job as a leader is to make your team better
More colloquially, Tony Dungy, former National Football League coach, said: “It is not about you . . . Your only job [as a coach, as a leader] is to help your team be better.
According to Harry Kraemer in his book “Becoming the Best”, true self-confidence and genuine humility are the distinguishing characteristics that will showcase a Leader’s values and highlight your authenticity.
True self-confidence comes down to a simple statement: I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know.
It is important to meet the expectations of the community or group that you are leading. You should be prepared to anticipate what it is that your stakeholders want. It helps to have mechanisms to consult with your stakeholders or those who represent them, to take the temperature, even if it does not need a formal consultation.
Other Leadership Methods – Command
The traditional way of leading was by command. A leader gave orders and everyone was supposed to follow them. Today, leaders recognize that issuing orders without any consultation or without any explanation of why the orders are necessary is not a good way of getting people motivated to do their best. As Major General Gale Pollock (Ret.), the first woman surgeon general of the U.S. Army, explains: “If you order people to do something that they don’t understand, they won’t give it all they’ve got. The greatest performances and courage come when you show them why it matters.”
Other Leadership Methods – Consultation
The second way to lead is by consultation. The consultation decision is where you ask people for their advice and input, and then you make the decision. This is a more motivating way of leading others than through simple commands. People will realize that the final decision is yours, but they will appreciate the fact that they were consulted in the decision-making process. And even if they don’t agree with the final decision, they will be more likely to abide by it because of this consultation.
The more you know and the more you can anticipate what is expected of you by those in your stakeholder group, the more consent you will have for your leadership.
Part of establishing consent involves good and crisp communication. Stakeholders abhor a vacuum, especially those in sport. They tend to think the worst and come to the wrong conclusions.
As a leader, your job is to ensure that the decisions that are taken are the right ones for the organisation based on the circumstances before you. Not all decisions will be right and not all will be popular.
But, a good leader will stand up for their decisions, explain what they have done and why and communicate in a way that allows those affected to feel listened to. If you take a decision that you believe is right, and it is made in a public domain, be prepared to come out and explain it together with your reasoning. Be open and transparent. In that way, if people want to take pot shots or criticise the decision, at least they understand the basis on which a decision was made.
Social media provides a challenge to this. A leader, especially in sport, needs to develop a thick skin when social media criticism and insults begin to mushroom. A leader should be ready for, and able to, deal with criticism.
Let me illustrate this theory with two examples of how I have attempted to lead by consent- one from sport, and one from community/charity. I will then contrast this with other styles of leadership, and, using case studies, see whether there are any common traits and characteristics. I will then apply all of this to the business and entrepreneurial environment.
Examples of Leadership by Consent – RFL and Head Injuries
The first example is from the Rugby Football League and it concerns the debate within the sport on concussion and concussive and other brain related injuries.
Medical advice for some time has begun to highlight the risks to players from concussive and sub concussive injuries. The Insurance market was also tightening up due to the risk of historic cases and as a result, premiums for the Insurance that we required to be able to play the sport, were increasing by 300%.
As part of my re-election campaign as Chair, I had vowed that I wanted to oversee a culture change that would lead to the game becoming safer and the health of our players being protected. I knew that there would be some who regard this as the game going soft and I felt that, only by presenting it as a culture shift could we get the changes through.
We set an objective to
- Reduce rates of concussion by 30% over next 5 years.
- Reduce absolute sub-concussive exposure to professional players by 30% over next 5 years.
I felt that, to gain consent, we needed to bring the game with us and to introduce the arguments for change gradually and carry out a visible and public consultation and evidence gathering exercise.
I had seen the backlash when Rugby Union tried to introduce these changes and had them rejected for lack of consultation.
So, we had this on the Board Agenda for over 12 months. I reported to our stakeholders after each meeting on the deliberations of the Board.
We arranged a trial at junior level of some rule changes, including the most contentious, that of the height of the tackle. We published the results of these trials.
We set up expert sub committees and put players, coaches and former players on them. We shared the data and evidence widely and consulted across the game on the recommendations.
After 12 months of what I describe as increasing consultation, in November 2023, we introduced 44 recommendations, to take effect over a two year period, including on tackle height, a new penalty and sanctioning framework, limits on maximum player load, maximum minutes per season, calibrated for different playing positions, rules on training limits and mandatory smart mouthguards to enable us to continue to monitor the data.
But, we also knew that, once the rules were introduced at the start of the season, there would be those who objected , some noisily, and there would be teething issues that might test the support of even our most loyal allies.
So, just as importantly, we put in place an implementation comms plan, which involved sending senior officials out to the media and the public when criticism came. But crucially, after two rounds of the season, we also undertook a listening exercise with players and coaches, and, as a result of their comments, we made some changes to the sanctioning framework and the way that referees interpret the new rules.
So, to retain consent for a controversial change, we used values and behaviours that included as consultation, listening, humility, responsiveness, and flexibility.
Examples of Leadership by Consent – JLC and Enough is Enough
The next example I bring is from my communal and charity life, from when I was the CEO of the Jewish Leadership Council, a representative body for the Jewish community here in the UK.
It was March 2018. For some time, our community had been troubled by statements, incidents and actions or omissions by the Labour Party leadership under Jeremy Corbyn that led to a growing fear that the party was allowing anti-Jewish racism to run amok amongst Labour Party structures.
There was growing concern amongst the Jewish community. As a community leader, I was becoming heartily fed up of having to put out statements calling for the Party to condemn an antisemitic act or statement or to distance the leadership from the growing perception that they did not take the issue seriously.
One Friday evening, an image appeared of a mural, which was of an anti-Jewish nature, that the then Labour Leader had appeared to endorse. When he refused to condemn the image, I remember drafting a quote, whilst on a train, on behalf of the community, and sending it in with an exasperated “I have had enough of this. When is it enough?”.
Over the weekend, a number of us in the organisation and in leadership positions must have had the same thought, because by Sunday morning, we had developed an outline strategy to call for a public demonstration by the community against the issue of anti-Jewish racism in Labour. We would call the community to come to Parliament Square for a rally. We, the leaders would deliver a letter to the Labour Party at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Group setting out our calls for action. Having delivered it, we would come out to join the rally. We gave it the name “Enough is Enough”.
We took a major risk with this. We had no idea how many, if anyone would turn up. We had not consulted anyone. It was out of character. The Jewish community rarely gathered publicly, and did not like to raise their heads above the parapet.
In the end, over 2500 people were there, along with most of the broadcast and print media. It got national, headline and front page coverage. It set the stage for a long running, media led story about Anti-Jewish racism in the Labour Party that ran all the way through until the 2019 General Election.
This example does not seem to fit with the principles that I laid out earlier though. No consultation. It could have gone wrong. So, why is this an example of leadership by consent?
Well, it worked. Had it not, there would have been more than egg on our faces. We would have had to fall back on our values to not lose consent of the whole community.
In the end, we felt that we were meeting the expectations of the community that we were leading and were prepared to anticipate what it is that we felt the community wanted.
But in this respect, we can be argued to have been displaying the characteristics of another style of leadership that I want to explore and contrast with leadership by consent.
This is the style of leadership that I describe as Benign or Benevolent Dictatorship.
A contrast – Benign or Benevolent Dictatorship
Many businesses are run on this principle. It is the mode of many entrepreneurs. It is a common way that those in charge of sports clubs or teams run their clubs.
So, I want to explore whether this type of leadership shares any characteristics with my principle of Leadership by Consent.
To do that, I want to look at two case studies of two similar activities, that each had different results.
Examples of other Leadership Styles – Rebranding of Leigh Leopards
The first example involved the rebranding of Leigh Centurions to Leigh Leopards.
The owner of Leigh Leopards is Derek Beaumont, a very successful businessman in both property and garden decking. He is a visible, extrovert, entrepreneurial and ebullient owner of the Rugby League club, who has put a lot of his own funds and his own personality into the Club. He does not object to my describing him as a “benign dictator”.
He believes that he is the custodian of and therefore the person the most attuned to the Clubs traditions and he has the courage to back his own convictions. He believes that is pointless being driven on something if people will not support you.
The last rebrand of the famous Leigh Club had been in 1995. The Club was formed in 1895 and so in 1995, they were Centurions (spelled wrongly). The mascot of the pig came from the sponsor at the time – Skoda. It was a disjointed story that, in his view, made no sense from a brand perspective. So he waited for the opportunity to change it.
Derek always looked at sales by looking at his business through the eyes of his competitors.
He saw Leigh Centurions as a fake version of Wigan – same colours, both had warriors on their badge- except that Wigan were successful and big and Leigh were not. They hopped between Super League and Championship.
To give the best chance with the new IMG inspired club grading system, he decided to reinvent how Leigh looked and how they were commercialised. He wanted a radical change – and considered the backlash but he was set on this course of action and did not consider consulting.
Leopards came from a social media post of him wearing a leopardprint (when applauding the staff) and asking “why was a 50 year old wearing a leopardprint? He hit on the idea of Leigh Leopards.
It helped that, at that precise time, his team were top of the Championship and poised to be promoted to Super League.
For a summer Rugby League festival, he thought it would be a good idea to try special kit integrating the leopard print rosette style in to the red kit. That kit sold more of that kit than they did of replica home shirts. They tried it on other merchandise too.
That gave him encouragement that elements of this in branding would work.
The name Leigh Leopards worked – it fits with other names in the game – Rhinos, Dragons, Wolves.
So he took the plunge and went for it. Normally, he would have consulted at this stage. But, as the owner, with courage in his convictions and respect for the traditions, he believed in himself and that others would follow. He thought a consultation would have killed the idea.
He went for a big launch, emphasising the experience of the whole club changing. This meant a new name, a new kit, a new brand, new and high profile player signings. It was a real statement of intent.
Derek played up to the role with leopardprint clothes, a branded vehicle. He lived the brand and embodied the brand.
In terms of measuring success, they added 60% more season tickets and the same increase in memberships. Crowds increased. The customer and fan offering was broadened. And, last season, Leigh Leopards won the Betfred Challenge Cup.
I want to contrast that with another rebrand that was not successful, in that it was stopped in its tracks by a fan and supporter backlash.
Examples of other Leadership Styles – Swinton Lions
Andy Mazey, a local businessman, had taken over Swinton Lions, a famous old club, in 2017 and had stabilised it financially. He is anything but a benign dictator. But, having stabilised the Club, he, like Derek, felt he knew what Swinton had to do to thrive.
They analysed data of where tickets were being bought from and despite the offers for new customers, the same number came from core Swinton as came from core areas of Greater Manchester.
The chances of growing in Swinton were remote. They were carrying the name of a town that they did not play in any more. They could not see any possible growth as Swinton.
He suspected that somebody- another owner or a new consortium, was going to take the Manchester brand and therefore he thought this was a way to make the club more attractive and seize what he saw was an opportunity.
They knew such a move would not be popular.
They toyed with becoming Swinton Manchester Lions, but they realised they could not be “half rice half chips”. They had to be Manchester Lions.
Andy thought he had built up a level of trust and respect. There was an understanding by the stakeholder base that something needed to be done.
They produced a 60 page deck of the vision, which was sent to the RFL. A shorter version of that was sent to key stakeholders – the supporters groups, staff and others. They held a meeting which was followed by an indicative show of hands, which seemed to suggest support, subject to some branding and other changes.
However, news began to leak out. A few days later, The Sun came with a headline about Manchester gaining a Rugby League club and Swinton ceasing to have a club. That story killed them as it really upset some of the fans on social media.
So they lost control of the message and there was a high level of abuse aimed at Andy.
The thing that hurt the fans was they were taking away the final attachment to the town and they were applying the death knell to the link to Swinton link.
Having his time again, he would have brought stakeholders in earlier in the process. They almost presented it as a “done deal”. They did not bring enough people with us nor get the fans involved earlier in the process. They did not present the facts and the data to enough people at an early enough stage.
Andy’s lesson from this is to have more patience and take more people with you. Get people on the journey with you.
Do These Examples Support my Theory?
So, do these case studies support each other? And what do they have to do with leadership by consent?
In both cases
- There was no consultation before the proposal was socialised.
- Both owners backed their own judgements and their own perception of what was best for the brand.
- Both involved a radical change.
- Both were socialised at a “big reveal”.
But from that point on, they diverged. One worked. One did not.
So, how does this fit my theory?
In both cases, the leaders felt that they had enough knowledge and had built up enough credit to understand the temperature of the people they were leading. They felt they were on the same wavelength as the fans and were giving the fans what, if they thought about it for long enough, they might want themselves. They were, at the right time, open, honest and transparent.
Derek Beaumont of Leigh had the strength of personality and the respect amongst the fan base to carry his proposal. His money and investment had brought him consent and it carried him through. But he needed to combine it with high profile signings and promotion to the Super League for it to land successfully.
Andy Mazey of Swinton thought he had done enough to earn consent. But his plans were too extensive and he overspent the credit that he had earned by stabilising the Club financially.
Leadership in Entrepreneurial Businesses
In business, in the world of entrepreneurship, the issue of consultation is a fascinating one. There are many businesses who will constantly market test their products and services, especially when launching a new product. Some,- and the bigger more established companies fall into this category -, will not move unless they have done detailed consumer testing.
However, entrepreneurs tend to go with the courage of their own convictions. The ones you have heard of are the successful ones.
Jeff Bezos deciding to disrupt the market in bookselling by distributing direct to the customer.
Mark Zuckerberg created an application to allow Harvard students to meet and stumbling on how he could exploit people’s innocent willingness to share their most intimate data with him whilst expecting nothing in return.
In my view, they are the exception.
Many entrepreneurs start new businesses on a hunch or a whim and do not succeed. I have been involved with two such businesses.
A business called Entrago, which between 2011 and 2013 tried to create the influencer market by establishing and monetising digital Celebrity channels in which high profile celebrities would post details of their lives and their subscribers would generate revenue from this special access. We generated £5M of seed funding, built the platforms, and signed up celebrities only to discover that the revenue generation was too slow and the platforms like Instagram and SnapChat were making similar technology available for free. We closed after two years.
National Padel was one in which I brough two HNW individuals together to acquire land to build commercial Padel Centres. Right idea; right time: Too much competition for land. An inability to get deals done for land in our chosen area resulted in the consortium falling apart. We missed the boat on the growing Padel business.
Those were entrepreneurial founder businesses, and the leaders displayed the characteristics more of benign dictators.
Leadership in Established and Multi-Stakeholder Businesses
Contrast that with the business that I chair- SIS. That has a turnover of £210M, has been in existence for over 30 years and has five longstanding shareholders. Two shareholders are financial investors and three are Bookmaking Companies- they are all customers of the business and competitors of each other. It makes for a complex shareholder base that is difficult to align.
As Chair, the only way I can lead this Company is by using the principles of leadership by consent. Specifically, constant communication to and with shareholders, listening, consulting, being responsive and answerable, seeking consent and being humble.
By doing that, in my first year, I was able to align the shareholders to support the management in a transformation strategy which has added 300% to the EV of the Company and has increased the profitability, distributing very pleasing shareholder dividends.
So, all going well. But, there will come a time when it does not do as well. Perhaps profits fall, shareholders misalign, the new strategy hits some bumps in the road. Then, all that I will have to avoid losing confidence is the consent that I have built up through my values and the way that I have led the Board. The extent to which the shareholders have felt involved and consulted and to which their views have been reflected.
Learnings on Leadership by Consent in Business
So, what have I learned as I have prepared this lecture on my theory of Leadership by Consent?
Well, it appears that founders and owner/directors, will usually display most of the characteristics of a benign dictator. But, even then, the values that they live and bring to their leadership and their character, will have a great impact on their long term success. Do they communicate actively? Are they humble? Are they responsive? Are they open? Are they transparent? Do they admit their mistakes and answer for their decisions.
But, for more established businesses, especially those where you are a hired -in CEO, or Chair, and in representative organisations and the NGO space or Third Sector, in my opinion, Leadership by Consent is the only way.
Effective leadership with consent, requires a leader to display honesty, humility, show no signs of arrogance, be representative, responsive and inclusive. In this way, you will be able to achieve your objectives, to grow your business and to sustain your mission.