Alex Ferguson - Does Leadership Have a "Use By Date"?

As a leader one of your key roles is to ensure that your staff are engaged and motivated. Alignment of aims, purpose and values between staff, teams and organization is the most fundamental aspect of motivation. The better the alignment and personal association with organisational aims, the better the platform for motivation.

Where people find it difficult to align and associate with the organizational aims, then most motivational ideas and activities will have a reduced level of success. Similalrly with aligning organisational aims with the personal needs of staff, as highlighted by Hertzberg and Maslow, is a fundamental objective for leaders. But can the power of a leaders motivational skills wear off over time, does a leader as a result have an expiration date or a finite shelf life? Are there only so many times a leader can use certain tactics or rousing speeches before they become repetitive and loose their impact.

You just have to look the sporting arena and particularly coaches in football and rugby. There seems to a natural cycle whereby they are given a few years to make an impact. Often what seems to happen is that they have a big impact on performance to start with but the impact waines over time as their players become accustomed to their motivational techniques. Obviously there do seem to exceptions to the rule such as the Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson. He has now been manager for 25 years. So how does he do it? If you examine his approach then some of the answers lie with the fact that he rebuilds his teams every 5 years or so. So he brings in new players who are unaccustomed to his motivational techniques. He also changes his backroom staff and assistants regularly and looks to develop people from within.

So how do you avoid becoming stale as a leader. Well it's down to the leaders themselves to keep developing their skills and knowledge. If they don't then there is a real danger that things will stagnate and performance impacted upon. Also taking a leaf about Sir Alex's book then it's not just a case of becoming an effective leader yourself but developing the people who follow you to be effective leaders as well. So it's how you perceive yourself as much as anything. One of the best ways of motivating is to create a network of leaders whom you nurture. It is they who then bring that freshness and innovation in terms of motivating and improving performance.