CABE Space Leaders Programme: People are your top asset

Leaders should focus more on attitude than competence in their staff and look for "cues and clues" in their own behaviour if workplace relationships break down, according to one of Britain's leading voices in management and human resources training.

"Job titles don't get stuff done," said Martin Horton, director of SOLACE Enterprises, part of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. "What gets stuff done is people, so think about who is in your peer group. We rarely follow competence by itself; more often commitment and attitude make the difference. In fact, recruiting people for their competence isn't the smartest thing local authorities or the private sector have ever done. We can train people to be competent, but if their attitude is bad it is likely to stay that way. That said, if then things do go wrong often it isn't because your staff are not paying attention to you.

"They may be copying you," he said. "If you're not happy with your team's behaviour, the place to start looking is at yourself, because they may be taking a lead from you. Look at your management team and what do you see - people squabbling for resources or committed to a common purpose?"

Horton, who has held several senior posts in the public and private sectors and has been responsible for delivering HR and training to 46 councils, said the quality of annual appraisals was "pretty dismal". Only a handful of around 90 delegates underwent "360 degs appraisals" where peers, senior staff and junior employers gave performance feedback on individuals. A voluntary system was a powerful way of better understanding yourself and your impact on other people.

He suggested leaders checked for "cues and clues" by thinking about what line managers said after meetings, out of earshot. They could also write down what they reckoned their team thought about them. Achieving goals through other people's willing behaviour, after all, demanded a "degree of self-awareness" from the leader.

"The reason people bully in organisations is because of their own fears - loss of status, other people's ability, how they will look. They spend a lot of time in meetings trying to look better than colleagues because they think there's a game going on about winners and losers. But they lack the self-awareness to understand their impact."

Such people would find it almost impossible to engender trust from their team, he said. But good self-awareness resulted in self-confidence and behaviour that was "authentic and honest". The payback was respect and trust from colleagues, who should be encouraged to communicate messages about good leadership much more.

"We spend so much time defining problems and putting things right but we rarely sit people down and say, 'what have you done this week that you are really proud of?' These things are never talked about."

It was important that teams sat down regularly and talked about the difference they made, said Horton, quoting former US president Harry Truman: "It's amazing how much you can achieve if you don't mind who takes the praise.

"As leaders, we could take a little bit more of the blame when mistakes happen and a little less than our share of praise when things work out well. That will set a context for your people to believe and think more about themselves and their futures. Your future, meanwhile, will take care of itself."