Bank of England governor Mark Carney says these are the three things all good leaders must do
The Bank of England governor Mark Carney today said leaders must do three things to be a success: find and develop the right people, set priorities and catalyse action.
Speaking at Regent’s University London today, Carney said tonight: “Of these, arguably the most important is focusing on finding and developing the right people.”
“Developing the right people starts with recruiting widely,” he said, with Carney stressing that a key part of this involves tackling diversity as a business imperative rather than an HR policy.
Read more: Millennial ideas of leadership are apparently based on The Apprentice
“10 years ago the Bank’s graduate intake was comprised largely of economists drawn from just 11 universities,” Carney said.
Last year, we hired from over 40 post-secondary institutions with half of the intake having studied sciences, business, law and the humanities. Of the 700 experienced professionals we hired in 2017, almost half were women and a quarter came from BAME backgrounds.
In large organisations, he said, developing future leaders requires discipline. Carney pointed to the boss of Vodafone, Vittorio Colao, reviewing the firm’s top 200 executives each year to assess performance and set goals.
The four qualities of a good leader, according to Mark Carney
Ambition
Purpose
Clarity
Humility
The second thing he feels leaders should do – set priorities – is particularly time-critical due to “both the rapid pace of global change and the arc of a leader’s personal capital within their organisation”.
As for catalysing action, Carney said specific changes will vary within a firm’s structure and culture, but in all cases they need “the full and visible commitment of the leader before devolving power to colleagues”.
The BoE governor also thinks there are four essential, and universal, attributes of leadership which are ambition, purpose, clarity and humility.
The first, Carney said, is not personal ambition but ambition for the organisation – and a message which applies to the Bank of England as it does the latest startup in Silicon Roundabout.
On humility, he said a leader needs to be able to admit their weaknesses, and continuously be learning.
“In this spirit, policymakers must remain humble as they work to build a more resilient financial system,” he said.
“We must remember that, although we can make financial crises less likely to happen and less severe when they do occur, we cannot abolish them,” he added. “Something will go wrong again even if we do not know exactly what or precisely when. Accepting this means our best strategy is to create an anti-fragile system that can withstand potential shocks when they happen.”
Read more: Majority of big banks failing Mark Carney’s climate change requirements