Role: Director-General

The foundation of any company is its director. He or she is its face creating the image of the company outside it and the authority to which the staff of the company compares themselves. The owner of the company can be such a person but most often it is Directors-General whom owners delegate managing of their business. In fact, Directors-Generals are the axis of the company and the company spins around it. The whole business depends on the quality of this axis. There are two types of directors: professionals and those who manage any old how. Professionals are people who have knowledge and skills. They are always unemotional, their actions are based on clear understanding of the result they are striving for and classification of the situation. There are only a few such people, about 10%, but companies under their management always take a stable niche on the market, develop steadily and avoid sharp turns in their development. Professionals of such a level, as a rule, are rarely public people and prefer to stay in the shadows. There are several characteristics peculiar to leaders of this level:

The role is a person’s condition, his or her beliefs, own rules, emotions. The role must comply with the situation. For example, you needn't play your professional role at home and continue browbeating members of your family and your favourite dog just like you cannot come to work and turn on the “I am a macho and the greatest seducer” mode. Or a woman-director has a cup of tea and some sweets in the accounting department in the morning and then gets outraged because her word as the director has no proper value. These seem to be obvious things, but only a few keep to this rule. And if the director allows himself or herself confuse roles, he or she has no moral right to demand compliance of the staff. The role which is chosen by the person always leads to respective reply from people around. The managing role like any other is designed by the person himself or herself. A professional switches between the roles accurately and always chooses the necessary one depending on the situation, so people’s response always leads to the needed result.

A professional’s management mechanisms are not based on the “carrot and stick” approach to motivation or on the personal “like/dislike” opinion, but on the knowledge of the business processes and people’s nature which must be taken into consideration, for example, when making decisions, because if it is, for example, a sluggish person, making decisions will take twice as long for him or her. It is useless to hurry or press him or her down as he or she will simply resist it. Professionals gather their team according to their understanding of how a business task must be realized, how many ideological employees, accompanying employees, presenters, etc. there should be. The managers of such a level can teach, direct their staff because they understand clearly all processes in their company and, in case of necessity, can manage any of them. All these gives an opportunity to prevent situations leading to negative consequences, including conflicts with the employees.

Knowledge allows making decisions quickly, skills - quickly realizing the made decisions. Together, all this makes the person’s own power lever, allowing to solve any problem, based on 4 cycles, not on experience. Professional leaders’ decisions are never based on past experience, only on knowledge that allows them to analyze the situation in each individual case, the classification of the people participating in it, and, accordingly, the prediction of their actions by several steps ahead, on the ability to control speeds and distance. This is how the technology of creating a scenario leading to a victory and its realization to obtain the desired result works.

Money is always an indicator of person’s responsibility level, therefore such people are honest first of all in relation to themselves, without breaking the word given to themselves and treat their promises in the same way. If they are not sure of the result, it is easier for them not to promise anything at all than to not fulfil their obligations. They run business in accordance with the same principles. No one is born a professional of such a level; you must study hard to obtain these skills and knowledge and develop them throughout your life but the result is always worth the efforts. Unfortunately, directors who do not possess the necessary knowledge always meet the employees’ and environment’s opposition sooner or later which leads to serious consequences for the company up to collapse of the business.