Today’s guest is Tewolde Gebremariam, Group CEO of Ethiopian Airlines. Under his leadership, the Ethiopian Airlines has been experiencing impressive growth and outstanding expansion; it is also becoming the most profitable airliner in the continent.
Tewolde joined the airlines in 1985 and served in different capacities in the cargo traffic handling department and progressed up the ladder to Manager Cargo Traffic Handling. Since January 2011, he has been serving as a CEO; his career includes about 34 years in the airline industry.
Before January 2011 when he started serving as Group CEO of the airlines, he had been serving with different responsibilities. Among these, he was appointed as Regional Director for India and South East Asia based in Bombay and later on transferred to Jeddah as Area Manager for Saudi Arabia.
And when the airlines commenced its direct services to the USA, he was appointed as Area Sales Manager for North East USA and Canada based in New York.
Since Tewolde has been demonstrating skillful leadership in leading the industry to successful achievements, he has been a multiple award winner. For instance, in November 2012, he won “The African CEO of the Year-2012”award.
And after a month in the same year, he also won “The Best African Business Leader” award from the Washington D.C. based Corporate Council on Africa. In July 2013, he became the first African Airline CEO to receive “The Airline Strategy Award for Regional Leadership” in the award’s 12 year history. Moreover, he won the 2013 “Planet Africa Professional Excellence Award” and the 2015 International Grand Prix Special Award in Milan.
Recently, he has been awarded Gold Medal by Ethiopian Airlines Board of Directors for his exceptional leadership that enabled Ethiopian to register outstanding performance and the successful accomplishments towards Vision 2025. Tewolde earned his B.A. Degree in Economics from the Addis Ababa University and his Masters’ Degree in Business Administration from the Open University in the United Kingdom. He also received series of leadership trainings.
Cognizant of his rich and fruitful leadership career, The Ethiopian Herald has a short stay with him few months ago so that he would share his leadership experiences with its readers. Excerpts:
Herald: It is often said that leadership can determine the success or failure of a company. How does it do that? Why is leadership often emphasized?
Tewolde: Companies and organizations undergo changes; just the driver of those changes is always leadership. Management or leadership plays a very central role in organizational success or effectiveness because it carefully relates human capital with the resources or materials to maximize the effectiveness of the company.
Yes, leadership can break or help the future of an organization. For instance, you may have well qualified engineers, pilots, technician, and salesmen; unless you establish a system in which all these things are working in an integrated manner and generate a result that is greater than their individual result then the company cannot succeed. Leadership or management is the only way to bring these resources together in order to increase the effectiveness of the organization.
Herald: As a leader, how do you schedule your days? How do you describe your working habit?
Tewolde: Today, the Ethiopian Airlines is the global company operating in 116 international destinations, in 5 continents, 21 domestic stations, 110 modern airplanes and 16 thousand employees; it is a very tough industry! You can guess what it takes to lead the industry. Thus, I always remind myself that the 110 airplanes are in the air.
In my daily schedule, I continuously pay attention to the safety issues. I also make sure that if my colleagues at leadership team have made sound decisions to ensure smooth operations. Soon, I wake up in the morning around five o’clock, I check my emails for any message that needs immediate response; I also check the operations or systems and talk to the duty manager for any clarification: ‘how were the flights?’ any delay, any incident, any development and the like.
I must always verify if there is any new political situations around the globe, if war zones declared between two countries, like what we have seen in Yemen, Seriya, Libiya. Whatever happens at a given corner of the globe has direct influence on our work since the Ethiopian flies everywhere.
Time management has also a central place in my daily schedule. I have learned that time is the scarcest resource. If I face shortage of money for instance, I can ask for it and friends can lend me. But that does not work for time which is very limited resource. Thus, I have to make sure that the 24 hours are properly managed.
Herald: As a leader a lot of things to do. When you are tired, how can you replenish yourself?
Tewolde: If you love your job, you do not get tired. If you are passionate about your job, the flow of energy is driven by the passion. It depends on how much you are passionate about your job. Since I love my job there is continuous flow of boundless energy. Of course, it is a biological nature that I have to rest, but I usually work for 16 hours a day.
Herald: What makes an effective leader unique?
Tewolde: I believe a leader is unique because of his unique attitude. His or her uniqueness is consistently reflected in his or her communication and thinking. His or her unique attitude makes him or her stay strong, confident, farsighted, positive and in passion to realize organizational goal. Because of this unique attitude, his responses to challenges as well as opportunities are different. His attitudes which are differently reflected in his deeds, words and thoughts would inspire others to develop trust in the leader.
Herald: Would tell some useful skills that a leader should possess?
Tewolde: Leaders should have skills that help them to know the entire system of the organization. And they ought to continuously sharpen their skills in order to maximize their effectiveness. To enjoy fruitful leadership in organizations like airlines industry, a leader should cultivate himself or herself at least on three skills. One is technical skill which helps the leader to know the technical aspect of the airlines. For instance, the component parts of the airplanes, the way they are functioning and the like demand the technical skill to manage them efficiently. Even though the leader does not carry out the technical parties, knowing how they can be done helps him or her to make sound decisions. Second, A leader should also have well developed human skill which refers to the ability to create comfortable working environment for employees. This skill enables the leader to work with subordinates, followers and others to efficiently accomplish the organization’s goals.
The leader with well cultivated human skills can create an atmosphere of trust where employees can feel comfortable and secure and where they can feel encouraged to contribute their share effectively for the success of the organization. He or she is also very sensitive to the needs of the employees to address them carefully. The other skill an organizational leader ought to develop is the conceptual skill that is very central to creating a vision and strategic objectives for an organization. A leader with conceptual skill is a farsighted to determine the future of the organization. He or she creates organization’s vision, goals and strategic objectives and then communicates it to all the employees effectively. All these and other skills are very useful for the leader to effectively transform the company. My stay in the industry for more than 30 years helped me to develop these skills. Since the operations in the airlines industry are very integrated, knowing the feature of the entire performances helps the leader to make sound decisions.
Herald: What qualifies a leader? Does training make a leader effective?
Tewolde: In leadership and management class, we usually deal with a question: is a leader born or taught? One can have a Ph.D in leadership from Harvard but that cannot qualify him or her to lead. Effective leadership is not the result of memorizing the theoretical abstractions, learning skills, imitating methods, attending series of trainings. Rather it is the attitude of heart. The theoretical abstractions are quite different from the practical applications. At our academy, I teach our potential leaders, engineers and pilots that a leader is partly born and those inborn traits must be trained.
Herald: What would you advice the young emerging leaders?
Tewolde: First, my advice is leadership is not something you do for a paycheck; it has to be with passion, love and commitment for the work. If someone is doing for a payroll, their commitment is limited, their motivation goes down, and their contribution will be low. And it is very difficult to get adequate results as a leader. Leaders’ effectiveness increases if they are working to realize the mission with commitment. Second a leader has to demonstrate integrity. As a role model, a leader has to have high standard of honest and fairness among the subordinates. Third, young leaders should have long term view of business; long term infrastructure and institutional arrangement. A company cannot be profitable as it exists for few months. They have to have long term plan to ensure continuous and flourishing benefits. Next, leaders in any business have to define the vision, mission and strategic objectives in clear terms. And then they ought to effectively communicate to the employees. Everyone in the company must internalize and state them in few sentences so that they can work very hard to achieve the organizational goals. If you go around in the airlines compound and ask anyone, they can tell you our vision. I believe this should be common for every organization.
Herald: Which type of leadership style would you appreciate?
Tewolde: Everyone has his or her leadership style; no fixed formula for leadership. Ones’ leadership style changes according to the situation and the people they lead. The growing trend is adapting different theories to the prevailing circumstances or according to the needs of the subordinates. For instance, some people are self-initiative; they are very task oriented while others are not.
The Ethiopian herald March 31, 2019
BY WAKUMA KUDAMA
