Ron Dennis Has Been One

RON DENNIS has been one of the most successful Formula-One leaders ever. Having ruled the sport for two decades without so much as a serious threat to his position, Dennis continues to be the power house that most envy. But a powerful position doesn't come without its share of problems. Dennis has had to face some challenges in the past few years that seem to have given his company, McLaren Group, a serious jolt.

McLaren had been doing fairly well for few years in 2000s but in 2006, the company found itself in a rough spot with no win at all and this was the first time this had happened since 1996. The company had earlier signed a deal with Vodafone and signed Fernando Alonso but if the company failed to live up to its reputation, the deals could cost it heavily. This being the main concern, McLaren decided to come up with a new car design and gave up their current one completely. This gave birth to the idea of 2007 MP4-22 car and with the new car came better fate. The year 2007 was a smashing success but within the company, there were problems. Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton did not get along and that alone raises questions about Dennis' leadership.

If this wasn't enough, Dennis' leadership came under attack when a spying scandal came to light. It was found that McLaren's chief designer Mike Coughlan had allegedly obtained confidential technical data from Ferrari's chief engineer. McLaren faced lawsuit as it violated Article 151c of the FIA International Sporting Code. FIA did not only strip the company of its 2007 points but also imposed a hefty fine of $100 million. Dennis however felt he was not to blame and neither his company. He tried to cooperate with the investigations, or so he claimed. But eventually one new piece of evidence led to the sad verdict against McLaren.

What might all this say about Dennis' leadership style, skills and capability? For one we must not ignore the fact that Dennis has been by far the most successfully person to ever head any Formula One company. This alone says a great deal about Dennis' leadership. It is true that in the past few years, the company has faced problems but there had been such issues before and McLaren came out of it stronger. It would be wrong to strip Dennis of his past accomplishments on flimsy evidence.

Even some insiders maintained that evidence was not proven completely and action was taken in haste. Dennis may not have been as innocent as he claimed, but it is possible that either this technical information was never stolen or even if it was, it never came to Dennis' knowledge till Ferrari built a case.

We cannot deny that most of Dennis' driver-related decisions have worked in favor of McLaren. If Alfonso and Hamilton failed to get along and this went on to become an ugly episode in McLaren's history, it is as much a question of clash of personalities as it is about Dennis' leadership. Two top drivers or champions in many sports face the same problems. The extreme competitive environment often forces the company and its officials to choose between the two and this is what happened between Hamilton and Alfonso.

But we do see a hole in Dennis' leadership because it is the job of a leader to make sure his people get along and even if they don't, it should be minimized in order to avoid damaging conflicts. Any conflict between one company's employees can hurt the company more than it hurts the employees themselves. Dennis could not possibly fail to see what was going on and if he chose to ignore it, then it puts a big question mark on his abilities as a leader.

Conflict management is one of the keys to success in leadership and we see that Dennis does not appear to have made use of this skill on purpose. We say on purpose because it is foolish to imagine that he couldn't see the squabble between the two drivers but since he himself may be favoring one driver over the other. It is very strange that a leader of his caliber would fail to treat his drivers equally and fairly. Even though he always claimed that he treated all drivers equally, this was hardly the case when at the end of Chinese Grand Prix, Dennis said: "We weren't racing Kimi, we were basically racing Fernando." [1] Not only was this a bad comment, it was one that tarnished his reputation as a fair manager. The Times felt that such comments "made a non-sense of his claims to be treating his drivers equitably in the World Championship run-in"[2].