Traits for Success at Pretty Much Anything

Author: Dave Crisp

22 May

Of the “Big Five” personality traits, the two David Brooks (my last post) culled from research that are more common among big company CEOs should be no surprise. For workers in general the most important has always been known – Conscientiousness. That is about following through, doing what you said you would, delivering the result. There’s an overtone of dogged persistence, true, but lots of people stick to their word without seeming to have fixate on detail or being ‘grinders.’

The second trait he pulled out is Emotional Stability. Is it any wonder a big company CEO might need the skills or temperament to tolerate rocky surroundings and keep on trucking? You can’t get to the top without being severely buffeted by conflicting demands, crazy work expectations and dramatically challenging personalities around you. To forge ahead Conscientiously in that environment takes Emotional Stability, for sure. We hope in personal life to have it a bit smoother, but for many it isn’t too different.

The fact these traits are possessed by pretty much every big company exec – and needed in most of what we ourselves do – stick-to-it-iveness and the emotional balance to persist long enough to get results – should be no surprise. So they’re ‘common’ to everyone. But that’s not to say these are their only traits nor that having them makes them ‘dull’ as Brooks argues. The top notch people I mentioned are or were highly unique personalities that we’d describe as anything, but dull.

The problem is exactly that these two are not ‘enough’ to get the very best results. Beyond sticking to it and staying the course, we need to be creative, able to work well in teams and energetic enough to care to, whatever the origin of that energy – belief, faith, commitment to a great goal, faith in people, whatever. These other three can all come from very different sources, hence the uniqueness of personality and style we see. When we look deeper we see that the first two traits can come from very different sources, too, not just gritting our teeth discipline.

Viva variety. Yet we see the five core needs for success are pretty much the same five in every endeavor, for every person. HOW they achieve them can be unique, but not whether they work. These are the five skill areas I work to help people discover and develop – ones that turn up in every book on success and which anyone can build for themselves if they simply keep focused and keep adding to steadily, conscientiously. throughout our entire lives: it isn’t over till it’s over. unless you flat out give up.

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Filed under: 5 Skills - Instant Leadership, All That We Know, Coaching Yourself, Happiness, How Simplicity Works

Case in Point: How We Understand Leadership

Author: Dave Crisp

19 May

A friend forwarded a really interesting New York Times Op Ed link (In Praise of Dullness) with the comment the author may or may not be making similar points to my last post. In fact, it could be taken either way because the author talks about several opposing things as if they were somehow one.

Author, David Brooks, cites interesting research showing that CEOs of today’s successful companies lack people skills, extraversion, openness and social agreeableness in study after study. that what distinguishes most is emotional stability and conscientiousness (these are ‘the Big Five’ that psychologists generally agree define personalities). He suggests charisma isn’t valuable, as Jim Collins showed in Good to Great, but in doing so he mixes apples and oranges.

First, it confirms my assertion that many of today’s large organization CEOs lack the skills they will need to lead with utmost effectiveness especially in the coming years of a new type of worker. That’s what Collins is getting at, too. He found only a handful of big company CEOs had taken their companies from Good to Great and kept them there. However, Collins’ findings reinforce that you need openness and sociability (though perhaps not extraversion) to reach the most successful CEO level – to lead effective teams. Quiet team-builders emerged as his preferred model and I agree.

What the other research confirms is what Collins also found – that most sizable company CEOs today are OK, but not superstars. It’s not their lack of charisma (Collins’ winners didn’t have it either), but more importantly lack of ability to build teams. Most are detail-oriented drivers who keep everyone’s nose to the grindstone where more open, creative solutions would be better. The grindstone approach keeps things going and creates incremental improvement, but doesn’t help things take off. Brooks notes that, but equates Collins’ top leaders with the grinders, which isn’t accurate.

All in all, as we struggle to get clarity about how top leaders should actually look, we find few companies yet understand it well enough to make the best choices. And that may be due to the fact that we have years of grinders lingering at the top choosing people like themselves. These are ’safe’ candidates, without a lot of personality actually, unlike the major characters that bring together all the right skills like Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Walton of Wal-mart, Welch of GE and other highly individual, but interesting styles.

Just because the bulk of OK companies today are run by ‘grinders’ (if I can call them that somewhat unfairly because most bring something more than that, just not enough more), that doesn’t mean this is what companies SHOULD look for. There is a better model. Collins got it right. We need to figure out how to develop it and then we need to start hiring for those qualities.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Coaching Issues, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Hope Springs Eternal for HR & Leadership

Author: Dave Crisp

18 May

Yet another article, this time on the Training Zone UK site, points out that poor leadership abounds – case in point being the troubled banks – despite the great amount of leadership training offered today, which is especially widespread in those very organizations. Great point. We teach it, but it isn’t learned. Or perhaps those who actually emerge at the top of organizations are frequently the ones who pay no attention.

Here we have the core puzzle of leadership development. The best training programs are established by many of these poor leaders who get to the top. The programs focus on skills that make for better leadership. In my own experience, top leaders were invited to speak at company training programs and gave impressive speeches touching on all the key principles, which they then ignored applying in their own behavior, with disastrous results.

Nevertheless, the article goes on to say, we will see dramatic improvement in future thanks to today’s insightful training. Really? If so, it clearly won’t be the training, but the attendees who make the difference. We’ve been teaching servant leadership, situational leadership and dozens of other effective models for 50 years. Still only a handful of truly effective leaders exist in top roles today.

We point the finger of fault in many directions – business schools, lack of measurement, poor HR – but we don’t face the likely fact that it is all of us and none of us who are to blame. Slowly, but surely we advance and tolerate poor leaders because they have the old-fashioned look of charisma, control and confidence that others lack and we can’t see anyone else being ready. We ignore evidence, training, common sense and examples of the best leadership styles to promote.

Only if a new generation of leaders and staff refuse to work with or for poor managers will we see this start to change. Will that be Gen X or Y or Millennials? Time will tell. In the mean time, the hard drivers, who think they have all the answers will likely continue to surge toward the top while the ‘continuous learner’ types who would make far better choices continue to question their readiness, along with everyone who makes the selections.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, Coaching Issues, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

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Traits for Success at Pretty Much Anything

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