Can Anyone Become a Leader?

Author: Dave Crisp

22 May

Overheard in the men’s locker room this morning: “He has no people skills. How did he ever get to be Media Director?” “Well, he works hard.” “Yes, he’s always served the CEO well, but no one else.”

Sound familiar? It’s a conversation I hear repeated everywhere I go in one form or another. Is this an HR strategy issue?

With a capable operator like Google (plus hundreds of others) proving leadership is by far the biggest key to productivity and both organization and team results, you bet. And if we take their “8″ keys to effective leadership, which they proved leaders could be coached to apply, the answer to whether anyone can become a leader is yes. So the question becomes how?

If you analyze Google’s list of 8 skill sets, the one they define as most important really encompasses most of the others. To coach well absolutely requires that you empower those you coach, care about their health, well-being, careers and more – an all around, whole-human-being orientation. It requires you to be results-oriented, to push, but know when to step back and find a balance, to be a good communicator in both directions, but especially listening. And clearly you need a clear vision of the desired result and technical skills that allow you to help, even though as a coach rather than teacher your skills don’t have to be better than your protege.

A coach, by definition, cares about, pays attention to and works with the people in their care. No one would dream of saying ‘he served the CEO, but no one else’ about an effective coach. A coach fundamentally understands the work their proteges do is more important in the long run than what they can accomplish alone in their limited time. They put coaching either first or at least very high on their priority list. They don’t complain about the time it takes. The role of a coach is to extend the productivity of their team and each of its members to that together they accomplish more than any one, including the leader, could do alone, so the time is more than worth it in the end. Coaching is the primary work of an effective leader. That seems totally obvious from Google’s numbers-driven research.

So, as I write this, I think, “perhaps one key strategic step we could take is to label every leader Coach first.” Executive Coach, Media Team, for instance? Senior Vice President Coach, HR. Perhaps that hard working individual who currently holds that position wouldn’t have wanted that role. at first. Perhaps they’d say, ‘not me, I’m not good with people, I don’t want to have to work with them like that.’ But chances are, to get promotions and more money, most budding executives would take a shot at improving their abilities, would be interested in taking training, would welcome being evaluated and coached themselves on these critical skills. if they wanted careers in leadership roles.

Final observations: Since it’s a well-accepted fact that leaders tend to hire and promote those they see as most like themselves whether they set out to or not, if we can make coaching the primary factor in every leader’s profile all our leaders would strive to hire those who can coach best instead of the rather non-people-skill mix we see today. We would never get to 100% and might not want that anyway. Diversity is helpful, but we need to reverse the current preponderance of command-and-control leaders. If coaching eventually becomes the primary criterion instead of some of the other questionable grounds managers have for ruling people in or out of positions that would be a benefit, too. This sounds like strategic talent management to me.

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Filed under: Coaching Others, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

The Last Word on Leadership Skills?

Author: Dave Crisp

14 May

Will there be a stampede of individuals and companies to install the 8 keys to leadership that powerhouse Google recently helped with by proving with solid numbers?

Probably not even though they also showed conclusively at least some individuals can learn and develop the 8 skills sufficiently in a short time to improve results and become promotable when their prior performance was dismal.

We can thank Google for proving definitively what leadership experts have been pressing all along, even though Google thinks it has only proven these work at Google. In fact their ‘discovery,’ though done at Google, for Google, matches exactly what we’ve all been saying. Due to their size, success and ability to undertake such expensive statistical research this should be the ultimate proof acceptable to CEOs and senior executives everywhere.

Don’t hold your breath though. The biggest hurdles will likely continue to be claims that it takes too much time to coach or, a variation of the same, that it distracts executives from their ‘real’ work. These have been consistent objections as far back as anyone can recall. ‘Yes, we could be better leaders,’ the story goes, ‘but we have more important things to do. and it’s a minor benefit anyway.’ Fairly explicit in Google’s findings is proof these are also false. Improved leadership has the greatest impact on results of any factor you can manage.

Google defused objections among their own managers by showing in concrete numbers that these skills form the most important keys to productivity of a manager’s team. That ought to be enough at least for large organizations where teams are the origin of almost all results, but in small and medium enterprises we can bet many owner-operators will argue, like French king, Louis XIV, “the [company], it is I.” And some will be right. In the view of many owners, employees, even managers, are simply there to carry out orders. The fact they don’t effectively means they should be fired, not coached.

What these weak leaders really mean is: I don’t know how to coach, I’ve gotten by without doing it all this time so why should I try now? The answer to that also lies in Google’s findings – that those who do try to improve their team members, who coach, who push productivity in positive ways and show interest in their employees produce results that are many times greater than those who don’t.

Here are the newly re-proven arguments in case you’re trying to convince people – Why employ leaders, or why be a leader, who works at a third or less of the results a half decent coach-style boss can produce? Hire a third fewer people and achieve the same results! Given that payroll is the biggest expense by far in most organizations that should be incentive enough.

Or even more critical, create leaders and teams who innovate, who find and exploit new ideas before your competitors do. or you’ll be out of business. Google knows they’ve got tons of money now to afford less than highly productive leaders, but innovation is their life blood as it is in more and more organizations. Except of course if you are government. In that case, just do it for yourself, to save your own sanity by making your team productive and garnering the respect you deserve if you do it. That works in all organizations. Even if your own boss is a jerk you can excel in ways that make you more confident, more able to succeed in other endeavors as opportunities arise (and they certainly will) and in self-respect.

Given these facts and options, the remaining hurdle is that most leaders (82% by some measures) don’t have these skills, but most don’t notice or admit it. What this makes essential is that we each take a look at ourselves against Google’s 8 skills and decide just how well we stack up. That’s the next post.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Coaching over Command Leadership, Coaching Yourself, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Management Guru’s Are Fallible

Author: Dave Crisp

30 Apr

Extending the last topic a bit further, Steve Denning’s rant against Bob Sutton’s efforts to develop “good bosses” seems to me about setting up a straw man so he can knock it down in favor of his own approach – to emphasize what he calls in his latest book “Radical Management.” I guess why this rankles so much is that what we don’t need right now is two progressive guru’s poking each others’ theories in the eye. We need synergy, not competition.

We’re all struggling toward something new in management and trying to figure out what’s wrong with the old and why it so persistently hangs on when there is so much evidence around us of better approaches. The challenge is the new methods are complex where the old was relatively much simpler – just line up a group and make them run as fast as possible in the same direction – the old, military-like ‘command and control’ style in which a single general knows what needs to be done and hammers everyone into going along on pain of punishment.

Reading Denning’s other stuff, including his own synopsis of his book, (it’s also covered in several Amazon reviews and in his own video on that page as well) it certainly appears he’s on the right track with much of what he recommends that he feels is ‘radical.’ (I’m not sure just how radical when we can see evolution toward it occurring all around us and practical examples in Toyota, Southwest Air and the other significant models we all continually point out.)

He rails away at ‘traditional management’ (ie: command and control) as so many of us do now, but what I fail to understand is why he doesn’t come at this from what it takes to become a non-traditional manager rather than just what’s wrong. He points at it indirectly in what he writes, describing conditions he hopes for, like ‘self-directed teams,’ but then slams Sutton as just one example of the great many authors he insists are pushing in the wrong direction by trying to reform old style managers.

Perhaps his point is we can’t easily reform traditional managers and so have to somehow blow up their style and the old system entirely and radically reinvent management. Beyond suggesting a need for self-directed teams he doesn’t seem to put forward a way to get there. While such teams are one way of improving things (but just one of many ways) they don’t appear magically by themselves. They need specific management style just as much as any other teams (just a very different type) and they rarely last quite the way he seems to think they would unless someone is consistently nurturing them.

I suppose I’ll have to read or at least skim his book to find out if there are any substantive recommendations for HOW to get where he’d like to go. That’s the true question. We now generally know where management needs to go, but we don’t know how to get there and make it stick, how to build the culture habits we need to really move organizations forward. Reading about his work, I’m impressed by what seem to be valid observations and examples of how much better “radical management” works, but frustrated by the lack of help figuring out how to motivate progress toward it.

As he points out, there are some 11,000 or more business books per year published and no one can hope to read all. So what motivates me to read one that seems to contain such obvious flaws? I’m sort of annoyed with myself for letting the need to investigate a negative motivate me more than looking for a book that might take me toward a positive answer. But then we often find ideas by contrast. by clearly understanding what’s wrong in something else. Certainly hope to report that’s what happens in future revelations on this work.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Books, Coaching Others, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

Civility… Really?

Author: Dave Crisp

19 Dec

Anyone reading much management literature these days will have noticed the growing demands for civility in the workplace, for an end to bullying and greater emphasis on treating people and speaking more politely. Entire bookshelves are devoted to it. Given the tone of much political debate, news and television, this is understandable across the board. We see a distressing lack of civility in many arenas and we don’t like it. or so we say.

Unfortunately the popular media seem to revel in incivility because, apparently, it sells. It certainly must draw major attention and sell advertising if we can judge by which shows survive the ratings battles. One only has to take a glance at Jersey Shores, the many ‘Real Housewives’ and dozens of others including some very popular blogs and even other supposed ‘reality’ game shows like The Amazing Race, to see the tendency to the worst sort of behavior to draw audiences. The first two are more blatant, but the ‘Race’ weekly shows team members berating each other for various shortcomings only partially balanced by later comments about how much they value and support each other.

Where do we stand really? It’s a puzzle because we are doing whatever we can to promote safe, stress- and harassment-free workplaces, yet we apparently enjoy seeing people verbally lash out at each other. We’d like to see greater civility in public discussion, but we not-so-secretly revel in ‘the other side’ getting slammed, often completely unfairly or out of proportion to what they’ve done, in the press. While we Canadians can feel somewhat smug that our level of public discourse hasn’t descended as far as some, we have to admit we are boosting the ratings of offending TV nearly as much as our neighbors.

It’s not news that human beings have contradictory feelings and thoughts. Perhaps we should just be thankful these cathartic ‘un-reality’ shows give us a chance to get our fill of incivility indirectly. On the other hand, there’s some reasonably reliable evidence that watching violence encourages viewers to act violently. Should we not be concerned this applies to violent discourse as much as actual behavior? That would make an interesting study, one I’m sure some college will undertake shortly.

In the mean time, I’m all for holding managers and workers to higher standards than we see outside of organizations. Realistically, though, I’m not sure we can do that as easily if we don’t at least try to address some of these problems in wider public behavior. Certainly schools, hospitals and other public institutions have been working away at the problem, but politics, the press and other media seem immune. Can we not develop the communication skills to have rigorous disagreements without insults to each other and to our intelligence?

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Filed under: 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Coaching over Command Leadership, Coaching Yourself, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

Impulsive Behavior Affects Strategy, Too

Author: Dave Crisp

11 Sep

Lots of comments on the Internet seem thrilled with Stephen Slater’s theatrical style for quitting Jet Blue – swear at a customer and exit via emergency chute, thus rendering the plane out of commission for three days.

Undoubtedly we’ve all been moved to similar antics in situations. I recall writing “Phooey Ptui” when giving up on a high school physics exam in a peak of frustration. It didn’t help my mark any and I’ve always suspected Mr. Jansen of having less than a stellar sense of humor, but perhaps he just wanted to coach me about losing my cool.

The problem is, as a small number of my teachers demonstrated, when you’re taking out frustration on people below you, not those above, no one is in a position to call you to account unless you step over an invisible line of sexism, racism or harassment of other discernable forms. Call your employee a “b-tch” or the like and you may or may not get hauled up on a carpet somewhere, deservedly, though many don’t. Remarks about people’s work, work ethic or intelligence frequently pass without penalty.

Later in life as a teacher and even later as a manager, it seemed amusing to refer to someone as ‘one brick short of a load’ or any number of other disparaging phrases we hear. Of course, WE would never say that to someone’s face (or where they might hear about it). But some do.

Humor, including banter and snide characterizations, can ease tension at work or anywhere else if handled appropriately, which is to say at least such barbs must be private in some sense. But when they become public daily comments about subordinates, company departments or even customers, their usefulness as stress relievers ends and these are now impulsive evaluations that often substitute for taking corrective action the perpetrator should be seriously considering instead of settling for an easy snipe.

Strangely many executives don’t make the connection. They slide into a habit of commenting negatively on all sorts of people and behavior with such offhand remarks, but don’t act. Venting this way is harmful to everyone who has to hear it and most of all to the executives themselves who should be working on ways to solve the problem rather than simply sidestepping. A habit like this slowly spreads across entire cultures because it means managers lower down don’t get backed to take effective action and they, too, fall into the ‘drive by shooting’ style of evaluation.

We actually need to encourage recognition of impulsive motivations, but see them as a signal that we need to come up with a better idea not a snide comment. Necessity is the mother of invention. The need to blow off steam can be turned to innovation. something companies desperately need all the time. If we’re angry at customers. why and what can we do about it? Same with other departments, co-workers, suppliers, etc., etc. Work is full of frustrations. We call it work for a reason. We need to work at it, but the goal should always be improvement.

Similarly in management we need to be aware of what frustrates employees (not just our behaviors, but those, too). If customers and employees are beginning to resent each other, there are major strategic issues at stake. We can’t simply suggest these are things we should tolerate. They’re signals, loud and clear.

Maybe we should change HR to the Human Signals Department and start picking up on these offhand signals.

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Filed under: 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Coaching over Command Leadership, Communicating Effectively, Fix The Jerks, Human Resources (HR), Leaders of the Future

What’s Courage, Whose Courage?

Author: Dave Crisp

21 Aug

From “old blood and guts” Patton to the newest entrepreneur, the media idolize courage – the sheer guts to initiate an enterprise and take the risks needed to pursue it persistently and make it work – as if it is all personal, all the ‘guts’ of just one individual.

But are we understanding ‘raw courage’ fully with this ‘over the top’ message? Is it all about just pushing ahead ourselves and shouldering all the responsibility of sending the troops out to do our bidding?

I’ve written a few times now about Proust’s ‘seeing the world through new eyes’ and Einstein’s ‘need for a different level of thinking than the one that created the problem.’ Here’s one more. By promoting this ‘manly courage’ model in which the sole hero on a white charger rides in with the answers, the media are overlooking the many other ways to solve a problem, including many that are just coming to be understood – like crowd-sourcing, for instance (asking a great many people to make their best guess or toss in their best ideas or pool their thinking in various ways).

As we enter an era in which no one person can come up with all the necessary ideas to survive and thrive in any particular enterprise, we have to shift to a leadership style that calls forth the best ideas from everyone and is willing to try them out – to risk – to put faith in others instead of shouldering all the responsibility oneself.

Maybe the level of courage we need today in leaders isn’t so much the individual hero who risks everything he or she owns in one shot and leads their troops into a new strategy, but the “humble” hero (to borrow a word from Jim Collins’ excellent leadership strategy book, Good to Great) who has the courage to ask for help and will back ideas from subordinates who seem to have a handle on what could work. It takes no less courage to shoulder the responsibility when a subordinate’s idea goes wrong than to face the firing squad when it’s your own failure.

Why do we persist in these military analogies if not for media hype about the rawness of courage required of great CEOs and leaders? In fact, it’s the day to day small decisions to encourage an employee with a potential solution and make it clear you’ll take the blame if need be. Of course, we want those to be carefully thought out, but the risk ultimately isn’t really different.

Are we just missing choosing the ‘lower level’ of risk-thinking because we revere the ‘higher level’ so much that we can’t be seen to do less? Does it have to be our idea for us to feel we’re seen as risk-takers. I fear that’s exactly what stops many bosses from taking risks on subordinates ideas. It doesn’t feel like a risk if you think you can off-load the blame on someone else. Who said ‘no guts, no glory?’ And did they mean there are no ‘guts’ involved in supporting your team’s ideas as if they were your own, without them having to in fact be your own?

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Leaders of the Future

What Level Was Einstein Imagining?

Author: Dave Crisp

8 Aug

Here’s another Proust-like ‘seeing the world with new eyes’ example that fits leadership and HR. This came to mind when a speaker at SCNetwork’s recent Diversity forum, Brenda Nadjiwan of Indian Affairs, opened her presentation with a quote from Einstein. It’s one I’ve often treated with impatience, partly because it seems almost obvious (have to say, though, we miss lots of obvious things) and partly because it suggests a new struggle and gobs of time may be needed to find a brand new solution. But wait, here’s what came to mind..

The Einstein quote is well known enough: Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. But perhaps Einstein had something different in mind than the obvious meaning that you have to rise up to a higher level of thinking to solve a problem created at a lower level. What if it’s the reverse?

In management strategy we frequently encounter the problem that the solutions we propose are “too simple.” For instance, we point to the tremendous power of simple recognition by senior managers as a powerful force for engagement and performance of staff. Just acknowledge good work we say. It isn’t rocket science. All it takes is literally saying something as simple as, “wow, thanks, that was great” or “I really appreciate your taking the time to think that through, I’m not sure I could have found such a great answer.”

What stops managers from saying stuff like this and reaping the benefits of improved performance from people who will strive like mad to do even better the next time just for a few more words of praise? Can we ever get enough praise? Do we ever get enough so we don’t need more for weeks and weeks and weeks? No. Most of us can absorb that kind of comment almost daily and still crave more. We know what this feels like personally, but we somehow don’t ‘get it’ that others who report to us respond the same way.

Managers argue that employees will tire of this, take it for granted, be even more upset when they don’t get praised next time because we established a baseline (and, oh, it’s work, it takes time, it’s hard to remember to do it – true until it becomes habit!). Many worry that most of the praise would be false, provided for work that’s just a basic expectation of the employee to do a job. Well, I’ve seen tons of employees not do the basics, so it never bothered me to thank people for doing their job and doing it quite well. I never seemed to have too much trouble distinguishing something I could thank someone for and make an even bigger fuss over something truly unique. Psychology tells us repeatedly that positive reinforcement works. So why not?

Isn’t this exactly a case of a problem being solved at a different, but ‘lower level’ of thinking – basic human needs – than the level that created it – expecting all employees to be so ‘grown up’ they just do their jobs because, after all, isn’t that what they’re paid for? Maybe managers are hung up looking for ‘higher level’ solutions when ‘lower level’ would actually work better. Maybe I’ll be accused of ‘lowering the level’ in organizations or in HR, but if it works, if everyone is happy and productivity increases, why not? What do you think?

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 5 Habits - Action, Coaching Issues, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks

Napoleon’s Glance

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Feb

Strategically it sometimes pays to step back from daily routine and read or experience something different… but not necessarily too different – the busman’s holiday they call it – as when you work for a charity, gaining pleasure and learning from doing more of what you do at work. Reading for pleasure, I stumbled on a book by William Duggan, associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, an expert on strategic thinking and author of three books in the field – The Art of What Works (2001), Napoleon’s Glance (2004) and Strategic Intuition (2007). The gist: Napoleon and other amazing leaders followed a route to highly effective strategy that is very, very different from what is normally thought of as strategic planning or strategic thinking.

The principles apply directly to HR strategy. Oddly, just recently, one of the many HR/Learning & Development blogs out there published “Four tips for Effective Leadership,” namely: Be counterintuitive, live comfortably in gray areas, learn by doing and exercise soft skills – exactly what Duggan points to with his great strategists. Strategy isn’t arrived at by ‘planning’ in the sense of laying out exact steps and stages with time lines and benchmarks. Napoleon and the others ‘put their teams in motion,’ ‘looked for small battles they could win decisively,’ ‘stuck to the course with firm resolution,’ and learned to evolve strategies as they went rather than work them out in detail beforehand.

Reading these, I realized that, yes, most successes I ran into along the way evolved ‘in the midst of action’ (a phrase I also recognized from a Zen master talking about finding your way calmly ‘in the midst of action’). Does this apply to HR? My former company got into elearning early and heavily, with great results, because we were asked to look at ‘expert systems’ that the CEO saw at a conference (a different computer technology) and we jumped to use the budget and just get going, without being in the least sure where we were headed, but seeing some possibilities in using technical systems to leverage more people learning more things.

If we’d waited for our IT process that called for developing a technical plan in detail, with projected costs three to five years out, we’d never have gotten off the ground. Yet planning is valuable. In the words of Eisenhower, the top allied General of WWII, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” The difference, in other words, is active versus passive. Get going, planning as you go, through the unexpected twists and uncertainties – don’t wait for “a plan” designed to resolve something you think may happen – it won’t.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, 5 Habits - Action, Books, Business/Strategy, Coaching over Command Leadership, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Mintzberg’s New Book “Managing”

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Nov

Wow. This is the next “Good to Great” – and only 7 years after that, not 20 as Collins’ book was after “In Search of Excellence.” Mintzberg once and for all establishes that management and leadership are immensely complex and have to be learned in the heat of practicing them, not from books or traditional courses. It’s one thing to say this to people and quite another to assemble a massive review, in very short, but dense form, proving it in the words and findings of a century of researchers.

I wrote the rest of this post to a friend, another keen observer, David Creelman of Creelman Research, who brought it to my attention. I realize this is actually a review:

Just finished Managing and have some thoughts it seems good to put down here. It’s an impressive assembly of far-reaching thinking. I think it will probably frustrate and confuse a lot of readers, which is too bad, but possibly an inevitable step in recognizing what really works. The management/leadership complex is just that – very, very complex without any clear single answers, very situational and requiring unique fit or adaptability to succeed at. I agree with the general premise, but would word it a bit differently. I would say not have said we are wrong to hold up leaders as worthy of examination and sometimes praise, but we are wrong to deify the idea of leader and leadership (and wrong to talk about it as a set of things that can be learned by the usual rote learning we get in schools). However, I believe that leaders do make a difference if they operate as Mintzberg outlines – constantly learning and reflecting and by trial and error efforts to improve things. I’m sure he would agree and wonder a bit why he didn’t make that more clear.

As I see it, organizations solidify the ossified structures they form in hopes of sustaining themselves as the original driving leader(s) move on. Theoretically the structure that worked should be able to adapt with new people coming into the slots and changing them to fit changing circumstances, but we haven’t paid nearly enough attention to that concept. We treat the structure almost as sacred once it’s in place (despite the tendency to constantly ‘re-organize’ to solve every problem, which really amounts to re-arranging the deck chairs – it doesn’t really change much – the power hierarchy is too attractive to those rising in it). To some extent the organization structure does ensure some continuity, but for how long if it doesn’t evolve?

It’s easy for those appointed to assume that they somehow inherit the stature of those who built the organization in the first place, not realizing it wasn’t a one-person show, but a cooperative effort that may be seen from outside to be one person. The fact that some initial leaders are strong-man types who create by force and maintain power by force leads to confusion as well. When we know that 90% plus of leaders believe they’re in the smartest 10%, it’s easy to see why they are so willing to try to impose their vision as Mintzberg points out is so common among those newly promoted. At that moment you’re at the peak of confidence in your infallibility; it’s just been proven, so why not impose it? Then it’s hard to back down and reveal your uncertainty as things begin not to work. You may not even realize it isn’t working and just apply more force to drive things the way you ‘see they will work if only everyone cooperates (with your vision).’

We need to help people see that maintaining and developing existing organizations is no less challenging, but very different from the initiating, entrepreneurial phase, that a different type of leader, adept with equally difficult, but different challenges, is needed – one who needs to manage and lead in a very different way, with more visible involvement of others typically, building a truly learning organization, which has to start with a learning leader.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, All That We Know, Coaching Others, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Missing the point makes the point

Author: Dave Crisp

9 Oct

My professional association’s magazine published a very small note about a new study done at University of Chicago: Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter? They express surprise (shock might be a better word) that “warm, flexible and team-oriented people are less likely to thrive [sic - they really mean 'get results'] than organized, structured, attention-to-detail types.”

Oops, that’s an article I have to read! It didn’t take long to find (link above), but, even double-spaced, 54 pages isn’t an easy-to-digest document. This is a great example of why leadership is so often misunderstood.

The key is to understand that when someone misses the point in an article it sometimes helps reinforce the real story when you go dig it out. This is a point I’ve continually tried to make and it comes into very clear focus when you dissect this study.

The researchers, themselves, are very, very clear about several things. 53% of leadership impact comes from one group of skills, which they describe as follows:

“The first and most important factor is a general factor, explaining 53% of the
variation in the ratings. All individual characteristics [emphasis mine] load positively on this factor, ranging from a loading for “integrity” of 0.33 to a loading for “efficiency” of 0.68. It is natural, therefore, to interpret this factor as capturing general talent or ability.” And THEN they go on to identify the second most important factor, which explains 20% of leadership results and is much more difficult to understand. It contrasts warm, team-builders with hard-driving, conscientious types who follow through details and gives preference to the latter for achieving results.

By highlighting what they said, I’m prefiguring the better conclusion. We know from many studies that the most important work trait among the so-called “Big Five” personality characteristics is ‘conscientiousness.’ We also know it’s not the only contributing factor to success. To be highly effective as a leader or in any other challenge involving people, the best results come from having a complex of skills WORKING TOGETHER.

Duh, that means the best solution is NOT the ‘either/or’ one. If you have a choice of only one skill set, of course select the hard-driving, one-man-band, the charismatic if possible, the analytic person who dishes out orders. provided they have one even more important element from that group – they’re consistent. If you want the best results, however, find someone with ALL the contributing skills in a good balance. an ‘all rounder,’ a leader who also coaches and builds effective teams and relationships in addition to these. Get it? Look for the #1 skill set, not the #2 where, if you have to make a choice, you should absolutely pick the hard-driver over the warm team-builder.

Why is it so darn hard for reporters of good research to pick out the key fact not the most explosive? Every leader, to be worthy of the basic name, must drive hard toward the end goals. They need passion and constant attention to details. but the best leaders, the very best, go beyond only that to add in the team-building, coaching abilities. If you can’t find the best, settle for the drive, but don’t suggest those traits are the only ones that count. Don’t make it either/or.

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