Don't believe everything you read in the studies
 Subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Blog |
| The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. |
| For weekly tips and resources pointers, check Wally's Three Star Leadership Letter |
| Find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention. |
| Find out more about Wally's coaching services. |
 |
The headline in the Wall Street Journal makes it seem so simple: "Tough CEOs Often Most Successful, A Study Finds." OK, cancel that emotional intelligence seminar. Get me a copy of Winning through Intimidation.
But wait. Can it really be that simple, that black and white?
First, let's dig a little on the study referred to in the Journal article. Three professors from the University of Chicago used a database including the strengths and weaknesses of 313 candidates for CEO jobs. The database was compiled by a consulting firm called ghSmart Inc. whose specialty is evaluating CEO candidates for corporate clients.
Sounds good so far. The firm does in-depth interviews with the candidates, uses independent sources to assess their version of events, and evaluates them based on several criteria. It also indicates which were hired (225) and how they performed.
OK, it's a small sample, but it still looks like it could yield helpful data. And it does, but not for everyone.
When you dig deeper, you discover that the main companies who hire ghSmart are private equity investors. Most of them are going to take a company private, do a massive rework and bring the company back public as quickly as possible.
A CEO taking a job like that needs different skills, strengths, and orientation than a CEO who's working to improve long term competitive advantage and profitability for a healthy company. A database made up of CEOs hired by private equity firms is hardly a valid sample to evaluate all CEO leadership in all types of companies.
You don't need to look far for evidence. Consider the case of Bob Nardelli. At Home Depot, he managed to alienate just about everyone while he shredded a culture that had worked for decades. But he was snapped up by private equity for Chrysler where he announced the layoff of 10,000 workers beyond the 13,000 already planned and just told Chrysler workers that there may be more layoffs yet.
One reason that you have to dig down and look at how a study was done is that you need to find out if the results are valid and based on a good sample. Then you have to decide if the results make sense for you, your company, or your industry. All leadership is situational and leaders vary a lot.
Effective leaders come in lots of different packages. You don't have to take my word for it. Here's Warren Bennis, writing in his seminal book, Leaders: "They were right brained and left-brained, tall and short, fat and thin, articulate and inarticulate, assertive and retiring, dressed for success and dressed for failure, participative and autocratic."
Some were probably tough. And some were not.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."
Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.
Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.
For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.
Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.
This has been a long running thread in much of my consulting to workplaces and managers. It gets at what’s different - and what’s the same - about human behavior in the workplace as well as life generally.
I remember a multi-part conversation with a colleague, back when Bill Parcells was at his peak, about what it said that he was so angry, unpleasant, and demanding, but the players played hard for him, loved him (mostly), and won for him. Fear of his wrath, like Lombardi, was a piece of the schtick.
We then tried to generalize about what that says about us humans, and although I think sports analogies have only limited utility for the workplace, it was our point of departure for talking about what goes into being a leader - and being lead.
For years I’ve been saying something like, “I won’t deny that being a scary S.O.B. can be one way to get the job done, but you don’t have to be a scary S.O.B. to be a good leader.”
The truth is, being a scary S.O.B. gets old really quickly unless you also know what you’re doing. Parcells knew what he was doing, and the point was that being a scary S.O.B. conveyed his focus, his insistence on high performance, and his personal commitment to success. It was contagious, and the players bought in. Bill Walsh got there too, but conveyed entirely different emotional states – and his players bought in.
Strong, effective leadership emerges from things not always immediately visible or obvious. Somehow, something in addition to intelligence or competence is conveyed to a group of people/employees able to receive that message: we’re going someplace good, and we can get there from here. There’s a feeling of confidence, of sure-footedness. It’s not magic, it’s partly emotional and psychological, obviously - but also strongly, necessarily, grounded in reality “out there.”
Reply to this