Leadership | All About Performance

Can We Accurately Evaluate Leadership Before Someone Has a Chance to Lead?

In general, our personalities are pretty stable over our adulthood. Yes, we mature and big life events can alter us, but the building blocks of who we are as people are closer in stability to our eye color than our hair color.

This stability has been important to the science of employee selection. The underlying idea of giving any type of pre-employment or promotional test is that the knowledge, skill, ability, or characteristic being measured is stable in that person for a given period of time so that it can be used to predict future performance. With skills, we assume that they will improve over time, so we look for those that a person has right now. For personality and cognitive abilities, we assume that a person will have those at a consistent level for many years and that these aptitudes can be used to develop specific skills, such as leadership.

When I conduct leadership workshops, I typically ask participants if leaders are born (e.g., do some people just have what it takes) or made (e.g., pretty much anyone can be an effective leader if given the right opportunities to develop). The conversation gets people thinking about what behaviors are necessary to lead (good communication, willingness to direct others, attention to details, etc.), which of those can be taught, and which cannot. Put another way, to become a professional basketball player, I can improve how well I shoot, but I cannot do too much about how tall I am.

But, what if we have the direction of trait to leadership wrong? What if the traits to become a leader don’t blossom until someone is given the chance to lead?

This study suggests that being promoted into a leadership position does change the conscientiousness factor of personality. Conscientiousness has been found to be a significant predictor of overall manager effectiveness. It’s an interesting idea in that it suggests that, for some people, we do not know if they have a sufficient amount of a trait that contribute to leadership success until after they become leaders.

As with all good research, it poses as many new questions as answers. For instance, were there increases in conscientiousness across the spectrum or only among certain groups (e.g., were there gains for those who already showed relatively high levels of conscientiousness, so the rich got richer)? Or, does it take a leadership experience to bring out conscientiousness in people who typically do not show it? Or, is leadership a tide that raises everyone’s conscientiousness?

Practically speaking, this is where the study has me thinking about assessing leadership:

1) Putting a re-emphasis on using performance on temporary assignments that involve leadership as part of the selection process in promoting people into supervisory positions.

2) Validating responses on personality tests that are taken after a person goes through a leadership role-play exercise or situational judgment test.

3) Re-thinking what aspects of personality indicate leadership potential (e.g., willingness to direct others and resilience) and broaden our list of things that are leadership skills to include some other aspects of personality (e.g., conscientiousness). We can then focus on selecting based on the former and training on the latter.

Some people have the right mix of attributes that allow leadership to come easily to them. As it turns out, some of those things become more apparent after a person has a chance to lead. This should encourage us to think about how we choose to evaluate leadership potential.

Selecting Managers Who Understand the Value of Praise

When I do leadership/management workshops, the first topic is always motivation. While I am a big believer that motivation must come from within, managers can impact performance, in the short term, by effectively using rewards.

Years of research tells us that cash and other extrinsic rewards can be effective motivators for tasks where individual effort leads to individual results. However, the bigger the distance between effort and results, the less value these incentives have. Oh, and they also lose their effect over time.

The wise manager knows that recognition, praise, and other behaviors that lead to intrinsic rewards are much more powerful. This article provides a good synopsis on how to use a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

While there tends to be a strong focus on rewards, something that gets overlooked is how to select managers who already have this insight. Sure, most can learn it. But, I would think that there are traits that predict how well a person rewards employees. Three of these would include:

A person with a high level of agreeableness is usually warm, friendly, and tactful. They generally have an optimistic view of human nature and get along well with others. People high on this trait are likely to want to make others feel engaged in their work.
Generous people are the ones who give more than is expected of them. Giving a reward to another person is an act that provides praise or a reward to another person when it could be kept to oneself.
View of Employees. Managers who have a “your paycheck is your reward” mentality are not likely to give out a lot of praise. Those who recognize people as individuals, and learn what their needs are, will be much more likely to provide meaningful motivators.

By making motivational skills part of the valid selection process, we are more likely to hire managers who will seek out opportunities to reward results. Appropriate use of such techniques will lead to more engaged and productive employees. They are less likely to turnover, which is critical in our current low unemployment economy.

Celebrating (Painful) Learning

In a previous post I talked about using the Marshmallow Challenge to provide insight into cultures that support risk taking. Taking the stigma out of making mistakes is one way to encourage creativity.

Taking this to the next level are FUN nights (note that curse words figure prominently into the article). This is where entrepreneurs are encouraged to share their failures with others. The thought is that the process makes people more relatable than if they only share your successes. The promoters feel this leads to better networking among the members.

Organizations could adopt this approach as well, but it would take a bit of a balancing act. Most companies want their executives to be approachable, but also want them seen as competent. Employees want to avoid being branded as “the person who had the bad experience.”

The key is to not just share stories of failure. Rather, talk about growth. When executives reveal experiences about what they learned from mistakes, others can see that risk taking, and the inevitable missteps that come with it, are part of the process of becoming successful.

From a selection perspective, there are traits you can look for in hiring potential leaders who are pre-disposed to this kind of learning. One is openness to experience. The other is self-confidence. Validating these types of measures will help you hire people who are willing to confront their mistakes and share their lessons with others.

Leadership on the Hot Fly

If you have been keeping track of the US Open, you know that the extreme heat and humidity has affected the players. It has also tested the leadership and decision making skills of the tournament organizers as they try to keep the players safe, the competition fair, and the paying customers and TV partners happy. But, there is a lot of bureaucracy to deal with, too.

The red tape comes from the rules of different stakeholder organizations: WTA (which runs the women’s tour), ATP (which runs the men’s tour), ITF (which runs the Grand Slam tournaments, of which the US Open is one of 4), and the USTA (which runs the US Open). What could possibly go wrong?

The WTA established a heat policy in 1992 (a 10-minute break between the 2^nd and 3^rd sets if the heat and humidity reach certain levels). The USTA has in the past issued heat guidelines for individual tournaments. Neither the ATP nor the ITF have any policies that speak to excessive heat. However, the Australian Open (another Grand Slam tournament overseen by the ITF) does have one (though not without its critics). During the US Open, the WTA policy has been implemented and the USTA decided to implement a modified version for the men where there is an optional (at the players’ discretion) 10 minute break between the 3^rd and 4^th sets.

The USTA showed some leadership to protect the male players and have not received much blow-back for it, other than, “What took you so long?” Was it the BEST decision? Maybe, or maybe not—I’m not a physiologist. But, they made it before someone was seriously injured (or worse).

What I find most interesting here is that there are four stakeholders in running the tournament, but they have not gotten around to coming up with a standard policy to handle something that they have already had to address and is likely to come up again (both the US and Australian Opens are played in the summer). One can easily imagine other areas where they should be working together (e.g., drug testing and match fixing).

Now, think about your organization. Are your operational policies consistent across business units/locations where they need to be and also flexible to account for local realities? Is it clear who makes on-the-spot decisions when these policies do not cover a particular situation?

It is impossible to come up with a policy for every possible scenario. But, smart organizations develop structures where decision making responsibilities are clear and different parts of the organization can learn from others. This leads to quicker decision making and smarter operations.

Escape Room Selection

Over the weekend I had a chance to go through an escape room (not as scary as it sounds). An escape room is a physical adventure game in which players solve a series of puzzles and riddles using clues, hints, and strategy to complete the objectives. This one was setup so that the team (there were 9 of us) had to solve a variety of number, word, and logic problems related to a theme in order to find clues and “escape” the room. This required a great deal of team work as some problems required information from a variety of sources and there were a good number to be solved in 50 minutes. We were able to escape within the given time (yay us!).

The process reminded me in some ways of an Assessment Center (AC). An AC is a process of evaluating complex skills and abilities in a variety of methods. Normally, a majority of the assessments are in realistic situations, as opposed to only paper-and-pencil, ones. You can see how the escape room experience reminded me of this.

Even though the eventual success of the group relied on teamwork, there were many opportunities to observe individual performance. For instance:

1) Leadership. Who spent time organizing the task (Where should we start? Should we break into small teams?) and who spent his/her time following?

2) Facilitation. Was there someone who kept time, tracked which puzzles still needed solving, and helped the group communicate?

3) Problem Solving. Who actually solved the puzzles?

4) Communication. It was easy to observe who was sharing information with others and who the good listeners were.

It would have been possible to video record, or otherwise gather behaviors, and score them for selection purposed. Or, provide the team and individuals with feedback for development purposes.

If I sound confident about using something like this, which in the case of my puzzle was not anywhere close to a work environment, it’s because I am. The AC method has consistently been found to predict performance and not have adverse impact. Effective ones have participants interact in a business situation other than their own so that job knowledge/experience does not play a big role. This creates an equal footing for all participants and gives a clearer assessment of their skills and abilities.

The escape room added elements of gamification from the facilitator, which is different than most live ACs. Of course, many online assessments have added gamification to their design (though with mixed results).
It was good to see this type of creativity in allowing people to show their skills. Particularly since so many innovations in assessments are focused so much on technology.

People–Can’t Profit With Them, Can’t Profit Without Them

So, in the same week that Tesla says that lack of people is a problem in their business (too many robots!), Starbucks comes to the conclusion that people are biased and are hurting its business, everyone gets training. So, which one is right?

Let’s start with Tesla. Their statement is not as much about how wonderful people are as it is that they haven’t quite (yet) gotten the engineering down for their new cars to be built completely by robots. So, it is not exactly an “Up with people” moment as a “Well, we guess we have to put up with them for a bit longer” one.

The Starbucks situation is a bit stickier. On one hand, they clearly felt as if they had to do something after a horrible incident involving African-American customers to maintain their brand image. But, I think they are setting themselves up for failure. Implicit bias training is well meaning, but correcting a lifetime of assumptions about people in a ½ day seminar is a pretty tall order. What will they do next time a racially tinged incident occurs? Do a full day of training? Validate a test that predicts levels of implicit bias?

Where I think the training will have the most impact is on their new hires. It sets a cultural norm of what is and is not OK. Yes, this will require management support and some way of recognizing employees for being decent human beings. But, in reading the comments on their social media pages after the announcement that may not matter as a lot of people were pretty bent out of shape of having to go one whole afternoon without their Starbucks. Ah, the downsides of selling a legal, but addicting, product.

Service sector organizations will always face the challenge of directing the activities of people in a way that is consistent with their values. Manufacturers are always challenged with introducing technology (which improves efficiency), but also understanding its limits (for now). We are not quite at a point where people can be engineered out of business. So, we still need to lead them in productive ways.

Does Kindergarten Really Have a Culture of Success?

You may be familiar with the marshmallow challenge. It is an intriguing and engaging team building exercise that demonstrates the importance of failure in group interactions.

It is all fun and everyone gets a laugh regarding how, according to an accompanying Ted Talk I show, kindergartners do better at it than those who went to business school. By the way, I’d like to see that replicated because it makes a great story but I doubt that it is really true. But the most important lesson for leaders from it is not that failure eventually grows success. Rather, it is the call to action to create a culture where taking the risk should be rewarded and not only when the risk leads to immediate success.

What leaders should learn from the challenge is that it takes place in an environment that encourages risk taking. There is no one to say, “Let me tell you how we’ve done this before” or “If this doesn’t work out well we are in big trouble.” From this culture, most teams are able to accomplish something that at first seems unlikely in about 18 minutes. This should lead to a candid conversation about the barriers that exist to useful failure and what actions can be taken to change those aspects of the culture.

The nature of kindergarten is to reward process more than results. Incentives in business cannot be quite follow that model and lead to success. However, we can use learning to find the unnecessary hurdles creativity and problem solving.

Flexibility, Bench Strength, and Leadership

An attribute associated with leadership is determination. The idea that once a goal has been established and a plan laid out, effective leadership involves sticking to it and absorbing the inevitable bumps that come along the way. This may involve coaching or training, but requires confidence in the team.

But, what if things get really bad? Should the leader have faith in the plan and work harder on execution? Or, does effectiveness require that things get “blown up” and change on the fly?

There was an interesting example of this in the college football national championship game earlier this week. The University of Alabama (Bama) was playing the University of Georgia (UGA). Bama’s coach had won 5 national championships (6 was the most) going into the matchup, so he knows something about winning big games. While renowned for his success, he is also thought of as being a bit humorless and someone who has extraordinary attention to detail, the latter being a trait shared with other successful coaches, regardless of the sport. This is a person who meticulously plans practices and expects nearly flawless execution.

So, in the championship game, UGA took a large lead into halftime. Bama’s coach was faced with a choice: Conclude that his team was executing poorly and stick with the plan (with some adjustments) or decide that the plan was not working and implement a different one. The coach chose the second option, including replacing many of his star performers, and they won the game in dramatic fashion. What can we learn from this?

1) A plan is not destiny. If leaders view them as the ONLY path, then they will be blind to other opportunities to succeed.

2) Changing approaches requires bench strength (which is literally true in this case). When Bama changed their game plan they also replaced some key players. This was only possible because they had a reservoir of talent with a variety of skills. If they had recruited (the college athletics equivalent of employee selection) players with the same skills, they would only be able to execute one type of plan. Since they had more variety, it gave the coach more flexibility. Think about that when someone says, “We need to hire more people like so-and-so.

3) Effective leaders establish criteria for success and failure. We often here about measuring when we have achieved goals. Less frequently talked about is when it is time to rethink our approach. While perhaps not explicit before the game, Bama’s coach knew when it was time to change to Plan B and made the decision.

Do effective leaders need determination? Of course they do. No plan is ever going to be executed perfectly and without adjustments. But, they also need the humility to know when their plans are failing and the talent available to them to change directions.

Mentoring For Turnover

This is an interesting time of the year in college football in the U.S., and not just because the final games are about to be played. As head coaches who had a poor year get fired (what should constitute the criteria for firing a college football coach is a topic for another blog), schools have begun looking for their next head coach. In some, but not many, cases an assistant who reported to the fired coach will get the job. In others, a head coach from another school will be head hunted. But, the most common instance is when an assistant from another school is hired. That is as if you wanted to hire a new vice-president of your company and you felt that the best candidates were directors at other firms. Why does this happen?

Part is that the athletic directors (those responsible for hiring the new coach) feel that the failure that led to the coach getting fired belongs to the assistant coaches as well. It is hard for them to go to their stakeholders and say, “We had a really bad season, but we think that one of our assistants is a diamond in the rough.” Note that some schools will groom a successor to the head coach when there is a retirement time frame set.

Picking head coaches from other schools typically involves a bigger school (read: one with a larger budget for salaries, practice facilities, etc.) poaching a successful coach from a smaller one. Think of this as an executive doing well at a competitor with less revenue and a firm with more sales thinking that s/he is ready to move up.

The last option, hiring an assistant from another school, is an interesting one because it reflects on the culture of coaching. Head coaches are thought of well when their assistants go on to getting better jobs. Most of them feel that part of their job is to mentor their assistants so they can get a better job—either at the current university if the head coach leaves or anywhere else. Unlike in corporate America, where losing top lieutenants is seen as a sign of a toxic culture, a head coach who has assistants move on (and be successful) at other schools is perceived as having a great “coaching tree” and attracts even better talent.

This culture comes from the coaching profession being relatively small (130 schools at the top level and 124 at the next). Even with 7 to 10 assistants for each team, everyone eventually gets to know everyone through movement, conferences, etc. Almost every college head coach got his job after being an assistant at another school (most likely, after being an assistant at several schools), so a head coach knows how big of a deal it is when an assistant gets the call to run a program.

In business, it is not a good thing if your high potentials are getting their big opportunity someplace else. However, what are you doing to ensure that they get meaningful promotions internally? Is a VP rewarded when one of her directors becomes VP in another division? Or, is she seen as someone who can’t keep good talent? If it is the former, she will attract more high potentials (internally and externally).

You can create this kind of culture if you encourage and train your executives to mentor talent. Recognize them publicly when their direct reports move on to better positions so they will be encouraged to continue to nurture talent and high potentials will want to work for them.

Inviting Introverts to Lead

Whenever I teach about leadership the participants and I talk about the value of charisma. Not surprisingly, most of those in the workshop feel that the most effective leaders are these larger-than-life figures. That is, until we start talking about ones that are not (and often one of them is the CEO of their company). So, what gives?

This article delves into the issue. Note that the author sometimes confuses behavior (which can be changed) with personality (which is VERY stable, despite her claim and her link that is not associated with any research). The real issue is what can introverts do to be effective leaders?

For many, what it comes down to is the expectations of the situation. If I think any task is going to be painful, of course I am going to avoid it. This is how introverts feel about an assignment that involves a lot of group interaction.

This study looked at potential barriers to introverts being effective leaders. What they found was that negative thinking about assuming the role inhibited performance (as measured by emergent leadership). However, and this is important, positive thinking did not lead to more emergent leadership. So, in working with high potential introverts, this data (and it is only one study) suggests that removing undesirable thoughts about the role (e.g., your fears are not accurate, you will not be a failure, etc.) will lead to more leadership behaviors than selling the role (e.g., you will be fabulous, there is no doubt that you will be successful, etc.).

This is important because it shows that those who lack the extroversion trait associated with charisma may still be effective leaders. This increases your pool of leadership potential in your company. It also provides a road map for encouraging introverts, who are otherwise qualified, to take on leadership assignments in way that allows them to be successful.

From a selection perspective, understanding this nuance would be valuable to determining who you choose to be leaders. Rather than assessing introversion/extroversion, you can look at a person’s attitudes towards leading groups as potentially a more valued predictor.