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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
A roadmap to success for tomorrow's leaders
The EQ Leader provides an evidence-based model for exceptional leadership, and a four-pillar roadmap for real-world practice. Data collected from thousands of the world's best leaders—and their subordinates—reveals the keys to success: authenticity, coaching, insight, and innovation. By incorporating these methods into their everyday workflow, these leaders have propelled their teams to heights great enough to highlight the divide between successful and not-so-successful leadership. This book shows you how to put these key factors to work in your own practice, with clear examples and concrete steps for improving skills and competencies. New data from the author's own research into executive functioning describes the neurological aspects of leadership, and a deep look at the leaders of tomorrow delves into the fundamental differences that set them apart—and fuel their achievement.
Leadership is changing, both in look and practice; strictly authoritative approaches are quickly losing ground as today's workers discover the power of collaboration and the importance of interpersonal awareness. This book provides step-by-step guidance for leading from within this space, with evidence-based approaches for success.
- Lead authentically to inspire and motivate others
- Support employee's needs and nurture development
- Communicate with purpose, meaning, and vision
- Foster ingenuity, imagination, and autonomous thinking
An organization's success rests on the backs of its leadership. At all levels, true leadership is about much more than management and task distribution—it's about commitment, collaboration, nurturing talent, developing skills, fostering relationships, and so much more. The EQ Leader integrates the essential factors of successful leadership into a concrete blueprint for the future's leaders.
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Seitenzahl: 536
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: Leadership: What Do We Really Know about Leadership?
The Leadership Explosion
Leadership: What's the Status?
Promoting Leaders from Within
Yesterday's Leaders
Today's Leaders
Tomorrow's Leaders
Good Leader, Bad Leader
Notes
Chapter 2: What Have We Learned about Leadership?
Defining Leadership
Measuring Leadership
Political Leaders
Understanding the Ideal Political Candidate
How Researchers Have Looked at Leadership
Notes
Chapter 3: Leadership: Why Emotional Intelligence?
The Evolution of Intelligences
What Is IQ?
What Is Emotional Intelligence?
How Does the MSCEIT Relate to Leadership?
The Self-Report of Emotional Intelligence
Other Models
Can Self-Reporting Emotional Intelligence Be Valid?
Self-Report Emotional Intelligence, IQ, Personality, and Work Performance
Notes
Chapter 4: Emotional Contagion
Spreading Emotions @work
Emotional Temperature
A Tale of Two Leaders
What Does the Research Say about Emotional Contagion?
How Does a Leader's Emotional Intelligence Affect Others?
Notes
Part I: The Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence
Chapter 5: Self-Perception: Know Thyself
Emotional Self-Awareness: Know Your Feelings
Changing Your Perception of Stress
Looking at Self-Awareness and Self-Regard
How Does Self-Regard Relate to Leadership?
Self-Regard and Toxic Leadership
Does Leader Self-Perception Relate to Subordinates' Performance?
Discovering Your Self-Regard
Emotional Self-Regard: What to Do about It
Know Thyself—Self-Actualization
Gauging Self-Actualization
Notes
Part II: Self-Expression and Leadership
Chapter 6: Self-Expression: Communication through Words and Action
Your Emotional Expression
What Emotions Motivate Your Staff?
How Can You Better Express Yourself?
Asserting Yourself
How Assertiveness Impacts Leaders across Cultures
Becoming More Independent
Notes
Part III: Interpersonal Abilities and Leadership
Chapter 7: Interpersonal: Creating the Bonds of Trust
Developing Your Interpersonal Skills
The Importance of Influence
What Leaders Need to Know about Empathy
How Important Is Empathy in a Leader?
Empathy and Emerging Leaders
Empathy and Gender
Empathy around the World
Empathy: What Can We Do about It?
Social Responsibility and Work
What about the Bottom Line?
Social Responsibility Internationally
Increasing Your Social Responsibility
Notes
Part IV: Decision Making and Leadership
Chapter 8: Making Better Decisions: Emotionally
Trusting Your Instincts
Problem Solving
The Mood You're In
The Mood You Create
How Those “Incidental” Emotions Can Affect You
The Influence of Positive Emotions
The Direct Effects of Emotion
What about the Object of the Decision?
Making Decisions: Feelings versus Calculations
How Subjective Are Our Feelings?
Deciding with Feelings or Logic
Emotional Decision Making and the Brain
Making Strategic Business Decisions
Decision Making and Reality Testing: Which Emotions When?
Impulse Control and Decision Making
Notes
Part V: Stress Management and Leadership
Chapter 9: Stress Management and Leadership
Stress Tolerance and Leadership
How Can You Better Manage Your Time?
The Half-Full Glass
Notes
Part VI: The Four Pillars of Successful Leadership
Chapter 10: The Four Pillars of Successful Leadership: Developing the Model
Developing the Four-Pillar Model: Theories of Leadership
Developing the Four-Pillar Model: Collecting and Analyzing the Data
The Four Pillars
Emotional Intelligence and Derailers
Notes
Chapter 11: Pillar I: Developing Authenticity
Authenticity
Becoming a More Authentic Leader
Becoming More Authentic
Summary
Example of Authentic Leadership
Being Real and the Culture of Reality TV
Why Is This Relevant to Leadership?
Notes
Chapter 12: Pillar II: Developing Leader Coaches
Coaching
What Is a Coaching Leader?
Better Conversations
Develop Strengths
Emotional Skills
Example of Coaching Leadership
Notes
Chapter 13: Pillar III: Developing Insight
Insight
Discovering Your Purpose
Communicating the Purpose
What Is an Insightful Leader?
Self-Actualization
Notes
Chapter 14: Pillar IV: Developing Innovation
Innovation
Examples of Innovative Leaders
What Is an Innovative Leader?
Self-Actualization
What Do Participants Produce?
Developing the Ideas
Notes
Chapter 15: What 360s Can Tell Us about Leaders and Potential Leaders
How Can We Better Assess High Potentials or Emerging Leaders?
How Do Self versus Others Leadership EQ 360 Ratings Compare? Or Do Leaders Overrate Themselves?
International Trends in Leadership
How the Countries Ranked
Emotional Intelligence and the GLOBE Theory
Leadership Orientations and Emotional Intelligence
Notes
Chapter 16: Entrepreneurial Leadership and EQ
The EQ Leader: Entrepreneurial CEOs
Succeeding in a Small Enterprise: Success Running a Dentist Office
What Does It Take to Be an Entrepreneur?
Musician Entrepreneurs
Notes
Chapter 17: Some New Things We're Learning about Leadership
This Chapter
Neuroscience and Leadership
How Do We Manage Change?
How Gen Zers Will Impact the Workplace
How Does the Servant Leader Model Relate to Emotional Intelligence?
Leading from the Top: Effective Boards of Directors
What Can We Learn from Unusual Leaders?
Using the Four Pillars
Investing in Improving Leaders' Emotional Intelligence
A Study Increasing Leaders' Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence Training in Organizations
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Table 2.1
List of Illustrations
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
Figure 3.1
Figure 3.2
Figure 6.1
Figure 7.1
Figure 7.2
Figure 7.3
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Figure 17.10
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Figure 17.12
Guide
Cover
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The EQ Leader
Instilling Passion, Creating Shared Goals, and Building Meaningful Organizations Through Emotional Intelligence
Steven J. Stein
Cover image: © chemc/iStockphotoCover design: Wiley
Copyright © 2017 by Multi-Health Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Stein, Steven (Steven J.), author.
Title: The EQ leader : instilling passion, creating shared goals, and building meaningful organizations through emotional intelligence / Steven J. Stein.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017007229 (print) | LCCN 2017016246 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119349006 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119349013 (epdf) | ISBN 9781119349037 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Emotional intelligence.
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To Micah and Gemma, my grandchildren.
I hope we can advance the state of the art of leadership to the benefit of your world.
Chapter 1LeadershipWhat Do We Really Know about Leadership?
If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.
—THOMAS AQUINAS
What do we really know about leadership? There's been a lot of talk about leadership lately. Judging from the vast number of books, articles, blogs, TED Talks, and more, you would think we have a treasure trove of information about the subject. A quick search on Amazon.com returned 192,136 books dedicated to leadership. In addition, there are hundreds of theses, thousands of articles in journals as well as thousands more research papers on the web. They have been written by a variety of professionals that not only include psychologists but also management theorists, historians, politicians and political scientists, theologians, philosophers, journalists, and other social commentators. Their contributions include scientific analyses, scholarly biographies, and popular accounts of leaders' lives. Knowing how to most effectively lead others can be pretty confusing with that amount of knowledge swirling around. In fact, it's hard to imagine that anyone could think of themselves as an expert in leadership in today's world when there's so much information available.
The Leadership Explosion
How do you deal with so many books on a single subject? Well I have to admit there's no way I was going to go through that many publications. But as I started doing my research, I found that most books fell into one of three categories.
Leader's View
The first group of books are written (or cowritten) by successful leaders. These include biographies of Bill Gates,1 Steve Jobs,2 Rudi Giuliani,3 Jack Welch,4 Carly Fiorina,5 Michael Dell,6 Richard Branson,7 and many others. These books can be very enlightening and educational, and the insights gained by the experiences of these successful people can guide others along certain pathways.
However, the downside I find is that the views presented tend to be idiosyncratic to those leaders. It's how the individual leader sees the world, which, unfortunately, doesn't always match events as they actually happened.
Having interviewed direct reports of some notable leaders, I can assure you that there are often discrepancies between a leader's reality and that of their direct reports. Anyone who has been involved in 360-degree evaluations of leaders, in which performance reports are taken from subordinates, peers, supervisors, and clients, will also know that the leader can see herself or himself somewhat differently than those around her or him. Therefore, although we can learn from each leader's perspective, these perspectives should not be misinterpreted as universal truths.
Observer's View
The next set of books I would classify as the observer's view. The observer is usually a consultant, a professor, a business writer, a business coach, or some variation of these. These people have had a lot of experience with one or more leaders (although they tend not to be leaders of organizations themselves). They bring a lot of insight out of their experiences working with leaders, theorizing about leaders, or studying leaders. Examples include books by John Maxwell,8 David Cottrell,9 Michael Useem,10 Peter Northouse,11 Simon Sinek,12 and others.
The caution with some of these books is that they may come out of preconceived theories with minimal empirical evidence, limited range of leadership settings, use of platitudes, and selective use of examples. There are often useful lessons from these books, but the recommendations are not always practical or easy to apply.
Researcher's View
The third group of books I call the researcher's view. These books tend to come from people with perhaps a few preconceived notions of what makes a good leader, and they approach the subject by evaluating data that encompasses both successful and unsuccessful leadership. Basically, these books use evidence-based procedures in interesting and enlightening ways to evaluate what truly differentiates successful and unsuccessful leaders. Examples include Kouzes and Posner13 and Jim Collins.14
Jim Collins, for example, in his book Good to Great15 started his work by practically discounting the importance of leadership and focusing on the structures, rules, and processes of large iconic companies that had been around for many years. By contrasting successful and unsuccessful companies, matched within the same industry, he came to the conclusion, which was contradictory to his expectations, that leadership does make a difference, in fact, a rather large one. He has championed the Level 5 Leadership in which humility and “fire in the belly” play a dominant role. As he states it:
The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company's core values), to make the company great. Yet at the same time they display a remarkable humility about themselves, ascribing much of their own success to luck, discipline and preparation rather than personal genius.16
In this book, I hope to borrow largely from the researcher's tradition. While I start out with the preconceived notion that emotional intelligence does make a difference in leadership, it has taken more than 20 years for me to reach the clarity of this position. When I started researching emotional intelligence and its importance in the workplace in the early 1990s, my focus was largely on individual performance and the enhancement of performance through emotional intelligence. I was interested in how emotional intelligence could help people better achieve their desired level of success—both at work and at home. Much of this work appears in the book I coauthored with Howard Book, The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success.17 Then I went on to explore how organizations, as a collective whole, could be emotionally intelligent.18
Over the years, the pull toward my study of leadership increased. It was an area I consciously avoided at first, maybe because of what I didn't want to find out about mistakes in my own leadership. But as more articles, books, blogs, and talks came out about emotional intelligence and leadership, I eventually felt I had to join the conversation. Part of the motivation was some of the misconceptions out there about the connection. There were spurious reports of overly high estimates—85 percent or so—of effective leadership due to emotional intelligence and very few of the claims were based on good evidence. At the same time, at Multi-Health Systems (MHS), where we have been testing people's emotional intelligence since the early 1990s, we've built up a database of approximately 2 million people. Many thousands of these were currently leaders, emergent leaders, or identified as high potential future leaders. Not only do we have lots of data, but it's global. We've tested the emotional intelligence of people from all parts of the world; as a result, we are compelled to share our findings on how emotional intelligence influences leadership.
So while I've been committed to the importance of emotional intelligence in human performance for many years, I didn't start with any preconceived notions of how emotional intelligence might impact leadership. In fact, early on in this endeavor, I had radio and TV interviews in which commentators told me why they believed emotional intelligence was a detriment to good leadership. I was told that being “nice” would get you eaten for breakfast in some companies. Of course, I'd have to explain that emotional intelligence was not about being nice. We'll get to the definition in Chapter 3.
Leadership: What's the Status?
What does it take to be a successful leader in today's organizations? Everyone has his or her own image of who a great leader is or what a leader should be. To complicate matters even further, experts have developed hundreds of theories about leadership. We probably know more about leadership today than we have at any other time in our history. Yet, we continue to read about the poor state of leadership in organizations around the world.
In a recent report, the Deloitte Global Human Capital Survey (2014)19 questioned more than 2,532 leaders in 94 countries and found that the biggest workforce “readiness gap” was leadership. Over 38 percent of respondents rated this issue as “urgent” for their organizations (86 percent rated it as either important or urgent)—more than 50 percent higher than the next identified gap—retention and engagement. Interesting, these two issues are quite closely tied together.
The biggest leadership needs reported include developing new leaders faster, globalizing leadership programs, and building deeper bench strength for succession planning. As you will see in the following case study, finding great leaders is not always solved by promoting from within.
Promoting Leaders from Within
Demetri never felt so anxious before. It was worse than his first day at work at the exclusive menswear store. He had been the top salesperson for four years in a row and had fought hard to be promoted to sales manager. He had all the best customers on his roster. Out of the entire sales force, he was the best at establishing profitable relationships. Now that he was rewarded with a promotion and pay raise he felt the pressure to perform at a much higher level than before.
Worry set in. First, he was unsure about how his coworkers would react to him in his new role. He knew at least one of them, Carlos, also applied for the manager position. Would Carlos be upset, perhaps even jealous? Then he worried about the effect his promotion would have on the team. They were a tight team, not just celebrating each other's successes, but socializing together. How would they now respond to him? How should he treat them? Could he keep the relationships the same? Treat them all as his buddies still? Never did Demetri think a promotion, something he worked so hard for, would create so many mixed emotions. Unfortunately, there was no preparation provided for him or the team he was now supposed to lead.
This scenario has been repeated so many times across many industries. People with good technical or sales skills are placed into management positions. The thinking seems to be—if they can sell, do great accounting, make the most widgets, design the best buildings, build the best software, well, then they can probably lead and help others do just as well as they did on the front line.
Unfortunately, leadership doesn't work quite that way. The skills and competencies that help you sell things, build things, analyze things, fix things, and so on, have little to do with being a good leader. Many people I've spoken with shake their heads when they hear about companies such as GE, Google, Microsoft, FedEx, and American Express that spend so much money on leadership training. They're even more surprised when I talk about it in terms of succession planning, but, the fact is, without a willingness to invest in selecting and training leaders, companies are likely to suffer the adverse effects of poor leadership.
When I speak with fellow CEOs they usually can recount a situation where they promoted someone on the basis of technical or industry skills and knowledge. While these skills are important for frontline job performance, leadership, whether supervisory or upper management, requires a different or additional skill set. What are these skills precisely? How do we develop them? These questions will be the theme of this book. I'll be presenting a combination of real stories, modified examples, research studies, personal anecdotes, new data that we've compiled at MHS and some very public examples to illustrate these points. Our emotional intelligence testing over the past 20 years includes over 2 million working people worldwide, and we'll use these sources to inform our leadership discussion.
Yesterday's Leaders
Whenever I give leadership presentations, I generally ask audiences to name an iconic business leader from 100 years ago. Anywhere in the world, whether I'm in Beijing, Buenos Aires, Helsinki, St. Lucia, Sydney, Bangkok, Dubai, Vancouver, or New York City, the name Henry Ford always comes up. While there are a number of reasons that Ford stands out, not the least of which is his innovations in the production of the automobile, he is mostly associated with a particular quote. It seems everyone everywhere remembers at least part of what he said, “to hell with the customer, who can have any color (car they want) as long as it's black.”
What is it about this quote, or attitude that stands out? Well most strong leaders have at least one signature characteristic they carry with them, perhaps as a legacy. For Henry Ford, it was most likely steadfastness. Leaders at that time were seen as captains of the ship. When the CEO made a decision, it was up to everyone in the organization to defend that decision. Not sticking with it was almost akin to treason. And the captain would go down with the ship, protecting his point of view.
This kind of leader is ego driven. The decisions this person makes are more about himself than about what is best for the company. This leader fears looking bad as much as he fears doing bad. In those days, changing your mind (or altering the course of the ship) was perceived as an unbearable weakness. It was the kiss of death upon which the leader would lose respect and no longer be able to face his workers. In parts of Asia, the concept of “saving face” is still a big issue.
While this type of leadership may appear strong to some, it usually comes with negative consequences. According to Lee Iacocca, who wrote the seminal article on Henry Ford for Time magazine, “The problem was that for too long they [Ford] worked on only one model. Although people told him to diversify, Henry Ford developed tunnel vision. He basically started saying ‘to hell with the customer,’ who can have any color as long as it's black. He didn't bring out a new design until the Model A in '27, and by then GM was gaining.”20
Tunnel vision at that time gave Ford's biggest competitor, General Motors, the break it needed to take significant market share. It was Ford's son who stepped in and finally insisted on bringing out new models (such as the Model A) and new colors that were needed for the continued survival of the company.
Ego-driven leaders tend to be driven by the past in that they look to past experiences for confirmation of their decisions, which facilitates steadfastness. What worked before should continue to work today and tomorrow. This supports their need for consistency—steadfastness. However, this can come at the cost of missing out on new opportunities, whether its technologies, changing economies, new strategies, or changes in customer focus.
Today's Leaders
Fast forward to iconic leaders of the late twentieth century. Who stands out in your mind? There are probably a number of names that you can generate, but one that always makes that list is Bill Gates. It was the development of software operating systems that enabled the personal computer to take off and basically change the world as we knew it. Of course, it was Bill Gates and his company Microsoft that made it all happen. Gates has long been seen as enthusiastic about new technologies and the potential they have to change our lives. But not too many people remember that in the early days of the Internet, Gates was decidedly pessimistic and slow off the mark.
I was one of about 2,000 people that attended what was seen at the time as a pivotal talk he gave in a large convention center ballroom back in the early 1990s. Gates spoke about how Microsoft had invested several million dollars exploring the potential of the Internet. His conclusion was that the best commercial use of the World Wide Web would be for video-on-demand, which was already available via cable and satellite. Unfortunately, he estimated that it would take another 20 years to make it practical and commercially viable. To quote Gates, “Bandwidth is a big issue. Unfortunately, it's not like microprocessors where every year you're going to see exponential improvements. But to make this happen will take something like 20 years [italics added]. And the main reason is that to get these high-speed connections to be pervasive, particularly getting them into homes around the world, will take a long time.”21
Microsoft chose to take a pass on the Internet.
Or did they?
It was only a short time after that when a fresh college graduate from the University of Illinois named Marc Andreessen teamed up with an industry veteran named Jim Clark. They created a small start-up called Netscape in Clark's kitchen. Their mission was to simplify and speed up access to the Internet. As soon as their little company went public, it changed the landscape of initial public offerings. It also changed the world. In one blow, Microsoft lagged behind in new, cutting-edge technology.
And Microsoft, in the public's mind, meant Bill Gates, who in numerous forums had staked out a steadfast position that now looked untenable. He was captain at Microsoft, and old-style captains of industry have traditionally gone down with their sinking vessels. At best, they'd find ways to shore up and continue to defend their positions because the worst thing a leader could do would be to publicly change his or her tune. Being inconsistent was worse than being wrong; it would be considered a weakness and waffling under pressure.
So how did Gates handle that situation? After all, at the time he already was one of the richest humans on the planet. Would he stick with his position and take a pass on the Internet? Or would he risk publicly changing his mind? Would he base his decision on what others would think of him? Was he concerned about his ego? Come on, do you really think Bill Gates would be concerned about what other people thought of him in a situation like this?
Gates turned a multibillion-dollar organization around immediately and went flat out after the Internet. Microsoft Explorer was developed and eventually became the world's most widely used web browser. As documented in Time magazine, “The World Wide Web emerged in 1994, making browsers necessary, and Netscape was founded that same year. Sun Microsystems developed Java, the Internet programming language. Gates hung back. It wasn't until 1996 that Microsoft finally, according to Gates himself, ‘embraced the Internet wholeheartedly.’”22
Why did he behave that way? Because Gates, like many of today's successful leaders, was and remains more concerned with success than with what people might think of him. He is driven by the future and opportunities, not by the past or his ego. Learning from the past is valuable, but preserving it can waste energy. Worrying about looking good, being consistent, or keeping the status quo were yesterday's virtues, but today's kiss of death. Successful leaders put their egos behind their missions, move forward with the times, and aren't afraid to alter their positions as necessary.
Tomorrow's Leaders
Having tested so many leaders, both young and old, I have been able to see the trends and where leadership seems to be headed. There is a new signature characteristic that I believe will be essential for tomorrow's leaders. I see it getting more and more important as we look at today's leadership successes and failures. However, I'm not ready to divulge this characteristic yet. Read on and you will discover it.
Good Leader, Bad Leader
Often when doing presentations on leadership I assign the audience an exercise. With participants working in small groups, each team is assigned one of two tasks. Each group is asked to write on a poster either the leadership characteristics most valued by their organization or the leadership characteristics leastvalued by their organization. On one of the posters, I found this list of descriptors:
Explosive
High ego
Always being right
Results driven
Ability to minimize ethical issues
Rigidity
No emotional control
Having serious “attitude”
I stopped to chat with the gentleman leading the group with these items on the board. When I started to ask how these behaviors were discouraged in his organization, he quickly corrected me and explained that these were the valued characteristics at the organization he and several others in the group had worked in. He then explained to me he had worked at Enron and that these were the characteristics valued by the senior team during the two years before it imploded.
We went through the list to see how these factors could be applied to leading an organization. Being explosive was a way of getting other people's attention. It also scared potential detractors and showed them you were serious. Most people would rather not confront someone in that state. Having a high ego is another tactic that implies you are right. After all, if you are so sure of yourself, well, why would anyone argue with that?
Always being right is a show of strength. If you are known around the organization as always being on the right side of an issue, then more people are likely to come onboard with you next time around. It reduces the amount of opposition you're likely to face and will help you win arguments more often than not. Being results driven is not an uncommon corporate position. The problem comes when nothing else matters. Treating people badly, taking shortcuts in processes, making promises you can't keep to customers, all these things are secondary to driving results.
The ability to minimize ethical issues is my favorite, especially when I'm presenting to lawyers and compliance officers. It sometimes gets referred to as ethical overrides. That is, you reward people for finding ways around codes of ethics, sometimes referred to as loopholes. So if I can justify why I needed corporate money for that private jet rental, luxury hotel, great meals, side trip with my family, and so on, everything is okay. I guess at Enron this only worked for a period of time, or until they got caught.
Being rigid is another way of telling people “it's my way or the highway,” something that seems to go over well in Texas, which conveniently is the home of Enron. Similarly, not having, or not displaying, emotional control is a fairly effective way to signal to others that one is not to be crossed/questioned. So is having strong attitude, which was described to me as being bold and assertive, in such a way that people knew not to question the leader's authority. This was described to me as a Texas attitude, which goes along with “don't mess with me.”
In looking at these traits it seems like they can be boiled down to being steadfast (high ego, always being right, results driven, rigidity, serious attitude) and being above questioning/criticism (no emotional control, ability to minimize serious issues, explosive).
It's hard to believe (at least for me) that companies can still operate this way in this day and age. Nevertheless, I've come across variations of this in my travels. Needless to say, some of these procedures can get you short-term results, but, as we've seen in this example, they don't seem to be viable long-term strategies. When I first started this work, it would often take a lot of convincing for some leaders to buy into the idea that managing emotions, for example, not using random anger to motivate, could be good for business. In the following chapters, we'll explore the case for emotionally intelligent leadership and what you can do to get there.
EQ Leader: Things to Think About
What were some of the best books you've read on leadership?
What did you like about them?
Are you familiar with a situation in which someone got promoted to a leadership position and was not well prepared for it?
Can you think of a “signature characteristic” that defines your current or a previous boss?
What would be the “ideal” signature strength of a leader you'd like to work for?
How would you want to be different from bosses you've had to work for?
What would be your signature characteristic as a leader?
Think about your own adaptability and willingness to change direction on important issues.
What do you think the signature strength of tomorrow's leaders will be?
EQ Leader: Actions You Can Take
Ask some of the people you work with for one-word descriptions of your boss.
Ask these same people what they would do differently if they were the leader.
Ask your coworkers about what they like best about their favorite leaders.
If you are a leader, ask some trusted subordinates how they would describe your leadership style.
Ask your subordinates what gets them most excited about their job. Then think about what role you play, as a leader, in cultivating their excitement.
Notes
1.
Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold, and Peter Rinearson,
The Road Ahead
(New York: Viking Press, 1995).
2.
Walter Isaacson,
Steve Jobs
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).
3.
Rudolph W. Giuliani and Ken Kurson,
Leadership
(New York: Hyperion, 2002).
4.
Jack Welch and Suzy Welch,
Winning
(New York: HarperBusiness, 2005).
5.
Carly Fiorina,
Tough Choices: A Memoir
(New York: Portfolio, 2007).
6.
Michael Dell,
Direct from Dell—Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry
(New York: HarperCollins, 2000).
7.
Richard Branson,
Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
(New York: Crown Business, 2011).
8.
John C. Maxwell,
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
, rev. and updated ed. (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007).
9.
David Cottrell,
Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can't Afford to Miss
(Dallas, TX: Cornerstone Leadership Institute, 2002).
10.
Michael Useem,
The Leadership Moment: Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All
, rev. ed. (New York: Crown Business, 1999).
11.
Peter Northouse,
Leadership: Theory and Practice
, 7th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2015).
12.
Simon Sinek,
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
, reprint ed. (New York: Portfolio, 2011).
13.
Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner.
The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations
, 5th ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012).
14.
Jim Collins,
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don't
(New York: HarperBusiness, 2001).
15.
Ibid.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Steven J. Stein and Howard E. Book,
The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000, 2011).
18.
Steven J. Stein,
Make Your Workplace Great: The 7 Keys to an Emotionally Intelligent Organization
(Mississauga, ON: Jossey-Bass, 2007).
19.
Jeff Schwartz, Josh Bersin, and Bill Pelster,
Global Human Capital Trends 2014: Engaging the 21st-Century Workforce
(Westlake, TX: Deloitte University Press, 2014).
20.
Lee Iacocca, “Driving Force: Henry Ford,”
Time
(December 7, 1998).
21.
Bill Gates, “Remarks by Bill Gates,”
Microsoft.com
,
www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches
; Corey Grice and Sandeep Junnarkar, “Gates, Buffett a Bit Bearish,”
CNET News
, July 2, 1998.
22.
David Gelernter, “Bill Gates: Software Strongman,”
Time
(December 7, 1998): 540–553.
Chapter 2What Have We Learned about Leadership?
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.
—PETER DRUCKER
The scientific study of leadership is about 100 years old. There are hundreds of studies that have looked at such things as personality, leadership style, cognitive intelligence (IQ), as well as leadership potential and performance. There have been a number of major reviews of the psychological and business/managerial literature summarizing much of what we know about leadership. One such review by Robert Kaiser and his colleagues nicely summarizes much about what we know from the academic literature.1 For example, they point out the overwhelming evidence that leadership styles are associated with certain effects—“considerate leaders enhance the job satisfaction of subordinates, structured leaders have higher performing teams, and transformational leaders inspire greater commitment.”
In addition, certain styles of leadership have been found to be better in order to get specific results. For example, the best way to lead when you have a high degree of control over a situation is with a task-oriented approach. On the other hand, when you don't have as much control over the situation a people-oriented approach can be better. In other words, in situations with low control, you would need to spend more time dealing with the people and their needs before getting them focused on the task you want done.
Defining Leadership
There are many different definitions of leadership that have been documented in the scientific literature as well as in popular writings. And many of them are very good. However, for the purpose of this book, I will define leadership as:
Behaviors used in any situation where you influence the thoughts, behaviors, or feelings of one or more people.
I see leadership not only based on skills, abilities, and actions, but as situational as well. Today, I am the leader and CEO of a company that employs about 160 people. This role carries a lot of responsibilities, weight, and prestige. However, once I get home, my responsibilities differ greatly. For example, my wife will order me to take out the garbage. She'll then give me several other tasks to do that include going through the mail, washing the dishes, and so on. Unlike being the queen or king, most leaders today are not 24/7 leaders. I participate in a number of groups for CEOs, and the size of their organizations can vary from 5 people to 500. I know very few, if any, leaders today who rule their kingdoms night and day.
The next important aspect for me is the concept of influence. For most of today's leaders, it's all about influence. We no longer live in a command and control society, whether in the workplace or at home. You can give orders, but that doesn't mean you will get the obedience of yesterday. Also, many people work in cross-functional teams where there is no designated leader per se. In order to be successful in leading others where you have no or limited authority over them you will have to be able to influence their behavior.
Today's leaders don't just guide behavior. If you truly want to be successful, you have to change minds and hearts. As the saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.” People today want to be inspired into action. You have to make them want to do what needs to be done.
Finally, how many followers does it take for a leader to be a leader? This almost sounds like the old light bulb joke. Well, in this definition you're a leader even if you only have one follower. You can be a leader if you can convince your partner to do their chores, get your child to do her homework, convince a friend to see the movie you want to see, or even convince your manager to let you take charge of the project. Many of the skills used to influence one person can, when used appropriately, be used to influence dozens, or even hundreds of people. One politician I know, started her career at a local level, convincing enough people, one at a time, to support the installation of a crosswalk at a busy intersection. From there, she went on to win a local election. After that she was elected at a regional (provincial) level. She eventually went on to be a cabinet minister with a major government portfolio, overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars. She was able to leverage her interpersonal skills from one-on-one to one-to-many.
Measuring Leadership
One of the breakthroughs in our understanding of leadership in an academic sense came in a review paper by psychologist Robert Lord and his colleagues at the University of Akron back in 1986.2 While looking at the (then) controversial area in organizational psychology around the usefulness of personality traits in leadership, he found an important distinction. Most organizational psychologists at the time had written off the importance of personality in leadership. This was based on a few poorly designed studies that focused on the importance of IQ in leadership by mainly looking at leader performance, and mostly in academic settings. Of course, you don't need to be an organizational psychologist to realize that personality plays a big part in leadership—if not in leadership performance, at least in leadership selection. For example, it would be hard to imagine a political election in which the personality of the candidates doesn't come into play.
Although it may seem intuitive, this was a big realization. How we select leaders is completely different from how we evaluate their performance. So Kaiser and his group reformulated our understanding of leadership using this distinction and classified studies into two groups: one group of studies that focused on how a leader is seen by others and another group that focused on the effectiveness of the groups that were being led. Basically, this differentiated the groups into leaders who were “looking good” versus those who were “doing good.” Just think about how we select leaders, whether it's CEOs or politicians. We generally go by how they present themselves. Another way to look at it is that the first group of studies focused on the individual leader and the second group looked at how the team, group, or organization was functioning.
Political Leaders
It's interesting how this plays out in the world of politics. Stephen Harper was a Canadian prime minister known for being very effective at getting things done. He was elected prime minister for two terms. He had a strong record of accomplishments but was seen as an introvert. He had come to lead the party through his work in the backroom, as opposed to the more traditional glad-handing politicians are known for. For his first two terms as prime minister, he had run against candidates who were seen as even less personable or likable than he.
He ran again, attempting a third term, against a young, charismatic drama teacher named Justin Trudeau, son of the late former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. At a dinner meeting during the election, I sat at a table with one of his senior cabinet ministers. We got into a discussion about the decreased likability of Harper and the effect his lack of personal appeal (compared to his rival) may have on the upcoming election. She tried to assure me that this wasn't a personality contest. Voters would decide on the candidate's record and would not be swayed by personality. Besides, she told me, Trudeau had no record of accomplishments. As you may know, Harper lost the election by a huge margin to the former drama teacher, who, as she said, had very little record to speak of. Harper's loss may seem like an anomaly, but, as I will illustrate, choosing leaders based on personality, not achievement, is fairly common.
Understanding the Ideal Political Candidate
Of course, the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump presented an ideal laboratory and a historical opportunity for those of us interested in leadership and how leaders are chosen. At MHS, we decided to take advantage of this opportunity, and we conducted two surveys at the beginning of September 2016, before the election. In order to get a better handle of what the emotional intelligence of an ideal leader (in this case, president) would look like, we surveyed 1,000 American voters. The sample selected was one-third Democrats, one-third Republicans, and one-third Independents. Their ideal president, by political affiliation, can be seen in Figure 2.1.3
Figure 2.1 Ideal President EQ Profile by Party Affiliation (© MHS, 2016)
As seen in Figure 2.1, the results were fairly similar across the political divide, which is interesting as this was one of the most divisive elections in recent history. There were some differences: whereas self-declared Democrats prefer, in order of preference, a president who is highest in Impulse Control, Social Responsibility, and Reality Testing. Republicans prefer a president who is strongest in Stress Tolerance, Problem Solving, and Reality Testing. Independents want to see a president highest in Stress Tolerance, Problem Solving, and Impulse Control (see Table 2.1).
Table 2.1 Top Three Qualities of an Ideal President by Party Affiliation
Party Affiliation
Top-Rated Qualities
Democrats
Republicans
First
Impulse Control
Stress Tolerance
Second
Social Responsibility
Problem Solving
Third
Reality Testing
Reality Testing
All three groups seem to be in agreement that the least important of the emotional skills for a president are Emotional Expression, Self-Regard, and Emotional Self-Awareness.
What are the biggest differences between Republicans and Democrats? The biggest difference was in Social Responsibility, with Democrats rating that higher than Republicans. The Independents were close to the Democrats on this. So to win over Independents, the candidates had to show at some level they care about their communities and the world around them. Just caring about your own and nobody else may not win the hearts and minds of Independents. Perhaps Hillary Clinton was seen as too self-motivated to win over Independents. Or perhaps Donald Trump's message of bringing back jobs and repealing Obamacare (due to its escalating costs to subscribers) was demonstrative of Social Responsibility.
The next biggest difference was in Empathy, with Democrats rating Empathy as a more important trait in a president compared to how Republicans rated it. Independents fell right between the two. Democrats want a president who can read the thoughts and feelings of others. This seems less important to Republicans. This is a skill that Bill Clinton is widely regarded as excelling in. A turning point here may have been Hillary Clinton's declaring Trump supporters as “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” Many Independents may have found it unacceptable to write off nearly 50 percent of the electorate.
Finally, the groups differed on Impulse Control. Democrats wanted a president higher in Impulse Control; that is, more able to manage what they say and their behavior. They prefer a president who is more thoughtful and doesn't shoot from the hip. Independents fall somewhere between the two, but slightly closer to Democrats. This factor is less important for Republicans, which may explain why many Republicans are not bothered by Trump's penchant for impulsive use of Twitter.
Comparing Trump and Clinton to the Ideal
We then surveyed a new group of about 1,000 voters, once again almost equally divided among party affiliation. They were sampled with one of two alternate surveys, with 500 voters completing each survey. In one survey, Clinton's emotional intelligence was rated first; in the other survey, Trump's was rated.
As seen in Figure 2.2, neither candidate reaches the ideal president in terms of their emotional intelligence scores. They each have their peaks and valleys, though both Clinton and Trump score highest in Independence and Assertiveness.
Figure 2.2 Emotional Intelligence Ratings of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Compared to Ideal President
The biggest differences between the two are Clinton scoring higher in Impulse Control, Stress Tolerance, and Emotional Self-Awareness, while Trump scores higher in Emotional Expression and Assertiveness, and slightly higher in Independence. It could be that, contrary to what voters say they want, emotional expression and assertiveness are more attractive characteristics of political leaders. While I don't have the evidence here to support it, I would venture to speculate, based on my experience in screening hundreds of candidates for reality TV shows and following up on characteristics of successful contestants, that the combination of high emotional expression and assertiveness, and low impulse control may have been a contributing factor to Trump's victory. Just as Bill Clinton is a natural when it comes to demonstrating empathy, Donald Trump uses his well-honed skills to his advantage. His emotional expression (at times including mocking opponents), assertiveness (clearly expressing his likes and dislikes), and low impulse control (often drifting away from carefully scripted speeches) were a sharp contrast to Hillary Clinton's more often than not standard stump speeches. It helps explain, as one radio interviewer pointed out to me, how Trump filled stadiums with more than 20,000 people. In our president's study, we used other peoples' ratings to look at leadership, something that is becoming more common in leadership research and in organizations.
How Researchers Have Looked at Leadership
Kaiser and his colleagues further extended Lord's work on leadership into four different ways that researchers have looked at leaders. They have examined: (1) what causes leaders to stand out, (2) how the approval of leaders is determined, (3) what constitutes an effective leader, and (4) the performance/outcomes of teams.
Standing Out
The first, sometimes referred to as emergent leadership, has to do with standing out. The focus here has been on people who stand out in one way or another, that is, they are seen by others to be leader like. That can include everything from being tall, having a deep voice, being extraverted, having charisma, or any of a number of characteristics that “stand out.” If you ever worked on a team that was put together to work on a project without a designated leader, you have some understanding of this. Eventually, someone will be seen as the group leader, even if informally. Without a leader, any team will have a difficult time functioning.
If there is one place that “standing out” is seen as important, it has been in the corporate world. Unfortunately, selecting leaders who stand out may be a contributing factor to our problems in corporate leadership, as well as staff engagement, today. In an entertaining book Leonard Sayles,4 almost like a fly on the wall, has documented the steps one takes in climbing the corporate ladder in today's organizations. The sad truth is that it almost reads like the book used in the old Broadway show How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Based on Sayles's observations in a number of organizations, starting from an entry position and getting promoted generally requires following a few rules. First, you want to avoid confrontation. People seen as argumentative or challenging the status quo are not seen as management material. Second, withholding suggestions for improvement in the organization will make you seem more agreeable. By favoring the status quo and resisting change, you are seen as supporting what management has put in place. Third, do not ask your boss to champion “unpopular” positions. Even if these positions could save the company thousands of dollars, you're better off keeping your head down. Fourth, and very importantly, always agree with your boss. If your boss sees you as disagreeable you are unlikely to get promoted. Fifth, spend your time on presentation skills and looking good. Dressing right, being well spoken, and wowing an audience—either in a boardroom or staff meeting—will get you noticed. And, of course, getting noticed as a smooth talker is what this type of leadership is about. Sixth, you have to be seen as having a strong desire to advance your career and look better than your peers. So it's important to drop hints to people with power that you could add a lot to the organization once you have the right position in the organization. Of course it helps to let them know how some of your coworkers may be slacking off, or just not up to snuff, in your humble opinion. And finally, always be working on your next advancement. Spend most of your time and energy, not on the tasks assigned to you per se, but on the activities and behaviors that are important to get that next promotion.
Unfortunately, as you can probably guess, being overly career focused does not lead to team or organizational success. One of the best examples of being overly focused on career has been documented by the former army officer and psychologist Norman Dixon.5 He researched the British military during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What he found was astounding. Basically, the British officers' preoccupation with status and promotion caused the death of tens of thousands of soldiers and the loss of dozens of strategic positions. It was all about “looking good” instead of “doing good.” His observations from the military can easily be applied to many organizational settings even today.
The skills one uses in career success are usually unrelated to, and sometimes the opposite of, the skills a leader needs to achieve team success. For example, to manage your career you should focus on socializing or networking with others, politicking (paying attention to who is important and who isn't and how to get closer to those with power), and networking with outsiders. Basically, you should be building your reputation both inside and outside the organization so when it comes time for a promotion, or when someone you've networked with outside the organization hears of a new opportunity, you immediately come to mind as a likely candidate.
On the other hand, in order to be an effective team leader and get things done, a different set of skills come into play. These include communicating clearly and delivering the right messages to subordinates or team members. Getting things done means that everyone on your team needs to know exactly what is expected of them. You also need to know how to motivate others to work for a common cause. As a team leader you may have to know how to discipline team members who are performing poorly. As conflicts arise within the team you will have to know how to resolve these conflicts. Conflict resolution is a key component of leading an effective team.
In order for you to lead a team it's also important to know how to staff the team. When adding new members or replacing old ones you need to know what skills are required and how to select for them. Finally, as a team leader it's important to know the training needs of your subordinates. People tend to grow in their jobs and will need to pick up new information and skills to keep current.
Approval Ratings
The second way leaders have been measured in the research literature has been based on approval ratings. While standing out has been common in corporate environments, approval is likely most common in the political arena. We generally cast votes on politicians based on how we feel about them. While many people vote by political party, and some vote for policies, the deciding factor in most elections has likely more to do with how you feel about the candidate (either good or bad). Even when looking at research in the corporate environment, Kaiser's review reported that most studies focused on people's feelings about the leader, as opposed to the results or outcomes attributed to that leader. Sometimes we see this in 360 ratings that subordinates complete on their supervisors.
