As American leadership consultants working on six continents we see an opportunity to be simultaneously proud and humbled as we observe trends in emerging markets.
The source of pride comes partly from having contributed in the authoring of the modern leadership development canon, but more excitingly, we find thoseprinciples now in demand far beyond the land of the original gray flannel suit.
But we also end up with a suitcase full of humility along the way as we collaborate with burgeoning free marketeers, who apparently see a second wave of commerce coming or are already in the curl. You don’t have to be middle aged to feel like Western-based business is long in tooth and not as nimble compared to the bright young crowd we meet in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
There’s great demand for learning about leadership styles beyond traditional command-and-control. We’re not political scientists, but we can’t ignore the hunch that we’re seeing business be the great democratizer. And in progressive democracies leaders are made, not born. Leaders can be wrong. And leaders can “not know.” They have to earn respect by not only working hard but by bringing willing followers.
Back in the States and Western Europe, business evolved from the industrial revolution, mostly under command-and-control leadership. Let’s watch what happens as new economy powerhouses are forged with participatory leadership and worker empowerment.
Drs. Randall P White and Sandra L Shullman are featured authors in the April issue of CLO Magazine. Writing on Ambiguity Leadership, Randy and Sandy advance the idea that an aptitude for ambiguity and the ability to be comfortable amidst uncertainty are traits that can be measured and developed. Also, they assert that research suggests that they are traits of high-performers. From the article:
Research done by the Executive Development Group suggests that the ability to positively manage uncertainty may be an essential trait of effective leaders, often found in those considered high potentials. Evidence shows it can be measured and learned.
Based on interviews with numerous C-level executives around the world, Elizabeth Mellon, executive director of Duke Corporate Education, said mindset — more than personality and behavior — forms an observable pattern among some of the most successful leaders and that a fearless approach to uncertainty is required.
“C-suite executives reveal a high degree of being comfortable with discomfort,” Mellon said. “They accommodate ambiguity and the uncertainty it brings. They are confident in making decisions that move their organizations into uncharted territory because they know this ensures long-term prosperity. They have ‘solid cores’ that allow them to navigate the unknown and accept not knowing everything. And they tend to have a longer view because they see time as a continuum in which uncertainty will come and go as they progress. Being uncertain doesn’t stifle them.”
We have been studying the affects that ambiguity has on leaders for two decades. The uncertainty that we all feel in ambiguous situations appears to be both a challenge and an opportunity. The ability to fearlessly grapple with ambiguity might be a trait that competitive businesses should seek.
The first of the eight “enablers” sought through our 360 assessment “Ambiguity Architect®” is described as “motivated by mysteries.” While the purpose of Ambiguity Architect is to determine a person’s ability to navigate uncertain situations, we find that many of the contributing traits of high rated participants to be those that are desired by scientists, research and development, inventors and entrepreneurs. If the business environment continues to grow in complexity and scale, and we have many reasons to believe that it will, are these roles that grapple with the unknown not increasingly important to leaders across many industries?
Our data suggests high performers can thrive in uncertain situations in which the ambiguity is not a choice nor desirable. We can only speculate much beyond this, but it is compelling to ask: can leaders learn to seek out uncertainty and ambiguity as a business strategy? Does skill at “being uncertain” become a positive motivator for creative solutions by lessening the severity of judgment for “dumb questions.” If we are operating in uncharted waters who is to say we’re on the wrong course? Perhaps there is a new mode or style of leadership that pursues uncertain situations because of these factors.
We’re happy to see that Toronto’s daily newspaper picked up an excerpt from Randy White’s article in Leadership Excellence for its “Monday Manager” column.
He (Randy White) contends that proponents of the so-called “strengths movement” seem to be passing out permission slips to stop stretching yourself in different directions. But relying on your strengths is a surefire path to executive derailment because it promotes stagnation while inhibiting growth and development. READ MORE HERE.
In addition to our inclusion, Harvey Schachter of The Globe and Mail does a nice job compiling progressive leadership and management items from diverse sources, both online and in print.
Dr. Sandra L. Shullman, Executive Development Group partner, writes this month in Talent Management magazine on the subject of personality profiles.
Sandy’s article offers an objective review of the fortes and foibles of personality assessment instruments and includes insights from two Executive Development Group clients, Jeff Holst and Gregory Pennington, Ph.D. Jeff is a 35-year corporate HR veteran with Coopers Lybrand, Bayer US, Kennametal and now a talent management consultant specializing in executive feedback and coaching. Greg is vice president and global senior leader of development and planning at Johnson Controls.
From the article:
Personality assessments take a beating from skeptics and supporters. The detractors make a case for fallacies and dangers. Notably, Annie Murphy Paul’s 2004 book, Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves, challenged their prevailing use: “They cannot specify how we will act in particular roles or situations. They cannot predict how we will change over time.”
This is partially true. In many cases, personality inventories are presumed to predict comprehensive performance when they can’t.
The other beating comes from the most devout acolytes of personality assessments: the talent managers who misuse the tools. As management demands faster results, HR often is seduced by marketing promises and distributor claims. Myriad management consultant Web sites tout amazing solutions and advertisements for instruments such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Hogan HPI or FIRO-B and DiSC.
Personality instruments are good at predicting two main categories behaviorally related to work: getting along with people and the motivational aspects of getting ahead. READ MORE HERE.
Lily Kelly-Radford, PhD, joins Executive Development Group as a partner. Kelly-Radford will provide executive coaching and leadership development to clients worldwide, with partners Randall P. White, PhD, and Sandra L. Shullman, PhD.
Kelly-Radford is also owner of LEAP Leadership, Atlanta, a leadership consultancy focused on the entertainment and sport industries. She was previously executive vice president global markets at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). At CCL, Kelly-Radford led worldwide delivery of executive education in North America, Europe and Asia.
Lily Kelly-Radford, PhD.
“Lily joins us at a time when global and cross-cultural experience is more vital than ever in our international practice,” says Shullman, who is based in Columbus. Kelly-Radford also expands the Greensboro-headquartered Executive Development Group presence in the United States, as she is based in Atlanta.
Kelly-Radford earned a Doctoral degree in clinical psychology from the University of Georgia. She is licensed to practice in four states.
There are some things your best friend should tell you, so we’ll politely challenge a news release from Cambria Consulting, a firm we’ve admired for years. We wished they had asked for some outside feedback before launching their latest instrument.
The release tells us there is a new way to administer 360-degree feedback without all the bother of an objective facilitator. The product’s main benefit is time savings and a kind of batch processing that allows entire teams to be rated at one time, like “mountains of Julianne fries,” just that easy, just that quick.
From the Business Wire release:
“Using Comparative Rating, managers can evaluate their direct reports together instead of one at a time. This ability to visually compare everyone against the same performance factors not only requires 50 to 70 percent less time, it also provides more accurate assessments. Entire teams and organizations can be assessed simultaneously, with higher completion rates and without rater fatigue. This is a significant benefit to today’s busy managers who would otherwise be burdened by the cumbersome single-rater process.”
The new Cambria360 is, no doubt, a spiffy user-friendly tool. Cambria makes great products. But we wonder if the promotional message obfuscates some of the problems inherent in evaluating such large groups at once. Where is the one-on-one evaluation? As coaches and facilitators, we feel left out.
It certainly is ideally suited for the strength-based leadership movement, with its emphasis on fast results.
Michael J. Benson, PhD, manager leadership assessment, Johnson & Johnson Steven Berglas, PhD, UCLA Anderson School of Management. Anand Chandrasekar, research associate with the Center for Creative Leadership Craig T. Chappelow, senior faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership Guangrong Dai, PhD, researcher, Lominger International—A Korn/Ferry Company Malcolm R. Davies, PhD, principal, Learning At Work Robert W. Eichinger, PhD, vice chairman, Korn/Ferry International. William A. Gentry, Ph.D senior research associate, Center for Creative Leadership Robert Hogan, Ph.D, president, Hogan Assessment Systems Robert B. Kaiser, partner, Kaplan DeVries Inc. Robert E. Kaplan, founding partner, PhD, Kaplan DeVries Inc. Jean Brittain Leslie, senior fellow, Center for Creative Leadership Morgan McCall, PhD, professor of management and organization, Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. King Yii Tang, assistant researcher, Lominger International – A Korn/Ferry Company Randall P. White, PhD, principal, Executive Development Group, adjunct faculty with Duke Corporate Education, London.
Each contributor brings decades of research and work in the field to take the strength-based leadership model to task.
With the publication of The Perils of Accentuating The Positive, the authors draw a line in the sand to say the research by the Gallup Organization is incorrectly applied and potentially dangerous to organizational development.
Focusing solely on strengths is inherently elitist, expensive and wasteful. Research informs us that all organizations, strong or weak, have big gaps in talent. Everyone needs to be well-rounded and capable of working well with other people. When individuals are allowed to follow their strengths with no attention to improving weaknesses, these talent gaps grow wider. Business becomes less productive because other executives have to “pick up the slack” left by the “top performers” who are permitted to flex their strengths. Inevitably, somebody has to do the hard work!
The Gallup Organization has given us much, but there is chasm in their strengths-based school of thought, now promoted by Tom Rath and Barry Conchie in their latest title, Strengths-based Leadership.
We maintain that strengths-based leadership is a mistake an especially ill-advised in our current economy. Talent management, coaching and executive education professionals need to bring this tough love message to the C-suite. Thankfully, we’re seeing the realization spread through electronic and print media…
Coert Visser, passing along some thoughts from David Creelman along with his own “critical examination of the strengths perspective”…
“I fear this might be too individualistic and we’d do well to move into a more interactive, dynamic and situationalist perspective.” Mr. Visser goes on to challenge the research that supports strengths-based leadership. Read more here: Solution Focused Change.
Colleagues Robert B. Kaiser and Robert E. Kaplan warn us, among other things, of “lopsided leadership”: “Once you overplay a strength, you’re at risk of diminished capacity on the opposite pole. For example, a leader who is good at getting people involved in decisions, and has been encouraged to build on that strength, may not realize that in engaging so many others he is taking too long to move into action. Among the senior managers we studied, 97% who overdo forceful leadership in some respect also underdo enabling leadership, according to coworkers. And 94% who overdo operational leadership in some way also underdo strategic leadership. Marked lopsidedness can limit your personal cachet and career prospects.” Read more here: Harvard Business Review.
Dr. Robert Hogan draws a line in the sand about the self-centered nature of positive psychology:
“…high level effectiveness is not the same thing as “flourishing”, a key term for Positive Psychology. IPAR data, for example, clearly show that many if not most talented and accomplished people are driven by private demons. And finally, it is not at all clear what “flourishing” means. If it means being able to live with oneself, then it is clearly only one aspect of psychological health, and it is an aspect that is closely related to narcissism. As such, it is likely to increase the ability to live with oneself at the expense of the ability to live with others, which in turn, will decrease the probability of occupational success (Judge, LePine, & Rich, 2006). If flourishing means self-actualization in a Maslowian sense, then it is simply wrong-headed.”
From “The Science of Personality.”
A few years ago management consultant Roz Savage sat down and wrote two obituaries: One for the life she had, and one for the life she wanted. The result? Today Roz is an eco-adventurer and rows a small boat around the world and across the the globe’s oceans to bring awareness to an increasingly delicate eco-system.
An inspiring woman, and an inspiring exercise. What would your obituary on 2008 look like? And what do you wish 2008 looked like?
