How leaders create and use networks

Most people acknowledge that networking-creating a fabric of personal contacts to provide support, feedback, insight, and resources--is an essential activity for an ambitious manager. Indeed, it's a requirement even for those focused simply on doing their current jobs well. For some, this is a distasteful reality. Working through networks, they believe,means relying on "who you know" rather than "what you know"--a hypocritical, possibly unethical, way to get things done. But even people who understand that networking is a legitimate and necessary part of their jobs can be discouraged by the payoff--because they are doing it in too limited a fashion. On the basis of a close study of 30 emerging leaders, the authors outline three distinct forms of networking. Operational networking is geared toward doing one's assigned tasks more effectively. It involves cultivating stronger relationships with colleagues whose membership in the network is clear; their roles define them as stakeholders. Personal networking engages kindred spirits from outside an organization in an individual's efforts to learn and find opportunities for personal advancement. Strategic networking puts the tools of networking in the service of business goals. At this level, a manager creates the kind of network that will help uncover and capitalize on new opportunities for the company. The ability to move to this level of networking turns out to be a key test of leadership. Companies often recognize that networks are valuable, andthey create explicit programs to support them. But typically these programs facilitate only operational networking. Likewise, industry associations provide formal contexts for personal networking. The unfortunate effect is to give managers the impression that they know how to network and are doing so sufficiently. A sidebar notes the implication for companies' leadership development initiatives: that teaching strategic networking skills will serve their aspiring leaders and their business goals well.     

Level 5 leadership. The triumph of humility and fierce resolve

Boards of directors typically believe that transforming a company from merely good to truly great requires a larger-than-life personality--an egocentric chief to lead the corporate charge. Think "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap or Lee Iacocca. In fact, that's not the case, says author and leadership expert Jim Collins. The essential ingredient for taking a company to greatness is having a "Level 5" leader at the helm--an executive in whom extreme personal humility blends paradoxically with intense professional will. Collins paints a compelling and counter-intuitive portrait of the skills and personality traits necessary for effective leadership. He identifies the characteristics common to Level 5 leaders: humility, will, ferocious resolve, and the tendency to give credit to others while assigning blame to themselves. Collins fleshes out his Level 5 theory by telling colorful tales about 11 such leaders from recent business history. He contrasts the turnaround successes of outwardly humble, even shy, executives like Gillette's Colman M. Mockler and Kimberly-Clark's Darwin E. Smith with those of larger-than-life business leaders like Dunlap and Iacocca, who courted personal celebrity. The jury is still out on how to cultivate Level 5 leaders and whether it's even possible to do so, Collins admits. Some leaders have the Level 5 seed within; some don't. But Collins suggests using the findings from his research to strive for Level 5--for instance, getting the right people on board and creating a culture of discipline. "Our own lives and all that we touch will be better for the effort," he concludes.     

Discovering your authentic leadership

The ongoing problems in business leadership over the past five years have underscored the need for a new kind of leader in the twenty-first century: the authentic leader. Author Bill George, a Harvard Business School professor and the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and his colleagues, conducted the largest leadership development study ever undertaken. They interviewed 125 business leaders from different racial, religious, national, and socioeconomic backgrounds to understand how leaders become and remain authentic. Their interviews showed that you do not have to be born with any particular characteristics or traits to lead. You also do not have to be at the top of your organization. Anyone can learn to be an authentic leader. The journey begins with leaders understanding their life stories. Authentic leaders frame their stories in ways that allow them to see themselves not as passive observers but as individuals who learn from their experiences. These leaders make time to examine their experiences and to reflect on them, and in doing so they grow as individuals and as leaders. Authentic leaders also work hard at developing self-awareness through persistent and often courageous self-exploration. Denial can be the greatest hurdle that leaders face in becoming self-aware, but authentic leaders ask for, and listen to, honest feedback. They also use formal and informal support networks to help them stay grounded and lead integrated lives. The authors argue that achieving business results over a sustained period of time is the ultimate mark of authentic leadership. It may be possible to drive short-term outcomes without being authentic, but authentic leadership is the only way to create long-term results.     

Four lessons in adaptive leadership

The armed services have been in the business of leadership development much longer than the corporate world has. Today's military leaders need tools and techniques to face a fast-changing and unpredictable type of enemy--so the armed services train their officers in ways that build a culture of readiness and commitment. Business leaders need to foster an adaptive culture to survive and succeed, given that they, too, face unprecedented uncertainty--and new types of competitors. Michael Useem and his colleagues at the Wharton School incorporate exposure to military leadership into MBA and executive MBA programs. Highlights include direct contact in the classroom with leaders in the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the Department of Defense, along with field-training exercises and battlefield visits. The programs are designed to help students connect viscerally to essential leadership lessons. Four are featured in the article: Meet the troops. Creating a personal link is crucial to leading people in challenging times. Make decisions. Making good and timely calls is the crux of leadership. Mission first. Focus on common purpose and eschew personal gain. Convey strategic intent. Make the objectives clear, but give people the freedom to execute on them in their own way.     

7 transformations of leadership

Most developmental psychologists agree that what differentiates one leader from another is not so much philosophy of leadership, personality, or style of management. Rather, it's internal "action logic"--how a leader interprets the surroundings and reacts when his or her power or safety is challenged. Relatively few leaders, however, try to understand their action logic, and fewer still have explored the possibility of changing it. They should, because leaders who undertake this voyage of personal understanding and development can transform not only their own capabilities but also those of their companies. The authors draw on 25 years of consulting experience and collaboration with psychologist Susanne Cook-Greuter to present a typology of leadership based on the way managers personally make sense of the world around them. Rooke and Torbert classify leaders into seven distinct actionlogic categories: Opportunists, Diplomats, Experts, Achievers, Individualists, Strategists, and Alchemists-the first three associated with below-average performance, the latter four with medium to high performance. These leadership styles are not fixed, the authors say, and executives who are willing to work at developing themselves and becoming more self-aware can almost certainly move toward one of the more effective action logics. A Diplomat, for instance, can succeed through hard work and self-reflection at transforming himself into a Strategist. Few people may become Alchemists, but many will have the desire and potential to become Individualists and Strategists. Corporations that help their executives and leadership teams to examine their action logics can reap rich rewards.     

The young and the clueless

It's natural to promote your best and brightest, especially when you think they may leave for greener pastures if you don't continually offer them new challenges and rewards. But promoting smart, ambitious young managers too quickly often robs them of the chance to develop the emotional competencies that come with time and experience--competencies like the ability to negotiate with peers, regulate emotions in times of crisis, and win support for change. Indeed, at some point in a manager's career--usually at the vice president level--raw talent and ambition become less important than the ability to influence and persuade, and that's the point at which the emotionally immature manager will lose his effectiveness. This article argues that delaying a promotion can sometimes be the best thing a senior executive can do for a junior manager. The inexperienced manager who is given time to develop his emotional competencies may be better prepared for the interpersonal demands of top-level leadership. The authors recommend that senior executives employ these strategies to help boost their protégés' people skills: sharpen the 360-degree feedback process, give managers cross-functional assignments to improve their negotiation skills, make the development of emotional competencies mandatory, make emotional competencies a performance measure, and encourage managers to develop informal learning partnerships with peers and mentors. Delaying a promotion can be difficult given the steadfast ambitions of many junior executives and the hectic pace of organizational life. It may mean going against the norm of promoting people almost exclusively on smarts and business results. It may also mean contending with the disappointment of an esteemed subordinate. But taking the time to build people's emotional competencies isn't an extravagance; it's critical to developing effective leaders.     

Social intelligence and the biology of leadership

A decade ago in these pages, Goleman published his highly influential article on emotional intelligence and leadership. Now he, a cochair of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, and Boyatzis, a professor at Case Western, extend Goleman's original concept using emerging research about what happens in the brain when people interact. Social intelligence, they say, is a set of interpersonal competencies, built on specific neural circuits, that inspire people to be effective. The authors describe how the brain's mirror neurons enable a person to reproduce the emotions she detects in others and, thereby, have an instant sense of shared experience. Organizational studies document this phenomenon in contexts ranging from face-to-face performance reviews to the daily personal interactions that help a leader retain prized talent. Other social neurons include spindle cells, which allow leaders to quickly choose the best way to respond to someone, and oscillators, which synchronize people's physical movements. Great leaders, the authors believe, are those whose behaviors powerfully leverage this complex system of brain interconnectedness. In a handy chart, the authors share their approach to assessing seven competencies that distinguish socially intelligent from socially unintelligent leaders. Their specific advice to leaders who need to strengthen their social circuitry: Work hard at altering your behavior. They share an example of an executive who became socially smarter by embracing a change program that comprised a 360-degree evaluation, intensive coaching by an organizational psychologist, and long-term collaboration with a mentor. The results: stronger relationships with higher-ups and subordinates, better performance of her unit, and a big promotion.     

Developing your leadership pipeline

Why do so many newly minted leaders fail so spectacularly? Part of the problem is that in many companies, succession planning is little more than creating a list of high-potential employees and the slots they might fill. It's a mechanical process that's too narrow and hidebound to uncover and correct skill gaps that can derail promising young executives. And it's completely divorced from organizational efforts to transform managers into leaders. Some companies, however, do succeed in building a steady, reliable pipeline of leadership talent by marrying succession planning with leadership development. Eli Lilly, Dow Chemical, Bank of America, and Sonoco Products have created long-term processes for managing the talent roster throughout their organizations--a process Conger and Fulmer call succession management. Drawing on the experiences of these best-practice organizations, the authors outline five rules for establishing a healthy succession management system: Focus on opportunities for development, identify linchpin positions, make the system transparent, measure progress regularly, and be flexible. In Eli Lilly's "action-learning" program, high-potential employees are given a strategic problem to solve so they can learn something of what it takes to be a general manager. The company--and most other best-practice organizations--also relies on Web-based succession management tools to demystify the succession process, and it makes employees themselves responsible for updating the information in their personnel files. Best-practice organizations also track various metrics that reveal whether the right people are moving into the right jobs at the right time, and they assess the strengths and weaknesses not only of individuals but of the entire group. These companies also expect to be tweaking their systems continually, making them easier to use and more responsive to the needs of the organization.     

Courage as a skill

A division vice president blows the whistle on corruption at the highest levels of his company. A young manager refuses to work on her boss's pet project because she fears it will discredit the organization. A CEO urges his board, despite push back from powerful, hostile members, to invest in environmentally sustainable technology. What is behind such high-risk, often courageous acts? Courage in business, the author has found, seldom resembles the heroic impulsiveness that sometimes surfaces in life-or-death situations. Rather, it is a special kind of calculated risk taking, learned and refined over time. Taking an intelligent gamble requires an understanding of what she calls the "courage calculation": six discrete decision-making processes that make success more likely while averting rash or unproductive behavior. These include setting attainable goals, tipping the power balance in your favor, weighing risks against benefits, and developing contingency plans. Goals may be organizational or personal. Tania Modic had both types in mind when, as a young bank manager, she overstepped her role by traveling to NewYork--on vacation time and on her own money--to revitalize some accounts that her senior colleagues had allowed to languish. Her high-risk maneuver benefited the bank and gained her a promotion. Lieutenant General Claudia J. Kennedy weighed the risks and benefits before deciding to report a fellow officer who had plagiarized a research paper at a professional army school. In her difficult courage calculation, loyalty to army standards proved stronger than the potential discomfort and embarrassment of "snitching" on a fellow officer. When the skills behind courageous decision making align with a personal, organizational, or societal philosophy, managers are empowered to make bold moves that lead to success for their companies and their careers.     

The uncompromising leader

Managing the tension between performance and people is at the heart of the CEO's job. But CEOs under fierce pressure from capital markets often focus solely on the shareholder, which can lead to employee disenchantment. Others put so much stock in their firms' heritage that they don't notice as their organizations slide into complacency. Some leaders, though, manage to avoid those traps and create high-commitment, high-performance (HCHP) companies. The authors' in-depth research of HCHP CEOs reveals several shared traits: These CEOs earn the trust of their organizations through their openness to the unvarnished truth. They are deeply engaged with their people, and their exchanges are direct and personal. They mobilize employees around a focused agenda, concentrating on only one or two initiatives. And they work to build collective leadership capabilities. These leaders also forge an emotionally resonant shared purpose across their companies. That consists of a three-part promise: The company will help employees build a better world and deliver performance they can be proud of, and will provide an environment in which they can grow. HCHP CEOs approach finding a firm's moral and strategic center in a competitive market as a calling, not an engineering problem. They drive their firms to be strongly market focused while at the same time reinforcing their firms' core values. They are committed to short-term performance while also investing in long-term leadership and organizational capabilities. By refusing to compromise on any of these terms, they build great companies.     

The best advice I ever got

A young manager faces an impasse in his career. He goes to see his mentor at the company, who closes the office door, offers the young man a chair, recounts a few war stories, and serves up a few specific pointers about the problem at hand. Then, just as the young manager is getting up to leave, the elder executive adds one small kernel of avuncular wisdom--which the junior manager carries with him through the rest of his career. Such is the nature of business advice. Or is it? The six essays in this article suggest otherwise. Few of the leaders who tell their stories here got their best advice in stereotypical form, as an aphorism or a platitude. For Ogilvy & Mather chief Shelly Lazarus, profound insight came from a remark aimed at relieving the tension of the moment. For Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella, it was an apt comment, made on a snowy day, back when he was a medical resident. For publishing magnate Earl Graves and Starwood Hotels' Barry Sternlicht, advice they received about trust from early bosses took on ever deeper and more practical meaning as their careers progressed. For Goldman Sachs chairman Henry Paulson, Jr., it was as much his father's example as it was a specific piece of advice his father handed down to him. And fashion designer Liz Lange rejects the very notion that there's inherent wisdom in accepting other people's advice. As these stories demonstrate, people find wisdom when they least expect to, and they never really know what piece of advice will transcend the moment, profoundly affecting how they later make decisions, evaluate people, and examine--and reexamine--their own actions.     

What makes a leader?

Superb leaders have very different ways of directing a team, a division, or a company. Some are subdued and analytical; others are charismatic and go with their gut. And different situations call for different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitive negotiator at the helm, whereas many turnarounds require a more forceful kind of authority. Psychologist and noted author Daniel Goleman has found, however, that effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. In fact, Goleman's research at nearly 200 large, global companies revealed that emotional intelligence--especially at the highest levels of a company--is the sine qua non for leadership. Without it, a person can have first-class training, an incisive mind, and an endless supply of good ideas, but he still won't make a great leader. The components of emotional intelligence--self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill--can sound unbusinesslike. But exhibiting emotional intelligence at the workplace does not mean simply controlling your anger or getting along with people. Rather, it means understanding your own and other people's emotional makeup well enough to move people in the direction of accomplishing your company's goals. In this article, the author discusses each component of emotional intelligence and shows through examples how to recognize it in potential leaders, how and why it leads to measurable business results, and how it can be learned. It takes time and, most of all, commitment. But the benefits that come from having a well-developed emotional intelligence, both for the individual and the organization, make it worth the effort.     

Thinking about ... leadership. Warts and all

Does using Tyco's funds to purchase a $6,000 shower curtain and a $15,000 dog-shaped umbrella stand make Dennis Kozlowski a bad leader? Is Martha Stewart's career any less instructive because she may have sold some shares on the basis of a tip-off? Is leadership synonymous with moral leadership? Before 1970, the answer from most leadership theorists would certainly have been no. Look at Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tsetung--great leaders all, but hardly good men. In fact, capricious, murderous, high-handed, corrupt, and evil leaders are effective and commonplace. Machiavelli celebrated them; the U.S. constitution built in safeguards against them. Everywhere, power goes hand in hand with corruption--everywhere, that is, except in the literature of business leadership. To read Tom Peters, Jay Conger, John Kotter, and most of their colleagues, leaders are, as Warren Bennis puts it, individuals who create shared meaning, have a distinctive voice, have the capacity to adapt, and have integrity. According to today's business literature, to be a leader is, by definition, to be benevolent. But leadership is not a moral concept, and it is high time we acknowledge that fact. We have as much to learn from those we would regard as bad examples as we do from the far fewer good examples we're presented with these days. Leaders are like the rest of us: trustworthy and deceitful, cowardly and brave, greedy and generous. To assume that all good leaders are good people is to be willfully blind to the reality of the human condition, and it severely limits our ability to become better leaders. Worse, it may cause senior executives to think that, because they are leaders, they are never deceitful, cowardly, or greedy. That way lies disaster.     

Building a leadership brand

How do some firms produce a pipeline of consistently excellent managers? Instead of concentrating merely on strengthening the skills of individuals, these companies focus on building a broad organizational leadership capability. It's what Ulrich and Smallwood--cofounders of the RBL Group, a leadership development consultancy--call a leadership brand. Organizations with leadership brands take an "outside-in" approach to executive development. They begin with a clear statement of what they want to be known for by customers and then link it with a required set of management skills. The Lexus division of Toyota, for instance, translates its tagline--"The pursuit of perfection"--into an expectation that its leaders excel at managing quality processes. The slogan of Bon Secours Health System is "Good help to those in need." It demands that its managers balance business skills with compassion and caring. The outside-in approach helps firms build a reputation for high-quality leaders whom customers trust to deliver on the company's promises. In examining 150 companies with strong leadership capabilities, the authors found that the organizations follow five strategies. First, make sure managers master the basics of leadership--for example, setting strategy and grooming talent. Second, ensure that leaders internalize customers' high expectations. Third, incorporate customer feedback into evaluations of executives. Fourth, invest in programs that help managers hone the right skills, by tapping customers to participate in such programs. Finally, track the success of efforts to build leadership bench strength over the long-term. The result is outstanding management that persists even when individual executives leave. In fact, companies with the strongest leadership brands often become "leader feeders"--firms that regularly graduate leaders who go on to head other companies.     

What to ask the person in the mirror

Every leader gets off track from time to time. But as leaders rise through the ranks, they have fewer and fewer opportunities for honest and direct feedback. Their bosses are no longer monitoring their actions, and by the time management missteps have a negative impact on business results, it's usually too late to make course corrections that will set things right. Therefore, it is wise to go through a self-assessment, to periodically step back from the bustle of running a business and ask some key questions of yourself. Author Robert S. Kaplan, who during his 22-year career at Goldman Sachs chaired the firm's senior leadership training efforts and cochaired its partnership committee, identifies seven areas for self-reflection: vision and priorities, managing time, feedback, succession planning, evaluation and alignment, leading under pressure, and staying true to yourself. The author sets out a series of questions in each of the areas, illustrating the impact of self-assessment through vivid accounts of real executives. Although the questions sound simple, people are often shocked-even horrified- by their own answers. Executives are aware that they should be focusing on their most important priorities, for instance, but without stepping back to reflect, few actually know where they are allocating their time. Kaplan advocates writing down what you do every working hour for a week and checking how well your actions match up with your intentions. As for feedback, managers should ask themselves whether they're getting truthful evaluations from their subordinates. (In all likelihood, they aren't). It takes time and discipline to persuade your employees to tell you about your failings.     

The five messages leaders must manage

If you want to know why so many organizations sink into chaos, look no further than their leaders' mouths. Over and over, leaders present grand, overarching-yet fuzzy-notions of where they think the company is going. They assume everyone shares their definitions of"vision;" "accountability," and "results". The result is often sloppy behavior and misalignment that can cost a company dearly. Effective communication is a leader's most critical tool for doing the essential job of leadership: inspiring the organization to take responsibility for creating a better future. Five topics wield extraordinary influence within a company: organizational structure and hierarchy, financial results, the leader's sense of his or her job, time management, and corporate culture. Properly defined, disseminated, and controlled, these topics give the leader opportunities for increased accountability and substantially better performance. For example, one CEO always keeps communications about hierarchy admirably brief and to the point. When he realized he needed to realign internal resources, he told the staff: "I'm changing the structure of resources so that we can execute more effectively." After unveiling a new organization chart, he said, "It's 10:45. You have until noon to be annoyed, should that be your reaction. At noon, pizza will be served. At one o'clock, we go to work in our new positions." The most effective leaders ask themselves, "What needs to happen today to get where we want to go? What vague belief or notion can I clarify or debunk?" A CEO who communicates precisely to ten direct reports, each of whom communicates with equal precision to 40 other employees, aligns the organization's commitment and energy with a well-understood vision of the firm's real goals and opportunities.     

The geography of trust

Leaders who rely forever on the same internal advisers, entrusting them with issues of ever greater sensitivity and consequence, run the risk of being sold short and possibly betrayed. Alternatively, lone-wolf leaders who trust no one may make enormous, yet preventable, mistakes when trying to sort through difficult decisions. A sophisticated understanding of trust can protect leaders from both fates. During the past decade, author and consultant Saj-nicole Joni studied leadership in more than 150 European and North American companies. Her research reveals three fundamental types of trustpersonal trust, expertise trust, and structural trust. Executives may persevere in relationships that are based on personal trust, no matter how exalted their leadership roles become. But such relationships are unlikely to remain static. They also probably won't provide the kinds of deep, often specialized knowledge leaders need. In circumstances where advisers' competence matters as much as their character, expertise trust--reliance on an adviser's ability in a specific subject--enters the picture. In organizations, leaders develop expertise trust by working closely with people who consistently demonstrate their mastery of particular subjects or processes. Structural trust refers to how roles and ambitions influence advisers' perspectives and candor. It shifts constantly as people rise through organizations. High-level structural trust can provide leaders with pure insight and information--but advisers in positions of the highest structural trust generally reside outside organizations. These advisers provide leaders with insights that their organizations cannot. High-performing leaders' most enduring--and most valuable--relationships are characterized by enormous levels of all three kinds of trust.     

Work and life: the end of the zero-sum game

Most companies view work and personal life as competing priorities in a zero-sum game, in which a gain in one area means a loss in the other. From this traditional perspective, managers decide how their employees' work and personal lives should intersect and often view work-life programs as just so much social welfare. A new breed of managers, however, is trying a new tack, one in which managers and employees collaborate to achieve work and personal objectives to everyone's benefit. These managers are guided by three principles. The first is to clearly inform their employees about business priorities and to encourage them to be just as clear about personal priorities. The second is to recognize and support their employees as whole people, not only acknowledging but also celebrating their roles outside the office. The third is to continually experiment with the way work gets done, looking for approaches that enhance the organization's performance and allow employees to pursue personal goals. The managers who are acting on these principles have discovered that conflicts between work and personal priorities can actually be catalysts for identifying inefficiencies at the workplace. For example, one manager and his staff found a way to accommodate the increased workload at their 24-hour-a-day command center while granting the staff more concentrated time off. So far, these managers have usually been applying the principles without official sanction. But as the business impact of their approach becomes better appreciated, the authors predict, more and more companies will view these leaders as heralds of change.     

You have to lead from everywhere. Interviewed by Scott Berinato

When responding to a complex, fast-moving crisis, leaders must constantly adapt their mental models and create a "unity of effort." argues Allen, a retired U.S. Coast Guard admiral and the national incident commander for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. That's a much bigger management challenge than approaching the job as a military operation and drawing on unity of command, and it can require nuanced and creative strategies, such as deciding to go "off book" when standard protocol simply won't work. In this edited interview, Allen--who also brought post-Katrina New Orleans back from the brink of anarchy and headed the Coast Guard's response to the September 11 attacks along the eastern seaboard-stresses the need to lead both from headquarters and on the ground. He discusses how the phenomenon of publicly available, real-time information has affected crisis management in recent years, addresses the challenges of managing multiple public and private stakeholders, and shares his thoughts on how to lead when an anxious public is counting on success.     

Ways women lead

Women managers are succeeding not by adopting the traditional command-and-control leadership style but by drawing on what is unique to their experience as women. According to a study the author conducted for the International Women's Forum, men and women in similar managerial jobs make the same amount of money and experience roughly the same degree of work-family conflict. But when they describe their leadership styles, vast differences arise. Men are much more likely than women to view leadership as a series of transactions with subordinates, and to use their position and control of resources to motivate their followers. Women, on the other hand, are far more likely than men to describe themselves as transforming subordinates' self-interest into concern for the whole organization and as using personal traits like charisma, work record, and interpersonal skills to motivate others. Women leaders practice what the author calls "interactive leadership"--trying to make every interaction with coworkers positive for all involved by encouraging participation, sharing power and information, making people feel important, and energizing them. In general, women have been expected to be supportive and cooperative, and they have not held long series of positions with formal authority. This may explain why women leaders today tend to be more interactive than men. But interactive leadership should not be linked directly to being female, since some men use that style and some women prefer the command-and-control style. Organizations that are open to leadership styles that play to individuals' strengths will increase their chances of surviving in a fast-changing environment.