Which of these people is your future CEO?

Americans have long believed that U.S. military officers--trained for high-stakes positions, resilience, and mental agility--make excellent CEOs. That belief is sound, but the authors' analysis of the performance of 45 companies led by CEOs with military experience revealed differences in how the branches (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps) prepare leaders for business. Those differences reflect the trade-off between flexibility and process that each branch of the armed services must make. Army and Marine Corps officers operate in an inherently uncertain environment. They define the mission but then give subordinates the flexibility to adjust to realities on the ground. This leadership experience tends to turn out business executives who excel in small firms, where they can set a goal and then empower others to work toward it. Navy and Air Force officers, who operate expensive, complex systems such as submarines and aircraft carriers, are trained to follow processes to the letter, because even small deviations can have large consequences. In corporations, these leaders excel in regulated industries and in firms that take a process approach to innovation. The larger lesson that the military can offer the business world is that fit matters. Different circumstances demand different leadership skills. Hire the person who fits the job.     

Stop holding yourself back

After working with hundreds of leaders in a wide variety of organizations and in countries all over the globe, the authors found one very clear pattern: When it comes to meeting their leadership potential, many people unintentionally get in their own way. Five barriers in particular tend to keep promising managers from becoming exceptional leaders: People overemphasize personal goals, protect their public image, turn their competitors into two-dimensional enemies, go it alone instead of soliciting support and advice, and wait for permission to lead. Troy, a customer service manager, endangered his job and his company's reputation by focusing on protecting his position, not helping his team; when a trusted friend advised him to change his behavior, the results were striking. Anita's insistence on sticking to the tough personal she'd created for herself caused her to ignore the more intuitive part of the leadership equation, with disastrous results--until she let go of the need to appear invulnerable and reached out to another manager. Jon, a personal trainer who had virtually no experience with either youth development programs or urban life, opened a highly successful gym for inner-city kids at risk; he refused to be daunted by his lack of expertise and decided to simply "go for it." As these and other examples from the authors' research demonstrate, being a leader means making an active decision to lead. Only then will the workforce--and society--benefit from the enormous amount of talent currently sitting on the bench.     

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.     

The work of leadership

More and more companies today are facing adaptive challenges: changes in societies, markets, and technology around the globe are forcing them to clarify their values, develop new strategies, and learn new ways of operating. And the most important task for leaders in the face of such challenges is mobilizing people throughout the organization to do adaptive work. Yet for many senior executives, providing such leadership is difficult. Why? One reason is that they are accustomed to solving problems themselves. Another is that adaptive change is distressing for the people going through it. They need to take on new roles, relationships, values, and approaches to work. Many employees are ambivalent about the sacrifices required of them and look to senior executives to take problems off their shoulders. But both sets of expectations have to be unlearned. Rather than providing answers, leaders have to ask tough questions. Rather than protecting people from outside threats, leaders should let the pinch of reality stimulate them to adapt. Instead of orienting people to their current roles, leaders must disorient them so that new relationships can develop. Instead of quelling conflict, leaders should draw the issues out. Instead of maintaining norms, leaders must challenge "the way we do business" and help others distinguish immutable values from the historical practices that have become obsolete. The authors offer six principles for leading adaptive work: "getting on the balcony," identifying the adaptive challenge, regulating distress, maintaining disciplined attention, giving the work back to people, and protecting voices of leadership from below.     

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.     

What leaders really do

Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. Leadership isn't mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having "charisma" or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in today's business environment. Management is about coping with complexity. Its practices and procedures are largely a response to the emergence of large, complex organizations in the twentieth century. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Part of the reason it has become so important in recent years is that the business world has become more competitive and more volatile. More change always demands more leadership. Most U. S. corporations today are overmanaged and underled. They need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership. Successful corporations don't wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential. Indeed, with careful selection, nurturing, and encouragement, dozens of people can play important leadership roles in a business organization. But while improving their ability to lead, companies should remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse. The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other.     

Smart power. Great leaders know when hard power is not enough

The next U.S. administration will face enormous challenges to world peace, the global economy, and the environment. Exercising military and economic muscle alone will not bring peace and prosperity. According to Nye, a former U.S. government official and a former dean at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, the next president must be able to combine hard power, characterized by coercion, and what Nye calls "soft" power, which relies instead on attraction. The result is smart power, a tool great leaders use to mobilize people around agendas that look beyond current problems. Hard power is often necessary, Nye explains. In the 1990s, when the Taliban was providing refuge to Al Oaeda, President Clinton tried---and failed--to solve the problem diplomatically instead of destroying terrorist havens in Afghanistan. In other situations, however, soft power is more effective, though it has been too often overlooked. In Iraq, Nye argues, the use of soft power could draw young people toward something other than terrorism. "I think that there's an awakening to the need for soft power as people look at the crisis in the Middle East and begin to realize that hard power is not sufficient to resolve it," he says. Solving today's global problems will require smart power--a judicious blend of the other two powers. While there are notable examples of men who have used smart power--Teddy Roosevelt, for instance--it's much more difficult for women to lead with smart power, especially in the United States, where women feel pressure to prove that they are not "soft." Only by exercising smart power, Nye says, can the next president of the United States set a new tone for U.S. foreign policy in this century.     

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.     

Risk propensity within the military: a study of Swedish officers and soldiers

Issues concerning risks in the military have gained increased attention within the Swedish Armed Forces, particularly relating to the new focus on an all voluntary force participating in international missions. Military activities inevitably include an element of calculated risk-taking, while at the same time the unnecessary taking of risks must be minimized. Within the context of the specific mission and situation, a number of factors relating to demographic variables, traits and beliefs may influence individual inclinations towards risk behaviour. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between such factors and individual risk propensity. Data were collected from two samples of Swedish soldiers and officers. Examining demographic variables, negative safety values and risk propensity were found to decrease with age, while men demonstrated a more sceptical view of safety measures and a higher risk propensity than women. The trait known as lack of deliberation, reflecting an inability to think ahead and foresee consequences, was positively related to risk propensity. A more sceptical view of safety was shown to be associated with a higher sense of personal invincibility and together with lack of deliberation predicted variations in danger-seeking scores. The distinction between functional and non-functional risk-taking is discussed on the basis of the relationships found in the study. Implications for recruitment to the military as well as for training and leadership are suggested, emphasizing the need for military leaders to balance their leadership in terms of safety-oriented and risk-promoting behaviours.     

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.     

Why should anyone be led by you?

We all know that leaders need vision and energy, but after an exhaustive review of the most influential theories on leadership--as well as workshops with thousands of leaders and aspiring leaders--the authors learned that great leaders also share four unexpected qualities. The first quality of exceptional leaders is that they selectively reveal their weaknesses (weaknesses, not fatal flaws). Doing so lets employees see that they are approachable. It builds an atmosphere of trust and helps galvanize commitment. The second quality of inspirational leaders is their heavy reliance on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions. Such leaders are good "situation sensors"--they can sense what's going on without having things spelled out for them. Managing employees with "tough empathy" is the third quality of exceptional leadership. Tough empathy means giving people what they need, not what they want. Leaders must empathize passionately and realistically with employees, care intensely about the work they do, and be straightforward with them. The fourth quality of top-notch leaders is that they capitalize on their differences. They use what's unique about themselves to create a social distance and to signal separateness, which in turn motivates employees to perform better. All four qualities are necessary for inspirational leadership, but they cannot be used mechanically; they must be mixed and matched to meet the demands of particular situations. Most important, however, is that the qualities encourage authenticity among leaders. To be a true leader, the authors advise, "Be yourself--more--with skill."     

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 work of the leader

Lieutenant General William G. Pagonis led the 40,000 men and women who ran the theater logistics in the Persian Gulf War during its three phases of operation: Desert Shield (buildup), Desert Storm (ground war), and Desert Farewell (redeployment). By military standards, it was a challenging assignment. By the conventions of any nonmilitary complex organization, it was unheard of. In the Persian Gulf, Pagonis's challenges included feeding, clothing, sheltering, and arming over 550,000 people. All of this in an hostile, desert region with a Muslim community distrustful of the "infidels" sent there to protect them. The lessons of leadership gleaned through Pagonis's experiences in the Gulf cross military boundaries--they apply equally to general management and leadership development in the private, civilian sector. To gain a clear sense of the overall organization in an area the size of the Southwest Asian theater, Pagonis deputized proxies, dubbed "Ghostbusters," to be his eyes and ears throughout the desert. His goal was to build a leadership-supporting environment, combining centralized control with decentralized execution. Pagonis believes vision is defined by the leader, but the subordinates define the objectives that move the organization toward the desired outcome. The roots of leadership, Pagonis claims, are expertise and empathy. A leader's work is not only to apply these traits but also to cultivate them--both on a personal and organizational level. True leaders create organizations that themselves cultivate leadership. This can only be achieved through rigorous and systematic organizational development.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

AMBITIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR ASSESSING MILITARY PERFORMANCE IN CRISIS RESPONSE OPERATIONS

This paper addresses the issue of measuring armed forces’ performance in crisis response operations. By means of interviews (17 respondents) and a large scale survey (1,253 respondents) field and general officers of the Netherlands Armed Forces (NAF) have been questioned on perceived organisational success in crisis response operations. The Dutch officers assess the NAF's performance positively. A number of senior officers are hesitant about the usefulness of measuring the performance of crisis response operations. According to them the context in which the operations are being executed is too complex. Most interviewees, however, are convinced that measuring performance is useful and should be improved. These military leaders express a strong need for criteria to assess their performance on the job.     

The Role of Leadership in the Turnaround of a Local Authority

This article examines leadership behaviour during a successful turnaround in a public services organization. Using findings from recent research on leaders in the public services, this article sets out a number of propositions about leadership behaviour. Then a case study of Newham Council from 1996 to 1999 is analysed to show that effective public services leaders do not simply work through visions, communications and empowerment. Successful leadership appears to be much more complex in turnaround situations than is suggested by much of the literature on visionary and transformational leaders.     

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.     

Are you picking the right leaders?

When it comes time to hire or promote, top executives routinely overvalue certain skills and traits while overlooking others. Intuitively, for example, they might seek out team players, people who shine operationally, dynamic public speakers, or those who are demonstrably hungry for greater responsibility. But some attributes that seem like good indicators of leadership potential are, paradoxically, just the reverse. Team players and those who excel operationally often make better seconds in command. Many a great public speaker lacks the subtle one-on-one persuasive powers that a top leader needs. And shows of raw ambition may be more an indicator of ego than of leadership talent. Unfortunately, few organizations have the right procedures in place to produce complete and accurate pictures of their top prospects. Assessments are often based on hearsay, gossip, and casual observation. Many companies spend too much effort trying to develop leaders and not enough effort trying to identify them. A new evaluation process will help you avoid that trap. Candidates are assessed by a group of people who have observed their behavior directly over time and in different circumstances. Using a carefully crafted series of questions, the group can probe a wide range of leadership criteria, including such "soft" attributes as personal integrity, that are difficult to assess. Without such information, senior management will remain vulnerable to misidentifying leadership talent, and the wrong people will continue to make their way up the corporate ladder.