Leadership Effectiveness: the mismatch between what science knows and what business does

The mismatch

In his 2009 TED talk, Dan Pink said “there’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does[i]”.

While Dan was discussing the subject of motivation, our research of effective leadership has identified there’s a mismatch here too. Arguably, a bigger and more costly one.

Organisations like Pan Am, Blockbuster, Kodak, Comet and others too numerous to name have gone to the wall because of a failure of leadership - they failed to innovate, transform and adapt to a changing world. At Enron and Arthur Anderson at the turn of the 21st Century, and at AIG and RBS more recently, ‘invincibility’, a component of narcissism, led to reckless risk-taking by leaders.

Leadership failings are not, of course, limited to just the corporate world.

The US National Transport Safety Board accident reports for the crashes of Alaska Airlines flight 60 in April 1976[ii] and United Airlines flight 173 in December 1978[iii], and the Public Inquiry report into the crash of BEA 548 in June 1972[iv] all identify leadership failures, not only by the aircraft captains, but by their respective flight crews as well.

In medicine and healthcare there is a litany of reports that highlight systemic leadership failures[v], including the incredibly sad story of the death of 37 year-old mother of two Elaine Bromily, following what should have been a routine operation in 2005.

But you don’t have to just look at the obvious historic failures to see the risk. The 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report highlights the need for leaders to “embrace the dynamic career demands of their people”[vi] and goes on to say that “for business leaders, the new models are a wakeup call to adapt or risk falling behind”[vii].

The Leadership problem

The problem is that most people are promoted into leadership positions because of their technical and functional knowledge, their professional skills and competencies, their IQ and their educational achievements. While these ‘hard skills’ are unequivocally important, they are simply not enough. A study of CEO success reported in the Washington Post revealed "zero correlation between pedigree and ultimate performance"[viii]. Personality, expressed through behaviour, plays an really significant role; it impacts everything.

It is surprising, therefore, that remarkably little attention is typically paid to leaders’ personality and behavioural traits as they ascend.

Psychologists now broadly agree that 10 to 15 personality traits are associated with effectiveness at work and research shows that only 20% of us naturally have the traits required for optimal success[ix]. The rest of us - the majority 80% - have to take positive steps to adapt our behaviours if we want to lead effectively.

At least thirty nine different leadership styles, ranging from Autocratic to Laissez-Faire[x] pop up in academic literature although if you look closely, it is possible to identify sufficient similarities to cluster them into just six main styles[xi]. But there’s a twofold challenge with focussing on leadership styles. Firstly they don’t tend to break out the behavioural traits in a sufficiently scientific way and secondly, there are overlapping attributes in the styles that mean the styles themselves are not unique. For example, it is possible to be both an ‘Authentic’ leader and a ‘Servant’ leader at the same time. So whether it’s 6 styles, or 39, or some other numerical value is somewhat irrelevant. What is clear is that the promotion of one style over another has meant leaders and HR & OD professionals have been subjected to fad-like and often conflicting advice.

This situation has been made worse by the mass marketing of personality-assessment tools such as MBTI which is based on untested, decades-old assumptions and was put together by enthusiastic amateurs working from a single source[xii]. It has no scientific validity and is not supported or approved by the scientific community[xiii]. It is very rarely used in clinical psychology[xiv] and the eminent psychologist David Pittenger wrote, in a seminal paper, “there is no obvious evidence that there are 16 unique categories in which all people can be placed”[xv]. One commentator noted “Your MBTI score is hardly more meaningful than your zodiac sign”[xvi].

It seems we’ve swallowed the hype and built leadership development programmes on pretty poor foundations. It should be no surprise, therefore, that McKinsey highlights these programmes frequently fail[xvii].

But there is a better way: it requires us to look at, and properly understand, an individual’s personality and behavioural traits.

Understanding the personality and behavioural traits that help and those that hinder

Research shows there are six traits associated with high performance and combinations of these six traits create a high-performance leadership style. There are also five traits that interfere with performance and are counter-productive, and two traits that operate as either assets or liabilities depending on what other traits are prominent in the profile[xviii].

Three of the positive traits (Achievement Drive, Innovation and Conscientiousness) comprise the ‘Task Mastery’ or ‘Grit’ dimension that includes the drive to tirelessly work through challenges, failures, and adversity.

The other three positive traits (Openness to Feedback, Helpfulness and Sociability) comprise the ‘Social Intelligence & Teamwork’ dimension. This dimension correlates strongly with what is commonly referred to as Emotional Intelligence or EQ.

Three of the counter-productive traits (Approval Seeking, Dependence and Tension) make up the ‘Deference’ dimension while the remaining four traits (Rigidity, Need to Control, Hostility and Competitiveness) comprise the ‘Dominance’ domain.

Other research identifies that increasing self-awareness is an important contributor to a leader’s success in developing his or her leadership skills[xix]. Leaders, and leaders-in-waiting, need to know whether they are one of the lucky 20% who have the natural personality and behavioural traits, or whether they’re part of the 80% who needs to develop. Only when you have a clear starting point can you build an effective development plan.

Using a scientifically reliable and valid assessment of the individual’s personality is the starting point. This rules out self-assessment alone. We now know from advances in cognitive and behavioural neuroscience that, despite the human brain’s phenomenal capabilities, it has a range of flaws including numerous biologically in-built biases, including the ‘egocentric bias’ where the brain modifies things to make us look better[xx]. It’s this bias that, were you to survey drivers on their driving skills using a 1 to 10 scale, there’s a good chance they’ll give themselves an above-average rating. David Dunning of Cornell University found that people who are not conscious of their skill deficits grossly overestimate their skills in areas where they are in fact weak[xxi].

The assessment, therefore, not only needs to use a scientifically reliable and valid tool, but also be multi-rater and multi-layered, taking input from those who witness and perceive the individual’s most prominent behavioural styles at work. This, combined with a self-assessment enables the leader to better understand the person he or she is and to then work with a coach to formulate a tailored development path that involves what Anders Ericsson calls 'deliberate practice'[xxii]. The goal is not to turn us into something we’re not, but to adjust those counterproductive behaviours that are manifest without conscious thinking in order to ‘smooth any rough edges’, and to build upon existing strengths.

Uses and Applications of this Knowledge

Understanding that there has been a gap between what business does to develop effective leadership and what science knows, means we have an opportunity to rethink some of our organisational development approaches. We could, for example:

• Encourage leaders to use a scientifically valid and reliable tool that gives them access to a truly an open, honest and frank analysis of how the people they work with perceive their most prominent behavioural styles in a manner that typical 360 processes and mass-marketed self-assessment tools cannot deliver, and give them the right coaching to help them develop;

• Improve our people acquisition, people management and succession planning processes;

• Use the knowledge as a catalyst to unearth the real root cause(s) of dysfunctionality amongst teams and groups.

Steve Lungley is an Organisational Development Consultant, Transformational Change leader and Coach. He helps organisations bring about business-critical change for which effective leadership is a critical success factor.

[i] https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

[ii] https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR7620.pdf

[iii] https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR7907.pdf

[iv] https://www.fss.aero/accident-reports/dvdfiles/GB/1972-06-18-UK.pdf

[v] Syed, M. (2016) Black Box Thinking, London: John Murray (Publishers)

[vi] https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/human-capital/articles/global-human-capital-trends-2017.html, p.19

[vii] Ibid, p. 32

[viii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/04/17/introverts-tend-to-be-better-ceos-and-other-surprising-traits-of-top-performing-executives/?utm_term=.33f7eb91ed36

[ix] Warren, R (2017) Personality at Work, McGraw-Hill Education

[x] Hassan, H., Asad, S. & Hoshino, Y. (2016) “Determinants of Leadership Style in Big Five Personality Dimensions”, Universal Journal of Management, 4(4), pp. 161-179

[xi] Goleman, D. (2000) “Leadership That Gets Results”, Harvard Business Review, March-April 2000, pp. 14-29.

[xii] Burnett, D. (2017) The Idiot Brain, London: Guardian Books.

[xiii] https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/mar/19/myers-briggs-test-unscientific

[xiv] https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

[xv] Pittenger, D. (1993) “Measuring the MBTI... And Coming Up Short”, Journal of Career Planning.

[xvi] https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

[xvii] Gurdjian, P., Halbeisen, T. & Lane K. (2014) “Why leadership-development programs fail”, McKinsey Quarterly, January 2014

[xviii] https://media.wix.com/ugd/11b8a4_6cc4b1f1eb24463993dddab05f2df9e2.pdf

[xix] Goleman, D. (1998) What makes a leader? Harvard Business Review, 76 (6), pp. 92-102

[xx] Greenwald, A. (1980) “The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal history”, American Psychologist, 35(7) p. 603 in Burnett, D. (2017) The Idiot Brain, London: Guardian Books

[xxi] https://media.wix.com/ugd/11b8a4_3c65616a2b1e4e9c9be0c0ede8bbd034.pdf

[xxii] Ericsson, K. A. (2006) The Influence of Experience and Deliberate Practice on the Development of Superior Expert Performance in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance