Leadership requirements of the future: What is ahead?

Centauric is launching a exploration of the  future requirements of leaders. We are speaking to thought leaders, scanning the literature and making on the ground observation. In the next few weeks we will be publishing reviews of key articles and posts. Join in the conversation at Centauric Thinking.

What Makes a Great Leader?

What qualities do you think every great leader possesses? Vision? Integrity? Openness? Creativity? Fairness? Assertiveness? Humility? Human resources experts have used those words, among others, to describe the traits leaders should have…but that verbiage falls short of actually defining behaviors that separate so-so leaders from those who are consistently successful.

When one of our clients, about to undergo a search for a new CEO, asked us about desirable leadership traits, I encouraged thinking outside the box, just like Tony Schwartz, author of “Be Excellent at Anything.” He takes a slightly different approach to identifying skills great leaders should have, drawing from his personal experiences working with inspirational people, and finding that great leaders possess four key capacities:

1. The ability to recognize employees’ strengths and believe in their abilities, which leads to expectations that become self-fulfilling. Employees will seek to excel when they have the support and confidence of their leader.

2. The ability to understand employees and meet their specific requirements. When employees’ core needs are met (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual), their performance and sustainability are positively affected.

3. The ability to clarify what success looks like, and then empower and trust employees to determine how to achieve it. Employees need to know what’s expected of them and have the freedom to complete those concrete deliverables as they see fit.

4. The ability to embrace their own “opposites,” i.e., vulnerability balanced by strength and confidence alongside humility. Employees will learn to value themselves, despite their shortcomings, when they see leaders freely acknowledging their imperfections.

Schwartz concludes that great leaders recognize the best way to get the highest value from employees is to give the highest value. That sounds a lot like “lead by example,” a concept that never seems to get old.

Schwartz, Tony. (2010), The Four Capacities Every Great Leader Needs (And Very Few Have), HBR blog

How Rude!

Think about the last time you witnessed someone being rude at work. Did it make you feel uncomfortable? Provoked? Angry? Did it have a negative affect on your job performance, or how you feel about your peers?
A coaching client recently told me that one of his coworkers rudely blasted him in an email about an initiative he was implementing. Adding insult to injury, the email was cc’d to others. My client was shocked…and he felt betrayed and unmotivated to move forward. This is a valuable reminder that how we treat our colleagues has a significant effect on our engagement with work.
Unfortunately, the odds are pretty good that you’ll see someone being rude in the workplace; for up to 25% of employees, it’s a daily occurrence. A 2009 study conducted by researchers from the University of Southern California and University of Florida investigated how witnessing mistreatment influences work performance. They focused on how individuals behave after seeing a co-worker experience mistreatment or rudeness, concentrating on whether it affected their task performance, creativity and/or citizenship behavior.
The study found that witnessing rudeness from a superior or peer affects performance on routine and creative tasks, and also reduces citizenship behavior. It can actually increase anti-social thoughts and behaviors, as a way of enacting revenge. It’s still not clear whether rudeness reduces effort or affects cognition, but it sure does impair the outcome!
These results could be extremely important, as they suggest the possibility that observing rudeness can be a starting point to a spiral of distaste and aggression toward the workplace or colleagues. Maybe our kindergarten teachers were right…a little common courtesy isn’t such a bad idea!
Porath, C.L. &Erez, A. (2009). Overlooked but not untouched: How rudeness reduces onlookers’ performance on routine and creative tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109, 29-44.