Harvard Business Review - HBRs 10 Must Reads on Leadership

On
Leadership

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HBRs 10 must reads on leadership

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4221-5797-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Leadership. I. Harvard business review. II. Title: HBRs ten must reads on leadership. III. Title: Harvard business reviews 10 must reads on leadership.

HD57.7.H3914 2010

658.4'092dc22

2010031617

eISBN: 9781422172025

Contents

Daniel Goleman

Peter F. Drucker

John P. Kotter

Ronald A. Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie

Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones

Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas

Jim Collins

David Rooke and William R. Torbert

Bill George, Peter Sims, Andrew N. McLean, and Diana Mayer

Deborah Ancona, Thomas W. Malone, Wanda J. Orlikowski, and Peter M. Senge

What Makes a Leader?

by Daniel Goleman

EVERY BUSINESSPERSON KNOWS a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job. And they also know a story about someone with solidbut not extraordinaryintellectual abilities and technical skills who was promoted into a similar position and then soared.

Such anecdotes support the widespread belief that identifying individuals with the right stuff to be leaders is more art than science. After all, the personal styles of superb leaders vary: Some leaders are subdued and analytical; others shout their manifestos from the mountaintops. And just as important, different situations call for different types of leadership. Most mergers need a sensitive negotiator at the helm, whereas many turnarounds require a more forceful authority.

I have found, however, that the most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: They all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. Its not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but mainly as threshold capabilities; that is, they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. But my research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still wont make a great leader.

In the course of the past year, my colleagues and I have focused on how emotional intelligence operates at work. We have examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and effective performance, especially in leaders. And we have observed how emotional intelligence shows itself on the job. How can you tell if someone has high emotional intelligence, for example, and how can you recognize it in yourself? In the following pages, well explore these questions, taking each of the components of emotional intelligenceself-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skillin turn.

Most large companies today have employed trained psychologists to develop what are known as competency models to aid them in identifying, training, and promoting likely stars in the leadership firmament. The psychologists have also developed such models for lower-level positions. And in recent years, I have analyzed competency models from 188 companies, most of which were large and global and included the likes of Lucent Technologies, British Airways, and Credit Suisse.

In carrying out this work, my objective was to determine which personal capabilities drove outstanding performance within these organizations, and to what degree they did so. I grouped capabilities into three categories: purely technical skills like accounting and business planning; cognitive abilities like analytical reasoning; and competencies demonstrating emotional intelligence, such as the ability to work with others and effectiveness in leading change.

To create some of the competency models, psychologists asked senior managers at the companies to identify the capabilities that typified the organizations most outstanding leaders. To create other models, the psychologists used objective criteria, such as a divisions profitability, to differentiate the star performers at senior levels within their organizations from the average ones. Those individuals were then extensively interviewed and tested, and their capabilities were compared. This process resulted in the creation of lists of ingredients for highly effective leaders. The lists ranged in length from seven to 15 items and included such ingredients as initiative and strategic vision.

Idea in Brief

What distinguishes great leaders from merely good ones? It isnt IQ or technical skills, says Daniel Goleman. Its emotional intelligence: a group of five skills that enable the best leaders to maximize their own and their followers performance. When senior managers at one company had a critical mass of EI capabilities, their divisions outperformed yearly earnings goals by 20%.

The EI skills are:

Self-awarenessknowing ones strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, and impact on others

Self-regulationcontrolling or redirecting disruptive impulses and moods

Motivationrelishing achievement for its own sake

Empathyunderstanding other peoples emotional makeup

Social skillbuilding rapport with others to move them in desired directions

Were each born with certain levels of EI skills. But we can strengthen these abilities through persistence, practice, and feedback from colleagues or coaches.

When I analyzed all this data, I found dramatic results. To be sure, intellect was a driver of outstanding performance. Cognitive skills such as big-picture thinking and long-term vision were particularly important. But when I calculated the ratio of technical skills, IQ, and emotional intelligence as ingredients of excellent performance, emotional intelligence proved to be twice as important as the others for jobs at all levels.

Moreover, my analysis showed that emotional intelligence played an increasingly important role at the highest levels of the company, where differences in technical skills are of negligible importance. In other words, the higher the rank of a person considered to be a star performer, the more emotional intelligence capabilities showed up as the reason for his or her effectiveness. When I compared star performers with average ones in senior leadership positions, nearly % of the difference in their profiles was attributable to emotional intelligence factors rather than cognitive abilities.

Idea in Practice

Understanding EIs Components