Category Archives: Leadership

Leadership

Defining “Executive Presence”

Sylvia Ann Hewlett

Communication, “Gravitas”, and Appearance were frequently-cited attributes of Executive Presence in a study by Sylvia Ann Hewlett of the Center for Talent Innovation.

Gavin Dagley

More characteristics of executive presence were identified in interviews with 34 professionals, conducted by Perspex Consulting’s Gavin Dagley and Cadeyrn J. Gaskin, formerly of Deakin University.

Caderyn Gaskin

Five “executive presence” qualities were observable during initial contact:

Status and reputation, similar to “gravitas” discussed by Hewitt,
Physical appearance, mentioned by Hewitt,
Confidence,
Communication ability, included in Hewitt’s “executive presence” triad,
Interpersonal engagement skills.

Five additional presence features emerged during repeated contacts:

Interpersonal integrity,
Values-in-action,
Intellect and expertise,
Outcome delivery,
Use of coercive power.

These qualities combine in different ways to form four presence “archetypes”:

Positive presence, based on favorable impressions of confidence, communication, appearance, and engagement skills plus favorable evaluations of values, intellect, and expertise,
Unexpected presence, linked to unfavorable impressions of confidence plus favorable evaluations of intellect, expertise, and values,
Unsustainable presence combines favorable impressions of confidence, status, reputation, communication, and engagement skills plus unfavorable evaluations of values and integrity,
“Dark presence” is associated with unfavorable perceptions of engagement skills plus unfavorable evaluations of values, integrity, and coercive use of power.

Philippe De Backer

Another typology of executive presence characteristics was identified by Sharon V. Voros and Bain’s Philippe de Backer.
They prioritized elements in order of importance for life outcomes:

Focus on long term strategic drivers,
Intellect,
Charisma, comprised of confidence, intensity, commitment, care, concern and interest in others,
Communication skills,
Enthusiasm for work,
Cultural fit with organisation and team,
Poise,
Appearance.

Fred Luthans

University of Nebraska’s Fred Luthans and Stuart Rosenkrantz with Richard M. Hodgetts of Florida International University investigated the relationship between “executive presence” and career “success.”
These researchers observed nearly 300 managers across levels at large and small mainstream organizations when leaders:

Communicated,
Engaged in “traditional management” activities, including planning, decision making, controlling,
Managed human resource issues.

Richard Hodgetts

Communication and interpersonal skills, coupled with intentional networking and political acumen enabled some managers to rapidly advance in their organizations.

These rapidly-advancing managers were identified as “successful” leaders because they achieved a higher organizational level compared with their organizational tenure.
In contrast, “effective” managers demonstrated greater managerial skill than “successful” managers, but were not promoted as quickly.

“Effective” managers spent most time managing employees’ activities including:

Motivating and reinforcing desired behaviours,
Managing conflict,
Hiring,
Training and developing team members,
Communicating by exchanging information,
Processing paperwork.

Stuart Rosenkrantz

Subordinates of “effective” managers reported more:

Job satisfaction,
Organizational commitment,
Performance quality,
Performance quantity.

Differences in advancement and subordinate reactions to “successful” and “effective” managers were related to differing managerial behaviors.

“Successful” managers spent little time in managerial activities, but invested more effort in networking, socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
Their networking activities were most strongly related to career advancement but weakly associated with “effectiveness.”

Few managers were both “successful” and “effective”:
Only about 10% leaders were among the top third of successful managers and effective managers.
This suggests that effective managers who support employee performance may not be advance as rapidly as managers who prioritize their own career over their employees’ careers.

Gender differences in gravitas, communication, and political acumen may explain why men more often are seen as possessing “executive presence.”

Women who aspire to organizational advancement benefit from cultivating both gravitas and proactive networking to complement communication and interpersonal skills.

-*Which behaviors and characteristics are essential to “Executive Presence?”

Related Posts

©Kathryn Welds

Creating Productive Thought Patterns

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Albert Ellis

Leaders’ actions actions are influenced by unspoken self-talk.
Sometimes, these thoughts are self-critical and provoke anxiety.

Aaron Beck

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), developed by University of Pennsylvania’s Aaron Beck, provides a systematic way to notice and restructure “irrational self-talk.“
Similar approaches were developed by Albert Ellis in Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), and David Burns in his synthesis of CBT and RET.

David Burns

Arizona State University’s Charles Manz and Chris Neck translated these self-management processes to managerial development.
They outlined a Thought Self-Leadership Procedure as a five-step circular process:

Charles Manz

1. Observe and record thoughts,

2. Analyze thoughts for potential errors in reasoning (jumping to conclusions, exaggeration),

3. Substitute alternate positive, realistic, plausible, acceptable thoughts,

4. Monitor personal reactions to these thoughts,

5. If more negative thoughts appear, continue to substitute the more productive thoughts.

John Crimmins

Other recommendations to manage thoughts about stressful situations were distilled by John Crimmins of Behaviour Institute in coaching people at work.

He suggested asking the following questions:

How do I know if this thought is true?
What evidence do I have to support this thought or belief?
How can I test my assumptions/beliefs to find out if they’re accurate?
What would a trusted friend say about these thoughts?
How is this thought helpful now?
What other ways that I can think about this situation?
What would a friend say when I blame myself in this situation?
What would I say to a friend who was in this situation?
What would a friend say to me when I take this situation personally?
How can I consider this situation on a continuum rather than in either-or terms?

-*What practices do you use to develop and apply productive thought patterns?

©Kathryn Welds

Followers’ Role in Enabling Bad Leaders

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Barbara Kellerman

Seven types of ineffective and unethical leaders are enabled by their followers, according to Harvard’s Barbara Kellerman.

She categorized bad leaders as:

• Incompetent – Failing to create positive change,

• Rigid – Not adapting to new ideas, conditions,

• Intemperate – Lacking self-control,

• Callous – Uncaring and unkind, discounting needs and wishes of group members, especially subordinates,

• Corrupt – Advancing self-interest ahead of public interest, through “lying, cheating, and stealing”,

• Insular – Disregarding health and welfare of outsiders,

• Evil – Committing atrocities, using pain as an instrument of power, exerting physical, psychological harm.

Kellerman’s earlier work focused on Hitler’s leadership, and asserted that his power wouldn’t have existed without complaint followership.

John Darley

She noted that bystanders who do not speak up enable bad leaders to continue their practices.

“Bystander Apathy” was documented more than forty years ago by NYU’s John Darley and Bibb Latané of Columbia.

Bibb Latane

Given status differentials between leaders and subordinates, followers can break out of complacent observership only if organizational structures enable them to call attention to unethical leadership practices.

Kellerman suggested mitigation practices for various organizational structures in a videotaped lecture, including developing support coalitions and considering external opportunities for employment outside the organisation.

-*What “bad leader” roles have you observed in your organization?

-*What seem to be effective ways to interact with a “bad” organizational leader?

©Kathryn Welds

Performance Excellence linked to Preventing Failures, Corrective Coaching

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Atul Gawande

Simple behavior changes, such as following a structured checklist, can prevent crucial workplace errors and increase quality in medical settings, found Harvard’s Atul Gawande.

He found that people effectively improved their performance when they recognized weaknesses in organizational processes, and took proactive steps to remedy these shortcomings.

Three elements of better performance can be applied across industries:

Diligence – Attending to details can prevent errors and overcome obstacles.
Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right suggests best ways to structure these memory aids,
Doing Right –Ensuring that skill, will, and incentives are aligned to drive excellent performance,
Ingenuity – Deliberately monitoring potential failures, continuously seeking innovative ways to improve performance and solutions.

These elements can be improved with attentive observation and feedback to prevent errors of omission when people don’t:

Know enough (ignorance),
Make proper use of what they know (ineptitude).

Ignorance occurs less frequently than ineptitude because relevant information is widely available, Gawande noted.
He suggested that both errors can be improved by systematic analysis and consistent use of tools like checklists.

Geoffrey Smart

Checklist-based analysis was also linked to Internal Rate of Return (IRR) in Geoffrey Smart’s study of investments by Venture Capital (VC) firms,

He found a correlation between IRR and leadership effectiveness in new investment ventures.
Selecting capable leaders is critical to business outcomes, so Smart also evaluated VC firms’ typical approach to assessing potential leaders:

The Art Critic is the most frequent approach in which the VC assesses leadership talent at a glance, intuitively, based on extensive experience,
The Sponge conducts extensive due diligence, then decides based on intuition,
The Prosecutor interrogates the candidate, tests with challenging questions and hypothetical situations,
The Suitor woos the candidate instead of analyzing capabilities and fit,
The Terminator eliminates the evaluation because the venture firm replaces the company’s originators,
The Infiltrator becomes a “participant-observer” in an immersive, time-consuming experientially-based assessment,
The Airline Captain uses a formal checklist to prevent past mistakes.
This last approach was linked to the highest average Internal Rate of Return (IRR) for the new ventures.
In addition, this strategy was significantly less likely to result in later terminating senior managers.

Venture Capitalists in these studies reported that two of their most significant mistakes were:

Investing insufficient time in talent analysis,
Being influenced by “halo effect” in evaluating candidates.

Systematic reminders to execute all elements required for expert performance can prevent failure and signal potential failure points.

-*How do you improve performance?
-*What value do you find in expert coaching?

Related Post:
Developing a SMARTER Mindset for Resilience, Emotional Intelligence – Part 2

©Kathryn Welds

“Strategic Umbrage” as Negotiation Strategy

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Daniel R Ames

Negotiation assertiveness style and understanding how others perceive assertive behaviours can determine success in bargaining, according to Columbia University’s Daniel Ames and Abbie Wazlawek.

Individuals who apply more assertiveness than required to achieve their goals have less-accurate self-perception than less assertive people, and both groups experience “self-awareness blindness.”

Abbie Wazlawek

A mismatch between negotiation partners’ ratings of appropriate assertiveness was linked to poorer negotiation outcomes for both parties.

Nearly 60% of negotiators who were rated as appropriately assertive but felt over-assertive (“line-crossing illusion”) negotiated the inferior deals for themselves and their counterparts.

This finding suggests that disingenuous emotional displays (such as “strategic umbrage” – feigned anger) were associated with a negotiation partner seeking the first acceptable deal.
This reduces the opportunity to achieve an optimal outcome for both participants.

Jeffrey Kern

Negotiators can increase their accuracy in judging their negotiation partner’s impression of their degree of assertiveness in the negotiation, (“meta-perception“) by:

-Participating in 360 degree feedback,

-Increasing skill in listening for content and meaning,

–Considering whether negotiation proposals are “reasonable” in light of alternatives,

-Requesting feedback on reactions to “strategic umbrage” displays to better understand perceptions of “offer reasonableness,”

-Evaluating costs and benefits of specific assertiveness styles.

Gary Yukl

Over-assertiveness may provide the benefit of “claiming value” in a negotiation but may lead to ruptured interpersonal relationships, according to Jeffrey M. Kern of Texas A&M, SUNY’s Cecilia Falbe and Gary Yukl.

Cultural norms for assertiveness vary across countries.
In “low context” cultures like Israel, dramatic displays of emotion and assertion are expected in negotiations.
In contrast, “high context” cultures like Japan, require more nuanced assertiveness, with fewer direct disagreements and fewer “strategic umbrage” displays, according to Edward T. Hall, then of the U.S. Department of State.

Edward T Hall

Under-assertiveness may minimise interpersonal conflict, but may lead to poorer negotiation outcomes and undermined credibility in future interactions, according to Ames’ related research.

To augment a less assertive style, he suggested:

Set slightly higher goals,
Reconsider assumptions that greater assertion leads to conflict,
Increase proactivity to show respect and improve outcomes,
Observe outcomes when collaborating with more assertive other people.

To modulate a more assertiveness style:

Make slight concessions to increase trust with others,
Evaluate the outcomes when collaborating with less assertive other people.

*How do you match your degree of assertiveness to negotiation situations?

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©Kathryn Welds

“Emotional Contagion” in the Workplace By Observing Others, Social Media

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Emotions can be “contagious” between individuals, and can affect work group dynamics.

Douglas Pugh

Emotional contagion iinvolves replicating emotions displayed by others.
Contagion differs from compassion, which enables understanding another’s emotional experience without actually feeling it, which is more characteristic of empathy, noted Virginia Commonwealth University’s S. Douglas Pugh.

Adam D I Kramer

“Viral emotions” can be transmitted through social media platforms with no need to observe nonverbal cues, according to Facebook’s Adam D. I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory of University of California, San Francisco and Cornell University’s Jeffrey T. Hancock.
This suggests that social media can significantly affect the emotional tone in workplaces and the interpersonal relations that take place there.
In addition, the emotional tone evoked by social media posts can affect workplace productivity.

Jeffrey Hancock

When positive emotional expressions were reduced in Facebook News Feeds, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts.
In contrast, when negative emotional expressions were reduced, people reduced negative posts, indicating that others’ emotional expressions influence bystanders’ emotions and behaviors.

Sigal Barsade

People in performance situations are influenced by observing others’ emotions.
When participants witnessed positive emotions in a decision task, they were more likely to cooperate and perform better in groups, found Wharton’s Sigal Barsade.

Individuals who were more influenced by others’ emotions on R. William Doherty’s Emotional Contagion Scale also reported greater:

Reactivity,
Emotionality,
Sensitivity to others,
Social functioning,
Self-esteem,
Emotional empathy.

They also reported lower:

Alienation,
Self-assertiveness,
Emotional stability.

Stanley Schachter

People are more likely to be influenced by others’ emotions when they feel threatened, because this elicits increased affiliation with others, according to Stanley Schachter‘s emotional similarity hypothesis.

Brooks B Gump

Likewise, when people believe that others are threatened, they are more likely to mimic others’ emotions, found Syracuse University’s Brooks B. Gump and James A. Kulik of University of California, San Diego.

Elaine Hatfield

Women reported greater contagion of both positive and negative emotions on the Emotional Contagion Scale in research by Doherty with University of Hawaii colleagues Lisa Orimoto, Elaine Hatfield, Janine Hebb, and Theodore M. Singelis of California State University-Chico.

James Laird

People who are more likely to “catch” emotions from others are also more likely to actually feel emotions associated with facial expressions they display, reported Clark University’s James D. Laird, Tammy Alibozak, Dava Davainis, Katherine Deignan, Katherine Fontanella, Jennifer Hong, Brett Levy, and Christine Pacheco.
This suggests that those with greater susceptibility to emotional contagion are convincing to themselves and others.

Christopher K. Hsee

Contrary to expectation, people with greater power notice and adopt emotions of people with less power, found University of Hawaii’s Christopher K. Hsee, Hatfield, and John G. Carlson with Claude Chemtob of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Participants assumed the role of “teacher” or “learner” to simulate role-based power differentials, then viewed a videotape of a fictitious participant discussing an emotional experience.
Volunteers then described their emotions as they watched the confederate describe a “happiest” and “saddest” life event.
People in higher power roles were more attuned to followers’ emotions than expected.

The service industry capitalizes on emotional contagion by training staff members to show positive emotions with the goal of increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

James Kulik

However, customer satisfaction measures were more influenced by service quality than employees’ positive emotional displays, according to Bowling Green State’s Patricia B. Barger and Alicia A. Grandey of Pennsylvania State University.

Emotions can positively or negatively resonate through work organizations with measurable impact on employee attitude, morale, engagement, customer service, safety, and innovation.

-*How do you intentionally convey emotions to individuals and group members?
-*What strategies do you use to manage susceptibility to “emotional contagion”?

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©Kathryn Welds

“High-Commitment” Workplaces Enhance Creative Problem Solving, Innovation

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Richard E. Walton

Some organizations have implemented suggestions by Harvard’s Richard E. Walton to cultivate a “high-commitment work systems (HCWS)” as a “lever” to positively influence employee productivity, retention, and innovation.

High-commitment employee benefits are designed to elicit employees’ reciprocal commitment and intrinsic motivation to support the organization’s objectives.
These programs include:

Employee participation initiatives,
Team rewards,
Profit sharing,
Career development training,
Internal transfer opportunities,
Internal advancement opportunities, with preference over external candidates,
Employment ”security.”

Song Chang

Organizations with these programs, measured by High Commitment Work System Scale, had employees who provided more innovative solutions to complex tasks in a study of more than 50 technology firms in China by Song Chang of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, with Nanjing University’s Liangding Jia and Yahua Cai, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Riki Takeuchi.

Zhixing Xiao

“High-commitment work systems (HCWS)” can occur in organizations with varying approaches to human capital management, described by China Europe International Business School’s Zhixing Xiao and Anne S. Tsui of Arizona State University:

Anne Tsui

Mutual-investment (or organization-focused) strategies combine:
–Economic exchanges with
–Social exchanges including implied trust and reciprocity leading to
–Expectations of employment security,

Quasi spot-contract (or job-focused) philosophies based on:
-Economic-exchange model with
-Market-like flexibility that
-Enables employers to easily hire and discharge employees.

In the United States, “at-will employment” permits employers to terminate any employee at any time for any reason or no reason without warning, noted Miami University’s David Walsh and Joshua Schwartz.

David Walsh

Although this job-focused approach does not imply trust or reciprocity, many contract employers offer employee benefits similar to those in “high-commitment” workplaces.

Joshua Schwartz

This contrast between employers’ implied social contract by offering high-commitment benefits with at-will employment may appear incongruous to employees.
The result may be confusion, cynicism or disengagement.

High-commitment benefit programs can enable “creative situations,” where individual motivation can contribute to commercial innovation.

Teresa Amabile

Organizations that establish creative work situations typically offer some high-commitment employee programs, according to Harvard’s Teresa Amabile:

Job rotation,
Training to increase subject matter expertise,
Job autonomy,
Working in teams to solve problems and deliver products,
Participative management.

Despite not guaranteeing employment tenure, these programs were associated with:

Egalitarian culture,
High trust,
Support for disrupting status quo.

High-commitment employee programs can lead to increased innovation and related commercial opportunities.

However, organizations with at-will employment practices and high-commitment benefits can benefit from clearly communicating the limits of their commitments to avoid adverse employee reactions.

-*What are most effective ways to integrate coexisting at-will employment policies with “high-commitment work systems”?

 RELATED POSTS:

Leader Self-Efficacy Beliefs Determine Impact of Challenging Work Assignments

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Stephen Courtright

“High potential” employees often receive “stretch assignments” to expand their organizational knowledge, skills, and contacts.

Amy Colbert

Personal leadership self-efficacy (LSE) expectations about ability to deliver successful outcomes determine the actual results, reported Texas A&M’s Stephen H. Courtright, Amy E. Colbert of University of Iowa, and Daejeong Choi of University of Melbourne in their study of more than 150 managers and 600 directors at a Fortune 500 financial services company.

Daejeong Choi

Individuals develop self efficacy, according to Stanford’s Albert Bandura, in response to:

Personal accomplishments and mastery,
Observing others’ behaviors, experiences, and outcomes,
Corrective feedback from others via coaching and mentoring,
Mood and physiological factors.

Albert Bandura

Bandura proposed that people’s expectations about their personal efficacy determines whether they:

Use coping behavior when encountering difficulties,
Apply exceptional effort in meeting challenges,
Persist for long periods when encountering obstacles.

These behaviors lead to the “virtuous cycle” of increased self-efficacy beliefs.

Laura Paglis Dwyer

A measure of leadership self-efficacy (LSE), developed by University of Evansville’s Laura L. Paglis Dwyer and Stephen G. Green of Purdue University, evaluates a leader’s skill in:

Direction-setting,
Gaining followers’ commitment,
Overcoming obstacles to change.

Sean Hanna

Two additional Leader Self Efficacy characteristics were proposed by United States Military Academy’s Sean T. Hannah with Bruce Avolio, Fred Luthans, and Peter D. Harms of University of Nebraska:

“Agency,” characterized by intentionally initiating action and exerting positive influence,
Confidence.

Jesus Tanguma

Women demonstrated significantly lower leadership self-efficacy beliefs than men in research by University of Houston’s Michael J. McCormick, Jesús Tanguma , and Anita Sohn López-Forment.

However, these lower leadership self-efficacy beliefs can be modified with training, coaching, mentoring, and cognitive restructuring practice.

Courtright’s team reinforced that beliefs result from previous experiences can determine future outcomes, suggesting the importance of monitoring and managing these self-efficacy beliefs.

-*How do you maintain robust Leadership Self-Efficacy expectations even after disappointments and setbacks?

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©Kathryn Welds

Anxiety Linked to Risk of Behaving Unethically

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Sreedhari Desai

Anxious people were more likely to act with self-interested unethical behavior in studies by University of North Carolina’s Sreedhari Desai and Maryam Kouchaki of Northwestern.

Maryam Kou

Anxiety was also associated with increased threat perception and decreased concern about personal unethical actions in simulated subordinate–supervisor pairs.

Desai noted that “individuals who feel anxious and threatened can take on self-defensive behaviors and focus narrowly on their own basic needs and self-interest.
This can cause them to be less mindful of principles that guide ethical and moral reasoning – and make them rationalize their own actions as acceptable.”

Charles Carver

Engaging in unethical behaviors may offer more options and greater control over outcomes, found University of Miami’s Charles Carver and Michael Scheier of Carnegie Mellon.
Unethical behavior was also associated with feelings of greater autonomy and influence, particularly in ambiguous situations, according to Ohio State’s Roy Lewicki.

Michael Scheier

People who violate ethical norms can experience a ‘cheater’s high‘ instead of guilt, found University of Washington’s Nicole E. Ruedy and Celia Moore of London Business School.

Roy Lewicki

Cheaters in Ruedy’s research reported emotional uplift and self-satisfaction instead of guilt, and Paul Ekman of University of California, San Francisco referred to this exuberance among some cheaters as “duping delight.”

Nicole Ruedy

In Ruedy’s studies, nearly 180 people completed a four-minute anagram task to earn $1 for every correctly unscrambled word.
Participants then rated current feelings from positive to negative, both before and after the task.

Celia Moore

Volunteers’ actual answers on the task were compared from imprints between their answer sheets to determine which participants reported inaccurate results.

More than 40% of these volunteers wrote in additional answers to increase their earnings, and reported significantly positive feelings after cheating on the task.

Even when Ruedy’s team told volunteers that researchers knew participants may be providing inaccurate reports in an insoluble anagram task, more than half the participants reported implausibly high scores.

Cheaters had higher levels of positive affect even when confronted with the team’s awareness of their potential deceit.
They also showed higher levels of self-satisfaction and feeling clever, capable, accomplished, satisfied, and superior.

Earning more money didn’t add to the “cheater’s high,” suggesting a top threshold for positive feelings associated with cheating.

Maurice Schweitzer

These findings suggest that organizational leaders can increase employee quality-of-life and diminish unethical workplace behaviors by clarifying roles, which reduces anxiety.

Leaders also can reduce employees’ anxiety by:

Paul Ekman:

Setting realistic expectations for employee workload,
Adopting Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) and flex time,
Emphasizing the value of experimentation, flexibility, and innovation.

-*How have you seen high-anxiety workplaces affect employees’ ethical judgment?

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©Kathryn Welds

“Evolved” Leaders in an Era of Self-Interested Leadership

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Jim Collins

Organizations that are “built to last” are guided by “Level 5 Executives,” argued Jim Collins in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t.

This style of leadership requires both personal humility and personal will, a combination not favored in the current US national leadership.

Collins proposed a developmental leadership hierarchy including:

Level 1: Highly Capable Individual, who applies knowledge, skills, abilities, and commitment to achieve team goal,
Level 2: Contributing Team Member, who contributes to team goal achievement through effective collaboration,
Level 3: Capable Manager, who sets plans and organizes others to achieve goals,
Level 4: Effective Executive, who inspires others to act toward the shared vision,
Level 5: Level 5 Executive combines personal will to achieve the organizational improvement goal, tempered with personal humility.

Modesto Maidique

Drawing on developmental psychology theories by Jean Piaget as well as Harvard’s Lawrence Kohlberg, and Robert Kegan, Florida International University’s former President, Modesto A. Maidique proposed a six-level Purpose-Driven Model of Leadership,

Jean Piaget

Leadership is service to others, organizations, and ideals, and follows a related developmental path:

Level One: Sociopath, who serves no one, exhibits low empathy, and destroys value and undermines others.
Well-known examples are Muammar Gaddafi, Adolf Hitler, and Saddam Hussein.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Level Two: Opportunist, who serves himself or herself, often at others’ expense by focusing on “What’s in it for me?”
Examples include Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Skilling.
Level Three: Chameleon, who “flip-flop” and cater to as many people as possible.
Examples include Senator John Kerry, former Florida governor Charlie Crist, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Robert Kegan

- Level Four: Achiever, who often achieves business goals through energetic focus.
  Peter Drucker
  
  Peter Drucker characterized this leader as “monomaniac with a mission,” driving toward a goal without fully considering the broader mission.
  Examples include former H-P CEO Mark Hurd.
- Level Five: Builder, who seeks to build an institution, not just to achieve a goal.
  Examples include IBM’s Tom Watson Jr., GM’s Alfred P. Sloan, and Harpo’s Oprah Winfrey.
  They have a clear vision, energize others, manage for the long term, and not swayed by short-term profit or stock market valuations.
Level Six: Transcendent, who focus on broader social benefit beyond their personal affiliations.

Examples include Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Dalai Lama.

These frameworks provide a structure to evaluate the words and actions of current political and business leaders, and suggest potential leadership vulnerabilities.

-*What level of leader do you observe in the highest levels of your work organization?
-*What practices are you implementing to develop your next level of leadership skill

Kathryn Welds, PhD | Curated Research + Commentary

Consulting Organizational Psychologist | Change Consultant | Leadership+Career Master Coach | Coach Supervisor+Mentor Coach |

Category Archives: Leadership

Defining “Executive Presence”

Creating Productive Thought Patterns

Followers’ Role in Enabling Bad Leaders

Performance Excellence linked to Preventing Failures, Corrective Coaching

“Strategic Umbrage” as Negotiation Strategy

“High-Commitment” Workplaces Enhance Creative Problem Solving, Innovation

Leader Self-Efficacy Beliefs Determine Impact of Challenging Work Assignments

Anxiety Linked to Risk of Behaving Unethically

“Evolved” Leaders in an Era of Self-Interested Leadership

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