Category: Leadership

To continue the theme of leadership from the last post, it all reminded me of a series of incidents I had a couple years back when Jim Collins Good to Great was really hot (although it remains pretty darn hot, that thing keeps selling like crazy).  The concept from the book that especially caught attention, as most readers will recall, was the notion of Level 5 leaders, those humble and relentless leaders who work like crazy to make the organization successful, while consistently putting the needs of the organization ahead of their own needs and wants.  Like most ideas in business, this is an old one (read Drucker, this theme abounds), but Collins wrote beautifully about it.

The thing that struck me, however, was that I had conversations with at least five leaders during one stretch who all claimed that they were Level 5 leaders.  In all five cases, these were people who talked relentlessly about themselves and — following the research on how power turns people into self-centered jerks — all were remarkably oblivious to the negative reactions to their leadership style.  Indeed, at least two I can think were classic narcissists.

Thus, my hypothesis (which may be wrong, so I would love your reaction):  "Leaders who claim that they are Level 5 leaders rarely, if ever, turn out to be Level 5 leaders." 

Reactions? Am I being too cynical?

I've been reading a lot this summer, especially on innovation and leadership.  They are both difficult subjects to frame in simple and accurate ways that provide useful lessons.  Leadership is especially tough, as so much has been written about the subject, it is so inconsistent, and yet the books keep coming out and people keep buying them.  It is among the most fascinating and frustrating subjects that I've ever wrestled with — yet there is still huge demand out there, as there should be, because we need better leaders and every leader I have ever met is hungry for simple (but not simplistic) ideas that are right and useful. 

All this came to mind this morning as I was reading Michael Maccoby's book The Leaders We Need. This is very thoughtful book and I recommend it.  I was especially struck by his definition of leadership. he goes through some of the various definitions (Of course, not all of them… that would take hundreds and hundreds of boring pages), and then proposes:

There is one irrefutable definition of a leader, and that is someone people follow. 

He then adds: "This may be too simple a definition for many academics, but once accepted it opens the door to plenty of hard thinking."

I confess that I have been thinking about it a lot this morning.  It does seem wonderfully simple and it does seem right.  But I wonder what others think. Is it too simple?  Is it useful?

I have written here about Carol Dweck's fascinating research on the differences between people who believe that their IQ's are fixed versus those who believe their IQ's are malleable. As she shows in Mindset (which summarizes a large body of careful research), people who believe that "being smart" results from learning and experience are much more likely to try new things, to ask "dumb" questions, and to risk failing.  In contrast, people who believe that IQ is fixed believe that having to work hard to learn things is a bad sign because it shows they aren't that smart, so they avoid situations where they have to learn new things and that involve struggle or failure.  For people who believe that IQ is fixed, the focus is on convincing other people that they know a lot already, that they learn very fast, and that they rarely fail or make mistakes. 

A new academic paper by Professors Peter Heslin and Don VandeWalle applies the logic of Dweck's research to managers and the assumptions that they hold about their people.  They report three studies and an intervention. Their first experiment entailed showing nuclear power plant managers videos of an employee who first displayed poor negotiation skills, and then in a second video, displayed good negotiation skills.  Those managers who believed that human talents are "fixed" (e.g., agreeing with statements like " As much as I hate to admit it, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.  People can't change their deepest attributes.") were compared to those who had a "growth" mindset (e.g., agreeing that "People can change even their most basic qualities.")   In this first experiment, those with the "fixed" mindset were significantly less likely to notice improvements in employee negotiation performance in the second video.  A follow-up study also showed that managers with a "fixed" mindset were less likely to notice a drop-off in negotiation performance when they saw the "good" negotiation performance video first, and the "bad" one second — in contrast, those with the "growth" mindset were more likely to notice the drop in performance. So the growth mindset doesn't just mean that people see the world through rose-colored glasses — they are more likely to notice negative changes too.   And a second follow-up study showed that people with "fixed" mindsets who received negative background information were less likely to notice performance improvements when viewing the "good negotiation performance" video six weeks later, when compared to people who had a growth mindset.

Finally, this paper also reports an intervention that Heslin and VandeWalle where they worked with managers who had a "fixed" mindset to see if they could be changed to have a "growth" mindset.  They used a series of interventions to change these beliefs, including showing them videos with research indicating that the brain is capable of "growing like a muscle,"  encouraged them generate reasons to believe that people are capable of developing their abilities, and having them write an email to hypothetical protegee outlining arguments that abilities can be developed and talking about times when they had "personally overcome professional development challenges."  (Indeed, this trick of getting people to write an argument that runs counter to their belief as a cornerstone on many attitude change experiments, as well as brainwashing techniques used in natural settings — including to brainwash new cult members and prisoners-of-war.)  These interventions led these managers to change from the "fixed" to the "growth" mindset, and to notice changes in employee performance at roughly the same rates as those managers who held the "growth" mindset from the outset.

The upshot of this research is that managers who believe that employee
ability is fixed are less likely to notice when an employee that they
believe to be "poor" does good work, or when an employee that they
believe to be "good" does poor work. But the silver lining is that the fixed mindset isn't fixed!  You can teach an experienced manager a new mindset! 

Like all research, this set of studies has limits.  But I applaud the researchers for not only uncovering a fascinating pattern, but also going through the work to change the people they were studying, apparently for the better. And the lesson for all of us, as much social psychological research has shown, is to be careful what you believe — as you will likely see it, even if it isn't true.  

P.S. The reference to this research is Heslin, Peter A. & Don Vandewalle (2008) Managers's Implicit Assumptions About Personnel.  Current Directions in Psychological Science. 17: 219-223.