I'm Sorry I broke Your Company

7. Great Leaders Don't Fit the Models Steve Jobs Failed My Leadership Competencies

Now that we have eliminated the sorting, ranking, and labeling, we have a very big problem. We have no way to identify the future leaders of the company. Without a leadership pipeline in place, a company will find itself without competent leaders and will crash and burn in a fiery blaze of mediocre management only to become the next Harvard Business School case study on what not to do. Continuing the legacy of the talent war, talent management consultants will often cite this potential leadership crisis as the reason for all those HR systems. Without them, how do you identify those A players who will become the future leadership of your company? Let me put on my own consulting hat for a moment. That person whom nobody knows, does her job well but sticks to her own responsibilities — probably not a potential leader. That other person, the one everyone knows, who volunteers for everything, and who loves leading teams and projects — yep, that’s the one with the potential. There you go. I have assessed leadership potential. That will be $2,500, please.

I apologize for being flippant. I realize that this is an important business concern. It's just that so many leadership consultants and coaches and gurus, leadership assessments, and leadership development programs are urging you to develop specific leadership competencies, It's hard to separate the hype and hypotheses from sound practices. I know in a previous chapter I said I wasn't going to make the distinction between management and leadership, but in this chapter I want to talk about what is currently billed as «leadership development.» In many companies, leadership development applies to everyone, meaning that everyone is expected to learn a certain level of leadership skills, making the distinction between manager and leader even harder to make. The premise behind leadership development programs is that good leadership consists of a specific set of capabilities that can be learned. I use the word «capabilities» because some of these are personal attributes, like self-awareness, rather than a typical skill, like «communicates clearly.» A lot is going on in this premise. First, it is assumed that leadership ability can be broken down into It's component parts. In reverse, this assumption means that all good leaders possess the same set of skills and attributes. The second part of this premise is that these skills and attributes are not necessarily innate but can be acquired with effort.

So what are the attributes of a good leader?

Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and Thomas Jefferson are all considered great leaders. What do these people have in common? Charisma or charm? Neither Grant nor Jefferson was considered to be charismatic. In fact, Jefferson hated public speaking, wasn't particularly adept at it, and sent his State of the Union messages to Congress to be read even though his two predecessors had addressed Congress in person. Gandhi, MLK, and Lincoln were respected for their sense of humility, but there was nothing humble about Churchill, Roosevelt, or MacArthur. MacArthur had a reputation for being dramatic, while Eisenhower and Grant were laid back personalities. Both Churchill and Grant battled with alcohol abuse, while Jefferson had different vices, dying woefully in debt and unable to free his slaves. Lincoln and Gandhi, in contrast, had upstanding moral characters. What about their upbringing? Some were rich; some were poor. What about vision? MLK certainly had one, as did Jefferson. Were Eisenhower and Grant visionaries? Not really. It's not obvious to me what traits these leaders have in common.

Fortunately, even more so than management, leadership is a topic that has been studied for centuries. Starting with Machia-velli, people throughout history have been obsessed with what makes a great leader. It's a hot topic in the business world as well. Leadership gurus, books, and models abound, so lets look at what the experts say about leadership attributes. Lm going to look at more recent experts than Machiavelli because I think our ideas have changed considerably since the Renaissance. Once again, I pulled my dusty books from the shelves and discovered that I have even more leadership books than management books. Fortunately, none of them is 609 pages long.

My first leadership book was a gift of a signed copy of Warren Bennis's On Becoming a Leader, first published in 1989. Bennis was one of the first people I remember being considered a leadership guru. His ingredients for leadership are a guiding vision, passion, integrity, trustworthiness, curiosity, and daring. Bennis emphasizes the ability of a great leader to shape himself in the way he wants to be and, as a result, shape his environment. In the books introduction, Bennis sums up his research on leadership: «No leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express himself freely and fully. That is, leaders have no interest in proving themselves, but an abiding interest in expressing themselves. The difference is crucial, for It's the difference between being driven, as too many people are today, and leading, as too few people do.» That’s a very humble view of leadership. Most people I know in leadership positions are there because they strove to be.

My second leadership book from around the same time is John W. Gardners On Leadership. At the time, Gardner was famous as a leadership guru, but I rarely hear his name bandied about today, probably because he died in 2002 and so many others are vying for attention. John Gardner was the secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under Lyndon Johnson and became noteworthy for several landmark federal programs, including Medicare; the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which redefined the federal role in education; and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Gardner described six things that leaders did differently from managers. Leaders

1. Think longer term

2. See the bigger picture

3. Are able to influence others outside their immediate sphere of control

4. Value the nonrational, unconscious, and intangible aspects of behavior

5. Exhibit political skills to deal with multiple constituencies

6. Question the status quo

This is a different take from Bennis’s research. Bennis focuses on internal qualities that describe self-actualization, while many of Gardner’s elements have to do with how a person relates to the external world — strategic thinking, political savvy, influence.

Jim Collins is a more recent and world-renowned business management guru who has written several business best sellers. In his book Good to Great, Collins describes a number of characteristics that set great companies apart and enable them to achieve lasting greatness. One of these characteristics is that they are headed by a Level 5 leader. A Level 5 leader possesses a unique combination of personal humility and professional will. This means that they credit successes to others and to external factors, while taking the blame for failures themselves. They are realistic about the challenges facing their companies but are committed to overcoming them. They are able to subjugate their egos to a higher purpose, having achieved this ability either through intense self-reflection or a traumatic life event. Collins makes the distinction between Level 5 leaders and Level 4 leaders, who tend to be egotistical and sometimes charismatic people capable of motivating people toward a vision. Level 4 leaders can achieve remarkable change, but Level 5 leaders build great organizations that outlast their leadership.

In addition to his leadership styles model, Daniel Goleman has created a list of traits of successful leaders that aligns with his emotional intelligence theory. His must-have leadership traits are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. While his traits are different from Warren Benniss, they both describe leadership in terms of internal capabilities, as does Jim Collins. I call this focus on internal traits «the self-actualized leader model.» Another famous management guru and also a professor at the Harvard Business School, John Kotter, assigns the role of change agent to a successful leader. He describes leadership as setting direction, aligning people, and providing motivation. Like John Gardners model, this is more of an action model or what you have to do or be able to do as a leader. Okay, my head is starting to hurt. I still have a bunch more material — Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey, Peter Senge. As a writer, I have a general rule: if it is boring to write, then it will be even more boring to read. So I am stopping.

My point is that numerous leadership gurus have conducted copious research, and all have their models of what traits or actions are required to be a leader. Although some of these traits are similar, there really is no consensus on exactly what those traits are. However, all the leadership gurus agree that leaders can be made. Therefore, leadership development is a plausible concept. Keep in mind, though, that most of these people make a living at leadership development, so there is just a small conflict of interest. One other thing I've gleaned from the research is that none of these gurus mention more than a handful of traits. So far, Bennis’s list is longest with six traits.

Now I want to compare my synopsis of leadership theory to what is being practiced in industry. Leadership assessments are a booming business. In fact, when I searched through my desk to find the assessment done on me, I was shocked to discover that I had been assessed not once but three times with three different tools. I remembered only one particular assessment, not because of the insights I got from it, but because of It's length. I was assessed in twenty-four competency areas. This thing is pages and pages long. I wouldn't have minded so much if I had been the only one filling it out, but my manager, my direct reports, and a group of my peers had to do this for me — and not once but three times (although the two other tools were shorter). A couple of years later, I was asked by two separate people to do the same lengthy assessment of them. I remember I thought it would never end. Although I really wanted to do my best and give them helpful information, I had no meaningful answer for many of the questions and ended up just giving them «average,» especially in the latter part of the assessment when I became tired. That gave me tremendous insight into my own assessment as I tended to rate average in the latter part of my questionnaire.

The result of the assessment was an identification of my strengths and my weaknesses. With those isolated, I developed an action plan that would leverage my strengths and develop my weak areas. Reviewing this a decade later, I laughed at my action plan for my weaknesses. My top «leadership derailer» was my lack of organization. Listed underneath, I have steps for getting more organized. I laughed because this report is sitting atop one of several piles of paper that have spilled onto the floor from the top of my desk, which is completely covered with files and books and other piles. Oops. Guess I didn’t achieve that one. Now I can never become a great leader.

These leadership competencies aren’t just part of assessments that employees take for training or advancement. They are now written into many performance reviews. In addition to being rated on goal achievement, employees are rated on a list of attributes. If you lack some of these skill areas, you get a black mark on your review, so people try to make sure that they have attained a certain level of competence in all of them. In fact, many companies have training programs in place to ensure a certain level of competency in all these attributes, hence, the mastery of twenty-odd competencies to be a successful leader. You may think that this lengthy list of traits is an exception. Along with my old leadership assessments, I also dusted off an old performance review. (You may be gaining insight into the origins of my piles of papers.) It includes several pages where one is rated on one’s leader behaviors. It has thirty-four behaviors divided into eight overarching categories, for example:

• Sustain focus on performance

Seizes opportunities to improve the business

Is guided by high standards

Sets the right priorities

Is oriented to our customers

• Create an inclusive environment

Is open to new ideas

Includes colleagues

Ensures managers do the same

• Encourage open discussion/debate

Listens actively

Encourages contribution

Accepts criticism

Skillfully manages meetings and discussions

Communicates effectively

• Manage change

Anticipates strategically

Takes initiative

Plans for better ways to operate

Empowers people to act

Trains change agents

Seeks better practices

• Develop people

Yada, yada, yada

• Align across the company

Yada, yada, yada

• Foster innovation and creativity

Etc., etc.,

• Demonstrate strategic agility

More of the same

A friend shared the leadership competency model she helped develop for a very large organization. It is in the shape of a circle and it has four major components — thoughts, results, personal, and people — similar to the breakdown of competencies in the Successful Managers Handbook. It has twenty subsets of skills, which are then broken out into another layer of skills, too numerous for me to readily count. This type of model has worked It's way into conventional management practices. It is now assumed that to be a good leader, you need to «demonstrate mastery» of anywhere between twenty and forty skills going by the name of «leadership competencies.»

But what about Steve Jobs?

Seriously, Steve Jobs would have failed all my leadership competency assessments. Everything I have read about Steve Jobs— how he treated employees, friends, and even his caregivers — makes him seem like a real jerk. Yet no matter how much his mean behavior violates our image of a good leader, he was undeniably a great leader. He built three companies in total, two of which are amazing companies with unsurpassed records of success — Apple and Pixar — and created whole new business models and industries, such as iTunes and the iPod, iPad, and iPhone. He radically changed the way people communicate, surf the web, and listen to music. According to Jim Collins, a Level 5 leader is one who can create a sustainable company. Steve Jobs surpassed that criterion by creating whole new industries. When he died, he received an outpouring of grief that is usually reserved for entertainers and politicians. He had followers all across the globe. But he certainly wasn't humble. His people skills were sorely lacking, too, especially on the empathy side. Maybe Steve Jobs was a unique exception, but what about

• Larry Ellison of Oracle?

• Carly Fiorina of HP?

• Meg Whitman of eBay and HP?

• Neutron Jack Welch of GE?

• Michael Eisner of Disney?

All these CEOs have been described as either heartless, aggressive, brusque, micromanaging, or tyrannical. The eminence of Steve Jobs as the ideal CEO has set off a debate in the business press about whether good leaders really need to have people skills or empathy. Recently, an article in Forbes called «Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs,» stated that about 4 percent of CEOs are psychopaths as compared to 1 percent of the general population, and those aggressive and unsympathetic qualities are what makes them successful. The New York Times published an article called «Addictive Personality? You Might Be a Leader» in a similar vein about a large proportion of CEOs having addictive personalities, which makes them more obsessive and risk taking than the rest of us. Needing the constant adrenaline rush, they are not satisfied with mundane achievements.

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, another leadership guru, has identified narcissism as a common trait among CEOs and other successful leaders. The clinical profile of a narcissist is a male whose childhood was dominated by a devoted mother while his father was either absent or distant. According to the Mayo Clinic website, «Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. Those with narcissistic personality disorder believe that they re superior to others and have little regard for other peoples feelings.» Michael Maccoby also writes extensively about narcissistic leaders, especially their strengths and weaknesses. Of all the personality types, narcissists seem to be the most able to exhibit the daring and confidence needed to take the big risks of anticipating new industries and creating breakthrough products. Of all the «traits» that make a good leader, the one that seems most highly correlated with leadership success is narcissism. Therefore, instead of being rated on various social abilities, leadership assessments should really be asking about the relationship you had with your mother and your father.

But what about

• Sam Walton of Walmart?

• Lou Gerstner of IBM?

• Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway?

• Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines?

• Walt Disney?

None of these famous and successful leaders are known to be egomaniacal, people-using narcissists. So which is it? Are good leaders narcissists or self-actualized achievers or visionary doers? The experts don't seem to have reached any consensus, so lets ask one of our leaders, the one who started this whole debate. In a 2003 interview for 60 Minutes, Steve Jobs said, «My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each others kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person; they're done by a team of people.»

All these leadership competencies are nice to talk about, but in reality they don't make a good or successful leader. In reality, people adapt to strengths and weaknesses, their own and those of others. To compensate for their own weaknesses, leaders surround themselves with others who possess the skills they lack. This allows the whole team to emphasize their strengths. The other interesting point is that followers adapt to the weaknesses of their leaders, if given enough reason to.

Steve Wozniak built the first Apple computers. It wasn't the two Steves working in a garage building a PC. Woz did the technical work, and Jobs did all the marketing and sales. Jobss biggest contribution was that he recognized the market opportunity for the personal computer and persuaded Woz to start a company with him. Jobs didn't create the graphical user interface that set Apple apart. He saw it at Xerox Parc and recognized It's potential. The same with Pixar. He didn't create Pixar. He bought it from Lucasfilm because he saw It's potential. Jobs, celebrated for the design of his products, also wasn't a designer. He appreciated good design, so he hired good designers. His team tolerated his obnoxious behavior because he brought an extraordinary talent to the table — his ability to recognize and exploit potential, both that of good ideas and that of good people. If Steve Jobs did not have this talent, no one would have tolerated his egotism and perfectionism.

When you read stories about great companies and great leaders, the common thread is that the leaders didn't do it by themselves. All these CEOs have had a team of people with diverse skills working for them. The reality of the situation is that no leadership formula or model works for everyone. Each person has unique skills and qualities, and the point is to maximize those while mitigating the weaknesses, either through training, compensating, or building a team. When I look back at my disorganization as my «derailer» behavior, I find it completely irrelevant. I have no interest in filing papers or keeping my desk neat. What a waste of time. I am fortunate that I have always had someone working for me that was good at filing or just took on the task of keeping me organized. Although my lack of organization has been a topic of jokes and playful derision, no one has ever seriously complained to me about it. I received a low score on a sheet of paper that somehow was supposed to dictate how I could improve as a person. A piece of paper can't know who I am. Because I have lots of other talents to offer — like being able to bring out the best in people, solve problems, and manage workloads — that are so much more important, my subordinates, peers, and managers are happy to deal with my messy desk.

People adapt. That is the one thing humans excel at doing. We adapt to our surroundings, and we adapt to other people. We can forgive deficiencies in someones personality if that person brings something else to the table. That's key. You need to have some kind of talent. However, lots of talented people are not leaders. What makes a leader rise to the top is some kind of drive or will to succeed. Narcissists are driven by the need for acclaim. Self-actualized leaders are driven by their passion or desire to make the world a better place. Visionaries are driven by the need to realize their vision. Something makes them work hard, persevere in their goals, and inspire others to follow them. Whether that drive is internal or external, altruistic or egotistic, is irrelevant. Drive without any requisite talent probably doesn't result in much. But that talent could be almost anything when you build a team of talented people. So why on earth are we demanding that our employees develop competence in a laundry list of skills that have no real relevance to leadership ability? Even more ironic, it is really easy to assess «drive» to choose employees for leadership programs. Let them apply to join, but make the application process very rigorous. Only those with drive will fulfill the application requirements.

When I discuss, well, rant, about leader competencies to my friends who are human resources consultants, they often try to convince me that these competence models provide a lot of good for employees. They are usually the basis for employee training programs. I agree that employee development and training are worthwhile. In fact, a great deal of empirical evidence shows that companies that invest in their employees, especially in training and development, outperform those that don t. However, I've come to believe that requiring all employees to develop a certain level of competence in thirty skill areas and attend corporate-sponsored training classes to do so is actually inhibiting real leadership development. And here is where I need to apologize. Back in the early ’90s, I was on the forefront of this whole competency effort, and I actually helped create one of these in-depth competence models. I'm sorry.

In 1994, I took a position in my consulting company's internal training department. At the time, the only program we had was a two-week new-hire orientation boot camp called «Gemini Skills Workshop» or GSW. This program was generally recognized as a best practice within the company for a number of reasons. It was built around a real client case study; it focused on a few skills, which were practiced ad nauseam; and throughout the two weeks, participants received extensive coaching from the facilitators and feedback from the other participants. Overall, GSW was an intense bonding experience where the company culture, jargon, and values were inculcated. One of the strengths of this program was that it concentrated on a few vital consulting skills, like meeting facilitation, brainstorming techniques, and client interviewing. GSW's purpose was for every consultant to be useful on the first day of a project. We created a road map of consulting skills and documented the expected level of competence upon completion of the GSW. This way, project managers knew exactly what skills they could count on new hires having and assign them accordingly. To keep the program up to date, the training function would periodically survey the company leaders to determine what skills should be emphasized. Although we occasionally introduced new material depending on needs, the basic skills rarely changed.

As the company grew and we embarked on the business transformation strategy, our leadership realized that we would need to provide more training to our consultants. This was especially important because to fill our pipeline, we were hiring more candidates out of school and fewer experienced hires. Because GSW worked so well, the leaders wanted a continuation of that type of training. The idea of Gemini University (GU, for short) was born. Now we needed to know what to teach.

We took the concept of competencies and applied it to the company as a whole. By now, the word «competency» was fully rooted in the business lexicon, and we worked with the various practice areas to develop competencies and training for their consultants. It was a huge undertaking with everyone slotted into a development track based on industry (financial services, manufacturing, etc.), practice (operations, strategy, IT, etc.), or functional expertise (supply chain, sales and marketing, etc.). The end product was a list of required competencies by position and the mandatory training to achieve them. Although the head of operations decided that everyone in the supply chain function should get certified through APICS (American Production and Inventory Control Society), most of the classes were in-house through GU. The first GU was held in New Jersey, and it was deemed a huge success due to the number of attendees. This had to be a good thing, right? People were getting training in skills they needed for the future success of the company.

At first I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the atmosphere of the university program was different from that of the orientation boot camp. Of course, it was ten times larger, but the GSW participants seemed happy to be there. I can't say the same for all the GU attendees. We continued to hold the classes, twice a year, alternating between Paris and New Jersey. I began teaching a course, and over the few years that I taught, I noted that most of the people in my class did not want to be there. When I asked a few why they seemed resentful, they explained that this was their valuable training time, and it was being wasted on topics they didn't want to learn. Other consulting companies sent their consultants to conferences or to external courses of their own choosing, but at Gemini, your only real option was internal training classes, and a mandatory training track limited your options even more.

I had worked in supply chain and began to talk with my colleagues about why they were disgruntled over the new competency development track. Many of our outstanding consultants had previously worked in supply chains at major companies. They saw absolutely no need for an APICS certification. How can passing a multiple-choice test be better than ten to fifteen years of real-world experience? They were interested in learning about a new software called «SAP» and another new development called «e-commerce.» Gradually, they left for other consulting companies, leaving behind those with little experience who needed the certification and had never heard of SAP or e-commerce. Unfortunately, while we were so busy training our consultants on large-scale business transformation skills, we totally missed that the economy had improved, clients didn't want or need large-scale change, Y2K was a huge area of concern, and this new thing called the «Internet» was taking off.

Although developing competencies seems like a great idea, in execution on a large scale, it is an attempt at standardizing people. Think about this. You analyze the skills or competencies that you think you need. You codify these on a piece of paper or computer system. You develop training around these competencies and send all your people through these classes over the course of several years. First, you are training all your people in exactly the same skills, in exactly the same way with the result being that they all think and act the same. You are systematically embedding mediocrity by requiring an average competence in everything from everyone. Secondly, the scale of the program prohibits one from changing the competencies on a regular basis. So now you are embedding a static skill set. Thirdly, there is no room for innovation, creativity, or originality in this model. Although the original idea behind developing core competencies was to compete for the future, what happens is that you are no longer able to gain insight into the new competencies you may need in the future. If you are not letting people pursue their own interests and learn exotic and crazy new ideas, how will you know that the future requires a whole different set of competencies? Innovation can take place only in an environment that encourages diverse thinking, an influx of new ideas, and pursuit of personal passions. Plus, the assumption upon which this whole system is built is faulty. Many of these models describe leadership competencies, the skills required to become a good leader in your chosen field. Yet no one actually knows what competencies make a good leader.

Lets get back to the self-actualization school of leadership. How does anyone achieve self-actualization without pursuing her own interests? Look at what shaped Steve Jobs. He had an interest in computers that he pursued on his own. After dropping out of Reed College, he audited a calligraphy class because he thought it was interesting. This sparked his whole obsession with good design. He sought self-enlightenment in India, only to realize that Thomas Edison had a greater impact on the world than any swami. None of the events that shaped Steve Jobs were company or school sanctioned.

When I look at my own career and consider what helped me become a better person and also a better leader, most of those weren't company sanctioned, either. The top item is parenthood. I became a much better manager after having children because I learned how to deal with other people on their terms and not always my own. You can't tell a two-year-old that you're the boss, and he needs to do what you say. I mean, you can, but it won't get you anywhere. Regarding training, the classes that helped me most were on systems dynamics, neurolinguistic programming, and a women's leadership program that stressed the importance of relationships. Only the last one was part of corporate training, and it was a recommended external program, not a mandated one. There is such a big difference between choosing to be there and having to be there.

The last big problem with this attempt at standardizing the workforce is that it inhibits the chance of self-actualization at work. If all your development is through mandatory programs and you get stuck in a job for which you are ill suited, your chances of finding a personal passion at work are slim to none. If you haven't found a personal passion, how can you create a compelling vision for the future that inspires others? Remember our schools of thought on great leaders — self-actualized achievers, visionary doers, or narcissists? If self-actualization and finding your passion have become harder due to rigid competency requirements, who is left? It's scary to think that through the widespread use of talent management systems, companies may now be ensuring that the only people who can rise to the top are the narcissists.

We need to get rid of the laundry list of leadership attributes that employees are required to master. No one really knows what traits make a good leader. Get rid of the copious mandatory training and e-learning classes. Do offer training to your employees, but make it a menu of in-house, external, and «you get to choose» classes. For internal programs, determine a small set of skills, perhaps five, that you would like all your employees to master. You cant ever go wrong with communications skills like coaching, feedback, and conflict resolution. You may consider a brainstorming, problem-solving, or creativity tool. Offer onboarding and new manager training. But encourage employees to seek training and conferences of their own choosing and to learn things no one has ever heard of yet. Encourage everyone to share the new and crazy things they've learned with others. Remember that the reason we work in groups is so that we can benefit from the strengths of others and offset their weaknesses. Not everyone needs to be competent at everything. This is why we work in organizations.

But what about identifying the future leaders of a company and developing that talent? This is still a vital function a company needs to survive. Whether it is called «drive,» «passion,» «singular pursuit,» «ambition,» or «a call to a higher purpose,» all leaders have a will to succeed. It may be driven by an altruistic goal or by inner narcissism, but leaders all persist in achieving their goals. They are very easy to identify in the workplace. You know — that person who gets things done and volunteers to lead teams, the one whom everyone knows, the go-to person? Yeah, that's the one. And if you can't find enough of those, let your employees apply to leadership programs with the understanding that the application process will be a lot of work. Only the ones with ambition will apply.

That will be $2,500 please. You’re welcome.