Author: John Baldoni

So is the best man for the job a woman?

Research by Hay Group, culled from its 17,000-person behavioral competency database in 2012, finds that when it comes to empathy, influence, and the ability to manage conflicts in the executive level, women show more skill than men. Specifically, women are more likely to show empathy as a strength, demonstrate strong ability in conflict management, show skills in influence, and have a sense of self-awareness.

“Women often face barriers throughout their careers that require them to develop these skills to excel and advance in their organizations,” says Ruth Malloy, global managing director for leadership and talent at Hay Group. Malloy adds that the shift from hierarchy where individual achievement matters to matrix organizations where teamwork counts put a premium on the skills that women have mastered.

“Influence and conflict management are not necessarily inborn, these competencies more often are learned,” Malloy added in an email interview. Research by Hay Group found that “women scored higher on these matrix competencies compared to their male counterparts. My hypothesis is that these women who broke the glass ceiling as a population acquired and demonstrated more of these competencies to overcome obstacles to succeed.”

“I think women leaders do have to manage the female stereotype of being more relationship focused, softer or nicer,” says Malloy. “Behaviors associated with strong leadership tend to be more consistent with the masculine stereotype.”

“Women face the double-bind when taking on leadership positions. If their behavior is too feminine they are seen as too soft and incompetent, however if their behavior is too masculine they are perceived negatively.”

So why, despite these strengths, don’t we see more women in senior management? The reasons are complicated, even for ambitious, highly skilled women. One reason may be that successful women managers must demonstrate more leadership skills. According to Malloy, “Research the Hay Group conduced on outstanding women leaders found that they navigate this double-bind by using a combination of both stereotypically masculine leadership styles (e.g., being Authoritative or Visionary) and feminine leadership styles (e.g., being more Affiliative or Participative).” Men by contrast only need to demonstrate the “masculine” leadership styles.

Another challenge is how these top job openings are framed. When the role is framed less as an opportunity to demonstrate acquired expertise and more as a role that would give a high potential candidate a chance to grow and learn, “women and other diverse constituencies are more likely to be recognized” as suitable for promotion to senior positions. That’s assuming, though, that their skills and strengths have been recognized. And that’s the third obstacle: recognition for strong interpersonal skills is not straightforward. As Malloy says, “these [interpersonal] competencies are also more challenging to demonstrate.”

Finally, the single area where both female and male managers need to improve is in self-awareness. While women did outperform men on that metric, notice how low the rates for both genders are — under 20%. “If you think about most people in our day-to-day lives we tend to run on auto-pilot,” says Malloy. “We often are not mindful about our impact on others or how and where we spend our time. We can easily get caught up in the task or the day-to-day distractions” and pay less attention to ourselves and effect we may have on others.

“Improving self-awareness requires getting some source of credible feedback, and being open to that feedback,” she advises. “Find a trusted colleague or someone from your personal life who can give you constructive feedback in real-time.”

Malloy continues, “Developing self-awareness also requires reflection… Schedule time every week on your calendar to reflect on what went well, what did not, and how could you react differently in the future.”

Self-awareness is essential to effective leadership. A leader must know herself — her abilities, her shortcomings, and her opportunities for growth in order to be able to provide direction, guidance and inspiration to others.

Leadership demands strong interpersonal skills. And while research may show that women leaders have the edge in certain areas, the lesson I take from this study is that both men and women have work to do in order to become the leaders their followers need.

Some of the most engaged employees in your organization are your worst performers. And some of the least engaged are your highest performers.

This conclusion comes from new research by the consulting firm, Leadership IQ. The study “matched engagement survey and performance appraisal data for 207 organizations.” According to CEO Mark Murphy (who I interviewed via email), “We had long suspected that high performers might not be as engaged as has traditionally been assumed. But seeing that, in 42% of cases, high performers were even less engaged than low performers was a bit of a shock.”

This conclusion runs contrary to conventional wisdom as well as many studies (including this one from Gallup) that show high engagement — that is, how much employees are committed to their work — correlates with better bottom line results, including productivity and profitability.

You could think of these low performers as hamsters on a wheel, spinning fast but actually going nowhere. Conversely, high performers may be coasting like swans on a pond, just gliding by. You don’t see their effort because it’s below the water. As Murphy says, “in our study, high performers gave very low marks when asked if employees all live up to the same standards.”

While low performers may be more engaged, their efforts may not be as productive, especially since it’s the higher performers — disengaged though they may be — who are doing all the work. The underperformance of the former undermines the effort of the latter. This is especially true, according to the study, when low performers are not held accountable for poor performance. These employees may not even know they are doing a poor job.

Naturally when poor performers are allowed to slide by, it erodes the morale of high performers who feel, again according to the study, “helpless about the trajectory of their careers.”

“We had seen plenty of cases where managers avoid dealing with low performers (because they believe the conversation will be difficult), and instead assign work to the employees they enjoy — i.e. high performers.,” says Murphy. “And as a result, they end up ‘burning out’ those same high performers they enjoy so much.”

While I find Leadership IQ’s findings linking high engagement to poor performers to be contrarian, it is not usual for good performers to feel lost in the system. This is a comment I hear not infrequently in my coaching work.

So what to do about it? Murphy offers two suggestions. “First, leaders need to set very explicit, and behaviorally-specific, expectations for performance. These expectations need to define and delineate good, great, and even poor performance so employees and managers can clearly define and differentiate best practices, teach those practices to others, and then hold people accountable accordingly.”

Doing this, according to Murphy, “gives high performers confidence that their manager understands the meaning of ‘high performer’ and it holds the manager accountable to actually differentiate employees on the basis of their performance.”

Second, Murphy suggests regularly monthly meetings (perhaps lasting no more than 20 minutes) that ask managers about what’s going on in the workplace and how motivated they feel. As Murphy says, “If a company CEO were told that their best customers were unhappy, it’s a safe bet that CEO would be on a plane within hours. If we truly believe that people are our most important asset, shouldn’t we pay a bit more attention to the engagement of the best of those people?”

Senior management needs to communicate more clearly, hold people at every level accountable for results, and actively invest time and resources in the talents of high performers.

All too often companies do not know their employees are unhappy until they leave. Exit interviews reveal that they leave because they did not believe anyone cared. Research has confirmed the old saw that people leave bosses, not companies. That makes holding bosses accountable for employee engagement critical.

Senior leaders need to do a better job of teaching managers how to be better managers. And they also need to apply such standards to themselves.

Working with an executive coach can be a large investment of time and money; it seems a shame to waste either. If you’re considering coaching (or have, ahem, been asked to consider it), make sure you get the most out of the experience.

People sign up for coaching for all sorts of reasons — perhaps it was their own idea, and they genuinely want to improve. But often, coaching is not something an individual chooses willingly; someone senior to them, maybe even on the board of directors, has suggested it.

Someone in a position of authority may make it known that if the executive wants to be promoted, win a bonus, or even keep his job, he must change behaviors that hinder his performance, turn others way, or do not instill confidence in his abilities.

And so the coach arrives — the outsider, hired to speak truth to power — and can’t make any headway, because the person being coached doesn’t really want to be there. Or the person being coached doesn’t have a specific goal in mind, and so coach and coachee meet a bunch of times before parting ways, neither really knowing what they tried to accomplish.

As I was talking the other day with a colleague — Mark Goulston, M.D., author of Real Influence, which he co-authored with John Ullmen — it occurred to us that there were some things we wished executives knew about coaching before signing up for it.

Effective coaching is often a matter of challenging assumptions, and the biggest assumptions often reside in the mind of the person being coached. Challenge your own assumptions about what you need to improve so that you can lead your people in ways the organization demands and they expect.

Before you meet with your coach, ask yourself what specifically you want to get out of it. The need for coaching could be remedial, that is, you are doing something that bothers others — being too abrasive — or you are not doing enough — too much indecision. For example, the executive may admit that he is focusing too much on details and not enough on big picture challenges. Or the executive may recognize that her failure to make timely decisions is wasting time. Such admissions serve as points of recognition that can leader to greater self-knowledge. What issues are getting in the way of your ability to achieve your potential, or the potential of the organization?

Even if you don’t want to work with a coach — but you have to, because your boss or the board has asked you to — you must enter the engagement willingly. Try to find some way of framing the challenge of improvement so that it feels more palatable. That might mean focusing on the outcome you want, like winning a promotion or avoiding being let go. Acknowledging that you need to improve in one area or another isn’t easy, but it is necessary to letting coaching be successful.

Don’t let your coach ask all the questions. Ask them some questions. And ask yourself, “Why do I want this person to be coaching me?” Often a coach comes recommended by others. The coach’s track record and reputation may be outstanding, but that doesn’t mean he or she is right for you. The coach must be able to demonstrate an awareness of the issues you’re facing and a willingness to help you confront them. Yes, executive coaching is a journey of self-discovery — but the coach is your guide. Make sure you get someone you can connect with.

Give yourself some early wins. What are you willing to change — right now? Coaching occurs over a period of time, but long-term growth must have a starting point. Why not today? For example, if the executive needs to loosen up his heavy-handed management style, a coach can ask what he is willing to give up. First steps may include speaking less and listening more, or learning to ask open-ended questions that are designed to elicit information, not intimidate. He can take those small steps right away and start making progress towards his big goal. That’s incredibly motivating.

Truth be told, our self-assumptions protect our self-image. If we knew how often we irritated others, or failed to deliver on expectations, we might lose faith in our ability to do our jobs. We are human after all.

But a coach’s responsibility is to encourage self-examination. Unexamined behaviors can cut us off from the very people we need to engage and inspire. You’ll get a lot more out of your coaching experience if you start the process by examining and challenging your own assumptions.

Who’s next?

That is the question that those involved in succession planning focus upon when considering candidates for senior positions. And while the answer produces a candidate, such a question is too narrow.

A better question would be: who’s best?

While succession planning needs focus on identifying candidates for senior positions, too often the focus is on the horse race — who’s ahead — rather than the organization — who’s best prepared to lead. In a horse race, the focus is on metrics: what an executive has accomplished. In the organizational perspective, the focus is more broad-based — how the executive has achieved what he or she has accomplished.

As much as organizations devote to success planning issues, there are shortcomings. According to a 2012 study by the Institute for Executive Development (IED) survey participants noted three major problems:

• Lack of a coherent strategy for executive development
• Lack of a formal process for developing successor candidates; and
• Lack of candidates ready to take the CEO job.

IED’s suggestions for improvement include clarifying roles and objectives for those involved in succession planning and developing relevant analytics to determine a candidate’s true effectiveness. These two focus on what a candidate has accomplished; a third recommendation — improve the development process — gets to the how the candidate works.

“It is essential,” they argue, “that potential candidates have exposure to issues and challenge of [senior] roles.” Toward that end, candidates should have real and ongoing contact with senior leaders as well as board members. Furthermore, it suggests that candidates participate as instructors in internal executive development programs.

From my work with those being considered for promotion, the operative principle in this process is interaction, seeing how the candidate interacts with senior leaders as well as others at all levels. In this way those involved in candidate selection can observe how the candidate contributes suggestions, makes decisions, cooperates with others, and facilitates collaboration.

Such a process is designed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of high potential prospects. Likely most candidates will likely rate highly when it comes to “making the numbers,” e.g. fulfilling their objectives, but not all will be equally adept when it comes to “playing well with others.”

A candidate who favors “command and control” over participative decision-making may be tough to get along with. Also, a manager who cultivates his boss’s favor and treats his direct reports with disrespect is not someone worthy of a more senior position. Last year both Apple and Microsoft divested themselves of senior executives who did not get along with others. Apple CEO Tim Cook terminated Scott Forstall, a brilliant software designer. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fired Steven Sinofsky, who led the development of Windows 8. Both executives were accomplished but each wore out their welcome with their hard-headed management styles.

Identifying such shortcomings through a process of continual interaction gives those on the selection committee to recommend development opportunities. Some candidates will be encouraged to work outside their function, or take on an overseas assignment. Others will be advised to work with a mentor or an executive coach.

In this way the selection process becomes what Marshall Goldsmith, an executive coach who has worked with over 300 CEOs and is the author of Succession: Are You Ready? calls “succession development.” Rather than identifying the next CEO or next person for a senior slot, you look at, what Marshall says, “the next two or three generations who could be CEO.”

Such development not only prepares the next cadre of senior leaders, it enables the organization to focus on its business rather than who’s next in line. Choosing the next leader is not an easy process. It requires a commitment to a process of development that prepares leaders for greater levels of responsibility and in the process ensures the long-term viability of the enterprise.