Are you a “good” boss?  Google’s “Project Oxygen” has taken a lot of time — a couple of years, actually — to study what makes a good boss. Their “people analytics” staff has come up with eight key attributes of good managers within their organization.¹ Among those eight attributes are:

• Technical expertise (as you might expect of a tech firm like Google);
• Having a clear vision and strategy for “the team”;
• Helping your employees with career development;
• Be productive and results-oriented; and
• Be an effective and empathetic leader.

What shouldn’t surprise us is that of the eight attributes of a good manager, the “ability to work well with one’s employees” was ranked first in Google’s study. “Technical expertise”, which Google had considered an absolute necessity to being a team leader, was ranked at the bottom.

You may recall that in the Bizmanualz blog, we’ve talked about the qualities of great leaders and what makes true leaders different from others.   Mostly, what separates leaders from mere managers are those intangible qualities, those “quirks” of personality that stump psychologists and sociologists to this day.

What makes for a good manager and exactly how do we quantify it? Well, it’s been tried — a number of times — but Google is putting their own spin on the concept. Despite past failings elsewhere, the people at Google think it’s possible to make the process of grooming leaders a reliable, repeatable process. Their goal is to make the process of hiring and training leaders like any other human resources procedure.

This should be welcome news to every other HR department if Google’s HR can do it right. Managing people, with all their complexities and variations, is (at best) extremely difficult and statistical analysis is helpful only to a point. The chief problem with “data driven management” is that people can’t easily be reduced to a set of predictable behaviors and outcomes — we are only human. Every statistic has to be taken with a grain of salt² but even more so when human behavior is the focus.

I’m going to follow Google’s Project Oxygen to see if there’s any merit to it. I sincerely hope so but I don’t harbor lofty expectations, either. Google may have a world of resources behind them but — people being people – it’s not a sure bet that Project Oxygen will deliver the goods.

So, what do you think? Can Google be successful — at something not so technical — when many other companies before them haven’t been?

NOTES

¹Bryant, Adam, “Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss”, New York Times, 12 March 2011 — http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html.

²Seife, Charles, Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, Viking Press (23 Sept 2010). ISBN-13 #978-0670022-16-8.

A LinkedIn acquaintance of mine has shared what I think are some remarkable insights regarding leadership.  His group, Followership, is dedicated to a better understanding of what’s demanded and required of us when we are in the role of follower.

In the Bizmanualz blog, we’ve talked about what qualities our leaders should possess (and too often don’t) but we haven’t talked about one of the most important parts of leadership. To be a leader, you have to have followers.

“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”
Gen. George Patton, U.S. Army (1885-1945)

Why don’t we get the kind of leaders we want more often? Is it because we don’t know how to follow? How many of us follow our leaders passively? How many of us play an active role in ensuring the success of our leaders?

It’s sometimes said that leaders are made by their followers, and vice versa. From that, it should follow that if we’re to get leaders who embody those traits leaders should have, we as followers should embody many, if not all, of those leadership traits ourselves.  Those traits include:

1. Self-respect (and respect for others);
2. The ability to communicate well;
3. Integrity of character;
4. Humility;
5. Courage;
6. Persistence;
7. Dedication;
8. Commitment;
9. Willingness to accept responsibility; and
10. Decisiveness.

How about you? What kind of followers do you have? What kind of follower are you, especially if you’re a leader? Tell us what you think.

How many times have you seen this in the movies — the “last stand”? A group of soldiers is heavily outnumbered, supplies are getting thin, and nerves are frayed.

Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

Reinforcements are nowhere in sight. The enemy’s commander is just outside the gate, calling for the group to surrender.

Now, imagine yourself in the place of the officer in charge. Your organization is the castle/outpost/fortress under siege. You can fight or you can surrender; you’re surrounded, so retreat is not an option. It looks like there’s little chance of a favorable outcome for your small group. What do you do?

Your company might not be literally “under siege” but in our current economic state, you can be excused for feeling sometimes like the vultures are circling overhead. When times are tough for your business, what do you do?

1. Be a leader, not merely a boss. Get out in front of your employees. If you don’t demonstrate leadership capability, who will follow you?
2. Stand on your principles. There’s the expedient thing to do and there’s the right thing to do. If you believe in yourself, your product, and your employees, you’ll do the right thing.
3. Maintain employee morale. Convince yourself there’s no such thing as impossible, then demonstrate your conviction to your troops.
4. You know who your employees look up to — make those individuals part of your circle of command (“C of C”). Don’t lock yourself into one hierarchy.
5. Within your C of C, quickly determine your options.
6. Realistically assess your resources, strengths, and weaknesses.
7. Plan for the best- and worst-case scenarios.
8. Lay out the options for all your employees and explain why you prefer option ”x”.
9. Give your employees a choice whether to take a stand with you or cast their lot elsewhere. Those who aren’t firmly with you will weigh you down.
10. Execute your plan.

Remember — anyone can play a leader when things are going well. It’s in times of crisis when we find out who our true leaders are.

Maybe you and your business have been — or are — in a scenario like the one above. What kind of leadership did you display in that time of crisis? Do you have other ideas on how to lead in a crisis?

I and a colleague of mine began a couple of informal polls last week as a result of the response to a recent blog post in which I asked the question, “Leaders: what makes us want to follow them?“. We set up a questionnaire on Survey Monkey, asking participants to identify the top three leadership characteristics from among those I listed in the post.

So far, participants in that poll believe the top three leadership qualities are:

1. Decisiveness (especially in a crisis);
2. Doing what’s right (not what’s popular); and
3. The ability to plan effectively.

Similarly, we asked members of a group on LinkedIn (Smart Leaders) an open-ended question: ”What do you feel are the two most important qualities a leader can have?” Participants in this case weren’t restricted to a list of a dozen or so items; instead, we wanted the first thing(s) that popped into their heads.

Nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Naturally, responses are all over the place. Interestingly, a number objected to being limited to just two leadership qualities and gave us a half-dozen or more “most important” leadership qualities. For now, the two most important leadership qualities according to Smart Leaders are:

1. Vision; and
2. Passion.

There’s a host of other characteristics tied for 3rd place (e.g., courage, inspiration, empathy). As we get more responses from the LinkedIn group, the “top three” should become clearer. Of course, we’ll keep you updated.

Now it’s time to ask you — our readers — how you feel. What qualities do leaders need most, in your opinion? Are there two or three characteristics they need more than all the rest?

Do leaders need different qualities now than they did a decade ago, or a century ago? Are there people you work with who don’t have “leader” in their formal job title but are, in fact, leaders?

Head to either of our online polls (Survey Monkey or LinkedIn), or leave your comment on leadership below.

Thanks, and best wishes for the coming year,
Steve

Real leaders — not those people who run for office every other year, promising “real” leadership for a change — possess a combination of qualities and characteristics that make us want to follow them. Whether we naturally gravitate to these quality individuals or we subconsciously recognize their leadership, we follow them. We’re pretty good at recognizing greatness in certain people.

Why are some people great leaders? What do they possess that we don’t?

“What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? What makes the dawn come up like thunder?”
Cowardly Lion, “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)

Leaders generally possess these characteristics:

• They are credible;
• They’re persuasive;
• They’re able to plan effectively;
• They have a strong belief system (a sound moral/ethical code);
• They communicate extremely well (direct, to the point);
• They’re confident, both in their abilities and in the abilities of others;
• They’re goal-oriented;
• They’re charismatic;
• They do what’s right, not necessarily what’s popular;
• They are decisive, especially in crises;
• They are responsible;
• They’re knowledgeable and experienced (and they share their knowledge and experience);
• They don’t become complacent (they don’t rest on their laurels);
• They trust, but don’t assume; and
• They have an eye for talent.

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1 (1776)

But where does it come from? Is there such a thing as innovative leadership quality? It seems anyone can be trained to be a manager, but leaders are cut from a different cloth. Why? It’s not that they’re born that way. They can be made, but there’s no easily reproducible process, no easy-to-follow recipe or we’d be doing it all the time.

The service academies seem to have the greatest success in this regard — they purposely educate and groom individuals to be leaders by instilling discipline, self-sacrifice, and an unshakable work ethic and by constantly emphasizing the need to plan for the best but prepare for the worst. Still, even they don’t have anything close to a perfect track record when it comes to turning out leaders. Similarly, there are outstanding leaders throughout history who never served in the military.

“The real leader has no need to lead; he is content to point the way.”
Henry Miller (1891-1980)

How are leaders best made, in your opinion? Or are they born? Do you go looking for leaders or do you wait for them to come to you? Does your organization have a process for identifying and training potential leaders?

For many companies, it’s that time of year — time for year-end performance reviews. Time to see if we can find our performance reviews from last year, or head over to Human Resources to get a copy. For managers, time to dust off the performance reviews from last year and see if anything’s changed.

If you’re like most of us, you haven’t kept a daily diary of your accomplishments, so you have to construct an account of the last 12 months from long-buried memories in just a few days. You don’t bother listing your close calls, almosts, and never-weres — you need to put a positive spin on your year.

You might go into the review feeling you did a “more-than-adequate” job, even if you can’t quantify it exactly. Then again, you might approach the review with a sense of foreboding. You’re not well prepared. Maybe you feel like you’re going to get slammed. Maybe you wish the shoe were on the other foot. Maybe you wish everybody would just forget about it.

The performance review, as most of us know it, is a broken process. Lately, there appears to be a groundswell of support for the idea of doing away with performance reviews. According to an article in a recent Wall Street Journal, many HR professionals are “frustrated that managers don’t have the courage” to give constructive feedback.

In an interview from July, 2010, UCLA business professor Samuel Culbert said that performance reviews should be dispensed with altogether because annual reviews don’t promote candid discussions about problems in the workplace or their potential solutions.

Going back to 2006, the Harvard Business School’s “Working Knowledge” page ran an article by James Heskett, one of the HBS faculty, in which he called into question the main objective of performance reviews. Professor Heskett asked, “Is (the objective) to weed out poor performers? To recognize the so-called A players? To provide the basis for compensation decisions?” He concluded that we don’t do a good job of establishing or communicating objectives.

W. Edwards Deming, one of the gods of quality, called the performance review one of the “deadly diseases of management“. You’re not going to find a much stronger indictment than that.

It’s been a few years since I’ve had a formalized performance review. The manager in question got much more out of the typical performance review because he always had the performance of the group in mind. He linked my performance to that of my teammates, which helped create and maintain a team ethos.

Unfortunately, his type of performance review wasn’t the norm. Too often, the performance review is an exercise with no apparent purpose, except to satisfy a regulatory requirement or follow a decades-old policy. We go through the motions but don’t accomplish anything. By conducting performance reviews the way we do, we miss so many opportunities for improvement.

We all deserve better from this “process”.

* * * * * * *

I’m currently conducting a performance review poll on LinkedIn. Please drop in (it’ll only take 10 seconds, if that) and register your opinion. Or, post a comment below.

What do you think? Do performance reviews work for your company or your group? Or, do you think the performance review should’ve been retired with the mechanical adding machine and green eyeshades?

* * * * * * *

REFERENCES

• Light, Joe, “Human Resource Executives Say Reviews Are Off the Mark”, Wall Street Journal (Nov 7 2010) – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704405704575596723632340284.html
• NPR Staff, “Annual Job Review Is ‘Total Baloney,’ Expert Says”, NPR-dot-org (Jul 8 2010) – http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128362511
• Heskett, Jim, “What’s to Be Done About Performance Reviews?”, HBS Working Knowledge (Nov 27 2006) – http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5563.html
• “Management’s Five Deadly Diseases – a Conversation with Dr. W. Edwards Deming”, Encyclopedia Brittanica Educational Corporation , 1984 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehMAwIHGN0Y. (Video is approx. 15 minutes long.)

FURTHER READING

• Peralta, Eyder, “Top 10 Performance Review Euphemisms”, NPR-dot-org (Nov 9 2010) – http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/11/09/131189907/top-ten-performance-review-euphemisms

One question asked endlessly in business, academic, political, and other circles is, ”What’s the difference between a manager and a leader?”

The most often quoted answer seems to be, “The manager does things right – the leader does the right things.” What exactly does that mean – “doing the right thing”?  Does that mean history tells us whether the leader did the right thing? Can someone be a leader even if they end up on the losing side?

A leader is one who knows that though the risk of failure may be great, they don’t give up on themselves or others. Leaders are people of exceptional character who are capable of bringing others through a crisis. All leaders share certain qualities or characteristics, including:

1. Self-respect and respect for others. If you don’t have a healthy self-respect, you won’t respect others. If you don’t respect others, they will not respect you. You can’t lead people who don’t respect you.

2. The ability to communicate effectively. Leaders say what they mean and mean exactly what they say. Effective communicators are far more persuasive than those who don’t communicate well.

3. Integrity and character. Leaders are not swayed by unsubstantiated opinions or unfounded rumors. Fame, power, or material gain don’t motivate them. Leaders have integrity, that strength of character that resists assault.

4. Having a vision, a mission (or a purpose), a sense of direction, and a clear set of goals. Moreover, they know that their job isn’t done when one set of goals is reached. Leaders know that life is a journey.

5. Being grounded. Leaders have a vision of what the world around them ought to be, but they are also pragmatic. Things will not always go smoothly, but leaders understand that and have the presence of mind to deal with that.

6. Courage. Fear is a powerful motivator; it causes many of us to turn away from our goals when our belief in ourselves and our cause isn’t strong. Leaders aren’t fearless — leaders make a conscious choice to act in spite of their fear.

7. Persistence, commitment, and dedication. It’s like they always say: “Winners don’t quit, and quitters don’t win.”  Nothing worth having comes easily. When setbacks crop up, leaders don’t flag because they always have their eyes on the prize.

8. Humility. Leaders aren’t self-promoting or self-aggrandizing. They don’t take all the credit. They give credit to others and refuse it for themselves.

9. A sense of responsibility. Leaders are willing to bear the ultimate responsibility for their undertakings. They don’t point the finger of blame when things go awry.

10. Decisiveness. When action is called for, real leaders don’t waffle. Knowing that a window of opportunity exists (“the time to act is now”), they act quickly and effectively, based on the best available information.

Most importantly, leaders have these characteristics in balance. Some may tell you there is one characteristic more important than the rest. They’ll say something like, “Oh, you have to have that ‘vision thing’ above all else.” Not true – people won’t follow someone who has vision without courage or humility, for example.

What about you? What do you think are the most important qualities in a leader? Who do you consider a leader and why?

Thanks so much for your time.