The Rising Star Checklist: 12 Capabilities That Predict Leadership Success

Episode #364 The Rising Star Checklist: 12 Capabilities That Predict Leadership Success

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A SURPRISE RESIGNATION?

It always comes as a bit of a surprise when someone we had earmarked for bigger and better things announces that they have no desire to progress.

Our search for talent and our need to fill the leadership pipeline for our company can deceive us. We occasionally typecast someone who has absolutely no interest in leading.

There are a bunch of potential topics to delve into here:

• Why do we assume everyone wants to progress in their career?
• What stops people from realising their ambitions?
• Do personality traits play a part in leadership performance?
• What capabilities would be likely to produce successful leaders? And,
• Can we easily observe these types of qualities in the people who work for us?

I start this newsletter by examining some of the reasons why great employees might not fit our stereotype of ambitious people; I’ll explore the capabilities that distinguish a rising staff from just a really good worker; and I’ll finish with eight questions you can ask yourself to work out, which is which.

SOME PEOPLE JUST DON’T WANT TO LEAD

One of my clients called me the other day to tell me about a shock resignation. It was one of his high performers who had been operating in a fairly senior leadership role.

Ultimately, although he loved the company and loved working for this CEO, he simply didn’t enjoy leadership, and he wanted to take a step back into a technical role.

This isn’t as uncommon as you might think. There are lots of really good people who don’t want the responsibility of leading others. They’re just happy to come in, do a good job, and then go home. In fact, in large businesses, up to 70% of your entire workforce is going to be made up of people just like that.

But, sometimes it’s hard to tell your decent workers from the genuine rising stars. In virtually every business, becoming a leader is the only way to get more money and greater status. And ambitious people are also drawn by the promise of being able to have greater impact.

Why is it that some people don’t want to be leaders? Here are four common reasons:

1. As a leader, you can’t control everything directly. You have to get outcomes through others, and often this means trusting someone else to get the job done. This can be really scary if you can’t learn to let go of control.
2. Many people just don’t want the extra workload. If you can’t loosen control, the only other option is to say hello to longer and longer working hours. The higher up you go, the bigger a problem this becomes. Some people simply don’t want work to dominate their lives.
3. Fear of failure. Many people lack the confidence to lead. They might reluctantly accept a promotion, but when things don’t go as they expect, their confidence takes a hit; and if they lose their self-belief, this can bleed into other areas of their lives, often leaving them angry and resentful.
4. A fundamental lack of ambition. This seems pretty self-explanatory, but some people just don’t have an ambition chip… which ambitious people find hard to fathom.

There’s a few pretty solid reasons why people may not want to be leaders… they sound obvious. So why can’t we see them more easily?

The number one reason is the halo effect.

We see someone performing well in one area and assume that this performance is going to carry over into other areas.

By the time you finish reading this newsletter, I’m going to give you a fresh perspective and a couple of practical tools to help you manage this halo effect. It could save you quite a bit, simply by not investing the time, energy, and money into developing people who don’t want to be developed.

ARE PERSONALITY TRAITS USEFUL PREDICTORS?

I came across an article a little while back from the Harvard Program on Negotiation. It was titled The Trait Theory of Leadership.

I always find it interesting to see the latest in the age-old debate of whether leaders are born or made. In the context of this newsletter, it’s worth asking the question, Is there anything that can inform us as to whether or not someone is likely to be a strong and willing leader based on their inherent traits?

The Trait theory of leadership dates back to the mid-1800s. This theory suggests that there are only a small percentage of people who have the personality traits to be great leaders.

Although this belief isn’t widely held these days, there’s been a bunch of research over the years to try to isolate the personality traits that are most useful in leadership. In the early 2000s, trait theory made a bit of a comeback. Some researchers identified personality traits that were correlated with leadership effectiveness.

Even when you look at Jim Collins work in his classic book, Good to Great, the Level Five leaders he describes have specific traits. According to this particular Harvard article though, the more recent research has divided personality traits into two separate categories:

1. Dispositional personality traits. These are things like motivation, energy, dominance, charisma;
2. Proximal personality traits. These include things like interpersonal skills, written communication, managerial skills, decision-making.

Dispositional traits are more deeply ingrained, which is why they appear to be more difficult to change. Proximal traits, on the other hand, can be changed more easily through education and training.

It’s quite likely that we intuitively observe our people’s traits, and make our own judgments about whether or not they are “leadership material”.

And, just as we do this in our own minds, it may well be the case that the individuals we pigeonhole are doing the same things to themselves: they may have an intuitive sense of their own suitability for leadership based on their dispositional personality traits.

12 CAPABILITIES THAT PREDICT LEADERSHIP PERFORMANCE

I often hear someone ask, “Marty, I have this really high performer, but…“

After the “but” comes all sorts of interesting sentences like:

• “… but they don’t listen”; or
• “… but they refuse to follow the company’s processes”; or
• “… but they seem to get distracted with non-core work”; or (my favorite)
• “… but no one likes working with them.”

My question is always the same: “Are they really a high performer?”

True high performers aren’t just good at one thing. Their performance is superior across a holistic range of disciplines, and their behaviors are exemplary.

It’s one thing for someone to be technically competent, and it’s good that they really know their stuff… but knowledge is a poor yardstick for performance. It’s becoming easier and easier to acquire any knowledge that you might need.

We often make the mistake of rating someone’s potential based on their job competence, but this can be a little misleading. For a start, being competent and hitting KPIs doesn’t make someone a high performer… and success at one level certainly doesn’t guarantee success at the next level.

On top of that, there’s something called tenure fallacy (which I think I just made up). There’s a massive difference between someone who has 10 years’ experience, and someone who just has one year’s experience, 10 times over.

In Ep.25: The Road to Exceptional Leadership, I outlined the capabilities that are more likely to be predictive of someone’s potential. Rather than looking at personality traits or trying to judge potential based on someone’s performance in their current role, these capabilities are highly tangible.

That episode was over six years ago, so I’ve updated and refined this list. You can use it as a checklist for people who you think are high performers, and may have the potential to lead at the next level.

It’s geared for senior leaders, but I think it can be pretty useful to project forward for any leader of leader’s role. I’ve created a PDF resource that goes into more detail and enables you to actually score your rising stars against these 12 capabilities, which I believe are highly predictive of leadership success at the highest level.

1. Seasoned judgment

   This should show a trend of growth and improvement over time because it comes from an individual’s experience in their chosen field.

2. Visionary thinking

   Can your rising star understand, simplify, and then communicate complex concepts easily?

3. Financial acumen

   It doesn’t matter what type of organisation you’re in, understanding how the money is made is a prerequisite for any senior leader.

4. Driving execution

   Delivering value is the object of the exercise for every leader. Lots of companies have plausible strategies, but very few execute on them really well. Without execution everything else is just conversation.

5. Attracting and developing talent

   Unless senior leaders learn to do this, the higher up they go, the harder they’ll find it to achieve anything resembling performance.

6. Empowering others

   This is a critical element of delegation, accountability and execution.

7. Influencing and negotiating

   The higher up you go, the less direct control you have over your people’s work and the more you have to achieve through influence.

8. Leadership versatility

   Are they able to adapt to different environments, economic conditions, teams and customer preferences?

9. Organisational relationships

   No one gets far in a modern organisation without a bunch of workable and productive relationships across the whole organisation. How effectively do they develop these relationships?

10. Inspiring trust

    Trust is the bedrock that senior leaders need to build in order to do the hard work of leadership.

11. Mature confidence

    Senior leaders need some measure of confidence to face the adversity that will inevitably present itself during the course of their career. A leader without confidence cannot instil confidence in their team.

12. Cross-functional performance

    The higher up your rising star goes, the more important it is that they develop a broad perspective of your industry and your organisation.

EIGHT KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF

To see if you’re getting a nasty surprise from one of your almost-stars, here are eight questions you can ask yourself. These will help you to overcome the potential halo effect.

1. What makes them so good at their current job?

   This may seem trivial, but you should at least understand why you are so taken with their work. Are they doing their job really well because they’ve adapted quickly or just because they’ve proven to be steady and reliable?

2. If they couldn’t use their current skills at the next level, how do you think they’d go?

   Imagine this person doing everything the next level requires, and nothing that they do in their current role. Can you picture that easily? If not, then why not?

3. Does their work ethic signal, ambition and drive?

   I don’t care what anyone says: ambitious people are hard workers. You don’t have to push them. They push themselves. People without work ethic who want to be promoted aren’t ambitious. They’re just entitled.

4. Do people naturally gravitate towards them in times of uncertainty?

   Having some natural leadership draw is definitely an advantage. Accountability, trust and confidence provide this magnetism.

5. Do they focus on commercial performance or just the technical details?

   Even at relatively low levels, high potential leaders see the bigger picture and they want to have a broader impact. They aren’t just inwardly focused on their own little world.

6. Do they bring new and innovative ideas?

   This is about contributing freely and openly to problems, issues, and decisions. Do they break new ground or do they just execute well?

7. Do you see this person as a trusted advisor or just a workhorse?

   Let’s face it, we all love a good workhorse, but if you aren’t seeking them out for their expertise and insight, they may not be promotion ready.

8. Here’s an idea; just ask them.

   If you think they’re leaders of the future, ask them if they’ve ever thought about leading. I’ve often heard interviewers ask, “where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” Well, maybe we should ask that more often of the people who want to progress in the company to find out if they truly do.

DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR TALENT

When you think you have a rising star, you’ve got to be careful not to just fall in love with them. Instead, take the opportunity to test their holistic performance. Look at their attitude, look at their behaviors, and use the checklist of senior leadership capabilities.

This will help you to work out if they’re really a leader for the future, or just someone who takes pride in doing a great job.