The downside of excellence

High performing leaders can undermine themselves by being afraid of showing their weaknesses.

Many smart professionals don’t do as well as expected and plateau in their careers because they get anxious about their performance which impedes their progress.

That’s according to Thomas J & Sarah DeLong in an article called “The Paradox of Excellence”  (HBR of June 2011). The Harvard professor and his psychiatrist daughter say many high performers would rather do the wrong things well than do the right things badly. Because they are used to success they may shy away from really testing opportunities because they carry risk or require new skills and would rather preserve their image.

High achievers are often independent-minded and don’t easily ask for help and people may tell them what they think they want to hear anyway. So the trick is to have a good support network that will give you honest and constructive feedback.

We know leaders often move on before they experience failure so are not prepared for it and don’t  learn from it –  cynics might say they move on before they are found out. The DeLongs suggest that you need to  expose yourself to new learning experiences that make you feel uncertain or even incompetent and to remember these are temporary feelings and can lead to greater professional ability. That all sounds admirable but I wonder if that is really possible when share values seem to rule corporate decision-making?

They also identify behaviours that can help you succeed but also get in the way. They say classic high achievers are:

• driven to get results – but may be so involved that they don’t let colleagues know what they are doing and think helping others is a waste of time
• doers– they believe nobody else can do things as well as they. They make poor delegators and may micromanage
• highly motivated – but because they take all aspects of their job seriously may not distinguish between what is urgent and what is important
• need positive feedback – they care what others think but may obsess over criticism
• competitive – but may be obsessed with comparisons with others leading to a sense of insufficiency
• passionate about work – but intense highs can be followed by crippling lows
• safe risk takers – they won’t damage the company by risky moves but may shy away from the unknown and miss opportunities
• guilt-ridden – they are driven to produce but no matter what they accomplish may feel they aren’t doing enough

The DeLongs are describing leaders and professionals who are behaving more cautiously then they should and thereby hampering their careers. On the opposite side of the coin there are those who over-do their strengths and begin to demonstrate the dark side of their personalities, often with devastating results for themselves and people around them.

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And they are not the first to suggest that leaders should show their weaknesses. Goffee and Morgan made the same point, also in HBR, in 2000 although they cautioned that leaders should do so selectively.

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It’s tough at the top

CEOs are leaving their jobs sooner since the recession, according to research by Booz & Co reported by James Ashton in the Sunday Times (13 June 2010).

CEO turnover has flattened out at 14% (still up from 11% in 2001) each year but fewer are getting dismissed – only 23% in 2009 compared with 35% in 2008.

And average tenure has shrunk from 8.1 to 6.3 years over the past 10 years. Interestingly that means that although they start the job a little older than in the past they still leave it at the same age: 53.2 years in 2009.

Companies and shareholders are now more impatient for results and CEOs are also more likely to see the job as a project rather than a lifetime career. It helps if you have worked for the company previously as internal promotions seem to last almost 2 years longer than average whereas outsiders are more likely to be forccd out.

The same weekend Ruth Sunderland wrote a well-referenced piece in The Observer: “Superheroes and supervillains – why the cult of the CEO blinds us to reality“.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/13/tony-hayward-terry-leahy-corporate-governance

She started by comparing the contrasting fortunes of the CEOs from BP and Tesco and suggests that businessmen are idolised out of all proportion and then become victims of a witch hunt when things go wrong (a bit like football managers then so watch out Capello if England don’t do well!).

Some people argue that the “cult of the chief executive” requires bosses to be charismatic leaders rather than competent managers. Most modern CEOs don’t talk about making money but about “vision and values” and have a “mission statement” rather than a job description.

She quotes research that shows that fame and charisma, with a few exceptions, has little relationship to high company performance. In the past entrepreneurs like Rockefeller (founder of Standard Oil) or Victorian soap baron Lord Lever were larger than life but they were bringing something new to market.

With the exception of people like James Dyson, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, most CEOs are not entrepreneurs (and haven’t invested in the companies which begs the question of why they get paid so much when they are not risking their own money – but that’s a different post).

Perhaps in difficult times we look for inspiration, influenced by the celebrity TV programmes like The Apprentice in both the US and the UK. Some CEOs undoubtedly succumb to narcissistic behaviour, a topic I have touched on more than once.See: “Leadership – the dark side”.

One contributor suggested that many CEOs are driven to succeed by trauma in their childhood which may help them to super-achieve but not have the personality to cope with failure. (This is not true for everyone. See: “What doesn’t kill you, makes you“). Egotistical CEOs may feel the need to take more risks to maintain or enhance their profiles which can then lead to spectacular failures with nowhere to hide.

There are also cultural differences with companies from Anglo-American meritocratic societies tending to go for star performers compared with the emerging Asian businesses preferring a more team-based approach.

As Professor  Froud from MBS said; ” … in a large organisation success or failure doesn’t hang on any one individual” but an anonymous FTSE100 CEO said; “Leadership is emotional. It is about winning hearts and minds to a common purpose. It’s not just about one person, but it starts with one person”.

All this reminds me of Harry Truman’s comment about the heat and the kitchen.