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10 Traits of the Ultra-Talented Leader

July 8th, 2009 @ 11:39 am

Categories: Leadership, Opinion

Tags: Leader, Leadership, Management, Joanna Higgins

ZD Net picks up on a Harvard blog about Steve Jobs’s leadership style — a heady mix of egoism and maverick behaviour that Taylor urges others not to emulate.

For some reason, this reminded me of the old ‘manager or leader’ debate. (Would the apparently temperamental and difficult Jobs have made it to second interview for a management job?)

I’m still not convinced there’s much to separate business leaders from managers. The concept of leadership’s far older than the modern practice of management, as the late Sir John Harvey-Jones observed. But is there any more to it?

Plenty would say there is — among them Peter Saville. He differentiates between leaders and managers, but adds a further distinction among leaders, within which is a group of elite, ultra-talented people.

Saville, the founding father of occupational (or industrial, as it was before) psychology and workplace performance measurement, has written a book all about the traits that mark out exceptionally talented people in a range of fields — sports, business, the arts.

His research for the book — called “Talent” — unearthed the following about the elite. Looking at the qualities that make for ultra-talented business people, some of them would suggest a kind of focus and drive that might preclude capable management. Do great leaders tend to be haphazard managers?

Here they are, see what you think:

  1. Talented people demonstrate leadership qualities young.
  2. There may be a genetic factor — research has found a link between success and individual levels of serotonin (a neurotransmitter that affects mood, among other things).
  3. You can improve upon your leadership style, but there’s got to be some grain of talent there to begin with.
  4. Hard work, competitive spirit and passion drive leaders to work that much harder than everyone else — Saville’s research supports Geoffrey Colvin’s idea of ‘deliberate practice‘ and Malcolm Gladwell’s discovery of the 10,000-hour rule (refuted here by Seth Godin).
  5. Academic prowess is no indicator of success in later life. Super-talented people didn’t necessarily do well at school and in a recent trial (using only schoolboys), it was found that the natural leaders in a group were also likely to be the ‘cheeky’ ones, who were lively and sometimes defiant. Leaders have what Aristotle called “practical intelligence”, and often think so fast, it looks like instinct.
  6. They don’t really care about details. Leaders are more interested in empowering others and surrounding themselves with a great team. Managers can be afraid of ceding power by delegating and are all about the detail.
  7. Job knowledge marks out leaders from managers — they may be captains, but they’ve also become the best navigators, too.
  8. Leaders have natural powers of persuasion — even in the army, persuasion is considered a more powerful motivator than an order.
  9. They get nervous, just like the rest of us, but they know how to channel their nerves and use the difficulty to their advantage.
  10. They are flexible and willing to alter direction. On the plus side, leaders aren’t afraid to admit they were wrong. On the minus side, they can be difficult to deal with and are apt to change their minds.

(Photo of Steve Jobs: marcopako,CC2.0)

 
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    bisikay

    07/29/09 | Report as spam

    RE: 10 Traits of the Ultra-Talented Leader

    WHY MANAGERS CAN?T LEAD AND LEADERS CAN?T MANAGE
    ?And What They Should Both Do About It!
    (Beyond MANAGEMENT and LEADERSHIP: Behold LEADAGEMENT)
    By BISIKAY, Director, The Global LEADAGEMENT Institute, London - leadagement@gmail.com
    PREAMBLE:
    JOANNA HIGINS, like many other commentators, is VERY correct in her analyses of the scenarios that LEADERSHIP and MANAGEMENT are different systems. Hence our own observation and assertion that MANAGERS CAN?T LEAD AND LEADERS CAN?T MANAGE. However, we also offered WHAT THEY SHOULD BOTH DO ABOUT IT: we call it LEADAGEMENT?

    INTRODUCTION
    I have come to realise that once we moved away from MANAGERIALISM to, and, from the LEADERSHIP models of EXECUTIVE deployment and development, a new paradigm could now emerge, which I am exploring in the new concept of "LEADAGEMENT: The SUPER-MODEL of Higher Executive Development Beyond Management and Leadership".
    Myself and a few colleagues are working on this super-model through the newly established GLOBAL LEADAGEMENT INSTITUTE, in London, UK. We believe that MANAGERIALISM is not enough, and that LEADERSHIP is not enough either. Current concerns about optimising executives? PERFORMANCE worldwide have given us the impetus for the LEADAGEMENT project. The way forward, we have come to conclude, is in the SYNTHESIS of both of the current executive models inherited from past generations.
    The basic principles of MANAGEMENT and those of LEADERSHIP practices are easily reducible to CONCEPTS that can become synthesised in the wholistic system of LEADAGEMENT, which hopefully in due course give us LEADAGERS: the dynamic HYBRID Super-EXECUTIVES, the Leader-Managers or the Manager-Leaders of tomorrow.
    We are already working to see how LEADAGEMENT practice helps to produce higher Executive PERFORMANCE among organisations administrative cadres.
    LEADAGING TOMORROW?S ORGANISATION
    From our observation of the current ORGANISATIONAL structures around the world, one has found that there is a traditional DUALISATION of the headship of corporations and institution into the conventional positions of the PRESIDENT / CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (the CEO), on one hand , and that of the CHAIRMAN on the other. Now, we would like to suggest here, in line with the principles and practices of LEADAGEMENT, that the COMBINATION of the Corporate Roles of the CHAIRMAN and the PRESIDENT / CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (the CEO), or the MANAGING DIRECTOR (MD), could be given to the newly conceived position of the LEADAGER.

    We are convinced that both the MANAGER and his/her MANAGERIAL role as well as the CHAIRMAN and his/her LEADERSHIP role will be synthesised into the LEADAGEMENT role for tomorrow?s organisations


    Below is an OUTLINE of LEADAGEMENT, the future EXECUTIVE Development and Deployment system.

    LEADAGEMENT: BEYOND MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP

    BACKGROUND:

    The 4 Operational and Developmental STAGES of Global Executive Functions of GOVERNANCE could be viewed as follows:

    STAGE 1: ADMINISTRATION
    STAGE 2: MANAGEMENT
    STAGE 3: LEADERSHIP
    STAGE 4: LEADAGEMENT

    LEADAGEMENT is the new super model of ADMINISTRATION and EXECITIVE functions beyond the current systems of MANAGEMENT and LEADERSHIP.

    LEADAGEMENT involves an EXECUTIVE who is LEADAGING an organisation as a LEADAGER, not just as a MANAGER or simply a LEADER, to LEADAGE for the highest level of personal performance and organisational productivity.

    LEADAGEMENT: THE DEFINITIONS
    (1) LEADAGEMENT
    Leadagement is the organic integration of management and leadership principles and practices in a synergetic, systematic and strategic way for the most effective and efficient executive and administrative productivity.

    Leadagement is the new super model of ADMINISTRATION and EXECITIVE functions beyond the current systems of MANAGEMENT and LEADERSHIP.

    Leadagement involves an EXECUTIVE who is LEADAGING an organisation as a LEADAGER, not just as a MANAGER or simply a LEADER, to LEADAGE for the highest level of personal performance and organisational productivity.

    Leadagement is really the essence of global executiveness.

    Leadagement as a WORD is derived from the combination of LEADership and manAGEMENT .

    (2) LEADAGE
    Leadage is how to both lead to manage and to manage to lead for maximum productivity and quality in the executive and administrative function.

    Leadage as a WORD is derived from the combination of LEAD and manAGE

    (3) LEADAGING
    Leadaging is the dynamic processs of managing leadership and leading management roles and functions for the most productive and qualitative performance of global executiveness.

    Leadaging as a WORD is derived from the combination of LEADing and manAGING
    (4) LEADAGER
    A Leadager is an efficient manager-leader who is at the same time an effective leader-manager, performing their leadaging role beyond just managing or leading an organisation or nation successfully.

    Leadager as a WORD is derived from the combination of LEADer and manAGER

    WHY LEADAGEMENT

    There is a GLOBAL need for the philosophical and operational SYNTHESIS of the basic Principles / Practices / Prospects / Processes of MANAGEMENT and LEADERSHIP, thereby taking CORPORATE GOVERNANCE to the required next level of development !

    There is a general acknowledgement of the NEED to make great MANAGERS function better as good LEADERS too. And it is vice versa for great LEADERS as well to function as good MANAGERS. But what about what I would like to refer to as ?EXECUTIVE DISONANCE?, whereby a manager would only want to perform their executive role simply and solely within MANAGERIALISM, and the organisational leader wanting to perform strictly within LEADERSHIPISM, and whereby both executive officers finding it very difficult to switch between the two administrative and governance paradigms, even when and if they are consciously trying to be flexible in the executive performances to reflect both their MANAGERSHIP as well as LEADERSHIP roles and goals .

    The observable EFFECT of this ?Executive Disonance? is the imbalance in the expected OUTCOMES of Management and Leadership PERFORMANCE in terms of compromising of EFFICIENCY for EFFECTIVENESS and vice versa. We would like to hypothesise that LEADAGEMENT Practice will help organisations and their executives achieve a better balancing of ADMINISTRATIVE and GOVERNANCE outcomes.

    There is MANAGEMENT in LEADERSHIP, as there is LEADERSHIP in MANAGEMENT, while both are really embedded in LEADAGEMENT. It makes our task of EXECUTIVE development and deployment much easier if and when we apply the super-model of LEADAGEMENT without needing to continuously switch from neither MANAGEMENT to LEADERSHIP, nor from LEADERSHIP to MANAGEMENT.

    LEADAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
    We anticipate that sooner or later, people and organisations would want to be in the league of the most productive executives, globally, whereby every good and great MANAGERS and LEADERS everywhere will require to ADVANCE themselves and their organisations further and higher with LEADAGEMENT from now on as the pioneer new world LEADAGERS !

    We earnestly seek contributions from all cadres of EXECUTIVES and the general public, GLOBALLY, on our ongoing efforts at developing and propagating the new subject of LEADAGEMENT.

    Out task now is how to make the new subject of LEADAGEMENT live up to its billing.

    PS:
    We would welcome CONTRIBUTIONS to our development of the LEADAGEMENT discourse, globally:
    Global LEADAGEMENT Institute, 11 Ealing House, 33 Hanger Lane, London W5 3HJ, UK
    drbisikay@yahoo.com OR leadagement@gmail.com


    REFERENCE

    BISIKAY (2008) Why MANAGERS Can?t LEAD and LEADERS Can?t MANAGE ( www.lulu.com / amazon.com )

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