Despite the abundance of formulas to identify what makes a good leader, the problem is that each one has different competencies and, therefore, leads in quite different ways.
This means, said Marcus Buckingham in his keynote speech at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s annual conference in Manchester this week, that trying to transfer tactics and practices that work well for one over to another in wholesale fashion rarely succeeds unless they share the same personality traits.
To make his point, he contrasted the leadership styles of Apple‘s Steve Jobs, whose philosophy about innovation was the same as Henry Ford’s – that is, customers don’t know what they want until you tell them – with that of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, whose stance was the polar opposite. Walton visited his stores regularly to see what was on the shelves, believing that it was impossible to know what customers wanted until they had bought it.
“You can’t have a formulaic approach. It gives people a feeling of control and being able to measure things, but you have to realise that there aren’t one or two pre-defined behaviours for excellence,” said Buckingham.
As a result, he believes that the answer is to use a “strengths model”, which filters everything “through the lens of who the heck you are”. This approach is used by content providers from Facebook to Spotify and even the New York Times, which uses a recommendation engine to suggest potential stories of interest “all filtered through the algorithm of you”, he said.
And he added: “If we’re not content providers in HR, I don’t know who is – we ask all the time ‘who the heck are you?’”. According to his strengths-based assessment model and book entitled ‘StandOut’, meanwhile, every individual demonstrates two dominant traits out of a total of nine and it is these dual characteristics that give leaders “their edge”.
1. Advisor – what is the best thing to do?
These people are practical and pragmatic and love to help people unravel problems so that they can move forward.
2. Connector – who/what can I connect to?
These individuals are resourceful and believe that if you put two people or things together, you can create extraordinary things. So their approach to a problem would be to introduce the right people to each other in order to progress a situation.
3. Creator – what do I understand?
Creators like to ruminate and think through a situation before they commit to anything. They get to the heart of the matter and help to make sense of things for other people.
4. Equaliser – what is the right thing to do?
Equalisers see life as being made up of commitments and make decisions on ethical rather than pragmatic grounds. They focus on planning and help to make the world a more predictable and reliable place by doing what they say they will do.
5. Influencer – how do I move you to act?
These individuals are always effectively closing a sales opportunity and win people over by persuasion, charm or being articulate. They believe in reciprocal altruism.
6. Pioneer – what’s new?
Such people like anything shiny and new and think of the world as a friendly place filled with opportunities. They are excited by filling the gaps in what they know how to do.
7. Provider – are you OK?
Providers do not leave anyone behind. They are aware of each individual’s emotional state, which they hold as sacred, and create an environment in which people feel safe to confide in them or come up with new ideas.
8. Stimulator – where is the energy in this room and can I raise it?
Stimulators are aware of a room’s emotional atmosphere and will seek to boost enthusiasm or engagement if it is low. Because they can be sucked dry by emotional vampires, however, they require downtime to recover.
9. Teacher – how can I/he/she learn?
These individuals are keen to help others develop and grow and find it stimulating if people do not follow a set path but go their own way.
In order to understand whether such traits could be applied consistently to individual roles, Buckingham undertook some research. One study showed that 90 sales people from the best sales organisations in the US often demonstrated ‘influencer’ as their primary characteristic, with ‘connector’ coming in second.
In the case of the top 150 leaders at Hilton Focus hotels, however, the top characteristic tended to be ‘equalizer’ – they wanted everyone to have the right room and to stay in a safe, clean environment – followed by ‘connector’.
But Buckingham added: “The key discovery was that, in each role there were representatives of people with any two of the nine strengths, which showed true diversity. They were all excelling, but all doing it in a different way. And whenever you study excellence in a role, you always find a range.”
What this means, in reality, is that there is “no perfect profile for any role,” only “perfect practices for your profile”, Buckingham said. Put another way, what techniques work for one may not work for another unless they have the same dominant traits.
In order to fulfil his brief and come up with transferrable best practice for the leaders of the Hilton Focus hotels, however, Buckingham and his team interviewed 27 of the 150 research participants, each of whom provided between four and five techniques and tips.
Some of these were subsequently provided to the sample group after they had undertaken a StandUp assessment, but the rest were drip fed to their mobiles ‘phones via text message each Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of the year.
As Buckingham concluded: “The challenge for HR is how to develop capabilities based on the fact that human nature means that each leader is different. But technology has afforded us the opportunity to share ideas and drip feed information without trying to dictate moves.”
