Book Review – The Extraordinary Leader
Book Review – The Extraordinary Leader
The first edition of the book, which was published in 2002, drew rave reviews for the ground-breaking research on leadership. Their focus had been on balancing and maximizing the strengths as opposed to just correcting the errors. The second edition is completely revised with more global outlook and new chapters regarding the core topic of strengths.
Figure 1: The Leadership Tent Floor
Source:
The book starts by listing the sixteen variables that form the significant unknowns upon which the leadership depends on. In order to demystify the leadership, they undertook an empirical research. Their empirical research was based on the 3600 responses from peers, bosses, and subordinates of about 20,000 leaders. It contained a database of about 200,000 questionnaires, used 25 different leadership assessment instruments and more than 2,000 assessment items. They then compared the top 10% of the leaders with the bottom 10% of the leaders to find out the differences. They discuss 20 insights which form the framework of the book. According to them, there are 20 competencies that can be grouped into 5 clusters and the authors likened them to the “The Leadership Tent” as in Figure 1. The book talks about effective leadership comparing and listing the differences between good and bad leaders, as well as, the difference between good and great leaders. They measured the leadership effectiveness by measuring the average employee satisfaction / commitment by averaging 16 differentiating competencies of 7.391 leaders from hundreds of companies and their effect on bottom-line outcomes. Their results say that the top ten percentile leaders had a significant impact on the performance of the company.
Elaborating on the tent analogy of competencies required for a leader, each cluster is likened to a tent pole. Effective leadership depends on maximizing the cubic space available under the tent, hence, the leader should raise all the tent poles to their maximum height to do that. Having skills that belong to a single cluster will bunch up the tent around that pole. These clusters and their competencies are listed below:
Character: This is the center pole of the tent. Competencies include high integrity and honesty. If this is the only cluster in which a leader excels, then there is only a 6% chance of the leader being considered great. However, if they lack the competencies in this cluster, they have zero percent chance of being considered great.
Personal Capability: Competencies include technical and professional expertise, the capability to analyze issues and solving problems, capability to innovate, and practice self-development. The top 10 percent of the leaders always had these competencies. They explain the four stage model in which people contribute, which was developed by Gene Dalton and Paul Thompson.
Focus on relationships: Competencies include taking initiative, establishing stretch goals, and driving for results. Producing results is a key outcome of effective leadership and is mandatory to be in the top 10 percent of the leaders.
Interpersonal skills: Competencies include communicating powerfully and prolifically, inspiring and motivating others to high performance, build relationships, build others, and building collaboration and teamwork. According to the authors, having only interpersonal skills will not get a leader into the top 10 percent.
Leading organizational change: Competencies include developing strategic perspective, championing change, and connecting the group to the outside world.
The four elements other than the character depend on which of the four stages of the contribution that belongs to. The book further talks about how the five elements and the competencies integrate with each other.
A competency can be called a strength when one is in the top 10 percentile in it, in other words, if one is stronger than 90% of the comparative leaders. To be an extraordinary leader, one has to be in the top 20 percentile leaders. Their research shows that achieving strength in any three competencies, if spread across the five elements or tent pole clusters, can move one into to the 81 percentile. Due to the difference in the outcomes of the top 10 percentile and those in, say, 60th percentile, it is worth investing in measures to shift the good leaders to great leaders or, in effect, to above the 90th percentile. However, this does not happen as neither the management realizes the gains in the outcomes due to this shift nor the individuals themselves see the necessity for this change.
Out of the 20 insights that they offer, some of the most salient ones are that:
Their research shows that the top 10 percentile leaders produced twice as much profitability than those in the 11th to 89th percentile of the same organization
A company can produce many great leaders
The relationship between increased performance and improvement in leadership is neither linear not incremental.
Great leadership consists of possessing capabilities that complement each other and act as building blocks
All competencies are not equal and only some competencies differentiate a good leader from the great
The leadership competencies are closely linked
There are different ways to lead
Their research suggests that it is important to invest in building strengths rather than spend effort on eliminating weaknesses. They discuss the case study of U.S. Marine corps to illustrate many of their insights. They assert that there are five fatal flaws that have to be eliminated if one has to be considered a great leader as even one flaw can make a leader ineffective. These fatal flaws are visible to others but rarely visible to the individual and are a result of deficiencies in emotional intelligence. These fatal flaws, according to the authors, are; 1) inability to learn from mistakes, 2) lack of interpersonal skills, 3) not being open to new or different ideas, 4) not being accountable for performance, and 5) lack of initiative. The book also gives a plan for developing leaders by:
Setting goals high: Achieving 90th percentile in each of the tent pole clusters
Choosing and sticking with one model of leadership
Since the leadership at lower levels is limited by leadership at higher levels, focusing on developing the senior levels of leadership
Focusing on enhancing competencies where the person already excels.
The leadership initiative is a strategic initiative that has to be driven by the top management and should be part of their long-term strategy. The book offers some advice to people who are interested in their personal development;
The character is important so it is imperative to develop and demonstrate high character. All commitments have to be honored and any mistakes have to be owned
Identify and develop a few competencies (usually 3 to 5) across the tent pole clusters where one is strong and develop them furthers
The competencies where one is weaker have to be identified and neutralized by either delegating or outsourcing
Connect and work with extraordinary leaders
Be enthusiastic in whatever one does.
While the book is an excellent research-driven book, with a key message that it is important to reinforce your strengths rather than focus on one's flaws (except for the fatal ones), there appeared to be a few inconsistencies in their approach. In chapter 4, they talk about how companies look at competencies to assess the leadership. They say that it is sometimes so complex that as many as close to 175 behaviors are defined under 15 competencies for each pay band, which is the reason why the competency movement has not worked. Then they go ahead and list 83 behaviors under 16 competencies with more scattered across the book along with the four stages of a career that have to be considered for their leadership requirement. This makes their method equally difficult or complex. There is no clear-cut conclusion whether these will work for everybody (Universalist) or you will have to select leaders that match the organizations patterns (Contingency). Even though their research is empirical, their data is still a collection of perceptions and does not always measure the effective leadership with measurable outcomes or results. Another issue that they themselves acknowledge is that, while the character is the central tent pole for any great leader, there are great leaders who have serious character flaws. They cite the examples of Bill Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani who are considered great leaders in spite of serious character flaws.
Example Case
The organization was executing a very complex project with too many variables that could go wrong and they were. The project was very critical for the organization as the success of this project could pave the way for the organization into an industry where there are tremendous opportunities. The project manager (PM) was new and had replaced the old project manager who had to leave the project due to some personal reasons. The PM had a couple of weekly team meetings and immediately realized the following. One of the team members, TM1 is not able to provide reliable data. TM1 has been able to find excuses for being unable to get the right data. Though the team initially was supportive of the efforts that TM1 was apparently putting in, they have been tiring of the excuses off late. This has been a cause of increased frustration amongst the team members. Another team member TM2, who is responsible for providing financial information, has been providing soft projects which were far too low. The team was facing problems with the top management due to the behavior of the two team members.
The PM needs the following competencies to resolve this issue. The PM has to display high integrity and honesty as this is necessary for the team members to listen and follow the PM’s instructions. Without this competency, it does not matter how many other competencies one has, people will not listen. While dealing with the team as a whole, the PM has to have the competency to “drive for results” so that the team’s efforts are result oriented. The PM can use the competency “establishing stretch goals” so that the team’s efforts are maximized. For these to succeed, however, it is very important for the PM to have good “interpersonal skills”. The PM can use the “interpersonal skills” to talk to TM1 and TM2 and use the competency “Take responsibility for outcomes” and “drive for results” to ensure that they understand that they responsible for the outcomes that they produce. The PM can also use the competency “developing others” so that TM2 can improve the capability to produce more accurate financial information. The PM can also use the competency “communicates powerfully and prolifically” to increase the openness in the team and the competency “inspires and motivates others to high performance” to help the project to be a success.
References
Cook, I. (2010, January 25). Book review – the extraordinary leader: turning good managers into great leaders. Retrieved from 888fulcrum: http://888fulcrum.com/the-extraordinary-leader/
The Publisher. (2016, April 17). Leadershop: building a community of leaders. Retrieved from leadershipnow.com: http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadershop/0071387471.html
Yukl, G. A. (2012). Leadership in organizations (8th ed.). London: Pearson.
Zenger, J. H., & Folkman, J. R. (2009). The extraordinary leader : turning good managers into great leaders (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Zenger, J., & Folkman, J. (2014). Key insights from the extraordinary leader: 20 new ideas about leadership development. Orem, UT: Zenger Folkman.
