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The top four traits followers look for in their leader.

On my previous blog, I challenged you to pick from the list of traits the perennial top four that the majority of followers seek in a leader.  How well did you do in picking them?  Here they are in rank order:

1. Honest
2. Forward looking
3. Inspiring
4. Competent

 I am not surprised, and I hope you aren’t either, that honesty always ranks as the number one trait by far each time the survey is completed.  If you are leader, how well would your employees and peers say you live out these four key traits?

 

What do you and others look for in a leader?

What traits do followers look for in a leader?  In their book, Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner list the top 20 traits most often identified by followers when answering that question.  For over 25 years, the authors have been surveying thousands of business and government executives asking the open-ended question, “What values, personal traits, and characteristics do you look for and admire in a leader?”   From these surveys they developed a questionnaire called, “Characteristics of Admired Leaders” which has been administered to over 75,000 people across the world. 

 What is so interesting is that over time and in all the questionnaires four traits have always received over 60 percent of the votes.  And these same four have been consistently ranked in the top four across different countries and one of the four traits has always been ranked the highest each year the survey was completed.

 

Here are the 20 traits on the questionnaire.  See if you can figure out which are the top four vote getters and see how well that match-up with your top four.   I will share the top four in another blog later this week.

 

Intelligent

Fair-minded

Honest

Straight forward

Broad-minded

Supportive

Forward-looking

Dependable

Cooperative

Courageous

Determined

Inspiring

Caring

Competent

Imaginative

Mature

Ambitious

Loyal

Self-controlled

Independent

Is your team dysfunctional? Build a dream team

The July issue of Success Magazine has an article about Patrick Lencioni’s best selling book the The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  I read the book when it came out and it’s one I recommend every leader read.  During my long corporate career I have been a part of and led many teams.  Very few of them have been what I would call high performance teams and several of them were clearly dysfunctional.  Lencioni describes the five dysfunctions of teams.  See if any of them apply to your team.

 

1.                  Absence of trust – Do the team members trust and can they be vulnerable with each other.  They need to be able to admit their weaknesses and mistakes, to acknowledge the strengths of others, and to apologize when they do something wrong.

2.                  Fear of conflict – Great teams argue and fight, but they don’t make it personal or mean spirited.  Most teams work to avoid conflict and confrontation which usually leads to compromise and artificial consensus, and that usually is a precursor for mediocrity.

3.                  Lack of commitment – When teams can openly and candidly debate issues and share their opinions about decisions, there is no holding back and everyone knows where everyone else stands on the issues.  Team members want to have a voice and to know their opinions were heard even if they aren’t accepted.  Even if they disagree with the final decision there is a strong likelihood they will fully support it because their ideas were listened to and considered.

4.                  Avoidance of accountability – The best accountability for a team is peer-to-peer.  Peer pressure is more effective and efficient than going to the leader to resolve an issue or intervene.  Strong teams have the courage to confront team members when they are performing or helping the team.

5.                  Inattention to details – Team members need to be focused on the collective good of the team.  However, they too often focus on their own organization, department, goals, budget, and career aspirations.  The truly great teams put the team goals ahead of personal goals. 

 

How many of the dysfunctions do you see on your team?  What steps can you start taking to begin building an effective team?  It will not be easy, but the rewards are worth the effort.  However, keep in mind it is a never ending process that requires constant work and attention.

Does Socialism Work?

A friend sent this to me. 

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.  That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, it would be a great equalizer.  The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.   After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.  The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.   The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

 When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.  The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.  It could not be any simpler than that.

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Coincidentally, I see the same phenomenon take place when companies give everyone the same pay increase rather than pay for performance.  It always leads to mediocrity which is the death of any company or business.