(P) How to be an efficient leader?

Madalina Balan, Managing Partner HART Consulting The problem of good leadership is more and more in the focus and it is not anymore an HR trend. Under the current economic situation, under the current challenging business environment, especially in emerging economies like Romania, the quality of leadership is directly connected with the bottom-line. All shareholders want an efficient leadership in their companies. But what is efficient leadership? And how can they know if they have it or not? Robert Hogan, a famous business psychologist, believes that “people always live in groups; we evolved as group living animals. Second, every group has a status hierarchy; there are people at the bottom, in the middle, and at the top, and everyone knows who is where. This suggests that the most important problems in life concern getting along with other people and achieving some measure of status.” He refers to these concerns as “getting along” and “getting ahead,” and individual differences in these capabilities predict a wide range of occupational outcomes. Effective leaders are skilled at building relationships and acquiring status. During the 80’s, in US, one of the most flourishing economy at that time, a big retailer ordered an internal survey about the quality of the leadership as they faced several failures of top executives that affected the business financial results. Although their leaders were charismatic, outgoing, good at networking, socially skilled, ambitious, determined and intelligent, at a certain point, under pressure or when bored they failed. They failed to maintain a high performing team as they turned into being self-sufficient, arrogant, bully, emotional volatile, skeptical, mischievous and attention seeking, reserved, cold and aloof, etc. The company wanted to maintain success and therefore hired a team of consultants and business psychologists and gave them the job to find out what predicts this failure of leaders. They have identified through a thorough methodology involving 360 feedback, performance management data, interviews, etc. 10 counter-productive behaviors that described the failed leaders: Excitable - Concerns seeming moody and hard to please and being enthusiastic about new individuals or projects and then suddenly disappointed with them Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K16GhdWkHE Skeptical - Concerns seeming cynical, mistrustful, doubting others’ true intentions, and feeling mistreated Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8CbuULVkKw Cautious - Concerns seeming resistant to change and reluctant to take risks or chances due to an unusual fear of criticism or failure Video: