T he 1980s and early 1990s were often portrayed by the news media as an era when tough-talking, hot-tempered leaders ruled corporate America. The midto late 1990s, in contrast, were depicted as a gentler time, when executives treated employees more compassionately. Now it seems the pendulum has swung all the way back.
A recent opinion piece in USA To d ay c a rried the headline "Nasty bosses back in vogue"-a sentiment that is gaining curre n cy in the press. " O rga n i z ations wa n t a u t h o rity fi g u res aga i n " and " abu s ive leaders a re back ," w riter and consultant Harri e t Rubin observed in the USA To d ay c o l u m n .
To re s o l ve the push and pull between nasty bosses and nice ones, Rubin wro t e, "the solution is a balance. . . . The best bosses m ay be John Wayne-tough and bust heads, but they are also skillfully nice."
More than thirty years of research at CCL shows that in addition to sophisticated interpersonal skills, a certain degree of toughness and resilience is critical for success as a leader. But successful leaders are also more complex than that. They are self-aware. They are effective at using their strengths. And they are firmly committed to identifying and tackling their weaknesses.
Leading effe c t ive ly invo l ves having the right skills at the right time more than it does cultivating a persona of toughness or tenderness. This point was driven home in an art i cle in the Ja nu a ry / Feb ru a ry 2005 issue of L e a d e rship in A c t i o n , " Th e N egat ives of Focusing O n ly on the Po s i t ive." CCL re s e a rch e rs Jean Brittain Leslie and Sylvester Taylor examined assessment data gat h e red by CCL in recent ye a rs f rom more than 400,000 individuals. The authors found a striking dispari t y b e t ween the skills that the bosses of manage rs deemed most critical for orga n i z ational success and the skills that the manage rs we re perc e ived to have by their cowo rke rs. For ex a m p l e, c o -wo rke rs rated the ability of manage rs to lead employees-the leadership competency rated by bosses as the most important fo r o rga n i z ational success-fifteenth out of sixteen competencies. In other wo rd s , t h e m a n age rs we re viewed as deficient in the skill their bosses valued most. On ave rage the manage rs we re not considered strong in thirteen of the sixteen competencies defined by CCL's Bench m a rk s ยฎ assessment tool as key for leadership success.
L eve raging your strengths as a leader makes sense. But the temptation also exists for leaders to focus only on wh at they do best. The manage rs considered in C C L's study sure ly had strengths that propelled their rise through the ra n k s , but it seems these strengths we re not those most necessary for success in their curre n t roles-and that could mean tro u ble for the manage rs and their orga n i z at i o n s . R e lying too heav i ly on strengths usually wo rks until something inside or outside the orga n i z ation ch a n ges. At that point, l e a d e rs might need to draw on new skillso n ly to find that they do not have them and it's too late to develop them. A wiser ap p ro a ch is to begin immediat e ly the hard wo rk of identifying weaknesses in yo u r l e a d e rship rep e rt o i re and seeking to improve on them.
CCL favors an approach to leadership that emphasizes mutual respect in the workplace. Successful leadership is about far more than a cult of personality. Numerous competencies are required. What really matters is leaders' willingness to take inventory of the skills they have and, while honing and refining those skills, to acknowledge the importance of cultivating the skills they are missing. Individual careers and the health of organizations might hang in the balance.