New research from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) which surveyed 2,200 leaders from 15 organizations, in three countries between 2006 and 2008 produced some interesting findings. The research project was designed to answer the following questions:
- What leadership skills and perspectives are critical for success now and in the future?
- How strong are current leaders in these critical skills and perspectives?
- How aligned is today’s leadership strength with what will be the most important skills and perspectives in the future?
A comparison of the leadership strength from the research contrasts existing leadership skill levels with what skill would be required in the future the results are illustrated below.
The research identified the following seven competencies as most critical for success, now and in the future:
- Leading people: directing and motivating people.
- Strategic planning: translating vision into realistic business strategies, including long-term objectives.
- Managing change: using effective strategies to facilitate organizational change.
- Inspiring commitment: recognizing and rewarding employees’ achievements.
- Resourcefulness: working effectively with top management.
- Doing whatever it takes: persevering under adverse conditions.
- Being a quick learner: quickly learning new technical or business knowledge.
The interesting thing to note from this research is that only resourcefulness is a current top ten skill! All the others rated as important for success in the study are not skills that leaders have mastered today. This means that today’s leaders are not meeting the demands of their organisations. The CLL call this the “Leadership Gap”, referring to the huge gap that exists between the leadership skills organisations have today and the skills they will require in five years time.
Given these findings we need to take personal responsibility and ask ourselves:
- What are we doing personally to improve our leadership skills?
- What are we doing to help others improve their leadership skills?
- If we are taking action, are we doing enough?
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Management, Research, Change Management, Strategy, Planning, Learning, Business, Future
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
The sample is largely male (71 percent) and the average age is 42. The managers’ organizational levels
include 5 percent top executive; 13 percent senior executive; 30 percent upper-middle manager; and
52 percent middle.
Nice work. The one thing that really sticks out to me is the fact that participative management scored so low; while inspiring commitment is of greatest need. Go figure! I just published a post that speaks of that same topic. Check it out.
Perry
http://wisefoundations.wordpress.com/20-weeks-to-build-a-successful-organization/post-1/?preview=true&preview_id=417&preview_nonce=9330ab1b15
Very interesting findings from a well-respected group (CCL). I was recently asked by one of the most prestigious Executive MBA programs in America to give a speech on the most important skills needed to be an effective “global leader” in the future. To prepare for the talk I sent a note to more than 20 friends and clients that are CEOs or senior leaders at multinational companies for their input on the topic. Although I received replies from nearly every corner of the globe that answers were surprisingly similar. By a wide margin, this group of extremely experienced leaders identified the following traits as the most essential:
· Ethics
· Honesty
· Transparency
· Integrity
· Humility
· Respect
· Flexibility
· Collaboration
I find this to be a fascinating list, because this is not at all what I heard just five years ago. It seems that things are shifting and there is a growing awareness that many of today’s leaders are not well prepared to efectively lead today’s talented employees. A GAP indeed!
It is interesting to me that you asked CEOs what SKILLS would be necessary to be an effective leader and the CEOs responded not will skills, but with character traits. One of the SKILLS effective leadership requires is the ability to listen. The CEOs you asked didn’t answer your question.
Leading people, strategic planning and managing change are skills we’ve been teaching and learning, in different guises, for decades. And inspiring others – or being inspired by our leaders – has always been the BHAG.
But the last three items – resourcefulness, doing whatever it takes, and being a quick learner – are being tested now more than ever. These qualities, if we can learn them and inspire others to practice them, will define our futures as individuals and organizations.
Ask bad questions, you get bad answers!
Asking leaders what they THINK are the key attributes of being a successful leader is like asking a professional athlete how to be #1 in a sport. The professional athlete will offer what they believe to be the basis for their success. The list may include: hard work, dedication, willing to sacrifice. They may even go as far as to mention endurance and raw talent or even possibly a great coach. None of which are transferable or duplicatable.
I’m not saying these characteristics-attributes are not important. They are important. But there’s a lot more that goes into creating a great athlete. I’m thinking, bone structure, heart rate, reflex time or the biological eye hand coordination capabilities, etc.
The lists above are to generic and don’t get to the meat of leadership. Inspiring? Composure? Doing what it takes? Try to teach this to your coworker as a transferable skill set. Good luck.
The study is flawed from the start.
David Goldsmith
david@davidgoldsmith.com
Author of the book PAID TO THINK to be released in 2010
I guess I sort of see this in two ways. The first is I have had direct experience with the perceived gap especially when it comes to how organizations have handled the last year or so. The current skills needed set would have proven extremely valuable had the leadership skills within these particular organizations been developed and tuned toward the leadership gap.
But, these results sort of leave me questioning how they were gathered. So, I am in a leadership position in the midst of the recession and I am asked about the skills I have and what will be needed in the future. If provided the option aren’t you always going to have a gap in experience. The world of business is always changing and new skills are always needed or being developed.
Take social media for example. You ask a group of marketers about their perceived knowledge and skill set in this particular area. Wouldn’t the results be similar?
I guess what I take away from this is 1. the author created a great title to draw readers in and spark discussion. 2. It is always beneficial to understand where we are and what we need to move forward, but this idea that we are unequipped for the future is taking it a bit far.
At the end of the day if you want to be successful it is important that you are always looking for ways to improve your skill set; keeping your personal and professional development in line with present needs and future development in business.
You as a leader are obligated to never stop asking these questions and take personal responsibility for your future:
-What am I doing to improve my leadership skills?
-What am I doing to help others improve their leadership skills?
-Am I taking action and am I doing enough?
They should ask these managers’ employees the same questions and see what that dredges up.
Excellent article. Thanks for bringing this study to our attention. As there are startups sprouting in abundance, I think leadership will become even more of an issue than it already is. In some ways, leading a startup or new company is even harder than leading a major corporation. Pathing a path is harder than walking on one.
I wonder what we will be saying in the next 10 to 15 years. Cycle? hmm
David is correct. Nassim Taleb’s survivorship bias covers this. This implies that the highest performing realization will be the most visible. The losers do not show up, so we are missing a lot of information. Remember the majority of Tom Peter’s wonderful example companies had some bad luck after his book was published. Additionally, when surveys are done on managers, a vast majority think of themselves above average. And, there is a causative bias. Correlations do not necessarily mean causation. A manager screaming and waving his arms at the same time that results are obtained, does not mean that he caused anything but adverse feelings in the employees getting the work done anyway. But, he will think he was motivating and causing it all to happen. One can not rule out the luck factor either. I was there, executed some actions and reality changed and made it all wonderful. I got promoted and continued to ride the wave, until at some point it will crash. I wonder what kind of gap we would find if the employees of all these managers had been surveyed regarding their bosses.
There are several things to be aware of about this report and its “findings.” David and Chuck have already done a good job on some of them. My post on “Mind the Leadership Gap” ( http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2009/11/10/mind-the-leadership-gap.aspx ) covered some of them.
This survey was forced-choice using “competencies” from CCL’s Benchmark instrument. Naturally they expect some readers to order up the instrument to determine their own managers’ level of skill on each competency. The time horizon is only five years, hardly enough time to make a major change in any individual competencies or their ranking.
Most alarming to me was the list of things the respondents thought were unimportant. Here’s the list.
“Building and mending relationships
Compassion and sensitivity
Culturally adaptable
Respecting individual differences
Composure
Self-awareness
Confronting people
Putting people at ease
Managing one’s career”
Very interesting article and comments. It’s important to learn from our own and others experiences. There is a great book called “Words for Warriors” by Ralph Puckett. His examples are through essays of his own experiences and others. He identifies the winning ways of best practices, and we see at work a soldier who has willed himself to become one of the best of the best. His resourcefulness, doing whatever it takes, and being a quick learner have served him well.
It proves that leaders are not born, they are made.
Who are leaders? Surely leadership is a sociological category? Leaders emerge whatever.
Perhaps you mean that people in charge of economic resources are disconnected from other people? Well that is a political argument?
The difficulty with this research is that it hides who its own “interests”. Who is it speaking to, what will they gain and what do the authors expect to gain? Put that on the table and the results might make some sort of sense.
Surveys tell us we want our leaders to be Boyscouts and restaurants should offer health-food options. Well, Boyscouts lose elections and healthy menu items are not ordered. We recognize the NEED for these leadership traits, but we do not VALUE them. An inspirational, resourceful, and strategic leader may be good at his job, but it is unlikely such a candidate will be promoted to the job. The command-and-control politically savvy authoritarians are still in charge… and they promote their own.
Several comments have alluded to the need for leaders to know who they are leading, and I would add, why they are working in our organizations. In “Good to Great”, Jim Collins posits that if leaders can get the right people on the bus and in the right seats, they will be well on the way to creating a great organization. All the skills and dispositions or qualities mentioned in the study and in other comments would certainly support effective leadership once this is accomplished, as long as leaders stay in touch with the vision, stengths, and needs of those who have chosen to ride the bus along with us.
All the above points are good, but I want to comment on the born/made aspect of leadership. Yes, every sociological situation in the human sphere tends to have a leader emerge. This does not necessarily mean that the person so “chosen,” has traits that could lead to leadership in another context. So, we have a situational aspect that demands different traits for success. In a general business context, there should be some traits that allow for a larger probability of success. Intelligence (ability to learn quickly), emotional awareness, social awareness, communication skills (determining audience position/sensitivities). Can these be taught if there is no existing framework? I believe leaders are born with traits that allow them to learn and adapt to situations. Of course, continued learning and experience leads to more awareness and tools for different situations. One more thing…an angry mob will develop a spokesman/leader…but this situational leadership is more a function of the situation. A skillful leader would be the one that could turn the mob from it’s goal and direct it elsewhere. A business set up is usually a situation that is conducive to producing results. Employees are paid, contractors under contract…everyone involved is usually a willing party to getting the result. I see a managers role as making sure the players can do what needs to be done, and not letting anything, including him/herself get in the way.
There are seven competencies, listed above, for success, now and in the future that are all true for leadership like leading people, strategic planning, managing change, inspiring commitment, resourcefulness, doing whatever it takes and being a quick learner. Although, I think that the missing is emotional awareness, social awareness and good communication skills because this is life and people are all different. These are harder to teach because these are things that you are taught growing up or born with. This helps you adapt to certain situations. Learning more and more through out your life time by experience makes a person more aware on how to deal with these emotion and social situation and help develop the skills needed for different situations.
Leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. Leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership attributes, such as beliefs, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skills. Although your position as a manager, supervisor, lead, etc. gives you the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organization, this power does not make you a leader, it simply makes you the boss. Leadership differs in that it makes the followers want to achieve high goals, rather than simply bossing people around. There are different kinds of approaches to take in leadership like trait approach, behavioral approach and the power and influence approach. The trait approach is leadership as best understood in terms of traits or dispositions held by an individual that are accountable. The behavioral approach is a conception that leadership is best understood in actions taken by an individual in conduct of leading a group. Lastly, power and influence approach, which is best understood by the use of power and influence exercised by a person with a group. Also, there are all different kinds of leaders like transformation and charismatic leaders. Transformational leadership is the process of inspiring a group to peruse goals and attain results. These are leaders that are looked up too. There are also charismatic leaders, who produce support and ideas and beliefs of an individual who possess these traits.
The outcome is the same I register in daily life. It’s the change in basic management approach. Away from taylorism based theory x approach up to the knowleged and community based theory y approach. Put this discussion on my blog as well. Good research. Thanks for this input.
http://wp.me/pJLMj-2m
The 7 most important leaders qualities actually have not changed since Peter Drucker described them in ~1960. But the speed and the correlations in todays dynamic world require a better leadership for the ones that wants to be successful managers.
Everyone is bringing up such good points. The question I always go back to is “how does this relate to me and my organization?” I think the research shows clearly that if you want to be valued and in demand in the future, you need to find a way to grow as a leader. Many leaders are so busy putting out fires and getting the job done that the first thing to go is personal development. Focus on becoming a better leader, learn, listen, take time to reflect… all this will help ensure that you become one of the sought after leaders in the years to come. Not to mention the fact that it will increase your effectiveness exponentially which is what we expect from leaders – RESULTS.
This is so true. Yes, there is a gap!
Thank you for educating others with your posts!
Cheers,
Teresa
Not surprising, since people are not being educated to be leaders.
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