"Great leaders share a certain something – a certain lack of naiveté. There's a rigor in their thinking. A questioning manner and way. They build self-confidence in their people while, at the same time, challenging the hell out of their assumptions."
– Jack Welch, former CEO of GE
Step back for a moment and ask yourself three simple questions.
Is your business smart?
Are your employees smart?
Are your leaders smart?
Not knowing is pretty dumb.
In too many cases, organizations spend far too much of their time focused on measuring and analyzing whether or not their employees and leaders actually "do" their jobs. Unfortunately, it is rare to find an organization that actually spends its time understanding "if" their employees can actually perform the tasks they are being assigned.
Competency versus Skill
The "smart" organization understands that by focusing on the elusive "if" component of managerial competency, they can significantly reduce the amount of agony and stress for everyone involved. In his recent book "Executive Intelligence", author Justin Menkes points out that cognitive ability tests have repeatedly been proven to be a highly effective way of predicting work performance.
The question then becomes, is your organization smart enough to take note of this fact?
Executive Intelligence
Menkes' concept of Executive Intelligence was initially conceived when he discovered that, despite what we had thought for years, traditional IQ tests were not very effective in a business setting. He then went on to develop a modified system that recognizes "smarts" in various aspects of business success.
He divided theses aptitudes or smarts into three groups:
- Tasks
- People, and
- Oneself.
By evaluating an individual on these three aptitudes, you may be able to effectively determine whether of not the individual will excel in the business world. In other words, by focusing on the predictive indicators of success, you can improve your chances of actual success.
Knowing What
One of the key elements in identifying a person's underlying Executive Intelligence is understanding the difference between what an individual knows and what they are capable of learning. Many traditional business assessments use measures that test an individual's knowledge, not necessarily his or her intelligence.
To put it in more common business terminology, most capability tests use lagging indicators, whereas the key to Executive Intelligence is in testing and developing individuals using leading indicators.
The Executive Triathlon
We have known for a long time that personal growth and development begins with an individual's willingness to look deep inside, to come to terms with their blind spots and face the root cause of what is holding them back or capping their proficiency.
Menkes draws the analogy of tri-athletes at the beginning of their career. At first they may be excellent in one of the three disciplines. However, spending an inordinate amount of time honing their skills in this one area at the expense of developing competence in the other two, will never lead the athlete to success in the triathlon. The key is to recognize, and then work on, one's weaknesses to develop the entire intelligence package.
The Charisma Trap
Over the past couple of years, many books have been published extolling the virtues of the charismatic leader. Upon reflection, however, it turns out that charismatic leaders are seen as the ideal only in certain unique situations and only where they are successful when measured in terms of Profit and Loss.
The fact of the matter is, many more organizations have followed charismatic leaders who were not that successful, who may have excelled at one but not all three of the elements of Executive Intelligence and who were left asking "where's the beef?".
Pat Russo, CEO of Lucent Technologies sums it up quite nicely, "you can have all the charisma in the world, but if you're not effectively leading, managing, and getting results, it won't matter".
In other worlds, be careful not to fall into the charisma trap. To worship the image rather than the result.
In Our Opinion
The Beacon Group's Key Methods to Developing Executive Intelligence
We have been working in the field of "predictive indicators" for several years and, in the same way Menkes came to his conclusions, we have found that developing true capacity and releasing potential can best be done in a number of ways. Allow us to share a few of them with you.
Business Challenges – Simulations that test leaders in certain situations are great, but they are just that, simulations. To test the mettle of your employees, give them access to real problems facing your organization, and have them work through them in real time with a trained facilitator.
Team Coaching – As a significant component of Executive Intelligence deals with interpersonal relations, an effective way to develop your employees is to coach them (together with their boss, in a group setting) to communicate with candour, and to follow a guided process while making effective decisions.
Dedicated Learning – Systematically directing training to each of the 17 skills identified by Menkes, will serve as a foundation for achieving balanced proficiency and increasing each individual's Executive Intelligence.
Regular Assessment – Raising the overall Executive Intelligence of your organization is a worthy goal. Understanding, measuring and tracking the precise return on this investment can be accomplished through regular, dedicated and blunt assessments of key individuals using 360º feedback.
Our Monthly Rant
The Peril of the Nice Organization
It has been shown that striking the right balance between an individual's core intelligence and their sociability is key in a business setting. Unfortunately, organizations everywhere continue to take a hit – both to their P + L and their morale - thanks to what Jack Welch calls the dirtiest little secret in business or "superficial congeniality".
We agree with Jack (at least on this issue) when he points out that one of the obvious effects of the "nice organization" is a lack of candour or straight talk. While this habit might very well give the illusion of a great workplace, it is unlikely to produce either good leaders or good followers.
More importantly, with study after study showing that sociability is critical in today's modern organization, many have put the emphasis on this factor alone. As a result, organizations are now finding that they may have a roster full of nice people, but no one actually smart enough to get the job done.
Think about it.
| Contents
Competency versus Skill
Executive Intelligence
Knowing What
The Executive Triathlon
The Charisma Trap
In Our Opinion
Our Monthly Rant
Read This
We deal with organizations and their Leaders every day; our goal is to help our clients become the very best. To assist your organization, we recommend Executive Intelligence as our book of the month. To buy this book simply click on the image of the book cover. For further book recommendations, please visit our Resources Section on our website, or contact our Learning Department; they would be more than happy to provide further recommendations.
The Beacon Group can help your organization and its Leaders with our World-Class Organizational Development Expertise.
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