Assessments Today

How do Alpha Females Lead Differently than Alpha Males?

This was a offer that I couldn't turn down and thought you might be interested as well.  The Work Ethic Corporation is collecting data for their research study Predicting Leadership Success.  They have joined forces to offer a free assessment through Harvard Business Publications.  Here is the offer that I received:

Studies show that certain characteristics come more intuitively to men, such as analytical thinking and competitiveness, while women tend to place more value on relationships, teamwork and consensus-building.

But, what separates the competitive and ambitious male leaders from their equally powerful and determined female counterparts? Men and women bring obvious gender differences to the corporate round table, but how exactly do they lead differently?

These are just a few of the ideas explored in Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson's new survey, "Predicting Leadership Success." This survey explores how women and men lead differently and assesses how to predict your own success as a leader.

What's in it for you? For a limited time only, you will receive a complimentary 30-minute phone coaching session to discuss your Alpha Assessment as a "thank you" for completing the survey. Note that you must complete both the survey and the Alpha Assessment to receive your complimentary phone coaching session.

Take the Survey now

Best Practices - Leadership and Virgin (no not that kind of virgin)

I was going to start a new category "Best Practices" but I that is a dangerous thing.  The moment some organization is pointed out as a "leader" or "best" it is bound to be the kiss of death.  What happened to all those firms Tom Peter's wrote about in "In Search of Excellence or Jim Collin's "Built to Last"?  Oh Really?

That said, it is interesting to read about what some high profile firms (and those that aren't) are doing to stay competitive, or successful or even change with the times.  Here is one such case that is using 360 feedback processes.

Virgin Atlantic introduced a leadership development programme that was led by business objectives rather than HR processes, and fitted into the organisation's long-term goal of increasing profits by 7%. The leadership team started by identifying the traits it believed had made Virgin successful and followed this with a 360-degree appraisal of the management team's strengths and weaknesses.

 

What I find to be of interest in the article are the 11 steps that they have developed to guide them through the process.  this is a systemic approach and that is how assessments should be used.  Assessments are one tool in an overall program that is dynamic and and interdependent.  I find that I take little exception to what they are doing in principle.  Let's wait and see how successful they are at first the implementation and then the integration into the culture. 

Guide to leadership development in 11 steps

1. Understand the present and future context of the organisation and the sector in which it is operating.
2. Know what you are going to require of your leaders in the future. This mean you need to focus on potential performance.
3. Make sure any programme is tied into other company activities, such as secondments, mentoring, cross-functional working and masterclasses. It should mot be a standalone project or seen as solely an HR initiative.
4. Involve existing leaders by asking them to describe current and future leadership challenges.
5. Use a variety of development mechanisms. These might include group sessions and one-to-one work, experiential and paper-based activities, company projects, feedback and coaching.
6. Develop a framework on which to build the design of the programme, such as leadership competencies or principles.
7. Reflect company culture in the programme design. Make full use of the organisation's values and use the programme to bring them to life.
8. Give participants the opportunity to voice their career aspirations.
9. Wherever possible, involve line managers before, during and after the programme.
10. Build personal development planning into the programme. Individuals rarely complete development plans after the momentum of the programme is lost.
11. Carry out an evaluation of the programme at both a behavioural and results level through 360-degree appraisals (undertaken both before and after), surveys and performance data.

Editorial – why it is hard to recruit women and how assessments may not work

Generally, I try not to delve into the topic of assessments used for recruitment or hiring. I believe that it is primarily beyond the privy of coaches and trainers. However, the issue will come up on occasion – especially when certain behavioral assessments claim to be suitable for selection. I don’t share that view. Sometimes there are things of interest in the area that are worth discussing.

Besides my interest in assessments, my other passion is in the area of Leadership. So I am usually curious when I read about anything to do with the development of leaders – especially regarding diversity (not specifically gender) considerations. The UK Guardian has just published a short article that caught my attention: ‘”Why men can't manage women.” While I found the whole article of interest it once again sad to reconfirm the following statisitcs:

Figures published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) suggest that in the past five years there has been a 40% drop in the number of women working at middle-management level. As things stand, there will be fewer, not more, women reaching board level.

For our purposes here at AssessmentsToday, this quote is of particular significance:

Sarah Churchman, head of diversity at PwC, acknowledges that for many bigger, established companies with a management that is resolutely "pale, male and stale", attracting women is a huge challenge. "We had an issue with our female retention rates," …

There are also clear gender differences when it comes to how men and women like to be recruited. PwC found that women were skeptical about online tests as they believed counterparts would cheat - so rendering it worthless. "When companies are recruiting it is important that contact is made early on and that people are guided through the hiring process," says Churchman. "Our personality test was seen to alienate women and so we had to respond to that."

 

Makes me wonder if there are some lessons to learn about gender issues on other types of assessments as well. The question is interesting: Does skepticism influence who and who won’t appreciate assessments. To me the answer is obvious. Using the Platinum Rule which is a basic four fold model, we can clearly identify those who fall into the skepticism quadrants and even the relative degree.  We have also seen some minor gender differences as well but I am convinced that this due to what is “socially” acceptable behaviour. It also leads me to believe that cultural differences will also be evident and this has proven true with our data for the Platinum Rule.

Look for my follow-up article on gender, culture and language challenges in the use of assessments.

 

Editorial on US Airways proud that executives are assertive.

Reported this week by Cheapflights. com in an interesting title: US Airways still believes in mergers - assertive management.

Underpinning the new US Airways' penchant to seek out merger partners, and its proclivity to fix things, are the personalities of its key management players. They are not a passive bunch. Parker says when members of the company's executive team took personality tests, 70 percent of them scored above the median when it comes to assertiveness.

I personally don’t think that this is necessarily a good thing. Not that assertiveness is bad – in fact I like a direct approach. I get nervous with passive types who finally get fed up and lash out at you – as if I were suppose to know what they wanted or needed.

In addition, I am not sure that any North American airline is in a position financially to determine what is or is not good as a leadership competency; no matter how US Airways has been improving. In some ways it is the macho culture that prevents us from dealing with the complexities of society. Seems to me that in today’s world, we should be valuing collaboration a wee bit more.  Nor should someone be too excited that they are cloning any specific behavior. What a recipe for narrow mindedness at best and Group Think at worse. Certainly different cultures may favor one behavior or skill over another but we must continue to challenge our assumptions. Let’s also differentiate between style and skill.

This is just my editorial opinion and remember, I am the first to say it is just data and no one thing is either bad or good – in moderation that is. The Platinum Rule Behavioral Style Assessment is one of many instruments that measures the continuum of assertiveness. Like the others it just points to observed behaviors and not skills. These “styles” have a place everywhere and the important thing is how adaptive we are to adjust our behavior based on the situation at hand.

Profiling Leaders: Natural-Born Leaders, Meet Your Inner Managers

From the CIO Magazine comes the following review:

Do personality "tests" such as the Myers-Briggs profile really reveal how people think and work? And if so, can test-takers change their personalities to shore up weaknesses?

In a  published book from 2003, two academics focusing on leadership studies, Roy Williams and Terrence Deal, use Myers-Briggs and another model of cognitive styles to examine leadership and managerial roles. They conclude that, while people are indeed predisposed to think and act in certain ways, the best executives consciously combine different personality attributes. This enables them to respond effectively to a variety of situations.

In When Opposites Dance: Balancing the Manager and Leader Within, Williams and Deal define four types of executives:

• Rationalists, who value sound thinking and work through organizational structure to accomplish tasks.
• Politicists, who view group dynamics from a power perspective and are adept at politics.
• Humanists, who are attuned to organizational moods and regard people as a company's top asset.
• Culturists, who consider culture the preeminent force in an organization and communicate through stories, ceremonies and rituals.

Here is one review from Amazon:

Reviewer:

L. Scott Merritt (Sarasota, FL United States)  - See all my reviews

I found the book superb! It gives a logical spectrum to evaluate yourself and others you deal with. It helps to organize needed communication skills to effectively interact with people of different mindsets. I graded a strong politicist and could see how I need to understand different styles and incorporate them rather than confront in a win/lose scenerio. The book also clearly shows the need for both leaders and managers and that talented, aware people can move between the two. While a book focused on life-approach styles, it subtlely suggests the needed balance in peoples lives between inward(spiritual) and outward(action)components. Those that weren't balanced accomplished goals but significant problems came their way that diminished their effectiveness. The book is useful in business, government, education, the church and anywhere social interaction is required for success.

The DNA of Leadership: Alter your Company’s DNA and Accelerate its Profits

New book that is bound to be a must read for coaches.

More than concepts, The DNA of Leadership by Judith E. Glaser offers you a step-by-step guide to evolve your company’s DNA - towards a more profitable, sustainable and successful culture.  I haven't read the book - it just came out.  But I did listen to a interview of her by my good colleague, Mike Jay, and was terribly impressed.

The DNA of Leadership looks like it will become a key book on Leadership for coaches and  is full of Checklist Assessments.  Glaser and her associates have developed their own 360 degree assessment based on this material that sounds great. More than concepts, The DNA of Leadership offers you a step-by-step guide to evolve your company’s DNA - towards a more profitable, sustainable and successful culture. I encourage you to go to her new blog of the same name and download two very generous practical well written gifts with great checklists:

• Working in Concert
• Leadership and Coaching

Judith E. Glaser has been an executive and organizational coach and consultant for over two decades, working with CEOs, senior executives and their teams to help them develop leadership awareness and capability for handling new challenges in a world of moving targets.   Judith is a master facilitator, and an executive and organizational coach. During her career she has designed, developed and facilitated hundreds of dynamic and interactive workshops. These are based on her innovative transformational leadership technologies, designed for organizations to achieve outstanding business results.  Judith is one of the most innovative and pioneering change agents and executive coaches. A 21st century Organizational Anthropologist and author, Glaser, together with her team at Benchmark Communications Inc., act as advisors, coaches and executive consultants to CEOs and their teams helping them focus on competitive challenges in a world of moving targets.   

Her book Creating WE: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking & Build a Healthy Thriving Organization (Platinum Press, an imprint of Adams Media; April, 2005) made Amazon Business Book Best Seller List, and was selected by Forbes, Chicago Tribune, and Business Book Review as one of the top business books of 2005. It’s been translated into Japanese, Spanish and Russian. Her new book, The DNA of Leadership came out in March, 2006.

New Assessment based on the book “Good To Great”

In Jim Collins' landmark book, Good to Great, one of the most surprising results of the research of good-to-great companies was in the discovery of the type of leadership required to turn a good company into a great one. One might think that such companies are led by high-profile leaders with big personalities, those who make headlines and become celebrities. Yet, those leaders who seek and thrive in the spotlight do not exude what can be termed “Level 5 Leadership”. Leaders of this type — those who combine extreme personal humility with intense professional will — shun the attention of celebrity, channeling their ambition toward the goal of building a great company. Those leaders might run different companies in different markets, but they exemplify the same basic set of qualities.

Good to Great studied 1,435 companies and discovered six leadership behaviors that produce extraordinary results. TalentSmart® has created the first and only test of the six leadership skills from Good to Great. Researched and validated with leaders worldwide, this Good or Great test lets leaders know where they stand on the road to greatness, and where they should invest energy in improving.

I don’t know anything about this specific assessment but somehow I feel that it slightly misses the intent of the book.  Collins originally did not want to address leadership as a criterion for what makes a great company.  Interestingly, his researchers could not avoid this as a key component – but not the only factor.  Secondly, very few leaders reach the Level 5 and an instrument that measures only this level and which is self reporting seems to me rather questionable.  I think that it would have been more prudent to identify different behaviors at each of the five levels and then report how an individual shows up on each of the separate levels. 

Level 5 Hierarchy

Level 5 Executive

• Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.

Effective Leader

• Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards.

Competent Manager

• Organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.

Contributing Team Member

• Contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting.

Highly Capable Individual

• Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills and good work habits.