Are the most effective leaders introverts OR extraverts?

Analyzing Effective Leaders: Why Extraverts Are Not Always the Most Successful Bosses
 
Conventional wisdom tells us that leaders are the men and women who stand up, speak out, give orders, make plans and are generally the most dominant, outgoing people in a group. 

But that is not always the case, according to new research on leadership and group dynamics from Wharton management professor Adam Grant and two colleagues, who challenge the assumption that the most effective leaders are extraverts. 

Business Management Books

Business  Management Books

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries
Reflections on Leadership and Career Development: On the Couch with Manfred Kets de Vries
(Jossey-Bass, 2010)
Charlene Li
Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead
(Jossey-Bass, 2010)
Howard Kunreuther and Michael Useem, eds.,
Learning from Catastrophes: Strategies for Reaction and Response
(Wharton School Publishing, 2010)
Robert I. Sutton
Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best...and Learn from the Worst
(Business Plus, 2010)

How Learning Leads to Results

Matthew E. May, author of The Shibumi Strategy, introduces a passage on the critical role of a learning focus in innovation from The Other Side of Innovation, by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble.

Innovation as a Social Act

by Krisztina “Z” Holly

From s+b’s Best Business Books 2010: Three books explore new territory and illuminate the fundamental social principles that underlie the innovation process.

Highlights from 15 Years of s+b Book Reviews

by Theodore Kinni

A select shelf of books that not only expanded the corporate lexicon, but still have the power to change the way we see the world and do business.

Family Matters

Marshall Goldsmith, author of Mojo, introduces a passage on the difficulties of balancing work and family, from You Can’t Predict a Hero, by Joseph J. Grano Jr.

Helping the CIO Lead

Charlie Feld, the former CIO of Frito-Lay and a pioneer in his field, explains how IT can play a key role in developing corporate strategy.

by Mike Cooke and Edward Baker -

Charles (“Charlie”) Feld began his career in information technology leadership at IBM in 1966, back in the days of the mainframe and whirring tape drives, when IT was separated from the rest of the business by the proverbial glass wall. Since then, he has seen vast changes in both the technology that underpins how businesses operate and in how IT and its relationship with the business are managed. He has contributed greatly to those changes, most notably as CIO of Frito-Lay Inc. in the 1980s, where he pioneered the use of wireless handheld devices that enabled delivery people to constantly update sales figures from the road. Today, he is a leading advocate of the evolution of IT from a provider of services to an enabler of overall strategy, especially when innovative uses of technology can transform the way a business operates.
Following his work at Frito-Lay, Feld developed a general framework for IT-enabled business transformation. This led to his founding of a consultancy called the Feld Group in 1992 (it was subsequently purchased by EDS in 2004, became part of Hewlett-Packard Company in 2008, and is now independent again). That framework, and its related management techniques, has been the basis of his approach ever since, and it forms the basis of his new book, Blind Spot: A Leader’s Guide to IT-Enabled Business Transformation (Olive Press, 2010). The Feld Group’s research arm, called the Center for IT Leadership, has championed a strategic role for IT in business transformation, and the role of the CIO as a leader in that transformation. This view of IT leadership is validated by experience at companies as diverse as BNSF Railway, Southwest Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola, WellPoint, and CBS.
Feld’s ideas have particular resonance today. As computing infrastructure and interface design continue to evolve, it is crucial for IT leaders to find a viable pattern for strong leadership, to build their own leadership capabilities, and ultimately, to ensure that their specialized knowledge is integrated with real-world experience in multiple aspects of the business.
Feld recently sat down with strategy+business to discuss a wide-ranging set of topics, including his transformation framework, the proper career path for CIOs, and how to encourage top executives to mentor the leaders of the future.

How To Make Great Leadership Decisions

How To Make Great Leadership Decisions

By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth

Why do leaders fail?

They make bad decisions.

And in some cases they compound bad decision upon bad decision.

Excerpt

The truth is that even leaders who don’t fail make bad decisions from time-to-time. Those leaders who avoid making decisions solely for fear of making a bad decision, or conversely those that make decisions just for the sake of making a decision will likely not last long. The fact of the matter is that senior executives who rise to the C-suite do so largely based upon their ability to consistently make sound decisions.

Making sound decisions is a skill set that needs to be developed like any other. The first key in understanding how to make great decisions is learning how to synthesize the overwhelming amount incoming information leaders must deal with on a daily basis, while making the best decisions possible in a timely fashion. The key to dealing with the volumenous amounts of infomation is as simple as becoming discerning surrounding the filtering of various inputs.
Understanding that a hierarchy of knowledge exists is critically important when attempting to make prudent decisions. Put simply…not all inputs should weigh equally in one’s decisioning process. By developing a qualitative and quantitative filtering mechanism for your decisioning process you can make better decisions in a shorter period of time.

The hierarchy of knowledge is as follows:

Thinking Ahead Insights: Risking the Present for a Powerful Future

Managing the present from the future Assemble a critical mass of key stakeholders. Many more than just the top 8 to 10 leaders. Should include key technologists and leading process engineers. Group should be sufficiently diverse to ensure conflict, which will get issues on the table so they can be resolved. Have to decide how it's going to happen. Do an organizational audit to generate a complete picture of how the organization really works. Understand the competitive situation. Reveal barriers to moving from "as is" to the future. Core values. Key systems. Strategic assumptions. Core competencies, etc. Create urgency. A threat that everyone perceives, but no one is willing to talk about, is most debilitating to an organization Book of Five Rings � Japanese guide for samurai warriors. Written four centuries ago, directs the samurai to visualize his own death in the most graphic detail before going into battle. Idea being, once you have experienced death, there is not a lot left to fear: one can then fight with abandon. This helps explain the value of discussion about not changing and the dire consequences to a company in a difficult business situation. Harnessing contention. Conflict jump-starts the creative process. Most companies suppress contention. Control kills invention, learning and commitment. Emotions often accompany creative tension, and they are often unpleasant. Intel plays rugby; your ability at Intel to take direct, hard-hitting disagreement is a sign of fitness. Many excellent companies build conflict into their designs. Induce organizational breakdowns that foster out-of-the-box thinking and solutions. Breakdowns should happen by design, not accident. In trying to manage back from the future, concrete tasks will have to be undertaken; continuing on the current path will not get you there. Often you don't know how to make these tasks occur. This will generate breakdowns, which can generate out-of-the-box thinking and solutions, if the situation is managed/lead correctly. Continuous open dialogue is key to working through breakdowns. Setting impossible deadlines is another way to encourage breakdowns and out-of-the-box thinking   Insights from: "The Reinvention Roller Coaster: Risking the Present for a Powerful Future." By Tracy Goss, Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos.

The Pedigree of Emerging Leaders

Key points for spotting emerging leaders:

• individuals who consistently deliver ambitious results for the company
• individuals who consistently demonstrate the ability to grow, adapt, and be more flexible than their other top performing peers
• individuals who ask for opportunity and expand their capacity of operation and influence
• individuals who take things to the next level (ie: imagination, creativity, product futures etc)
• individuals who have strong powers of observation, judgment, reactions that are spot on, and EQ
• individuals who are clear thinkers and have a point-of-view that may be counter to the trend, and finally
• individuals who ask questions that are insightful that get the thought process into a creative frenzy.

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Thinking Ahead Succession Planning - The Key to future success

"Thinking Ahead"  succession planning enables organizations to takeover new responsibilities in a much faster way and with least disruption in the business activities.	An article highlights four best practices to ensure effective succession planning that can be implemented in any company - Analysis; Development; Selection and Transition. Having a structure in place that carefully engages in those best practices will set the new leaders firmly towards future success. Link to article >
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Learning to Lead

Herminia Ibarra , Professor of Organizational Behavior, and Faculty Director of the INSEAD Leadership Initiative, contests that we learn to lead in relationship, by becoming a part of a community and network of leaders, but what we preach, however, is very different.   Let's draw some inferences by considering a few schools of thought: Situational leadership, — originally conceived as the antidote to the great man theories of leadership. The situational school brought us the notion of "fit:" person to situation and leader to follower. The original version said the situation makes the leader. The simpler version we retained says something else altogether, that good leaders choose among the leadership styles or change strategies in their repertoire the one that best matches their current situation.    Discover your strengths — another great example of a one-sided and static focus on personal attributes that make people effective leaders. According to this theory, we can categorize ourselves according to a number of themes and clusters of themes that describe our strengths; once identified, they help us make decisions about what situation best match us. Practice — From Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers to Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated we learn about the magic rule of 10,000 hours. Bill Gates, we are told, became a computer wiz because he had access to an early computer and was able to clock the requisite number of hours. Putting in the hours, not innate talent, makes the leader.   Prof. Ibarra's research on how effective managers make the transition to bigger, broader leadership roles and cements their contribution to the growth and transformation of their organization, incorporates 4 key enablers: o    Motivate the transition to leadership. When asked to do things that don't come naturally, we implicitly ask ourselves "am I the sort of person who behaves this way?" "Do I want to be that sort of person?". When managers' identification is rooted in functional groups or expert communities, the answers are negative when it comes to leadership, and thus it is no surprise that they do not sustain the arduous practice it takes to develop as leaders. On the other hand, when they identify with recognized leaders, learning to lead is motivated by the desire to become a member of a valued group. o    Make the "competencies" come alive. One of the difficult things about learning to lead is distinguishing between "what" (content knowledge) and "how to" (process knowledge). We may know, for example, that "sensing external trends" is a critical competency in forging a strategic direction, and we may also want to become more like the leaders we know who are very good at that. But, how does one actually learn to strategize? In a successful learning cycle, role models, peer groups and communities of practice motivate change by changing our reference point on what is desirable and possible, and then once motivated, providing tacit knowledge on how to do it. o    Experiment from the outside in. Many aspiring leaders struggle to stretch their leadership within their current organization and roles. Caught in between delivery pressures and outdated views of their capacities, they more quickly or easily find roles outside the organization that allow them to lead. Their new activities, in professional organizations, clubs, informal advisory and so on, create external identities that they eventually internalize. o    Build external support & networks to sustain change. Often it is hard to get support for change from old mentors, bosses or trusted colleagues. They may have good intentions but maintain of what we can and should do that are based in the past and not the future. People and groups, on the fringe of our existing networks help us push off in new directions while providing the secure base in which change can take hold, one of the reasons why learning methods like peer coaching are so powerful.   O2ibm

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Thinking Ahead as a True Leader

The ability to 'think ahead' and plan a strategy, implies keeping in touch with employee opinions, technological advances and market trends that will help shape your vision - to be shared. Leaders, by definition, must have followers that aspire to the leader’s vision. Once you’ve  'thought ahead' into the future, you need to communicate your vision with conviction and confidence, as to inspire, energize and unite your team. A leader must be capable of shaping internal politics that will support performance improvement initiatives. During times of change, uncertainty and fear reign supreme. As a result, leaders confronting strategic and organizational change, have to manage communication effectively. As a leader, you have to portray a compelling vision for the future, while implementing change.  Processes that build a shared vision of the future, create positive coalitions, and allow open expression of competing views will prepare people for the change. Motivating people to peak performance is a must of  leadership. But how can you unleash the full individual emotional commitment and collective potential of your people so that they achieve higher levels of performance? Generating emotional energy and commitment takes time and effort, as to ensure that the right balance between achieving the task, building the team and  sustaining morale.

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Post-Recession Ways of Thinking Ahead in Business

Identifying Opportunities & Mobilizing Knowledge Resources: Strategic planning and investment for competitiveness     Creating actionable and achievable plans     Providing ongoing analysis and benchmarking     Aligning Incentives and Investments     Bridging Sustainability and Economic Development: New policies for a changing world     Enterprise Design Coordination - Adaptive Business Processes and Workflows     Dynamic Resource Management     Intelligent Business Decision Support     Event-Driven Planning and Scheduling     Leadership refocused with new strategy and cohesive vision     Strategic plans created for the global marketplace     Supply chains streamlined     Products redefined     New markets targeted     Cost-saving measures developed     Silos leveled & Teams aligned

O2ibm > Learn & Lead

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Integrative Leadership: A collaborative model that delivers results

"In the twenty-first century a new vision of leadership is needed more than ever. Leaders must integrate knowledge and talent from individuals in the private, not-for-profit, and government sectors to advance the common good."   Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Chairman Carlson School of Management Integrative Leadership  = leadership that promotes innovative, responsible, and effective solutions to cross-sector challenges locally, nationally, and globally.     Integrative leadership identifies the common ground among sectors and leverages their unique influence and resources to better move organizations, communities, and society forward in times of increased interconnection and rapid change. The Center for Integrative Leadership at the Carlson School of Management - University of Minnesota aims to better understand how collective action across sectors (business, government, nonprofits, media, academia) and geographic boundaries can solve some of the world’s most pressing and complex societal problems. Integrative leadership is driven by the following key concepts: Inclusion Involving stakeholders who can affect change in the process is a crucial task. Shared purpose Getting key stakeholders to agree on common purpose is critical to building sustainable solutions. Systemic thinking Helping members of a group to see the interdependencies of various actions and contributions they make to resolve a problem contributes to greater understanding of a problem and increased support for the solution. Sometimes, the least obvious factors are the most important. Inquiry Questioning all of the stated or unstated assumptions about the problem and facilitating an open and honest analysis of alternative points of view leads to fuller engagement by stakeholders. Consideration should be given to multiple working hypotheses. Constructive dialogue Choosing language and methods of developing shared meaning is important. Innovation Creatively resolving differences among opposing ideas can lead to innovative outcomes. Many problems are solved when a group uses inquiry to discover a new solution or a variation of a solution that is acceptable to members of the group.   O2ibm > Learn & Lead

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