5 Landmark Research Studies on Leadership
Landmark studies change our understanding of a topic and form the canon of works important to that topic. We believe there are at least five landmark studies over the past 25 years that are pivotal to an understanding and effective practise of Leadership…...extract from forthcoming book “The Gentle Art of Leadership” by Brian Donovan and Dean Phelan
Copyright © 2020 Uplift Centre.
Melbourne, Australia.
All Rights Reserved.
Landmark Research Studies on Leadership
A sifting of the volume of books and articles written about leadership shows the majority are observational reflections and opinions on the topic rather than reporting their own first-hand empirical research. As well as our own research detailed in our forthcoming book, the findings from the following five studies have each significantly impacted our understanding of the being and doing of a great leader.
1. In 1995 Daniel Goleman published a book called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ[1]. Emotional Intelligence, shortened to EQ or EI, is defined by Goleman as the ability to recognize, understand and manage our own emotions and to recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others. The findings in Goleman’s book and subsequent research determined that emotional intelligence accounted for approximately two thirds of the abilities necessary for superior leadership performance.
Goleman states “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far,”
The Harvard Business Review hailed emotional intelligence as “a ground-breaking, paradigm-shattering idea,” one of the most influential business ideas of the decade[2].
Today there is wide research supporting the reality of EI being integral to effective leadership. The Rutgers University-based Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (CREIO)[3] has done much work in catalysing this research, collaborating with organizations that range from the USA Federal Government to American Express. Johnson and Johnson (another CREIO member) found that in divisions around the world, their best leaders came from those identified at mid-career as having far stronger EI competencies than their less-promising peers.
2. In 2001 Jim Collins published his seminal research on the leadership findings from companies that appeared on the Fortune 500 list. In his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't[4], Professor Collins describes the company performance criteria that they used to identify the enterprises that had transitioned from Good to Great over time. Collins says: “Of our initial candidate list of 1435 companies, only eleven made the very tough cut. In those eleven, all of them had Level 5 leadership in key positions, including the CEO, at the pivotal time of transition.”
In his book, Collins says: “Level 5 leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organisation and its purpose, not themselves. While Level 5 leaders can come in many personality packages, they are often self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and even shy. Every good-to-great transition in our research began with a Level 5 leader who motivated the enterprise more with inspired standards than inspiring personality.”
The best leaders of the best companies had a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will… they were “self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and even shy.” The research turns on its head the often-held view of great CEOs being charismatic, extroverted, forceful characters with powerful egos. We can think of many examples of this type of leader. Yet, Collins’ findings challenged the assumption that this dominant personality profile is correlated to long term company success. Rather, it seems the best long-term leaders demonstrate a gentler art coupled with a fierce determination to forward their organisation or community’s best interests.
The work of Goleman, Collins and others is affirmed by Edgar and Peter Schein in their 2018 book Humble Leadership -The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust[5]. They start with a question that is similar to the challenge that arose from Collins work: Do you find yourself mired in an individualistic competitive culture of management in which leadership is always about a “superstar” doing something extraordinary and heroic? Would it help to think of leadership not as the “seven steps” you must take to lead, but as the energy that is shared in a group that is accomplishing something new and better? Building on decades of study focused on organizational culture and leadership Edgar and Peter Schein assert that leadership is always a relationship, and truly successful leadership thrives in a group culture of high openness and high trust.
3. In 2008 Google assembled a team of researchers to determine what makes a manager great at Google. It was named Project Oxygen[6] which continued to run over the next decade. Statistical analyses of manager performance ratings and manager feedback from Google’s employee surveys revealed that teams with great managers were happier and more productive. But proving that great managers were critical to great team performance didn’t explain what made individual managers great. So, the team asked employees about their managers. The researchers also conducted double blind interviews with a group of the best and worst managers to find illustrative examples of what these two groups were doing differently. The statisticians gathered more than 10,000 observations about managers across more than 100 variables, from various performance reviews, feedback surveys and other reports. Then they spent time coding the comments in order to look for patterns. The team first found eight, and later expanded to ten, common behaviours across high-scoring managers.
The Washington Post (20 December 2017)[7] published the findings as follows: “Project Oxygen (data from founding in 1998 to 2013) shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top managers, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) expertise comes in last at number eight. The top characteristics of success at Google are all SOFT SKILLS” i.e.:
· Being a good coach
· Communicating, listening well and sharing information
· Possessing insights into others (including others’ different values and viewpoints)
· Having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues
Following the success of Google’s Project Oxygen research where the People Analytics team studied what makes a great manager, Google researchers applied a similar method to discover the secrets of effective teams. Code-named Project Aristotle[8] - a tribute to Aristotle’s quote, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" - the goal was to answer the question: “What makes a team effective at Google?” So, in 2012 the researchers began studying 180 teams (115 project teams in engineering and 65 pods in sales) which included a mix of high- and low-performing teams. The researchers measured team effectiveness in four different ways using both quantitative and qualitative assessments from Executives, Team leaders, Team members and Sales performance.
With all of this data, the team ran statistical models to understand which of the many inputs collected actually impacted team effectiveness. The researchers found that what really mattered was less about who is on the team, and more about how the team worked together. In order of importance:
· Psychological safety: Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive. In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.
· Dependability: On dependable teams, members reliably complete quality work on time (vs the opposite - shirking responsibilities).
· Structure and clarity: An individual’s understanding of job expectations, the process for fulfilling these expectations, and the consequences of one’s performance are important for team effectiveness. Goals can be set at the individual or group level, and must be specific, challenging, and attainable. Google often uses Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to help set and communicate short, and long term, goals.
· Meaning: Finding a sense of purpose in either the work itself or the output is important for team effectiveness. The meaning of work is personal and can vary -financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed, or self-expression for each individual, for example.
· Impact: The results of one’s work, the subjective judgement that your work is making a difference, is important for teams. Seeing that one’s work is contributing to the organization’s goals can help reveal impact.
Interestingly, the researchers also discovered which variables were not significantly connected with team effectiveness at Google (though they noted that while these variables did not significantly impact team effectiveness measurements at Google, that doesn’t mean they’re not important elsewhere): Colocation of teammates (sitting together in the same office), Consensus-driven decision making, Extroversion of team members, Individual performance of team members, Workload size, Seniority, Team size or Tenure.
The Washington Post again summarised the key team effectiveness findings: “Project Aristotle further supports the importance of soft skills even in high-tech environments. Project Aristotle analyses data on inventive and productive teams. Google takes pride in its A-teams, assembled with top scientists, each with the most specialized knowledge and able to throw down one cutting-edge idea after another. Its data analysis revealed, however, that the company’s most important and productive ideas come from B-teams comprised of employees that don’t always have to be the smartest people in the room. Project Aristotle shows that the best teams at Google exhibit a range of soft skills: equality, generosity, curiosity toward the ideas of your teammates, empathy and emotional intelligence. And topping the list: emotional safety. No bullying.”
The Google research is quite compelling. One of the current world’s, arguably most successful organisations has studied what makes a great manager and a great team, for more than a decade. Their findings are, on one level, surprising. Yet on another level they confirm what great leaders have always known i.e. success comes from building a healthy culture where people feel respected and safe, and high performance is expected and strived for. Great leaders do this by good coaching, communicating and listening well, possessing insights into others, empathy and being supportive of colleagues. In our terms this is The Gentle Art of Leadership.
4. In 2012 Gallup, the global analytics firm, reported in two large-scale studies that only 30% of U.S. employees were engaged at work, and a very low 13% worldwide were engaged. Further, these low numbers had barely budged over the previous 12 years, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide were failing to develop and contribute at work[9].
In 2014 The HBR published Gallup’s research analysing their five-decade-long history of studying managerial talents across a wide range of managerial positions, and their relationship with employee engagement[10]. Nearly 350,000 applicants from hundreds of organizations using managerial assessments were analysed to determine the percentage of individuals with high or basic managerial talent. Then, multiple regression analysis was conducted across 11,781 work teams to examine the relationship between various manager-related independent variables and the team’s overall engagement.
Gallup's research revealed that managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units (which corroborates Google’s findings that good managers matter), with about one in 10 people possessing the necessary talents to effectively manage. Gallup points out that many people are endowed with some of the necessary traits, but few have the unique combination of talent needed to help a team achieve excellence in a way that significantly improves a company's performance. Gallup found that these 10%, when put in manager roles, naturally engage team members and customers, retain top performers, and sustain a culture of high productivity. Combined, they contribute about 48% higher profit to their companies than average managers. Gallup found that great managers have the following talents:
They motivate every single employee to take action and engage them with a compelling mission and vision.
They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
They create a culture of clear accountability.
They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.
They make decisions that are based on productivity, not politics.
The researchers also noted that another two in 10 managers exhibit some of these five characteristics of managerial talent and can function at a high level if their company invests in coaching and developmental plans for them.
Overall, Gallup’s data showed that when companies can increase their number of talented managers and double the rate of engaged employees, they achieve, on average, 147% higher earnings per share than their competition[11].
5. In 2015 McKinsey & Company, a worldwide management consulting firm, published findings from their research aimed at identifying the key behaviours of effective leaders[12].
Using McKinsey’s own internal experience and searching the relevant academic literature, the researchers came up with a comprehensive list of 20 distinct leadership traits. Next, they surveyed 189,000 people in 81 diverse organizations around the world[13] to assess how frequently certain kinds of leadership behaviour are applied within their organizations. Finally, they divided the sample into organizations whose leadership performance was strong (the top quartile of leadership effectiveness as measured by McKinsey's Organizational Health Index) and those that were weak (bottom quartile).
What they found was that leaders in organizations with high-quality leadership teams typically displayed 4 of the 20 possible types of behaviour, and that these four explained 89 percent of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness. The four leadership behaviours are:
Supporting others. Leaders who are supportive understand and sense how other people feel. By showing authenticity and a sincere interest in those around them, they build trust and inspire and help colleagues to overcome challenges. They intervene in group work to promote organizational efficiency, allaying unwarranted fears about external threats and preventing the energy of employees from dissipating into internal conflict.
Operating with a strong results orientation. Leadership is about not only developing and communicating a vision and setting objectives but also following through to achieve results. Leaders with a strong results orientation tend to emphasize the importance of efficiency and productivity and to prioritize the highest-value work.
Seeking different perspectives. This trait is conspicuous in managers who monitor trends affecting organizations, grasp changes in the environment, encourage employees to contribute ideas that could improve performance, accurately differentiate between important and unimportant issues, and give the appropriate weight to stakeholder concerns. Leaders who do well on this dimension typically base their decisions on sound analysis and avoid the many biases to which decisions are prone.
Solving problems effectively. The process that precedes decision making is problem solving, when information is gathered, analysed, and considered. This is deceptively difficult to get right, yet it is a key input into decision making for major issues (such as M&A) as well as daily ones (such as how to handle a team dispute).
In Summary
The DNA of effective leadership has two fundamental entwined strings:
1. Positive, healthy relationships with your people - through such practices as listening well, communicating, sharing information, empathy, genuine care and support, creating a safe culture of openness and trust, coaching, and so forth
2. Strong focus on performance and results - through such practices as commitment to vision, creating a culture of high expectations, accountability, quality, process efficiency, problem solving and productivity, prioritizing the highest-value work, and so forth
Effective Leadership is about building a team culture that simultaneously has these two elements of strong relationships and strong commitment to results. However, these are not separate things, but rather are ingredients that are blended together as part of an authentic personality to make effective leadership. Blending them is an Art because it requires creative skill, self-awareness, imagination and integration, like a dance; and it is Gentle in that it is not about forcing or making people do anything. Rather it is about engaging hearts and minds so that people want to join the cause because they believe in it and the leader.
Interestingly, in our book The Gentle Art of Leadership by Brian Donovan and Dean Phelan we found after two years of immersing ourselves in the research done by others, analysing our own data from over six thousand 3600 feedback forms, and conducting forty interviews with proven leaders, there is, as said in the book of Ecclesiastes[14] “nothing new under the sun”. Blake, Mouton and Bidwell published an article in 1962 titled Managerial Grid - which was a forerunner to their 1964 book The Managerial Grid: The Key to Leadership Excellence - in which they stated:
“Generally, the best long-term production is achieved and sustained when concerns for production and for needs of people are integrated in the team direction”[15].
So, whilst the fundamentals of leadership have been around since Moses, today we can articulate a lot more about the What and How of practising a Gentle Art of Leadership
[1] http://www.danielgoleman.info/purchase/
[3] http://www.eiconsortium.org
[4] https://www.jimcollins.com/books.html
[5] http://www.scheinocli.org/publications
[7] Valerie Strauss, “The surprising thing Google learned about its employees and what it means for today’s students” (Washington Post, 20 December 2017)
[8] The New York Times: What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
[9] https://www.gallup.com/services/176735/state-global-workplace.aspx
[10] Why Good Managers Are So Rare Harvard Business Review March 2014
[11] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236927/employee-engagement-drives-growth.aspx
[12] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/decoding-leadership-what-really-matters
[13] The 81 organizations were diverse in geography (eg. Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America), industry (eg. agriculture, consulting, energy, government, insurance, mining and real estate), and size (from ~7,500 to 300,000 employees)
[14] Ecclesiastes 1:9 New International Version
[15] Blake, R. R., Mouton, J. S., & Bidwell, A. C. (1962). Managerial grid. Advanced Management - Office Executive, 1(9), 12–15.; Blake, R.; Mouton, J. (1964). The Managerial Grid: The Key to Leadership Excellence. Houston: Gulf Publishing Co.
Copyright © 2020 Uplift Centre.
Melbourne, Australia.
All Rights Reserved.