You’re all familiar with the old adage that nice guys finish last. Like many common sayings that automatically roll off our tongues, it is not true. Nice people do just fine, thank you. However, as new research shows, it isn’t all good news for the considerate and honest people of the world either. In fact, we might be able to edit the proverb to read, “At the last, nice guys are finished.” A recent article by Jonah Lehrer in the Wall Street Journal (August 14-15, 2010) discusses what psychologists call the paradox of power. The same traits and characteristics that help leaders rise to power all but disappear once they’ve achieved positions of authority. Many people are surprised to learn that the vast majority of those who attain leadership roles are, in fact, not ruthless subscribers to Machiavellianism. Instead, far and above it is the people who are perceived as most considerate and sociable who become respected leaders. This makes intuitive sense, and as TRACOM knows from our own research, people give respect and support to leaders who practice high Versatility. The problem is, once these people become leaders, their good traits often fly out the corner office window.

Recent research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, indicates that when people are given power, their behavior begins to mimic individuals with neurological damage. In particular, they act like patients who have damage to the specific brain area that is important for empathy and decision-making. Researchers point out that one of the main problems with authority is that it makes people less sympathetic to the concerns and emotions of others. For example, studies have found that people in positions of authority are more likely to rely on stereotypes and generalizations when judging others, and they spend significantly less time making direct eye contact with people who are in less powerful positions than themselves.

Of course, power doesn’t turn everyone into merciless jerks. Some leaders are able to maintain and even enhance the good qualities that brought them authority. Extensive research on leadership would indicate that self-awareness and self-monitoring are key ingredients to remaining one of the good guys. Leaders who know themselves and the impacts they have on others, and who actively, on a daily basis, pay attention to their own behavior and control themselves, are much less likely to lose their good qualities.

Recently there has been considerable press coverage from political analysts who criticize President Obama for not showing enough outrage about the BP oil spill, regulation of Wall Street, and other highly contentious matters. Not all of this criticism is directed at his actions or policies, but rather at his lack of emotion when talking about these events. In other words, they say, he is too calm. With the importance that emotional intelligence plays for leaders, it makes me wonder, what is a leader to do in the face of crises like the Gulf Coast disaster? New research might help answer this question.

By appearing calm the president is open to criticism that he is not appropriately angry about the spill. Therefore some people may not trust that he is taking the spill seriously, and is not acting decisively to clean it up. They think that calmness is an indicator of apathy. 

But on the other hand, what if he stood in front of the cameras on an Alabama beach and kicked sand in the air, gnashing his teeth and cursing BP? Would this be more pleasing to the American public? Would people have more confidence in his actions to clean up the mess? Or would some people think he’s a raving lunatic who can’t handle the responsibility of leadership in a rational way? 

It’s not easy to be president. However, recent research sheds some light on why people suppress their emotions, and the impact this can have on others. Leaders of all sorts may find this information helpful when confronting their own challenges. 

An article in the New York Times discusses this research and explores the benefits of expressing emotion. In the article, one of the researchers notes that Mr. Obama remains calm because this strategy has worked so well for him in the past; it has become his preferred behavioral pattern. If he were to suddenly blow up, people would be confused by the disparity between his normal calm demeanor and his sudden anger. Many people would perceive him as insincere, leading to even more criticism from the pundits. 

So again, what is a leader to do? Researchers point out the importance of using different strategies for handling emotions. In particular, they discuss three such strategies: concealing (suppressing emotions), adjusting (for example, quickly calming one’s anger), and tolerating (openly expressing emotion). They state that the most socially skilled individuals can identify the need for different strategies, and then employ those strategies as different situations dictate. These individuals recognize the emotions they want to express, and express them at precisely the right times. It is people who are inflexible in their approach, who rely on a single strategy, who run into the most trouble.

For more detailed information on this research, you can read the New York Times article here.

Lately I've been reading about the types of systematic mistakes and errors of judgment that plague human beings, but that we're either unaware of or don't bother to correct. While we can live with ourselves for misplacing the car keys three days a week, there are some mistakes that have much more serious consequences. One particularly grave example comes from the world-renowned Mayo Clinic. Doctors there went back and checked the previous "normal" X-rays of patients who had developed lung cancer. They found that up to 90 percent of the tumors were visible in the old X-rays. 90 percent! They also found that the cancers were visible for months or even years, but that the radiologists had simply missed them.

Next time you get good news from your doctor, you might want to consider a second opinion to your second opinion.

So what does this have to do with Versatility or leadership effectiveness? Plenty. Leaders have serious errors of perception (I'll get to that in a moment). But there are fixes for these errors. Before you run away from your medical professionals, there is some good news. Anesthesiologists decided they had to do something about all the deaths that were occurring in the operating room, so they swallowed their pride and took the very simple step of creating a checklist of tasks to perform during every procedure. Also, they trained the rest of the medical staff, especially nurses, to speak up if they noticed anything amiss. The results have been astounding. Patient deaths due to anesthesia have declined over the past 20 years from one in 5,000 to one every 200,000 to 300,000 cases. 

Like anesthesiologists of yesteryear, managers, it turns out, are self-deluding. It's not their fault; we all think we're better than we really are. In an ongoing article for Harvard Business Review, Robert Sutton has been writing about the things good bosses believe. The first thing he discusses is how bosses' lack of self-awareness contributes to organizational dysfunction. The major remedy, of course, is to get feedback and to consciously monitor our behavior and the impact it has on followers and others. 

A recent article by Rebecca Schalm, an HR columnist at Troy Media, considers the idea of emphasizing a person’s natural strengths versus building up weaknesses in an effort to become more effective. The article is available here. 

As Schalm points out, this strength-based approach has become a common philosophy in personal and organizational leadership. This is not surprising in an era when people are encouraged to become their own “brand.” And certainly it’s easier to quickly label someone as “a numbers guy”, “a marketing whiz”, or “a turnaround specialist” than to make the effort to fully understand the nuances and intricacies of ourselves and others. 

But emphasizing strengths is almost always going to limit a person’s potential. Particularly because the higher a leader advances, the less time they spend using functional skills (sales, accounting, etc.) and more time on things such as building consensus, motivating others and establishing effective teams. 

Schalm goes on to identify a person’s ability to recognize their shortcomings and develop strategies to address them as a key factor in long-term success. Such self-awareness is a fundamental aspect of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), a frequent topic of this blog. Of course working hard on things we do poorly is not typically as much fun as applying our strengths, but it is necessary for improving our overall capabilities, and even our EQ. 

Another insight Schalm makes is the importance of balancing self-reflection with objective input when identifying strengths and weaknesses. TRACOM’s own research has shown that individuals frequently rate their own behaviors and EQ skills different than the people with whom they work. An over-reliance on self-reflection often leads to significant blindspots. TRACOM offers a whitepaper for those interested in the topic of Self-Perception vs. Third-Person Feedback.

What are your thoughts? What is the right balance of using strengths and developing weaknesses? 

By Graham Price

You may be aware that last week’s British elections resulted in a coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Seeing it first hand has led me to reflect on the resignation of former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and how he displayed his Social Style and Versatility during the campaign.

Writing an article that is free of bias is difficult because of the polarised nature of British Politics, exacerbated by the British press as they each back a particular party, so it is difficult to separate genuine news stories from fiction. Some stories report that Gordon bullies his staff, and allege that he frequently rams his pen into the back of his chauffeur’s seat during temper tantrums. Whether these stories are true is speculation, but his recent off-camera comments may show him in a true light. When a particular Labour voter (Mrs. Duffy) questioned him about immigration, he smiled to her face, wished her and her family well, and then disappeared into his Ministerial Jaguar and, unknowingly recorded, blamed everyone else for putting him in front of that "bigoted woman.......surely these things are supposed to be stage managed!!” 

If we asked people to determine Gordon's Social Style, we would most likely hear he is more Tell Assertive, uses less hand gestures, speeds his speech and could be described as stern. This would lead us to believe he has a Driving Style, and the recent televised debates would confirm this. 

As for Versatility, let’s look at each of the four components – Image, Presentation, Competence, and Feedback. During the TV debates, "independent" (I use the word loosely) opinion polls put Gordon Brown in last place, but his popularity increased when he talked about the economy. This indicates that his Image and Presentation skills are low; he didn’t come across well and his skills at communicating to a group of people were lacking. However, at least some of the substance of his statements was well received, and this could signify that he is perceived as having high Competence (he has good ideas, he perseveres to accomplish objectives, and he is optimistic about the success of his plans). When it comes to Feedback, it’s hard to tell since we see very little of politicians’ interpersonal interactions, which are mostly done in private. (Though his interaction with Mrs. Duffy might be a good clue about his lack of Feedback skills). 

Many factors affect elections, of course, especially during difficult economic slumps, but could Gordon’s Versatility have impacted his chances for a more favourable outcome? The British public has voted on Gordon and his party, and this might be one of the reasons he has been defeated. The question that only future historians may be able to answer is, did Gordon Brown’s lack of self awareness and poor interpersonal skill contribute to his standing as the most unpopular Prime Minister in the last 100 years?

Graham Price is managing director of Accelerate, a distributor of TRACOM’s products in the United Kingdom. Visit www.accelerate.uk.com for more information.

This guest blog is written by entrepreneur and business expert Tamara Monosoff.  Her newest book, Your Million Dollar Dream, will be published April 28, 2010.  Click here to learn more and for special launch-day bonus content.  By Tamara Monosoff

One of the most important aspects of running a business, or a department, in the twenty first century is efficiency. Whether managing a department, a sales quota or a small business, managers are challenged with increasing productivity requirements, while cutting costs—and this is within the context of today’s business environment where customer expectations remain high. Even as the current economic environment improves, I don’t think this trend will change…nor should it. Chapter 12 of my book focuses on many of these best practices and tools.

Today, virtually every company has the opportunity to create efficiencies that have not even been considered. For example, how many email messages do the combined employees of your company send out each day? If you have 20 people sending just 30 messages a day--that is 600 messages each day or 18,000 each month! Marketers might call those “impressions”—more importantly, “free” impressions. But, does everyone’s email signature have the same consistent marketing message for that day/week/month?  This is one simple example, but perhaps the most important place to look for efficiencies in our businesses is in individual’s activities.

This is demanding that managers of Twenty-First Century Businesses become more efficient than any before them. Fortunately, there are numerous opportunities to overcome this challenge and in fact far exceed expectations. Some methods are basic and driven by simple shifts in behavior. Other opportunities will require organizational participation.

Time is every manager’s—and individual’s-- most valuable asset. Not only must entrepreneurs and employees deliver more each day at work, they are also facing greater demands from their family. Seldom does a week pass when I am not asked to help at my kid’s school, or help my own parents with a decision. This is true for many of us. So, vigilance must be given to time management and there are many places to look for savings.

• Plan each day’s activities the night before. It as important to have set daily goals for what will be accomplished as it is to have an organized time-schedule. 

• Take time to organize your electronic files (hint: the computer desktop is usually not the most efficient electronic file-folder system.)

• To avoid work-flow interruption, check email and voicemail messages at set times and not all day long. 

• When making appointments, pay attention to who gets your best meeting times. In other words, the most easily—and requested—meeting times are 10am and 3pm. Save these times for the appointments you most need to advance your goals. These are the times I offer to clients or sales prospects, media or others who will directly impact my business. Internal meetings, vendor meetings, etc. are scheduled early or late when I cannot schedule client meetings. 

• One of the biggest complaints people have is “too many meetings”. In actuality, the problem isn’t “meetings”. The problem is time-wasting meetings. Meetings are essential when they have a clear purpose, an agenda and are managed efficiently.

The most exciting aspect of this is that the best innovations have yet to be discovered leaving incredible opportunities for today’s most creative managers and entrepreneurs.

Author and business expert Tamara Monosoff is the author of The Mom Inventors Handbook,  The One Page Business Plan for Women in Business, and   Secrets of Millionaire Moms. 

Click here to learn more and for special launch-day bonus content.   

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is a concept focused on how effectively people work with others. EQ skills are unique from a person’s technical skills and cognitive abilities. Multiple studies have shown that EQ competencies often account for the difference between star performers and average performers, particularly in positions of leadership.  A 2009 study conducted by Colorado State University compared TRACOM’s SOCIAL STYLE and Versatility Model with multiple well-known instruments for measuring Emotional Intelligence. The study found that Versatility was in fact closely related to EQ

Daniel Goleman is a leading researcher and author on EQ. He identifies four components of emotional intelligence:

• Self Awareness
• Self Management
• Social Awareness
• Relationship Management

Self Awareness means having a clear understanding of one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives and capabilities. On the surface there’s really nothing new about this concept, but it’s a critical skill and it’s overlooked by many people. 

Self Management is what Goleman says frees us from being prisoners to our emotions. Without understanding what we’re feeling, we can’t control our feelings and this leaves us at the mercy of our emotions.

Social Awareness is mostly about empathy. It’s the ability to read another person’s facial expressions, voice and other non-verbal signals in order to understand that person’s emotions.

Relationship Management is where these three previous skills all come together. This is the most visible aspect of a person, and in particular leaders. This is where you see skills like conflict management, team building, and influencing others. 

One criticism of Emotional Intelligence is that it sounds good in theory but it is difficult to put into practice.  To address that concern, TRACOM’s SOCIAL STYLE resources and programs offer very specific guidance to deal with common workplace situations and challenges including the Enhancing Emotional Intelligence with Style guide. Whether addressing leadership, selling, teamwork or management issues, they offer relevant and easily understood Emotional Intelligence advice.

For more information about applying EQ in the workplace, download our EQ whitepaper.

What is Diversity?

Most large organizations have made strides to increase diversity in their workforces, and many implement “diversity training” to help their leaders and employees be more aware of the issues faced by a diverse workforce. But too often this training fails to achieve its desired results, and can leave people feeling confused about what concrete steps they can take to benefit from an understanding of diversity.

Part of the problem is that some organizations don’t provide their people with a clear definition of diversity or how it can benefit their bottom lines. According to an article in Training Magazine, the most effective training programs treat diversity as an inclusive process, rather than excluding people who don’t meet the traditional definitions of a diverse person. Essentially, diversity encompasses any dimension that differentiates a person or group from others. This definition includes everyone. Since we are all different from one another, we all contribute our own unique perspectives and abilities.

The key is to educate people about how to leverage these differences for business success.

How is SOCIAL STYLE Related to Diversity?

SOCIAL STYLE describes differences and similarities in people’s natural behaviors and work preferences, with the ultimate goal of teaching people how to manage those preferences for increased productivity and effectiveness. Over many years of practice and research, we’ve found that each Style has specific strengths that help them succeed in their work lives. However, one person’s strengths can be another person’s stress. Success at the team and organizational levels requires people of all Styles to work together, and in order for this to happen they need to understand basic Style differences and how to manage these differences. Regardless of a person’s ethnicity, age, or nationality, he or she will have behavioral preferences that result in a particular SOCIAL STYLE.

 This post is an excerpt from a new TRACOM whitepaper on Diversity.  Download the full whitepaper. 

In a previous blog we talked about Versatility as a choice; people can consciously decide to behave with Versatility towards others, or not. Most people would say that our behavior is within our control. But is this true all of the time? How much of an impact does the larger context in which we live and work impact our behavior and our Versatility? Does the specific culture of an organization affect the Versatility of the people who work there?

One way to answer this question is to look at differences in Versatility across industries. Although all companies are unique, there are some common aspects to companies within a given industry. For example, many companies in the retail industry have similar environments, structures, and challenges, and this could influence how people behave.

TRACOM examined Versatility across industries and we found some interesting results. Certain industries do, in fact, have higher Versatility than others. Healthcare and medical services, entertainment and leisure, and consulting services lead the pack with the highest average Versatility among employees in our database. These are followed closely by people who work in the pharmaceuticals industry. The average for all of these industries is “Y” Versatility, which is higher than over half of the general population.

On the other end of the spectrum, we found the lowest average Versatility in the energy, manufacturing, and computer services industries. The average for these industries was an “X” level of Versatility, well below half the general population.

 Average Versatility within Selected Industries

 Above Average

1. Healthcare/Medical Services

2. Entertainment/Leisure

3. Consulting Services

4. Pharmaceuticals

 Below Average

1. Manufacturing

2. Computers/Computer Services

3. Energy

We hasten to point out that these findings are based on averages, so any individual within these industries can have low or high Versatility.

Still, is it possible that the unique demands of these industries influence people’s behavior? And do different industries have different sets of expectations about how people should behave? A medical facility might have a different expectation about how to treat co-workers and customers than a manufacturing facility.

People in leadership roles naturally influence their organizations’ cultures through their formal expectations and efforts to shape culture, and also through their personal behavior. It seems only natural that individuals’ interpersonal behaviors could be influenced by these expectations and practices.

What do you think? 

Dr. Casey Mulqueen, TRACOM Director of Research