A recent
Stanford University study concluded that publicly-perceived
leadership-qualities such as authority, power and emotional intelligence don’t
actually correlate with what companies require from their leaders.
Sarah
Cliffe’s Harvard Business Review’s article “Leadership Qualities vs.
Competence” based on the study said competence and deep knowledge of what needs
to be done is a more important success factor.
The paper
also looks at when power differences contribute to team success and when they
damage it.
Many of
today’s leaders use power poses that help them appear to be someone of
authority.
The poses
often based on extensive research have great value, but they may at the same
time lead us to ignore and cast-aside the importance of selecting competent
individuals as leaders.
The
researchers said a Cornell University study showed that in many cases, the
least competent but most overconfident people often ended up in charge.
What does competence mean?
Competence
is described by the researchers as deep knowledge of the technical work being
done.
With this
deep knowledge, competent leaders are more enable to help their teams seek out
new ideas and better solutions.
Three team-types studied
In the
Stanford study, three different team types were asked to search collaboratively
for the best solution to a complex problem.
The first
group was led by leaders who knew most about the task. In this case influence
was aligned with competence and these groups performed best.
A second
group of teams shared power and were relatively non-hierarchical. This group
did not perform as well as the first, but they did outperform the third group
that included hierarchical teams with randomly chosen leaders.
“We
replicated these findings in the field, by the way. We studied 49 teams at a
publicly held Dutch company; the teams were auditing finances in search of tax
evasion and fraud. If the team leader didn’t have a deep, technical
understanding of tax fraud, he or she led the team badly astray.”
Study takeaways
In
particular, they must not be overly influenced by political connections or
persuasiveness or the appearance of authority.
“Some of
those things can be useful, but competence comes first. It’s essential to use
objective measures of performance in hiring and promotion.”
Secondly, we
must be careful of formal hierarchy’s dangers.
Important
decisions, the researchers said require the best possible information. Leaders
must be able to value the expertise of other team members and share power when
they’re not best-suited to make a decision.
Thirdly,
it’s critically important to know where knowledge in the company currently
resides. Many fast-growing companies often lose track and are unable to appropriately
address the issue.
“Every
couple of months, a team should take stock of what challenges are most
pressing, and who has deep knowledge that’s relevant to those challenges.
Consulting
companies often face the same leadership dilemma when selecting project
leaders.
Cliffe said
in many consulting engagements, the person who brought in the client isn’t
necessarily the most knowledgeable about the work to be done,
“Leadership
roles are better assigned once you understand who knows what, and they may need
to shift in the course of the project as new issues arise.”
When do
self-managed teams, or “holocracies,” work best?
The
researchers indicated that self-managed teams or “holocracies” work best if
power can’t be aligned with the right set of competencies.
In those
situations, an egalitarian team may be a good idea, they said.
