What Really Matters in Leadership

Claudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan conclude in “Decoding leadership: What really matters” (McKinsey Quarterly, January 2015) that there are 4 leadership behaviors that are important to the success of organizations. They surveyed 189,000 people in 81 diverse organizations around the world to assess how frequently 20 kinds of leadership behavior were applied within their organizations. The sample was then divided into organizations whose leadership performance was strong (top quartile) and those that were weak (bottom quartile). The findings were that “leaders in organizations with high-quality leadership teams typically displayed 4 of the 20 possible types of behavior; and these 4 explained 89 percent of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness.”

Here are the 4 leadership behaviors that really matter (along with further considerations “et alors”):

What Really Matters in Leadership

Per McKinsey, verbatim:

Solving Problems Effectively

The process that precedes decision making is problem solving, when information is gathered, analyzed, 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.

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.

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.

Et alors

It is interesting that the first point relates specifically to ‘solving problems effectively’ rather than ‘decision making’ (1 of the other 20 leadership behaviors). Getting the right information at the right time in order to (then) make the right decision is evidently a critical leadership behavior that yields high dividends. It is also inextricably linked to ‘seeking different perspectives’…

A frequently observed analytical profile of leaders usually highlights great potential (learning agility, motivation, vision, change management etc) but inability to deliver because they cannot follow through on execution. All too often junior to mid-level leaders see themselves as the ‘creators’ but leave it to management and staff to execute.  To be a good leader you need to both start and finish...

‘Seeking different perspectives’ could be replaced by ‘diversity of thinking.’ Nothing will derail the effectiveness of leadership in the corporate world as much as ‘group think’ where everyone arrives at the same conclusion based on the same (limited) inputs. Looking ‘outside-in’ and encouraging diverse inputs are the keys to leadership effectiveness.

Being supportive can mean focusing as much on ‘feeling’ as ‘thinking’. Not all engagements are ‘rational’ in the sense that it is exclusively logic and analysis. If your leadership is to be effective there also needs to be a balanced consideration as to what people might feel – otherwise you can try and lead as much as you want but people might not always follow…