People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1 - 11

perspectives - counterpoint
Dave Winsborough is managing director of Winsborough Limited, a leading
New Zealand consultancy. An expert
on leadership at the top of organizations, he is recognized for his skills in
building high-performance senior-level
teams. He can be reached at dave@
winsborough.co.nz.

Leaders Must Look
Within to Create a
Healthy Workplace
Robert B. Kaiser
In his characteristically incisive and iconoclastic way, Robert Hogan has cut through the
hype and hoopla to get to the heart of what
we know about effective leadership. His secret
is to turn the leadership equation around by
starting with the people being led.
From this view, Hogan makes a crucial distinction: the difference between successful managers (who get ahead in their careers) and
effective managers (whose people are engaged
and get great results). We'd like to think that
effective managers are also those who get
ahead, but this is not normally the case.
Research on the topic suggests that only
about one in 10 managers are both effective
and successful (Luthans, Hodgetts, & Rosenkrantz, 1988). Look around at the people at
the top of most organizations and consider
which qualities best describe them: 1) good
at self-promotion, well-connected, and politically astute, or 2) able to bring out the best
in others, influential at getting people to set
aside their personal agendas and work
together, and utterly committed to the vision.
The first set of qualities is table stakes: Without them, you aren't likely to get very far. But
having them does not mean you will have the
second set of qualities. In fact, the more a
manager emphasizes the first set, the less
likely he or she is to emphasize the second set.

That's because they represent two distinct-
and sometimes conflicting-motivations:
self-interest and collective interest. Unfortunately, self-interest usually trumps the collective interest.
It is unfortunate for two big reasons. First, it
means that most people who aspire to positions of leadership do so for self-interested
aims: the compensation, status, and prestige of
upper management. The welfare of employees
and the performance of the organization may
only be an afterthought, if they are given any
serious thought at all. Second is the irony that
their selfish behavior is unlikely to bring them
satisfaction. Spiritual teachings from the Buddha to the Bible emphasize that the best way
to be happy is to make other people happy.
And indeed, empirical research shows that
doing good for others, investing in them, and
helping them to succeed leads to greater
personal satisfaction (Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008).
If managers are to create a healthier workplace, they must start by looking within, at
their motivation for aspiring to a position of
leadership. If they are more driven by the
trappings of status and other self-gratifying
desires, then you can expect little benefit to
workplace health. Those who seek to serve a
greater good are the ones more likely to create
the kind of culture that takes care of people
and performance. And in a karmic turn of
justice, those same managers are likely to
achieve a greater sense of fulfillment and
peace of mind for themselves.

References
Dunn, E.W., Aknin, L. B., & Norton, M. I. (2008). Spending money on others promotes happiness. Science, 319,
1687-1688.
Luthans, F., Hodgets, R.M. & Rosenkrantz, S. A. (1988).
Real Managers. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.

Rob Kaiser is president of Kaiser Leadership Solutions, a provider of cutting-edge
tools for the assessment and development of leaders, and the editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and
Research. He can be reached at rob@
kaiserleadership.com.

Leaders Can Drive
Disengagement,
But Not
Engagement
Adrian Furnham
Bob Hogan is a courageous academic and
clear thinker, willing to go against the tide
when he believes the consensus is flawed.
He helped "resurrect" personality theory in
the 1980s and '90s and has made a major
contribution to understanding leadership
derailment.
Few academics can claim to have started a
highly successful, international, multimillion
dollar company based on sound research
findings. He is a "one off" and should, I
believe, be seen as a "national treasure" for
American psychology.
One of the great attractions of reading or
hearing Bob is seeing him cut through the
Gordian knot of tangled theories or research
findings. He has a knack for getting to the
heart of the issue, which he always summarizes in a few memorable points. He has done
this in his "Six Lessons" piece, which is classic
Hogan.
While I agree with points one, five, and six,
and would commend anyone to read his
work on the dark side, I take issue with point
three, that leaders drive engagement, and
engagement drives performance. In past presentations, Hogan has noted the change in
concept from job satisfaction to involvement
to commitment and then to engagement,
which seems the new flavor of the month.
Despite the enthusiasm for the concept and
claims, the evidence remains weak. There is
both an absence of evidence and evidence of
an absence with regard to the idea that leaders (alone) drive engagement, which (alone)
drives performance.
In even the best studies and sound
meta-analyses, the size of the correlations
suggests that a manager's ability, personality,
and motivation does relate to performance,
but that the correlations are low (typically
around r=.2).
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People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of People & Strategy Winter 2015 Vol. 38 Issue 1

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