Page 159 - The extraordinary leader

136 • The Extraordinary Leader

The reality of this situation is that the child was cut because there were
no outstanding strengths, and above that, her performance was poor on two
drills. Which of those is more important? We think most coaches would
overlook flaws on two drills if they saw tenacious determination and com-
petitive spirit or if they saw strong kicking ability or skill at playing goalie.
The question here is not only what to tell the child about why she was not
chosen this year, but more important, what to tell her about how best to pre-
pare for next year.
Our belief is that emphasizing the child’s weak performance on two drills
is the wrong message. It would be far better to acknowledge that as of now
you did not see important strengths, and that is what this child should work
on in preparing for next year. What a terrible year it will be for her if her entire
focus is on “not messing up on the drill.” How much better it will be if her
focus is on getting really good at some specific skills that make players valu-
able to the team. Most coaches are looking for raw talent and believe they can
teach children to correct mistakes.
As they think about this short scenario, most people can replay several real-
life situations about themselves that are very similar. Through this reinforce-
ment and conditioning, people have come to the common belief that it is
their mistakes, weaknesses, and poor performance on tasks that keep them
from being successful.
In our research, we have found that leaders with very negative ratings on
competencies were perceived less positively overall. We call these issues fatal
flaws. Fatal flaws need to be corrected. There is, however, a significant dif-
ference between fatal flaws and areas that are slightly less positive than oth-
ers. Let us call these rough edges. A person performs at an adequate level. For
many leaders, we have noted their tendency to focus their efforts for improve-
ment on rough edges, using the same logic as if it were a fatal flaw. Most peo-
ple believe that lower-scoring competencies tend to hurt more than profound
strengths help.
Look at Figure 6-2. Who do you believe would be perceived as being more
effective as a leader? Surprisingly, in our research with more than 8,000 lead-
ers, Person B was perceived to be more effective.
Most people are more concerned with eliminating any perceptions of
weakness than they are focused on developing strengths. This approach is
reinforced by organizational practices that punish people for either weak-
nesses or rough edges but frequently fail to encourage people to develop
strengths.