Page 173 - The extraordinary leader

150 • The Extraordinary Leader

● Step 2: Decide which weakness is most significant, usually because it
has the lowest score.
● Step 3: Develop some plan of action to fix the weakness.

In fact, in some cases, working on a weakness is the best approach to improv-
ing. Those cases involve a category of attributes that we will call fatal flaws. For
example, while looking at a dataset of 11,129 leaders who were assessed on the
16 differentiating competencies we found that 30% of the leaders had one or
more potential fatal flaws. We defined a potential fatal flaw as a competency
at the 10th percentile. When we looked at the impact of fatal flaws we found
that those with one or more potential fatal flaws as a group on average scored
at the 18th percentile in terms of overall leadership effectiveness. Leaders with
just one potential fatal flaw scored at the 37th percentile, those with two at the
27th and those with three at the 22nd percentile. Weaknesses have a dramatic
negative impact on perceptions of overall leadership effectiveness.

Fatal Flaw Profile

Suppose that the profile in Figure 7-1 was an assessment of your leadership
effectiveness as reported by your subordinates. The profile shows their per-
ceptions of your effectiveness on a variety of leadership competencies, A
through P. The longer the bar, the greater your perceived effectiveness.
Competency J is perceived by others as an area of significant weakness, and
for the sake of illustration, suppose item J is “Capable of learning from
mistakes.” An extremely low score on this dimension is a fatal flaw. In our
research, we found that people with this profile, if they improve their behav-
ior on item J, will experience a dramatic improvement overall in the way their
subordinates perceive them. That improvement lifts everything with it. If the
fatal flaw is not corrected, it will act as a drag on the overall perception of lead-
ership effectiveness. It is impossible to prove, of course, but we believe that
even one extremely low score has a negative halo effect. The extremely poor
performance in the one competency drags down the perceptions on all other
competencies.
Frederick was the director of research for an international pharmaceutical
company. A brilliant chemist, he towered over others in his grasp of the tech-
nical aspects of the research process. But his personal manner was curt and
abrupt. He cut people off in meetings. He rejected suggestions or ideas for
procedures that were not his own.