Page 196 - The extraordinary leader

New Insights into Leadership Development • 173

to fire a professor.” Someone at the table asked, “Why? What rules did he
break? Was he incompetent?” “No, he was not incompetent!” replied the pres-
ident. “He was very current in his field. The problem was that no one in his
department could remember a staff meeting that he attended that did not end
in an argument. He was absolutely impossible to get along with and created
so much friction in the department that nothing was getting done.” In this
case, the professor’s lack of interpersonal skills made the professor’s technical
competence irrelevant. It ceased to matter. People no longer paid attention
to his technical competence.
In another situation, we were working with the management of a chem-
ical company research laboratory. Their work was highly specialized work
and they had recruited absolutely the brightest and best scientists in the
world. The productivity of the lab had come under considerable scrutiny.
To understand better what some of the problems were with this group, many
of the scientists were interviewed. In an interview with one of the leading
scientists, the interviewer asked him to describe a typical technical review.
Each of the scientists was asked to present new research studies before all
the scientists for their review. The interviewer asked, “Are the technical
reviews helpful?”
The scientist replied, “Not at all.”
“Why?” the interviewer asked.
“Because when new scientists present their ideas for a new area of study
they aren’t asking for input, they are just showing off how much they know.
Several times I have listened to scientists talk about research that we have
already determined is never going to work. We have tried the same experi-
ments before. They always fail. But rather than help this idiot out, we just sit
back and inwardly grin because we know that they will fail. By letting them
work on this research it just helps my work to look even better and gives me
a lot better chance of getting a big bonus.” The scientists in the lab were com-
peting against each other for recognition, rewards, and promotions.
Here again, the lack of effective interpersonal skills seriously erodes the
perceived technical competence of this laboratory. We estimate that this cul-
ture, with high scientific and low interpersonal effectiveness, was costing the
company a minimum of millions of dollars each year. The number could be
in the billions if the comparison is made to what that group of scientists could
have created, had they created a high-performance work environment.
Having strong interpersonal skills does not help people become any
smarter, but it does help them to share the knowledge that they have,