Page 287 - The extraordinary leader

264 • The Extraordinary Leader

research that emphasized the difference between good leaders and great
leaders. Clearly, General Mills had the same philosophy; they needed great
leaders. He also was impressed with the strength-building philosophy. “As a
brand-centric company, we have always believed in building brands and
leaders as our primary mission. As with a strong brand such as Cheerios or
Yoplait, it is more effective to build on success and add to strength,” said Wilde.
To help leaders build their strengths, a customized competency companion
development guide was developed. The companion guide provided leaders
with new insights on specifically what they needed to do to improve a strength.
“We adapted the companion guide as the key ‘take away’ from the training
and coaching,” Wilde added.
In 2003 and 2004, all officers and directors at General Mills received
360-degree feedback, training on the strength-building philosophy, and
instructions on how to use competency companions to build strengths. Lead-
ers also received one-on-one coaching on their feedback and their develop-
ment plans. The external executive coaches used were specifically trained
in the logic and methodology of strength-building and the Competency
Companion Guide. The efforts for improvement were reinforced in 2005 and
2006 with additional training and support to keep development momentum
going. In 2007, all officers and directors received a follow-up 360-degree assess-
ment to measure their progress. We were able to compile a data set of 181
leaders with both pre-test and post-test results. This enabled us to assess the
impact of the Extraordinary Leader approach.
A comparison of the overall leadership effectiveness rating on the pre-test
results with the post-test results showed a statistically significant improvement
in overall leadership effectiveness. For an organization that is already well led,
to show significant improvement suggests that every organization, no matter
how good they are, can get even better.
We were primarily interested in the leaders who made significant
improvements in their leadership effectiveness. We eliminated leaders in
the data set who were at the 80th percentile or higher in the pre-test results.
These are leaders that were already quite extraordinary. Looking at the
results for the remaining 141 leaders, we found that 34 percent had made
substantial improvement in their leadership effectiveness. Six percent were
substantially less effective. We have always found in our pre-test and post-
test research that a small percentage of leaders get negative post-test results.
Typically, these are leaders who had moved to much more challenging jobs
and had not yet mastered the complexities of their new assignments.