Page 38 - The extraordinary leader

Demystifying Leadership • 15

and peers, produced twice as much net revenue to the organization (their term
for profitability) as that of managers in the 11th through 89th percentiles. So
the difference between really great leaders and the others is extraordinary. We
have found strong statistically significant relationships between leadership
effectiveness and a variety of desirable business outcomes such as profitabil-
ity, turnover, employee commitment, customer satisfaction, and intention of
employees to leave. In almost every study where we have undertaken to under-
stand the impact of various dimensions of organizational effectiveness, lead-
ership effectiveness has consistently had substantial impact. This is discussed
in Chapter 2.

Insight 2. One Organization Can Have Many Great Leaders
Being a great leader can be defined by selecting the top 5 or 10 percent from
any distribution, but this is artificial. It was done for the sake of ease and objec-
tivity in our research. However, greatness should ultimately be defined against
a standard rather than merely comparing people against each other. There is
no reason why half the leaders in an organization could not be great if they were
developed properly. Better still, why not all? Great leadership is not a compet-
itive activity in which one person’s success detracts from another’s success.
Four great golfers can play together and all four can come in 10 strokes or
more under par on the course. If anything, playing with other great players
elevates the play of each individual. Likewise, an organization can have large
numbers of leaders performing at a high level and having positive impact on
their people and producing excellent business results. The goal should be to
have all leaders performing at an extremely high level, and there is no reason
why this cannot occur.
Jack Welch’s legacy at GE was a strong emphasis on developing a large
number of great leaders, many of whom went on to lead major divisions of
GE, and some who left to head up other major corporations. Somehow we
must change the mentality that holds that any organization can have only a
few really good leaders. Chapter 2 covers this topic.

Insight 3. We Have Been Aiming Too Low in Our
Leadership Development Activities
We contend that one of the major failings in leadership development pro-
grams has been the tendency to aim low. Michelangelo said, “The greatest