Page 45 - The extraordinary leader

22 • The Extraordinary Leader

become outstanding in several areas, and that when they do, they will in all
likelihood be perceived as highly effective leaders.
Our research indicates that good leaders are, in fact, producing better out-
comes than those of leaders who are bad. Good is better than bad, but nei-
ther they themselves nor their leaders appear to recognize the substantial
contribution they could make by moving from being merely good to great.
An example of the focus most executives have in fixing weaknesses was
demonstrated in the following consulting engagement:
We conducted an organization-wide study to determine the key factors
influencing the success of 100 field offices. We submitted a report that found
that the most powerful factor influencing the success of field offices was the
effectiveness of the office manager. After studying the report carefully, the
executive team came out with a recommendation to “find the bad managers
and fix them.” However, after finding the “bad” managers, it was determined
that there were not enough of them to explain the organization’s overall poor
performance. The executives came back doubting the validity of our study.
With further analysis, however, we collectively came to the conclusion that
the organization’s poor performance problem was not because of bad man-
agers but was the result of having a large number of mediocre ones. Their
performance paled in comparison with that of the few exceptional managers,
and the key to raising the overall performance of the organization was to
help facilitate the improvement of the mediocre managers to the level of the
exceptional ones. Greatness is driven by strengths, with “the more the better”
being the simple fact. Chapter 6 elaborates on this important idea.

Insight 14. Great Leaders Are Not Perceived
as Having Major Weaknesses
One of the common bits of folk wisdom about leaders is that great leaders
have great strengths, but that strengths taken too far become weaknesses. Fur-
thermore, no one is perfect, so great leaders must have highly visible flaws.
We were fully expecting to find that notion confirmed by our data.
To our surprise, there is no hint of that. Instead, our data describe the lead-
ers who are seen as highly effective by their subordinates as not having flaws.
Their scores across all competency categories were remarkably similar on the
high side. Frankly, we wondered if there was not a pervasive halo effect that
caused people who are really effective at a few skills to be perceived as being