Page 79 - The extraordinary leader

56 • The Extraordinary Leader

● Treating everyone the same—no “smiling up and kicking down”
behavior
● Treating the waitress and bellhop with dignity, as well as people of
high status
● Trusting other people; assuming they have good intentions
● Working collaboratively with others, versus seeing everyone as a
competitor
● Not acting in an arrogant manner toward others
● Being tenacious and not giving up because something is difficult
● Having emotional resilience; adjusting rapidly to changing
environments

Many organizations have learned that finding people with the right char-
acter is the absolute requirement for long-term success of the organization.
A colleague asked a senior executive of Louis Vuitton, the maker of high-
end luggage and personal accessories, how they went about getting people to
produce such high-quality products. The executive’s answer was, “You look
for people who seek quality in their personal life, and in all the things they
use and possess. You can’t train that into people.”
The retailer Nordstrom is currently working to regain the position that it
once held as the leading provider of excellent service. Again, when the exec-
utives are asked about how they plan to do that, their answer is “Hire nice peo-
ple.” It is much easier to teach a nice person selling skills and how to use
“point of sale” equipment than it is to teach “niceness” to someone who knows
how to complete the paperwork for a sales transaction.
However, our research shows that when people receive high scores on this
important dimension of leadership, but this is all they score highly on, then
the likelihood of them being perceived as outstanding leaders is approximately
6 percent. And if people are given low marks on these “character” dimensions,
they will absolutely not be perceived as great leaders.
We concur, therefore, with the people who have written of the importance
of leaders being persons of high character. Without it, long-term failure is cer-
tain. Where we part company with some is our conclusion that character is a
necessary, but not sufficient, element for great leadership. To complicate the
matter even further, there are some people who are perceived as effective lead-
ers yet who seem to possess major character flaws. This will probably be known
in leadership literature in decades to come as the “Clinton phenomenon.” It