CULTIVATING EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP IN THE IT WORLD

by David R. Caruso and Kerry F. Gentry, Senior Consultants, Cutter Consortium

INTRODUCTION

Leadership is critical to the success of all enterprises. Nowhere is that need more apparent than in the IT world. The best technologists are promoted to positions of ever greater responsibility by climbing the ladder or, in all too many cases, being shoved up the corporate ladder without the employment of adequate selection methods. These leaders are then left without guidance to learn the leadership ropes on the job, resulting in demoralized teams, overbudget projects, and a lack of project direction. A few seem to have what it takes and -- by dint of their skills, knowledge, and a bit of good fortune -- become recognized as capable leaders in their organization. We believe that a more structured approach to leadership is both possible and necessary. The intention of this Executive Report is to stimulate thought, discussion, and action about how we select and train good and effective IT leaders.

We all know that leadership is important. We admire (or fear) those who exercise it. Some see it as a natural talent inherent in individuals, complex beyond all understanding or meaningful intervention. Others think all people are created equal, lacking only the right prescription and opportunity to be another George Patton or Alexander the Great. Corporations and armies pay homage to leadership without definition of the term or real assessment of its specific impact on their performance. In short, we lack a clear, diagnostic understanding of leadership and its role in maximizing corporate performance and success. But in fact, leadership is definable, can be assessed, and, like other attributes, can be improved with intervention. Effective intervention, however, requires in-depth understanding of the nature of leadership.

IT professionals have a tendency to view their industry -- and themselves -- as somehow different from the rest of the world of human endeavor, and there is a certain misleading truth in this perception. Each industry, each project, and each individual is indeed unique, but unique in its characteristics and context, not in the principles that underlie its descriptive models and paradigms. Especially in the case of leadership, it is important to understand that the capabilities and behavior that separate effective from ineffective or good from bad are universal, becoming IT-centric only at the rather superficial level of situational knowledge. IT, in other words, is a singular but not unique case in the study of leadership.

This report aims to define the nature of leadership, to propose a model of leadership, and then to suggest a viable approach for selecting and training leaders in IT as well as other occupations.

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Leadership is the process by which one individual influences others to do, of their own volition, that which he or she would have them do. It is the most fundamental mechanism within our species for coordinating and motivating group social behavior. The reason leadership exists as a social device is simple and primal: The chances of a group surviving are higher than those of an individual surviving. The combined intellectual contribution of multiple minds makes the group smarter, and specialization makes it more efficient than any single individual.

Further, individuals in a group care for one another and look after one another's needs. As Charles Darwin noted 150 years ago, leadership is not a uniquely human device. "Social animals perform many little services for each other: horses nibble, and cows lick each other, on any spot which itches: monkeys search each other for external parasites" [3]. Coordinating the activities of such a group may be the simple result of instinctive behavior. As Darwin noted, "Rabbits stamp loudly on the ground with their hindfeet as a signal: sheep and chamois do the same with their forefeet, uttering likewise a whistle. Many birds, and some mammals, post sentinels." But in the coordination of some species, more than instinctive behavior is at work. Many groups of social animals have leaders, and for communities of higher animals, the leader coordinates the activities of his or her group. The leader of a troop of monkeys scans the horizon for danger, alerts the troop of possible danger, and informs the group when it is safe to explore, lounge, or play.

But while leadership may be instinctive behavior in lower animals, human behavior involves such complexity that it requires leadership to be a deliberate, cognitive process. Cognition, therefore, is the defining characteristic of human leadership.

Leadership confers on human groups benefits that are both tangible and intangible. Collectively, we are able to achieve levels of reward, security, and ego satisfaction that would be impossible through uncoordinated individual endeavor. Leadership enables people to work together efficiently to realize numerous positive outcomes:

• Groups gain rewards greater than those individually obtainable. Groups facilitate not only the achievement of greater work objectives than those an individual can undertake alone but also a specialization in skills with the attendant large gains in efficiency. No other species enjoys the unique benefits of individual task specialization as much as humans do.
  
  
• Groups create enhanced security for individuals and the entire social group as well as emotional comfort in making sense out of a complex and often uncertain environment.
  
  
• Groups provide ego satisfaction in the form of meaning, purpose, and recognition for the follower, who is able to identify with and share in the success of the leader and the group.
  
  

Leadership is so fundamental to what it means to be human that it should be relatively easy to define, measure, and select for leadership qualities. Yet we all are familiar with stories of failed leadership, whether in political contexts or corporate environments or, more specifically, by CIOs and CTOs. Our analysis of leadership, then, must start with some basic definitions. What exactly do leaders do? And are there really differences between the role of a leader and that of a manager?

What Leaders Do

Leadership is a process of aligning the objectives of the individuals being led with those of the leader and of influencing individuals to work toward achieving those objectives. Leaders seek to influence the behavior of individuals and, by influencing individual behavior, to influence group behavior. When effective, leadership establishes group and individual commitment to the leader's values and objectives and motivates followers to strive toward those goals. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the core functions of leadership.

Figure 1 -- A leader begins with individuals and creates a group with a common mission.

Figure 2 -- A leader aligns the perceived needs of the individual with those of the group.

Leadership and management are clearly different. Although management is indeed a uniquely human phenomenon, leadership is more primal. As discussed in this report, management refers to the prescriptive practices, procedures, records, and reports that are used to constrain activities and events within a project or enterprise. Leadership, on the other hand, is the influencing of others to act in the ways the leader prescribes to achieve a goal. Leadership and management are therefore intimately related and interdependent, but approach the governance of a group from diametrically opposite perspectives.

Certainly, management is necessary and critical to the survival of complex groups and systems. In addition, management and various control functions may be required for effective leadership.

Good and Bad Leadership

Leadership per se is either effective or ineffective. There are no universal criteria for good or bad leadership, and the quality of leadership should not be confused with the motivation or objectives of the leader. Once leadership is deemed effective or ineffective, judgment about whether it is good or bad rests on an unpredictable mix of situational and subjective criteria. Like anything else, leadership comes with associated costs and unintended consequences. The limits of tolerable costs are largely determined by the value and priority of the leader's objectives. On the other hand, leadership is by definition bad if it is ineffective or counterproductive.

Leadership may be either positive or negative in character. It is positive if followers are motivated by reward, and negative if they are motivated by fear of punishment. Positive leadership requires skill and the investment of emotional capital by the leader. It is durable, resilient, and, in most cases, over time yields better follower performance. Negative leadership requires nothing of the leader except the power to inflict punishment. It can, however, be extremely effective in the short term when an objective is so urgent as to justify the cost and unintended consequences of its employment. A few rare individuals respond to nothing else. The very nature of effective leaders is to fit their leadership style to the requirements of the circumstances. Even the most benign of competent leaders can and will use negative methods when they are appropriate.

Examples

An instructive example of effective but, by most criteria, bad leadership lies in the formative and early years of the US Navy's vaunted nuclear power program and the iconic Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover was the prime mover in the initial development of shipboard nuclear propulsion and the rapid progression of that revolutionary technology to drive a fleet of superbly capable submarines. Given his uniquely powerful relationship with the US Congress and his seat on the Atomic Energy Commission, he was able to ride roughshod over the Navy and the industry in his single-minded advocacy of nuclear propulsion. He delivered a remarkable military force in an equally remarkably short time and with impressively few technical missteps.

But behind Rickover's public persona and the accolades produced by the success of the nuclear power program, a different view of the admiral's leadership emerges. Arrogant to the point of narcissism, abusive of his power, and indifferent to human costs, Rickover's leadership was extraordinarily negative. Sailors working under Rickover cynically quoted his "first rule of positive leadership": first prize is nothing; second prize is a kick in the ass.

By most metrics, Rickover's leadership was effective. But what about the costs? The most obvious direct cost was the attrition of talented officers and others who refused to continue serving in an environment of unending 80-hour weeks and constant criticism. Only about 20% of those who entered the Navy's nuclear power program continued beyond their initial period of required service. The best people -- having pride, perspective, and options -- simply voted with their feet at the first opportunity and left. Committed to the Navy for an average of six years, these candidates had spent two full years in basic training and two more in apprenticeship, which left only two fully productive years before this 80% of entrees left, taking their hugely expensive training investment with them. Moreover, this attrition was barely supported by the available pool of talent for Navy recruitment. At the time, the Navy's criteria for candidates for the nuclear program was so demanding that only some 1,600 qualified graduates were available annually from the nation's colleges and universities. Of these, more than 400 had to be recruited to meet Rickover's needs. What corporation could absorb such costs?

And what about other, unintended consequences? First, dictatorial leadership using intimidation and negative impact can be effective, but in a democracy, the best are the first to go. This constant departure of top talent inevitably dilutes the quality of senior leadership. Second, perspective and focus become narrowed to that of the leader. In the case of the US Submarine Force, Rickover's powerful focus on his program and power base to the exclusion of other issues put pressure on the chain of command, resulting in the effective de-emphasis of traditional skills in tactics and operations. His demand for absolute procedural compliance and his intimidation of operators was so great that it directly resulted in the loss of the USS Thresher and the 129 men aboard. In a submerged accident at sea, the captain and crew refused to deviate from the procedures in the reactor plant manual and take action that could have saved the ship. Did Rickover intend for this unfortunate outcome? Of course not. But this loss of life was nonetheless a consequence of his leadership style.

The Rickover model of leadership is neither dead nor confined to the military; it is alive and well in many organizations and IT environments. Such a leadership style is based on position or power. Leadership theorists refer to this as "position-based leadership," or "legitimate power." This is the power of kings, generals, and dictators (and perhaps some CTOs for whom you have worked).

Examples of both effective and good leadership are more difficult to find and generally less dramatic. In industry in general, and in IT in particular, leadership has for the most part been subordinated to management practices and technology. Leadership involves an elusive quality that to date hasn't been amenable to technical management approaches, with the ROI of intervention difficult to measure or assign. There are good and dubious leadership practices, but no cookbook of procedures. In the workplace, technical mastery and leadership are often equated with one another, and in an industry with more than its share of considerable egos, there is a prevailing reluctance to recognize leadership deficiencies.

The quality of leadership often exhibits glaring differences within different strands of the same organization. The fact that these differences frequently are not addressed suggests that managers at higher levels don't routinely subject leadership to the same objective examination that they apply to management practices and procedures.

Consider this example: Some years ago, one of the largest independent IT system and software developers in the US was organized in several divisions. Domestic divisions reported to a group executive, while the single European division reported directly to the CEO. Because of -- or perhaps in spite of -- a high degree of competition between these divisions, the domestic divisions thrived and became one of the largest single vendors to the US government. Their leadership ensured that corporate culture, practices, and objectives were consistent throughout all divisions and well understood by employees. The divisions shared a strong corporate identity. Further, what the authors call the "hunter mentality" prevailed, and individual initiative in pursuit of corporate objectives was rewarded. In other words, leadership of the domestic group and its divisions was positive, proactive, focused, and effective.

In comparison, the European division's performance was lackluster. Despite huge market potential and few comparable competitors, growth and financial performance were limited. At the time, this US company operated in Europe with five wholly owned national subsidiary companies and was virtually the only sizable transnational IT vendor in Western Europe. To an outside observer, the reason for the discrepancy between potential and performance was readily apparent: the leadership of the organization. The five separate companies were allowed to operate with little central control or direction. No overarching objectives, practices, or culture were imposed on them due to the division president's fear of conflicts with "local culture."

As a result, objectives were neither aligned among the five companies nor generally understood by the workforce. Discipline in adherence to corporate standards of performance and responsibility was lax. Instead of acting as one cohesive enterprise whose presence spanned Western Europe, the division appeared from the marketplace perspective to be five separate, small, uncoordinated, and idiosyncratic companies. The single greatest competitive advantage the division should have enjoyed -- that is, the ability to concentrate large resources on clients' needs under a publicly recognized supranational culture and identity -- was squandered. Several years later, after two administrative changes of the division president, the company put a strong leader in place. He quickly undertook the alignment and motivation of the component organizations within the division, and the division is now the fastest growing and most profitable in the corporation.

The new president created a viable team organization. He did not dictate behavior but enabled the employees in the various groups to create a shared vision as well as to create and establish a sense of purpose and meaning. The independent fiefdoms began to communicate and coordinate with one another as they became aware that each division's survival and growth was dependent on the others' success. The president transformed these diverse little bands into an organization with common vision and purpose. One can only surmise the position to which this corporation might have risen in the marketplace today had leadership been appraised earlier with the same definition and objectivity as financial results. This form of leadership, in which the leader aligns the needs and goals of people to create effective units, is often referred to as "transformational leadership."

The Leadership-Management Bridge

All collective human endeavors, whether in the form of a project or a corporation, are governed by a continuum of leadership and management. The balance between the influence of leadership and the prescriptive constraints of management depends on the nature of the activities, the culture of the enterprise, and external environmental factors such as government regulation. In visual form, this balance is best exemplified by a bridge. With pure leadership at one end and pure management processes at the other, every project or enterprise at any given time operates at a specific locus on this leadership-management bridge. For every enterprise, the primary executive responsibility is to understand where the locus is and where it should be for maximum corporate efficiency and then to bring these two points together. On the leadership-management bridge, Rickover's organization operated at the extreme management end.

The leadership-management bridge can best be understood by examining the core functions of leaders and managers. We have distilled the essence of these differences in Table 1 (based on [7]).

Table 1 -- Functions of Leaders and Managers

In the IT world, the manager-leader distinction holds true. As our colleague Ram Reddy notes, CTOs tend to fight the status quo and are motivated to "communicate and manage change effectively" [11]. CIOs, by contrast, view their role as supporting and maintaining the status quo.

We don't mean to denigrate the importance of managerial functions. As we noted earlier, management is necessary and vital to the success of all complex enterprises. Our focus, however, is on leadership, which, as we have stated, is undervalued and poorly understood in many IT organizations.

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT HUSBANDRY

The Concept

An enterprise's managers and staff are unarguably a resource. This human resource is, equally unarguably, the most critical to corporate success -- dwarfing money, market, and technology through its impact. The task of leaders is to marshal these resources to achieve critical objectives. In order to do so successfully, the leader must be able to assess the nature of the available resources, assign resources to appropriate tasks, identify resource gaps, and then fill these gaps. At the enterprise level, good, effective leaders also have a longer-term view of their human resources, and they nurture and develop these resources to ensure continued future success.

Our observations of good, effective leaders suggest that they use definable and replicable methods in the selection, development, and deployment of their human resources. Although it may appear somewhat jaded or callous, we refer to this approach to human resource management as "husbandry." Originating in the 14th century, the term has two basic meanings, according to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary: (1) The control or judicious use of resources and (2) the scientific control and management of a branch of farming and especially of domestic animals.

Without demeaning the employer-employee relationship or calling for the domestication of the legions of programmers, analysts, and technicians in our ranks, we can view all resources, including those in management and leadership, as composing the "herd." In the context of the above definition of "husbandry," we believe that it is both appropriate and helpful to apply the concepts of husbandry to the corporate human resource and to its specific application to the IT world. Why IT? Simply because of the rate of change in the field; the pace of evolution; and the short duration of each generation of products, services, and environments. With the rapid turnover of ideas, good management husbandry in IT will yield an extremely high ROI.

Management husbandry, then, is defined here as the use of scientific methods to establish and maintain a population of managers whose individual and collective attributes provide optimum support to enterprise objectives and to ensure judicious use of those resources. Under the umbrella of management husbandry, leadership is the most important target for judicious application and deliberate enhancement. For the remainder of this report, leadership husbandry will be the focus of discussion.

Within the definition of leadership husbandry, the word "scientific" implies methods based on objective, repeatable measurement and specific, focused intervention to improve the performance of individuals as well as the herd. Judicious use exists when proper job assignment maximizes individual productivity. Both aspects of husbandry are dependent on a reliable, effective assessment of individuals. The assessment process, then, is essential to the function of the larger whole; this assessment includes a framework of processes for the accurate determination of leadership capability and potential, positive intervention to improve individual and herd performance, and selective accession and assignment of staff.

Leadership husbandry, therefore, has several requirements, which we will discuss in the next section:

• A model of the leader that is based on measurable attributes
  
  
• Standards for each of those attributes that are derived from corporate culture and objectives
  
  
• A diagnostic, scientific assessment process to pro.file the individual based on these defined attributes and standards
  
  
• A development/intervention scheme for individuals and for the group
  
  

THE LEADERSHIP MODEL

If we are to demystify and understand leadership so that we can evaluate individuals and predict or improve their ability to align and motivate others, we need a model of leadership. The model can and should be universal, valid, and useful in characterizing leaders regardless of the environment in which they serve and their chosen style or methods of influence. Whether the leader is a warrior on the field of battle or a corporate warrior at his or her desk, the model is the same. The attributes populating the model vary, sometimes dramatically, in quality and significance from individual to individual and situation to situation and, in so doing, yield a unique result for each case of person, time, and role.

If we are to enjoy the benefits of leadership husbandry, we must know which traits and skills are essential to the successful prosecution of our enterprise objectives. We must know which of those traits and skills can be cost-effectively improved through the intervention of training, counseling, or specific experience. We must know which individuals are unlikely ever to be effective and comfortable in leadership roles and ensure their assignment to positions that maximize their productivity while minimizing the personal and professional risk to them and the enterprise. In short, the model must be an easily grasped and applied descriptive and diagnostic tool.

The Universal Leadership Wheel

As Figure 3 indicates, the Universal Leadership Wheel is an intuitively obvious framework for the depiction of a leader, with a hub at the core and spokes emanating from that hub to support a rim at the periphery. Conceptually, at the center, or hub, lie the core traits that are fundamental to the individual's personality and that are difficult or impossible to significantly alter after the formative stages of life. The hub attributes largely determine an individual's ultimate capacity for leadership and explain why all people are not created equal.

Figure 3 -- The Universal Leadership Wheel.

Surrounding the hub are those behaviors that characterize the individual's interaction with others and determine how others perceive us. These behaviors can be modified to some degree through various interventions, but the rate and degree of their modification is dependent on certain abilities within the hub traits.

Finally, at the outer rim of the wheel are the knowledge areas or skills required by the specific leadership environment. These attributes, such as technical expertise, are most easily modified by training and, to some extent, are in constant evolution because of accumulating experience. The rate at which we acquire specific skills is also a function of our core abilities and our interest in these competencies. As with all wheels, the outer rim moves the fastest of the Leadership Wheel's three components. This means that the specific knowledge or skills required for effective leadership (and management) are highly changeable and a function of the endeavor's current environment.

Another conclusion one may draw from the Leadership Wheel is that individual capacities for leadership are likely to fall on the time-worn bell curve: that is, there are few natural Alexander the Greats just as there are few who are incapable of exercising some level of leadership. For the majority, it is a capability that can be improved with judicious intervention in the spoke or rim attributes.

The next question we must address is, "What goes in each of these three areas?" We are not the first to ask about the characteristics of an effective leader. Table 2 summarizes the extensive literature in this area. It is noteworthy that, despite the literature's strong thread of commonality, there is no overarching structure or general model of a leader.

Table 2 -- Summary of the Traits, Skills, and Abilities of Leaders

Hub Traits

What core abilities should be placed at the hub of the Universal Leadership Wheel? We draw from various theories of leadership and models of leadership effectiveness to create a concise list of these core traits.

Intelligence. At its most basic, intelligence is the ability to learn and adapt successfully to the environment. This is essentially how psychologist Alfred Binet defined intelligence in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Intelligence is the most fundamentally important hub ability. Without intelligence, one cannot acquire the behavior and knowledge necessary to be an effective leader. But this does not mean that more is better. In fact, some studies demonstrate that a leader should not be too smart or much smarter than his group. So one needs a certain level of intelligence to be an effective leader. Beyond this level, however, intelligence may or may not help, depending on the degree of development of other hub and spoke attributes.

Situational awareness. This is the habitual surveillance of one's environment for events, issues, and conditions of potential significance. Further, it is the ability to discern the relationship and implications of seemingly disparate data derived from widely separate observations. It is an instinctive personal behavioral trait for which individuals display varying degrees of natural aptitude.

Emotional abilities. These abilities include the accurate identification of emotions in oneself and others as well as the abilities to generate an emotion to enhance the thinking process of oneself and others, to understand what makes people tick, and to manage one's own and others' emotions for maximum effect. Leaders with high levels of emotional abilities -- or what we call emotional intelligence (EI) -- are often charismatic, create meaningful connections with others, engage in positive behaviors, and communicate clearly. Our approach to EI is based on the original ability model, which specifies EI as a form of traditional intelligence, much like IQ [2].

Personal courage. This is the ability to control one's own fear and distraction and maintain effective thought and decision-making processes when meeting challenges in a threatening mental or physical environment. It includes self-confidence and self-control.

Motivation. If intelligence is the GPS of the vehicle of leadership, motivation is the horsepower under the hood. Motivation, or drive, provides the energy an effective leader needs to keep going when the going gets tough.

Flexibility. There is no single formula for effective leadership. While some leaders are lucky and able to succeed in difficult circumstances by following a premeditated plan, these plans usually don't work in other contexts or environments. A key to good leadership is flexible thinking, the willingness to be open to new ideas, and the ability to change one's patterns of behavior when necessary. Flexibility, or "openness," is related to many important workplace outcomes, such as benefiting from training efforts.

The hunter mentality. The hunter instinctively seeks to master his or her own fate; the hunted is fatalistic. The hunter is proactive in controlling the course of events. He or she tends to focus on objectives and concentrate on finding a path through the environment to that objective. His or her priorities are clear and stable, and when faced with problems, the hunter is patient, confident, and persistent. He or she is quick to identify and mitigate risks to the plan without losing sight of the objective. Personality theorists might call this hub trait "assertiveness and dominance," but it is somewhat more complex than the simple sum of those descriptions.

Spoke Behaviors

The spokes comprise the next level of the wheel, consisting of a more or less specific list of behaviors. The complete list is longer than that for the core hub traits, so we will include some of the more salient behaviors in our analysis.

Credibility. Leadership cannot exist if the putative leader lacks credibility with followers. A leader whose situational knowledge, skill, and decision making are unreliable can exercise only authority. Somewhat perversely, if authority is the only basis for imposing the leader's objectives on his or her followers, credibility is still required, because the threat of censure or punishment for noncompliance with the leader's wishes must itself be credible. A person who lacks the credibility to inspire either respect or fear has little ability to influence others.

Vision. This is the propensity to examine multiple perspectives on a situation, to think and to select a way forward to useful objectives. It is a dynamic process, and specific objectives may change with circumstances. A good vision is more stable than specific objectives and provides a good leader with guidelines to determine whether the group is on the right track.

Authoritativeness. This trait relates to confidence and overall competence. An authoritative leader is comfortable with his or her skill and knowledge base and is able to draw upon these skills to address problems as they arise. Self-confidence underlies this behavior.

Decisiveness. This trait involves a willingness to make and enforce decisions. An impulsive decision can be a smart decision but can nonetheless lead to disaster; hence, an element of decisiveness is judgment about urgency, data quality, and risk. Decisiveness balances existing information with timeliness of action. A decisive leader is not afraid to make decisions but does not make them without some amount of data and a degree of confidence. Overall, decisiveness is more about taking an informed risk and making a decision rather than analyzing the situation until the decision is rendered obsolete.

Reliability. If you have ever worked for an unpredictable leader, you understand the importance of this skill. Leaders must be consistent in their actions, not arbitrary in their decisions. Leaders must be reliable as well: you should be able to count on them to do what they say. Consistent leaders are those whom we learn to trust and follow.

Integrity. Surveys of admired leaders -- those whom you would willingly follow -- always include the quality of honesty or integrity. If we start questioning the motives of the leader, it is likely we will be less effective as individuals and certainly as a group. Other than despots, effective leaders must be trustworthy in dealing with their followers.

Responsibility. Perhaps one way to define responsibility is the axiomatic expression "The buck stops here." Leaders take ownership of outcomes. Failure to achieve mission-critical objectives is a failure of leadership. Good leaders understand this.

Connectivity. Whereas the technical skills of written and oral communication are quite easily taught and are rim skills, at the behavioral level, the effective leader must have a good sense of what to communicate, when to do so, and the ability to perceive the effect of his communication. In a real sense, the effective leader must be an astute listener. He or she must be a good manager of his or her own communication style and content. Leaders who connect with followers do not require great acting skills or literary finesse, but characteristically their interaction must be well targeted, accurate, informative, attention-getting, and sincere. You can't mold another person's objectives and motivation if you don't effectively communicate your own as well as the benefits of them adopting your view.

Conflict management. Effective leaders sometimes generate conflict. That's right: they don't steer clear of tough situations; they don't always try to "make nice." Constructive and creative conflict can help people bring issues to the surface that otherwise would remain hidden. When there is conflict in the group -- and there always will be -- an effective leader must have the skill to steer the conflict to a productive conclusion.

Resourcefulness. Because situations change, effective leaders must know how to accomplish goals using available resources. They don't build a career out of quick fixes consisting of chewing gum and wire. In a pinch, they find creative ways to bring the necessary resources to bear on their problems. We sometimes refer to this skill as adaptability or innovation.

Empathy. Recall our distinction between an effective leader and a good leader. Perhaps the key skill that differentiates good effective leaders from bad effective leaders is their empathic skill. Empathy means that the leader can relate to others, feel for them, and see the world through their eyes. If a leader is truly empathetic, he or she leads from the heart.

Rim Skills

The third level of the wheel is the rim, consisting of a list of skills or knowledge areas. No list of these skills can ever be complete because every leadership situation is unique, and it is incumbent upon the enterprise to define these characteristics precisely for each project or endeavor. It is helpful to break down rim attributes into general, or transferable, skills and situation-specific areas of knowledge. Because a leader cannot be credible and effective without this situation-specific knowledge, these skills are no less important than hub traits or spoke behaviors, but training can impart all these skills. Again, think about Alexander the Great. He would be completely ineffective in command of a present-day armored brigade unless he were given the opportunity to master the technology involved. Even then, he might be a dysfunctional leader until he had learned the ways of society and politics in 2005. Note that it is in the rim skills that a leader's leadership profile finally becomes specific to his profession and situation, such as with an IT project.

General Skills

These areas will likely be quite familiar to the reader because they mirror the various aspects of managerial knowledge. We include these in the rim level of leadership because all these skills are relatively easily acquired through formal training and experience. Once the underlying principles of these skills are grasped, the understanding is easily applied to new situations and provides a ready foundation for any required detailed knowledge.

Oral and written communication skills. As the size and geographical distribution of the group being led increases, so does the importance of good communication skills. A key element of effective leadership is subordinates' clear understanding of the leader's intentions and expectations. In a simple leadership scenario, or in situations in which the leader and followers are face to face, rudimentary -- perhaps even nonverbal -- communication may suffice, but today's corporate environment demands the rapid, precise communication of complex data and thoughts to multiple and often widely distributed recipients. Under such circumstances, there is no substitute for effective command of language and media.

Planning. This refers to the ability to create a blueprint or structure for achieving one's objectives, which are derived from the vision of direction and the organization. Planning requires knowledge about impending tasks, available resources, and possible problems that may arise. The specific knowledge area of budgeting can be included under planning as well.

Monitoring and reporting. While probably based in part on one's situational awareness, the management implementation of monitoring and reporting can be learned readily. Specific to the enterprise and environment in detail, the fundamental principles are part of an effective leader's basic education. Good monitoring and reporting ensures that a leader receives the data required for reliable, prompt decision making.

Staffing. Knowing what resources are required to get the job done and how to get the resources on board is a critical competency for any leader. Few consider the importance of the function of staffing -- which in some organizations is accorded the level of a nuisance activity -- but having the right people at the right time is critical to your project success. Do you promote a technical wizard to a management role because that's the way it's done, or do you cherish, nurture, and allow this technical resource to be leveraged?

Resource management. To be effective, a leader must know how to obtain money and material in the environment in which he or she operates. Think people, tools, process: to be effective, the leader must know how to get the right people in place, supplied with the correct tools, and engaged in the proper process.

Organizational skills. This is the competence to create an organization tailored to the specific requirements of the objectives, environment, resources, and culture. For example, an infantry battalion and an IT project require very different organizational structures. The more complex the enterprise, the more important this skill set becomes. The more specialized the individuals in a group, the more critical organizational skills become.

Situation-Specific Knowledge

Environmental. In every leadership situation, the leader must know and understand the environment in which he operates in order to make correct strategic and tactical decisions. An enterprise must understand its marketplace and the competition. A project manager must understand the customer as well as the strengths, assets, and liabilities of his own surrounding enterprise. In short, a leader must know the territory.

Technological. Leaders don't necessarily need to be technically expert in every discipline within their organization, but they must be sufficiently technically conversant to understand and make decisions about issues they confront. Otherwise, they lack credibility with the technical community they lead. Further, there is a major difference between doing and leading people who do. IT leaders have to speak the language of developers as well as the language of customers and have sufficient understanding of both camps to bridge the gap between two fundamentally alien cultures. In-depth knowledge of future trends and technologies is a critical leadership success factor, but one that can be acquired with relative ease.

Regulatory. Good leaders are ethical and thus must be aware of how to do things right. Good leaders must know the law, be fully compliant with the current regulatory environment, and stay on top of changes in this arena. Good leaders should not end up in jail.

Political. This knowledge area refers to organizational politics both internal to the enterprise and external in the form of the customer base or marketplace. This knowledge allows the good leader to get things done by knowing whom to call, when to call them, what their concerns are, and how to ask for assistance. Political skill relies on good understanding of stakeholders and their views.

Cultural. Cultural knowledge refers to the culture of an organization, the culture of a customer organization, or the culture in which customers operate. We've all probably made our share of cultural faux pas, and even a leader with all the required hub abilities may act like an ugly American if he or she lacks cultural knowledge. As we continue the trends of outsourcing and virtual teams, cultural knowledge becomes increasingly important.

The Dark Side of Leadership

A leader can have all the necessary hub abilities and all the spoke skills, with a good sprinkling of rim knowledge, and yet be a poor leader. In this section, we briefly examine the traits that a leader should not have, the so-called dark-side leadership qualities. These qualities preclude effective leadership and derail careers, both in IT and non-IT leadership positions. Table 3 lists a few of these qualities.

Table 3 -- Negative, or Dark-Side, Leadership Qualities

The first row of Table 3 lists the most common reasons for executive failure, according to research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership. Some of these are the mirror image of hub, spoke, and rim attributes, but they bear listing in this section.

Dark-side traits include true personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder. A leader with this psychiatric disorder has problems with relationships, can be quick to anger, and is guilty of what psychologists call "splitting": at first, he or she loves you, and you can do no wrong; but over time, with little apparent reason, this leader turns on you and finds fault in everything you do. This behavior reflects not only bad leadership but also a psychological problem that is often apparent to subordinates, but not to those in positions of power. Leadership husbandry must screen out those with dark-side traits in order to select effective and good leaders.

DERIVATION OF STANDARDS

In the foregoing paragraphs, we have presented a model of leadership and a set of attributes within that model. To meaningfully assess these attributes, standards are necessary as measuring sticks. To be useful, standards must be definitive, understandable, and specific to the enterprise. They must be descriptive of the level of individual capability or performance that is required to support enterprise objectives. Derivation of standards must therefore begin with an analysis of enterprise objectives to determine the enabling requirements of each attribute within the model. While hub traits -- which are fundamental to the individual and his capacity for leadership -- have relatively universal standards, behaviors and rim skills involve far more situation-specific standards.

If they are to be a basis for quantifying the measurement of an attribute of the leadership model, incremental levels of performance or capability must be spelled out to allow for observations or test results to be compared with a scale. Each standard must provide, in its reference scale, a clear demarcation between adequate and inadequate competence or performance that reflects the minimum requirement to enable the successful pursuit of enterprise objectives.

For example, if the trait is situational awareness, a candidate standard for the corporate environment might involve the levels and characteristics in Table 4. It is obvious that the derivation of these standards requires the committed participation of those senior managers who best understand the objectives and culture of the enterprise. It should be recognized as a core responsibility of senior management and a fundamental step in enterprise risk management.

Table 4 -- Levels and Characteristics of Situational Awareness

The Assessment Concept

If we are to practice the husbandry of leadership, we must make the following three determinations for both individuals and the group:

1. What do we need?

2. What do we have?

3. What specific intervention is required to close the gap?

The assessment process that supplies the answers to these three basic questions must have the following attributes:

• Accuracy
  
  
• Objectivity
  
  
• Ability to be quantified
  
  
• Reliability and repeatability of results
  
  
• Diagnostic ability
  
  
• Nonthreatening to the subject being assessed
  
  
• Cost-effectiveness
  
  

The differing natures of the attributes to be assessed, from hub traits to rim skills, and the need to distinguish the individual's abilities from masking environmental factors dictates a multidimensional assessment process. In such a process, at least three approaches are necessary:

1. Field observation of the individual's performance in niche

2. Evaluation of the individual's behaviors and skills without staff support

3. Psychological assessment

During the assessment process, each attribute populating a leader model should ultimately be resolved to a single numerical value. Standards for all attributes should be specified to the same degree of resolution (i.e., all should be on a 1-5-point, 1-7-point, or other scale). This allows for easy combination of results from the multidimensional testing.

The numeric results from the multidimensional assessment process provide a profile of the individual's capacity for leadership and are predictive of his or her future performance. When individual values are averaged for the focus population, they provide a collective profile that is both diagnostic and predictive of enterprise leadership performance.

Presently, managers are evaluated on their performance in their employment niche. They are usually hired based on their technical qualifications and reported history of performance in prior employment niches. In general, neither performance appraisals nor the evaluation of candidates for hiring effectively identifies the individual's quality of leadership as opposed to management or technical skills. Reputation and interviews are dismally ineffective in predicting an individual's performance in a new and untried employment niche.

Assessment Process Components

An assessment process satisfying the above criteria is, of necessity, multifaceted and requires a substantial investment of corporate overhead. There are three recommended components to provide the requisite multidimensional profile of an individual:

1. A 360-degree field appraisal

2. Individual testing in a simulated operational environment

3. Psychological testing and assessment

Each component provides illuminating data on a subset of the leadership model attributes, while the 360-degree field appraisal is a measure of actual performance in a niche. The availability of data from more than one component process ensures that each attribute is seen stereoscopically, in full relief. It is not uncommon, for instance, for an ostensibly successful project manager actually to be the beneficiary of surrogate leadership by one or more of his direct reports. Placed in a new niche without that support, he will fail on his own. The essence, then, of the multimodal assessment is to strip away the cloak of environmental camouflage and obtain an undistorted profile of the individual. There are often multiple ways to assess the attributes of leadership, but Table 5 illustrates the ideal multimodal approach to leadership assessment. We list the primary ( ) and secondary () information sources for each attribute in our leader model.

Table 5 -- Assessment Methods for Each Attribute

So what are the roles of the various component processes?

The 360-Degree Approach

Presently, use of the 360-degree field appraisal is widespread in the corporate world, usually on a standalone basis for performance appraisal, prediction, and reward. If its limitations are respected, it is an invaluable tool providing insight into the skills, behaviors, and traits of the subject. Its chief strength is that it can, or should, provide a distilled view of the individual over time in a real-world environment. Its cardinal limitations are the following:

• It is subjective.
  
  
• It is fraught with camouflage.
  
  
• It is intentionally or unintentionally biased by structure, content, or inadequate training of contributors.
  
  
• It has a propensity for the "halo" effect.
  
  

We recognize the popularity of the 360-degree approach and concede that it can be useful to gain a certain perspective on a leader, at least in theory. But the 360-degree approach is especially problematic when one tries to assess the core or hub abilities. When observers were asked to evaluate the intelligence of a target individual, they did so with great certainty and, as it turns out, great inaccuracy. Abilities are often hidden and difficult to judge accurately. In one study, the correlation between observer-estimated IQ and measured IQ (via an IQ test) was roughly 0.30. (This means that observer ratings overlap only about 9% with measured IQ, and so this approach is an extremely inaccurate measure of intellectual ability.)

The Simulator (or Assessment Center) Approach

The simulator-based assessment provides an orthogonal view of the individual in that, when immersed in a simulated business exercise under the eye of trained observers, the individual is isolated from the reinforcement of the staff and other support and comforts of his or her niche. Performance then becomes completely dependent on the individual's capabilities and behavior. It is here that the assessment will identify those managers whose success is based on talented surrogates. The advantages of this component process are the following:

• It is objective and standards-based.
  
  
• It can be tailored to specifically examine the attributes of interest in the leadership model.
  
  
• Trained observers are more reliable and insightful than field contributors.
  
  
• Simulation allows the manipulation of stress, permitting the direct observation of certain leadership attributes not readily evaluated otherwise.
  
  
• Trained observers are not stakeholders in the individual's success. Hence, the halo effect is minimized.
  
  
• Results of the assessment are specific and diagnostic.
  
  

The simulator-based assessment is not, however, without limitations, among which are the following:

• Creating simulation scenarios and training role players and observers requires considerable expertise and creates substantial overhead cost for the enterprise.
  
  
• A diversion of several days is required from the individual's regular work assignment to accomplish the assessment.
  
  
• The assessment is only as good as the model and standards it is based upon.
  
  
• The results represent a snapshot of the individual. The validity of observations is typically high, but from the simulation alone it is not possible to determine with certainty whether the observed behavior is typical or anomalous for the individual.
  
  
• Considerable effort is required to condition subjects to accept the assessment without apprehension or competition.
  
  

However, simulator-based assessment may be the single best way to measure core abilities such as personal courage and the hunter mentality by creating certain environments where these abilities are tapped.

Psychological Assessment

When hiring for positions at the top of the house, some organizations send their finalist candidates off to a psychologist or psychiatrist for in-depth, diagnostic interviewing. In our opinion, such interviewing is only as valuable as the interviewer. Even when the professional uses a structured interview approach, the coding and classification of such responses is not terribly reliable or accurate. Other available methods of testing are, however, much more valid, including the following:

Projective testing. This is a free-association diagnostic assessment dating to the days of Freud. Clinicians still use it when they conduct a psychological assessment of children and adults. Projective testing techniques vary from free association to inkblot analysis to telling a story in response to an ambiguous scene. Whatever the value of such methods -- and they may indeed yield important data about a patient -- we do not believe that projective testing should play a role in the selection of leaders. The interpretation of the data is almost solely dependent on the skills of the clinician, the absence of bias, and the presence of participant honesty and openness.

Self-report testing. This is the most common means of psychologically assessing a person. You've probably taken tests like these yourself. In these tests, we pose a series of statements and ask to what extent the statement describes you. If we wish to measure motivation, for example, one such statement might be "I work hard," to which we agree or disagree on a 5-point Likert scale. Of course, reliable assessment requires that we ask many similar questions.

The difficulty with self-report testing is test-taker self-awareness and honesty. I may believe that I work hard, when in reality I don't. And if I am being assessed as part of a selection process, numerous studies show unequivocally that self-report tests are subject to "faking." To some extent, faking can be counteracted by the inclusion of faking test scales by which we can determine whether the test taker is being honest.

There is an additional hazard when using this method to assess core hub abilities: in general, people are not good at estimating their own skills. In studies where subjects were asked to estimate their IQ, the correlation between self-estimated IQ and measured IQ was a mere 0.15 (which translates into about 2% of the variance in actual IQ being explained by self-rated IQ). Though imperfect, self-report tests are often one of the ways to assess certain spoke attributes.

Objective testing. This is the gold standard in psychological assessment. Objective tests examples include IQ tests and the SAT college entrance exams. While tremendous controversy surrounds IQ testing, this testing is generally considered objective because of the way answers are scored. On these tests, there are right and wrong, or perhaps more accurately, "righter" and "wronger," answers.

Interestingly, objective tests are available to measure hub abilities such as intelligence, emotional abilities, and motivation. There are a wide variety of intelligence tests, from individually administered omnibus tests to more specific ability tests, such as verbal ability and spatial ability. It might seem unlikely, but we also possess a means to objectively measure the various emotional abilities outlined above. For example, we can measure the ability to accurately identify emotions in others by presenting a photo of a person and asking the test taker to identify how the subject feels. One such emotional intelligence test is the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). ¹

Motivation can be assessed objectively through direct and indirect methods. Indirect methods include the use of existing intelligence tests and the recording the person's persistence and speed of completion. Direct tests of motivation provide open-ended, often mundane tasks and record how long, quickly, and accurately the test taker works at the task.

We are unaware of any objective tests to measure personal courage or the hunter mentality -- at least those that would be ethical in an IT hiring and selection environment. Both can be observed and measured, however, in a simulator-based assessment.

THE LEADERSHIP HUSBANDRY APPROACH

The Process

As noted previously, leadership husbandry is a subset of management husbandry. It consists of a methodical, objective process of first determining what the enterprise intends to do, then extracting from the objective the leadership capabilities and performance required for success, expressing these capabilities as attributes and standards, and finally measuring capabilities and performance among the existing staff. After defining what is required and measuring what exists, the final step is to apply specifically targeted interventions to change the individual and collective profiles of leadership within the enterprise to bring both in line with requirements. A collateral benefit of this process is its ability to validate enterprise objectives. If, for instance, a chosen objective implies leadership and management capabilities that the existing workforce, even with reasonable intervention, cannot realistically be expected to achieve, that objective must be reconsidered in light of the risk.

Leadership husbandry involves the following set of key actions:

• Set business and cultural enterprise goals and objectives.
  
  
• Analyze these goals and objectives to formulate an effective organization and identify the leadership and management positions.
  
  
• Prepare job descriptions for each leadership and management position.
  
  
• Develop a leadership model and standards specific to the enterprise objectives, culture, and job position.
  
  
• Assess candidates for each job position at hub, spoke, and rim using multidimensional assessment process.
  
  
• Complete and report gap analysis.
  
  
• Integrate and report results of individual assessments as a collective profile of the management herd.
  
  
• Update collective profile gap analysis.
  
  
• Plan and execute required interventions.
  
  

Generation of Development Plans

Following gap analysis, the next step should be a realistic consideration of the feasibility and cost of closing the gaps. The goal is to improve individual and group performance, but as in all things, investment is required to obtain positive change. The concept of husbandry may conjure up images of drowning the runt of the litter or, in the IT world, firing incompetent technologists and leaders. It is a hard fact of the real world that sometimes a humane culling of the IT herd through attrition or a reduction in the enterprise workforce is indeed warranted and the most effective action for the survival of the enterprise. More generally, however, better results flow from training and astute assignment. Above all else, humans are a learning species and, given the opportunity, can acquire many of the qualities they need to be a positive contributor to the group.

It's important to ensure that the ROI for leadership interventions justifies the benefits gained. Given the fact that hub traits are lodged in the personality of the individual and are therefore difficult or impossible to change, an attempt to improve that area may well be too costly in money, time, and risk to warrant investment even if the person's spoke and rim capabilities are satisfactory. In such a case, the leadership husbandry approach would reassign the individual to a position in keeping with his or her abilities and seek a replacement candidate for the targeted position. It is unlikely that persons with poor leadership ability due to hub traits can be sufficiently reinforced with supporting staff to succeed in a leadership position.

Obviously, spoke behaviors are more addressable than hub traits. Seminars, workshops, counseling, and mentoring all may be effective over time. They are, however, habituated behaviors closely linked to the hub traits, and there is a substantial risk that apparent change may vanish during periods of elevated personal stress. Gaps in spoke behaviors may sometimes be compensated by astute team formation and manipulation of job descriptions.

Rim skills are usually addressable at lower cost, in less time, and with less risk than hub traits or spoke behaviors since they are knowledge-based. The rate at which an individual can assimilate new skills, however, is dependent on some of the more fundamental hub and spoke attributes. Experience is a major learning factor in the development of rim skills and, no less than the mastery of classroom training, is influenced by the individual's hub and spoke attributes. As the saying goes, some people never learn. Others are quick studies. The difference between the two lies first in hub traits and, to a lesser degree, in spoke behaviors.

All this implies that good corporate leadership and management must be clinically objective in judging the leadership profile of their herd of managers and that they must not shy away from the difficult decisions that may flow from these judgments. Not all men are created equal in their capacity for leadership, and not all men are equal in performance, regardless of their abilities. It is senior management's responsibility to provide its enterprise with an effective cadre of leaders and, given today's highly competitive environment, to ensure that leadership as a valued commodity within its organization follows a path of continual improvement. It is also management's responsibility to ensure that employees are not only well led but also assigned to positions properly aligned with individuals' abilities. Lack of ability or desire to be a leader does not in itself denigrate the value of an employee. It does suggest that the employee will be of greater value to the enterprise and more comfortable if his or her strengths are not mismatched with job requirements. In the IT world, it is not uncommon to find that a group's chief scientist, who is invaluable to the enterprise, is regarded as a disastrous people manager.

What, then, do we do with such a valuable human resource? Keep him or her in a technology-based role, or provide the skills and knowledge he or she requires to step up to a leadership role?

Training, Development, and Learning

No one is born with knowledge of algebra or Chinese or how to drive a car, but somewhere along the line, you acquire such information, knowledge, and skills. Humans can learn almost anything. (But the rate at which we learn, and the amount that we retain, is a function of our general mental ability, or IQ.) Learning is not merely exposure to new ideas; it is a change in what you know or what you do. While IT organizations expend a good share of their resources on training efforts, not all training results in learning. Training is not necessarily learning; it is often an experience that does not result in permanent behavioral change.

Cognitive psychologists know a great deal about the components of good training. Good training results in learning, and learning occurs best when it considers the learner's beliefs; provides for repetition and practice; allows for the commission and correction of errors; offers constructive, systematic feedback; and is explicitly connected to the job to guarantee transfer and generalization of training. Such training doesn't just "happen." It is not a random moment of instruction, nor is it a sink-or-swim experiential event. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that roughly 70% of training in the workplace is informal (i.e., learning outside the confines of a classroom environment) [13].

We also know that learning is not always effortless and fun: the acquisition of a new skill, or enhancing knowledge in an area where our beliefs about the content are not consistent with the subject area being taught, is difficult and resource-intensive. While it is easier, and considered more fun, to sit through workshops that are experiential and enjoyable, these experiences do not translate into good learning.

Studies of training indicate that characteristics of the learners themselves have a lot to say about what is learned and how well it is learned. Interestingly, the psychological trait known as openness (or the hub trait of flexibility) and conscientiousness (or the hub trait of motivation) are the two most important predictors of training effectiveness.

How to Train and Learn

Different traits, behaviors, and skills are better acquired through different methods: on-the-job training, classroom instruction, mentoring (as well as its more formal cousin, counseling), and workshops or seminars.

On-the-job training. The most common means to learn and develop in the workplace is via on-the-job training and experience. The advantage of this method is that it occurs in real time and in the context of work, so acquired knowledge is easily applied and does not require much in the way of infrastructure. The chief disadvantage of this method is whether on-the-job training results in true learning. That is, there may not be enough structure or follow-through to ensure that the developed knowledge or skills have a lasting impact. Because of its unstructured nature, this method can also result in knowledge gaps. Nevertheless, it should remain a valuable part of training and development for all organizations.

Classroom instruction. IT professionals are faced with ever-changing, complex regulations and technological advances. Formal classroom instruction should have a place in all organizations, but especially within IT organizations, as an efficient means to stay in touch and up to date. Classroom training must incorporate an understanding of the learner's hub traits and ask questions, such as, "How smart, motivated, and flexible are the learners?"

Mentoring, coaching, and counseling. In Greek mythology, Mentor, Odysseus' loyal advisor, was given the task of educating Odysseus' son Telemachus in Odysseus' absence. When a mentor assists an individual in his growth and development, he really works for the parent company.

Coaching is a more formal mentoring process, often conducted with the assistance of an outside person. Unfortunately for the training field, anyone can call themselves a coach -- and many people with no training or even experience in teaching, mentoring, or counseling enter the coaching field. Nevertheless, the one-on-one coaching experience can be an invaluable tool in the development of good managers and leaders.

Counseling and psychotherapy can be important components of leader development. Even though an effective and good leader is mature and possesses strong emotional abilities, anyone can suffer from the ill effects of stress, depression, or anxiety. The best leaders are self-aware enough to recognize when they themselves need support. A leader who undergoes a bout of depression should be flexible enough to seek professional assistance in coping with this or any other overwhelming emotional situation.

Workshops and seminars. From the feel-good but content-empty motivational seminar to the weeklong, intensive residential training program, workshops and seminars cover a lot of training ground. Effective workshops must be based on an underlying model or theory of the subject matter and must allow for systematic feedback, provide practice, allow for and correct errors, and transfer the new skills to the learner's environment. The best learning will occur when an intensive workshop experience is either preceded by or followed with classroom instruction for greater content depth and/or mentoring for individual action and development plans.

The leader model and ideal training interventions. Each of these training methods has advantages and disadvantages. Our analysis of these training approaches suggests that each can be mapped to our leader model, thus providing an organization with a structured approach to developing its leaders. By matching the training need to the ideal method, organizations' ROI on training can be maximized. Table 6 indicates the methods we have found to be best suited to intervention for each attribute of our leader model. As for our assessment table, we list the primary or preferred intervention ( ) as well as secondary methods (). As Table 6 illustrates, on-the-job training is best suited to the outlying job-specific rim skills.

Table 6 -- Development Methods for Each Attribute

Our firm belief is that the core of leadership -- the traits centered in the hub of the leader model -- is difficult to improve or enhance. Certainly the potential of a leader can be better realized through intervention, and we all can acquire compensatory strategies in almost any hub trait. But the bottom line on training is that the ROI for hub-level interventions just isn't there. Thus, our emphasis is on the critical importance of selecting those with the greatest aptitude to become the leaders of your organization.

Accessions

Current hiring practices are ineffective in assessing the profile of a candidate in terms of the enterprise's requirements. It usually consists of some form of work history provided by the candidate in an application or resume, followed by interviews and, in some cases, reference checks. The process is subjective and does not provide a rigorous comparison of the individual with a model based on attributes and standards. Validity of the process is modest in assessing rim skills and virtually nonexistent in examining hub traits or spoke behaviors. Perhaps for purely technical positions, the current practice is adequate; but even here, the need to work in teams, whether virtual or not, puts greater demands on the hub and spoke attributes of such technical professionals.

For management positions, our current procedures are woefully inadequate. If the accession is to replace an incumbent, one must have assurance that the new is superior to the old. If the accession is to fill a new position, one must have assurance that the candidate is capable of meeting the demands of the job. All this argues for the evaluation of accession candidates by the same clinical, diagnostic process that is used to assess and improve leadership in leadership husbandry.

"Ah," you say to yourself, "but past behavior predicts future behavior, so all this talk about assessing and husbandry falls by the wayside when you've worked with the candidate." "Not necessarily so" is our decided reply. After all, what you have observed in the past are behaviors or a demonstration of knowledge in a specific niche. This knowledge may or may not be relevant to a new position. In addition, past successes may have been due to the individual's traits, behaviors, and knowledge or to the contributions of others on the team. Take some individuals out of their support network, and their effectiveness melts away in a new environment.

Another problem with simply basing decisions on past performance is that it misses the opportunity to find and select hidden resources in your group. What about the other members of the herd who possess much greater skills or knowledge but have not been given a chance to demonstrate it? These resources are underutilized because the group's leaders did not recognize them. Perhaps this is the most valuable part of our leadership husbandry approach: it recognizes and rewards human potential. In this way, the call for leadership husbandry practices is much more human than its alternatives. Our approach recognizes and rewards people's human potential.

CONCLUSION

The Importance of IT Leadership

Our colleague Jeff Scott may have articulated the problem of leadership best. Scott says that as IT managers move up to mid-level positions, their old techniques begin to "break down." Scott continues, "They are confronted with complex organizational, political, and interpersonal issues far beyond their level of experience and understanding. Without a strong leader to mentor them during this shift into a leadership role, they try to replicate past successes with skills and tools that are inappropriate for the new problems they face. Perhaps most unfortunate, they perpetuate this management style within their management team, and the cycle continues" [12].

We do not envy the role of IT professionals in today's environment. Their job is complex, and their world can sometimes appear to be in a continual state of flux without structure, direction, or meaning. Through the use of our simple leadership model, and through the adoption of our basic leadership husbandry approach, perhaps your IT organization can better meet the challenges you face in an increasingly harsh environment while bringing a greater sense of meaning and purpose to your staff.

It is axiomatic that leadership is critical to the success of all enterprises, yet it remains the most potent, underexploited source of competitive advantage in today's world of business. As we have shown in the foregoing discussion, it is not an unfathomable quality to be seized upon when present and recognized or fatalistically lamented when it underlies corporate failure. It is instead a resource that can be identified, measured, and managed. Given a clear understanding of the process of leadership and the essential attributes of effective leaders, a deliberate, structured approach to enhancing the resource within an organization -- IT-related or otherwise -- is both possible and necessary. Management husbandry -- or its subset of leadership husbandry, as we refer to it here -- is neither an experimental concept nor an unproven theory. All the component tests, methods, and processes have been demonstrated and proven both reliable and effective. To be sure, nothing is free. An effective program of leadership husbandry requires a substantial front-end investment of overhead resources. At the outset, effective leadership at the higher levels of corporate management is required to ensure positive reception of management husbandry, including leadership, within the subject workforce. Ultimately, ROI should be substantial and enduring. Unlike technology, leadership does not obsolesce.

As one of the authors of this report is fond of saying, "Leaders have only three obligations: to set objectives, manage the risks to those objectives, and accept accountability for the results." The greatest single contributor to astute selection of objectives and risk mitigation within any enterprise is effective leadership at all levels.

¹For more information on MSCEIT, see www.emotionaliq.com/MSCEIT.htm.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

About David R. Caruso
About Kerry F. Gentry

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