But as they looked at the scores of the best managers, they found something subtly and wonderfully different. The high scores of the best managers moved aroundâone manager would do well on questions about creating a particular ambience in the pub, say, while another would excel on questions about inventory and budgeting. There was no pattern at all. Or, rather, there was just one big patternâthe only way to predict a managerâs performance was to look at his or her total score. They had found a list of ways in which managers could excel, and they could define excellence on each of these dimensions. Yet it seemed to make no difference which of these a candidate excelled at, as long as he or she excelled somewhere.
This was not an anomaly for the role of pub manager. Every single occupation the Gallup Organization studiedâsalesperson, teacher, doctor, housekeeperâdisplayed this same pattern: those who excelled did not share all the same abilities, but instead displayed unique combinations of different abilities, strongly. Excellence in the real world, in every profession, is idiosyncratic.