... if organizations want leaders to drive change, they would be well advised to hire moderate misfits rather than candidates who are a perfect fit for the current culture. A carbon copy of the rest of the team could perpetuate rather than disrupt the status quo. At the same time, hiring people who are radically different will rarely generate the desired change. More likely, these leaders would end up disrupting only themselves.
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There is a world of difference between the personality traits and behaviors it takes to be chosen as a leader and the traits and skills you need to be able to lead effectively.
Even if the essence of leadership talent is universal, the context a leader is in will shape how they behave, ought to behave, and are evaluated. As a consequence, some leaders may be popular in some cultures but not in others (think Vladimir Putin or Hugo ChƔvez), and many high-performing managers may struggle when they are moved from one culture to another, for example, from Germany to Indonesia or from a nongovernmental organization to a fintech startup.
But the evidence-based view of a leader is that of someone able to align a group in the pursuit of a common goal. Accordingly, some people may not be in a position of authority but may act as leaders by encouraging people to work together as a coordinated unit. Likewise, some individuals formally in charge may not be operating as leaders or may have little talent for shaping a winning team. This conflict between true ability and a leadership assignment often arises when employees are rewarded with a leadership role because of their past performance as individual contributors. Under these circumstances, leadership is more of a symbolic title or recognition for past efforts, rather than an actual resource for the team or organization.
In sum, bad leaders are unlikely to turn into talented, inspirational, or high-performing leaders. Yes, they can change, but most leaders wonāt improve much beyond what you have seen them do in the past, especially if they are left to their own devices. Human inertia makes professional development interventions, such as executive coaching, indispensable, though a much more effective strategy for improving the quality of leaders would be to focus more time, effort, and resources on selecting talented people into leadership roles. As in any other area, prevention is a much better option than treatment, and while thereās no need to choose between one and the otherāboth should be pursuedāleaders will be much more likely to improve when they have been correctly selected.
...any deliberate attempt to introduce formal quotas for an underrepresented group will inevitably convey the impression that such a group is less capable. Why would they need help otherwise? This incorrect assumption is based on the illusion that current systems are meritocratic. We have to challenge this assumption by acknowledging and tackling the politics and nepotism that corrupt the selection of leaders rather than by using positive discrimination.