When hiring the leader of any organization, such as a CEO, one of the desired personality traits that comes up time and time again is “charismatic.” People say that they want a dynamic leader, who can inspire and lead the masses. But does charisma really lead to success? Is having a dominant personality that others instinctively follow necessarily a good thing? Jim Collins and his team spent five years indirectly researching what makes a great leader while writing the book Good to Great. What Collins found was that hiring a “charismatic” leader for CEO actually had a negative correlation to a …Read more »
Tag Archives: Leadership
Why A Charismatic Leader Can Doom An Organization
The Definitive Guide to Employee Criticism
In 1964, when he was a sophomore at Lisbon Falls High School in Maine, a 17-year-old Stephen King worked as a sportswriter for a local newspaper. After turning in his first piece – a recap of a basketball game – his editor cut out nearly half of it, chastising King for overwriting. “I took my fair share of English Lit classes in my two remaining years at Lisbon, and my fair share of composition, fiction and poetry classes in college, but John Gould (the editor) taught me more about any of them, in no more than ten minutes,” King wrote …Read more »
Study: The Most Important Characteristic In A CEO Is…
What’s the most important characteristic in a CEO? Korn Ferry, the world’s largest executive search firm, conducted a study to find out exactly that. And what they found was surprising – the one characteristic that correlated most directly to an executive’s success is… drum roll please… “learning agility”. I’m going to guess the first question that comes to your mind, directly after the eye roll that comes after hearing a quintessential corporate buzzword like “learning agility”, is “what the heck is that”? Well, The Wall Street Journal asked Korn Ferry CEO Gary Burnison that question, and this is what he said: “It comes down …Read more »