What Separates High-Performing Leaders from Average Ones [Archive.org URL]

For decades, leadership development has focused on “competencies,” a psychometric-based method of assessing and developing leader behavior. Organizations figure out the competencies that leaders need to be successful, help them develop those competencies, and then measure those competencies in the organization.

The problem is that this logic is inconsistent with how work actually gets done. Leadership does not happen in a vacuum; leaders are always acting within a larger organizational and social context.

I learned this while leading the learning function at BHP Billiton. We decided to approach the development of our leaders differently, and used a collection of sociological and behavioral economics lenses instead of the traditional competency-based ones. While we had already suspected that our best leaders were not defined by the presence of certain competencies, what we found surprised us: Our best leaders were defined by the execution of a collection of very discrete day-to-day routines, such as how they planned for meetings.

Like this content? Why not share it?