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    You are here Home » leadership

    Likability in Leadership—Necessary for Some, a Liability to Others

    Last updated on May 31, 2018 by Dan McCarthy · This post may contain affiliate links

    Guest
    post from Cassandra Frangos:
    We had a handy rule of thumb for hiring in my
    first job in management consulting. After the first or second round of
    interviews, if the candidate scored high on the prerequisites, the team would
    gather for a reality check and ask each other: "Would you mind being stuck
    in an airport for 9 hours with this person?” If the answer was, "Oh my, no way," we’d usually move on to
    the next highly qualified candidate. Consulting is a time-intensive business
    where exhaustive hours are spent traveling to remote locations, making
    presentations together in close quarter conference rooms, and collaborating
    with customers. You have to like the people you work with.
    Yet, it’s not the same in every
    case—likability does not necessarily
    equal followership when it comes to leadership. When I’ve conducting executive
    assessments or performance interviews, for instance, I don’t need to hear that
    a leader is highly likable. In fact, if that’s the first thing a colleague says
    about a leader, it gives me pause. There are other arguably more important
    elements in gaining the respect necessary to lead.
    When I
    weigh the pros and cons of likability, I put the question into context by
    looking at three lenses that help calibrate the question:
    The
    first context is culture. A leader’s
    disposition needs to be in sync with the culture of a company. I met with the
    CHRO of a staffing firm in the southwest last month and the first thing I
    thought was: this person is really nice and
    I can see why she is so respected here.
    The organization was relatively
    small, everyone was together in one location, and they relied on local contacts
    to keep the business going. Likeability was built into the formula. Would that
    same CHRO be as successful at a firm where the culture was more about
    innovation and less about continuity? Doubtful.
    Industry is the second context to
    consider. When people talk about the qualities that made Steve Jobs so
    successful, likability didn’t always appear on the short list. Yet, he was one
    of the most admired leaders of our time. Apple is in an industry where fresh ideas,
    fast thinking and constant change are keys to success. Jobs brought a highly
    distinctive design vision that keyed-in on user experience and an eye for
    engineering excellence that few could match. He was a brilliant in all the ways
    that mattered, and that, more than likability, gained him the
    followership he needed to lead in computing. Likewise, the aggressive and
    purportedly overbearing Jack Welch was highly respected and emulated, but
    likability was not a key ingredient for leading the massively complex global
    conglomerate.
    Lastly,
    I look at circumstance. In general, I
    would expect customer facing leaders to be likable but the benchmark may be
    somewhat different for other types of functional or technical leaders.
    Likewise, there are numerous extenuating circumstances that make likability in
    a leader more or less necessary. If a leader is charged with reengineering or
    remaking a failing firm, they must be empathetic, but perhaps likability is too
    much to expect. Whereas, if a leader is hired to improve employee engagement,
    shore up retention, and bring the organization together, then achieving the
    necessary followership may depend upon being likable.
    In
    leadership, likability looks different depending upon the context. The best
    leaders are decisive, commend respect, and connect with their followers. That
    won’t happen if a leader is a bully, tyrant or, yes, just plain untrustworthy.
    But likable? It’s not always a necessary quality in a leader.
    BIO
    Cassandra Frangos, EdD, is
    the author of Crack
    the C-Suite Code: How Successful

    Leaders Make It to the Top and a
    consultant at Spencer Stuart, where she focuses on collaborating with Fortune
    500 leadership teams on executive assessments, succession planning, leadership
    development and top team effectiveness. Previously, she led Cisco’s Global
    Executive Talent practice where she played an integral role in the 2015
    succession planning for Cisco’s CEO, and conducted the research for Crack the C-Suite Code.

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