Successful Managers

from an article by Scott Burns relating a study by Michael Lombardo, a behavioral scientist and project manager at the Center for Greater Leadership in Greensboro, N.C.

"The idea that you pick up skills and know how to manage," he said, "is just plain wrong. The common theme in virtually all our interviews with managers -- and these were fine technical people -- is that knowing the technical solution, having a particular skill, was only a small part of managing. Perhaps a third, maybe as little as 10 percent. The rest was people and persuasion."

The growth in MBA degrees is significantly faster than real growth in our economy and therefore, in real management positions. While the degree has become the price of admission to much of corporate America, it remains that many who get it somehow think that mere possession puts them in line to run General Mills, or Exxon, or any of the largest corporations in America. In fact, the hardest part of their education is about to begin, and it will continue for years.

Lombardo and his compatriots at the center know a lot about that because they've done hundreds of interviews with top managers while trying to find out how and why promising managers "derail," while others, with apparently equal promise, succeed.

They found that the promising managers all have very similar qualities. They are incredibly bright, technically brilliant; have outstanding track records; are identified early as "comers"; have made many sacrifices; and they are ambitious.

Those who derailed, Lombardo says, usually did so for one or more of the following reasons:

-Insensitivity to others
-Cold, aloof, arrogant.
-Betrayal of trust.
-Overmanaging, failing to delegate.
-Overly ambitious, playing politics.
-Failing to staff effectively.
-Inability to think strategically.
-Overdependence on a mentor.
-Inability to adapt to boss with different style.

Those who ultimately succeeded, on the other hand, had these common characteristics.

-More diversity in their track records. they had done a lot of different things well, not over-specialized.
-Maintained composure under stress.
-Handled mistakes with poise and grace.
-Focused on problems and solved them
-Got along with all kinds of people -- were outspoken but not offensive.

What Lombardo finds most striking in the qualities it takes to get to the top, and stay there, is that the people who succeed most and longest somehow manage contradictory personal qualities:

-They are confident but humble.
-They assume responsibility but delegate.
-They can have great curiosity but also have the discipline to concentrate on, and solve, a single problem.

The bottom line is that 90 percent of the real education for management is still on the job.

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