Bosses who read novels may excel at work, study reveals. PHOTO/FILE
In 2009, James Zenger published a
fascinating survey of 60,000 employees, that sought to identify how
different leadership characteristics combined to affect perceptions of
whether a boss was a “great” leader or not. Two of the characteristics
that Zenger examined were “results focus” and “social skills.”
Results
focus combines strong analytical skills with an intense motivation to
move forward and solve problems. And yet if a leader was seen as being
very strong on results focus, the chance of him being perceived as great
by staff was only 14 per cent
.
.
Social skills combine
attributes like communication and empathy. If a leader was strong on
social skills, he was seen as a great boss even less of the time – a
paltry 12 per cent.
However, for leaders who were
strong in both results focus and in social skills, the likelihood of
them being seen as great shot to 72 per cent.
Social
skills are a great multiplier. A leader with strong social skills can
leverage the analytical abilities of team members far more efficiently.
Having
the social intelligence to predict how team members will work together
can also promote better pairings. Psychologists say it is a skill worth
learning, and an on-going study is suggesting that reading fiction can
be useful.
NEURAL SEESAW
Often, what initially appear to be task-related difficulties turn out to be interpersonal problems in disguise.
One
employee may feel devalued by another or think that he’s doing all the
work while the partner loafs, leading both to put in less effort to
solve otherwise solvable problems. Socially skilled leaders are better
at diagnosing and treating these common workplace dilemmas.
So,
how many leaders are rated high on both results focus and social
skills? If this pairing produces effective leaders, companies should
have figured this out and promoted people to leadership positions
accordingly, right? Not hardly.
David Rock, the
director of the Neuroleadership Institute, and Management Research
Group, recently conducted a survey to find out the answer.
They
asked thousands of employees to rate their bosses on “goal focus”
(similar to results focus) and social skills in order to examine how
often a leader scored high on both. The results were astonishing. Less
than one per cent of leaders were rated high on both goal focus and
social skills.
How could this be? Well, our brains have
made it difficult for us to be both socially and analytically focused
at the same time. Even though thinking socially isn’t radically
different from thinking analytically, evolution built our brains with
different networks for handling each.
Regions of the
brain lying on the outer surface of the frontal lobe are responsible for
analytical thinking and are highly related to IQ.
In
contrast, regions in the middle of the brain, where the two hemispheres
touch, support social thinking. These regions allow us to piece together
a person’s thoughts, feelings and goals based on his actions and words,
as well as the surrounding context.
Here’s the really
surprising thing about the brain. These two networks function like a
neural seesaw. In countless neuroimaging studies, the more active one of
these networks becomes, the more the other one quiets down. Although
there are some exceptions, in general, engaging in one kind of thinking
makes it harder to engage in the other.
It’s safe to
say that in business, analytical thinking makes it harder to recognise
the social issues that significantly affect productivity and profits.
Moreover,
employees are much more likely to be promoted to leadership positions
because of their technical prowess. We are thus promoting people who may
lack the social skills to make the most of their teams and not giving
these leaders the training they need to thrive.
REWARD BALANCE
How can we do better? For one, we should give greater weight to social skills in the hiring and promotion process.
Secondly,
we need to create a culture that rewards people who use both sides of
the neural seesaw effectively. We may not be able to use them in tandem
easily, but knowing that there is another angle to productivity will
help us produce leaders with more-balanced skills.
Finally, it may be possible to train our social thinking so that it becomes stronger over time.
Social psychologists are at the beginning stages of examining whether this kind of training will bear fruit.
One exciting prospect is the recent finding that reading fiction temporarily strengthens these mental muscles.
Wouldn’t it be great if reading the latest John Grisham novel was the key to larger profits?
The writer is a professor and director of the UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. He is the author of “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect”
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