LEADERSHIP & The Secret to Effective Leaders is to Encourage 4 Types of Behavior

New research suggests that the secret to developing effective leaders is to encourage four types of behavior.

by Claudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol, and Ramesh Srinivasan, McKinsey Research, 1/7/15.

Our most recent research, however, suggests that a small subset of leadership skills closely correlates with leadership success, particularly among frontline leaders. Using our own practical experience and searching the relevant academic literature, we came up with a comprehensive list of 20 distinct leadership traits. Next, we surveyed 189,000 people in 81 diverse organizations4 around the world to assess how frequently certain kinds of leadership behavior are applied within their organizations. Finally, we divided the sample into organizations whose leadership performance was strong (the top quartile of leadership effectiveness as measured by McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index) and those that were weak (bottom quartile).

What we found was that leaders in organizations with high-quality leadership teams typically displayed 4 of the 20 possible types of behavior; these 4, indeed, explained 89 percent of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness (exhibit).

Four kinds of behavior account for 89 percent of leadership effectiveness.

Read more at … http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/decoding_leadership_what_really_matters