Based on a comprehensive global survey incorporating the agriculture, consulting, energy, government, insurance, mining and real estate sectors McKinsey research drew a conclusion that developing leadership effectiveness can be effectively channeled through the encouragement of 4 types of behaviour.

“Over 90 percent of CEOs are already planning to increase investment in leadership development because they see it as the single most important human-capital issue their organizations face. 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.”

The four behavioral traits identified included:
A) Be supportive
B) Operate with strong results orientation
C) Seek different perspectives
D) Solve problems effectively

“Experience shows that different business situations often require different styles of leadership. We do believe, however, that our research points to a kind of core leadership behavior that will be relevant to most companies today, notably on the front line. For organizations investing in the development of their future leaders, prioritizing these four areas is a good place to start.”

 This is a thought provoking article with my readers demonstrating their appreciation through the positive feedback generated. Interestingly and not surprisingly when key executives in my network self rated their leadership values and provided a snapshot of their own priorities there existed a considerable diversity of opinion, with the four key behavioral traits readily identified. From experience a well developed EQ should enable leaders to effectively nurture the right environmental/cultural conditions in order to drive for results, through the behavioral traits as identified in this thought provoking research study.

Source: McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index.