The Plague of Mediocre Leadership

Have you ever been taught by a teacher who couldn’t teach? We have, and it wasn’t the result of them lacking motivation and desire. Neither was it them missing a teacher-training course module on Friday afternoon one semester. These teachers, although well-intended, should be no where near children and education. They might have always wanted to become a teacher, but they lack the natural talent to be on—even an average one.

It’s the same for managers and leaders. Just like bad teachers, we’ve all met too many examples of these during our careers—bullies, narcissists, micromanagers, and those who graduated cum laude in crass insensitivity. Insecurity lies at the heart of their incompetence, and they see their position as an exercise in authority and control, insisting and directing rather than delegating and trusting. They inflict their mediocrity on everyone in their care. We have both experienced leaders and managers who, in different ways, nearly succeeded in destroying our sense of self-worth and caused us to question our whole reason for being. With managers and leaders, the vast majority are unfit for their roles.

Research has shown that, from as long ago as 2014, 82% of managers lack the talent to be effective in their jobs, and the evidence has become more robust since, where engagement data (arguably the best proxy for management and leadership effectiveness) has barely moved in 10 years, and in the last year has dropped significantly.

Given the motivations of so many to climb the corporate ladder into top management and leadership positions, there is a huge disconnect. Our research into top performing leadership and management targets this disconnect, and our analysis revealed the talents that the very best leaders and managers possessed. We call them the “Five Talents That Really Matter.” In them, we captured and described these characteristic traits and dispositions as follows: Setting Direction, Harnessing Energy, Exerting Pressure, Building Connectivity and Directing Traffic. Having distilled these five talents from studying the very best leaders, and then assessing everyone else (58k and counting), the vast majority fall well short. Only 4% score in the top quartile. Forty eight score in the bottom quartile. Mediocrity clearly rules.

Read More: What I Learned About Leadership from Leading Leaders

In our research, we have seen a disproportionate weighting of leaders in a narrow set of attributes and traits, such as action orientation (a predisposition to act before fully thinking things through) and relationship building (connecting to people because of a mutual liking of each other). As strong as these attributes are, they seem to come at the expense of other important traits and dispositions, such as strategic thinking. These two findings combine to produce outcomes that lead to ineffective execution and project missteps.

An example of this occurs when leaders, because of the relationships they build, find it hard to performance manage team members by holding them to account for sub-standard work. Rather than terminate these employees, weaker leaders never address the performance issues and poor behavior and unacceptable performance is tolerated.

Why, then, do so many mediocre managers and leaders get promoted to the highest positions where they fail in large numbers?

Let’s frame our answer by making one thing clear: Exceptional leadership is rare. Mediocre and poor leadership is the norm.

In fact, organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik argues that confident, rather than competent, people are more likely to be appointed. We agree but would take his argument a stage further going to the source—to the very top of the corporate food chain. Decision makers are usually more swayed by candidates they like. In our research, we factored differences between the individuals in our database and found that “likeability” was the main reason why so many (otherwise substandard) individuals succeed in being promoted or appointed. They didn’t need to be liked by everyone, but they were liked by the interviewer who owned the decision.

The typical face-to-face interviews (that are featured in nearly every selection process intended to evaluate external candidates) are a poor method for cutting through the congenial and charismatic fraud. Of the 48% of leaders sitting in the bottom quartile of our database, 31% measured strongest in relational connectivity—presenting themselves as positive, upbeat, friendly, and socially adept leaders, yet lacking so many other critically important aspects of leadership, without which success is beyond reach.

The problem is made worse by the fact that the constellation of leadership talents essential to top leadership performance are extremely difficult to detect from resumes and interviews. We also see the overwhelming majority of companies having no clue about identifying the characteristics of leadership that matter or developing questions to assess these characteristics accurately. CEO’s and hiring executives further argue that no candidate is perfect, often as an excuse to explain the deficiencies they see in the candidate in front of them, whom they then find poor reasons to appoint. When you don’t know what you are looking for, it’s remarkable how many people meet that standard.

From the candidate perspective applying for a top leadership position, the entire charade is eminently predictable and therefore easy to prepare for. While CEO’s and top executives wrack their brains to come up with difficult and esoteric questions, candidates know they’ll be asked to describe a difficult situation they faced and how they dealt with it, a tricky employee and how they “cured” them, a negative situation and how they turned it around, a time when they started in a minority of one, but still succeeded—the list goes on. Even though hiring managers also know this, they persist anyway.

Every failed executive came highly recommended by a search firm and received the support of referees vouching for their capabilities. Even the candidates who organizations know the most about—internal candidates—fail at a rate that is staggering. Crucially, if we conclude one thing about human judgment in candidate selection, it is that it’s exceptionally poor. Yet ask any executive to describe their hiring effectiveness, and the worst response we hear is that an executive is “pretty good.”

Hiring managers, recognizing these valid criticisms, make the most banal statement of all: “I don’t place an over-reliance on any one factor, I try to balance them all.” The average of 10 inaccurate data sources is an inaccurate conclusion, with the degree of inaccuracy magnified. Looking for the Five Talents not only has high validity, but it also ensures a very high level of fairness. It is fair by sex, race, disability, age, country of origin, first language, as well as industry, size of organization, and market maturity.

We all talk about the importance of getting hiring decisions right, but practices to achieve this are flawed. Placing high weighting on imperfect sources has created the leadership challenges that most organizations face—mediocre performance, lack of demographic diversity, too much focus on functional excellence at the expense of critical leaders, and an over-investment in management and leadership development (through programs and coaching) that fail to move the needle. It’s time for organizations to upgrade their entire hiring process. That begins by acknowledging that their current approaches are failing.