How to know if you're cut out to be a leader.
Were you the kid who all the other kids looked up to and followed? The one who naturally took charge and made the rules from early on in your childhood?
Or, perhaps your desire to call the shots didn't surface until high school, college, or later in life.
Regardless of when you first realized you were interested in leading others, if you are going to succeed in the role of a business leader, there are some fundamental characteristics you'll need to possess.
We'll get to the specific characteristics soon-but, first, we'd like to point out why certain traits are essential for leadership success. It all comes down to "job matching."
Job matching is one of the key concepts that Caliper developed when Herb wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review in 1980-and it still holds true today. Caliper has been in the business of relating personality traits to job success for the past 50 years. Everything revolves around the process of matching an individual's inherent motivational strengths to the specific requirements of the particular job.
Every one of us has strengths and limitations. The people who are successful in their careers and jobs are those who know their strengths and are able to put themselves in situations that play to their unique abilities-where their limitations are of little consequence.
Here's a simple, but eye-opening, exercise we've used over the years to illustrate the importance of playing to your strengths. Right now, we'd like you to grab a pen and a piece of paper. At the top of the page, sign your name.
How did that go? Did you need to think about how to hold the pen or write your name? Now sign your name with the opposite hand. Can you do it? Of course. But it's much slower, awkward, and the result may even be illegible (assuming you're not ambidextrous).
That's how your natural tendencies and abilities work on the job. Of course you can go against nature for a while, but, as you get tired, when an emergency comes up, or when you need to move quickly, you're going to resort to what is natural. That is where performance excels-when you are in a position that plays to your strengths rather than one that works against who you are.
Determining whether to pursue a certain career or job involves more than simply gaining an overview of the job and thinking it sounds like something you'd enjoy or could make good money doing. Instead, you need to focus on your core qualities and fully understand the competencies required for the specific position.
The Responsibilities of a Leader
Let's take a quick look at the most basic elements of leadership. Leaders need to develop and manage an organization's strategic and operational goals. They provide the overall vision and structure, create plans and programs to achieve revenue and profitability objectives, set the tone of the organization, and give guidance and direction to their employees. And that's just the starting point. It takes some very strong dynamics to be a consistently strong leader.
At Caliper, we have assessed the personality traits of three million people across nearly every industry and job title over the past 50 years. Our database is full of statistics regarding which personality traits most often lead to success in which jobs. We know which traits successful leaders have in common, and we've seen how people who lack these traits are often fighting a losing battle when trying to make it as a leader.
We'll go into details about those traits in Chapter 3. But for now, let's turn our attention to you.