The Drivers and Derailers of Great Leadership
You have attributed leaders’ personalities to some major corporate catastrophes, including the downfall of AIG and issues at Apple. How does this happen?
The actions and interactions between individuals have a huge impact on outcomes in the workplace, and this is played out every day, in every profession—sometimes with extraordinary results and other times with disastrous results. We have found that personality style has a greater impact on leadership effectiveness than IQ or educational achievement.
It’s never about one individual trait; it’s about combinations of personality traits. We have identified the 13 most important traits, and it is the different combinations of them that can be wonderful or dangerous.
Tell us what happened at AIG.
The AIG story is consistent with what we know about ‘why planes crash’ and ‘why medical errors occur’: In 75 per cent of cases, it’s human error. There are breakdowns of leadership, teamwork and communication that stress people and systems — and we see the same patterns in the financial arena. Before the global financial crisis hit, was overseeing AIG’s Financial Products group, selling hundreds of billions in credit protection in the form of CDS’s [credit default swaps]. He was a real workaholic and known to be very aggressive, stubborn and self-absorbed. In our framework he would rank high on Rigidity, Hostility and Need to Control.
