‘Rarely does a book contain such breadth and depth of information, that is based on current research and proven techniques. Reading Margareth’s book is comparable to completing an advanced degree in the field and practice of leadership. Each page contains information that is worth digesting and soaking in. As a person, Margareth is a force of nature; her book follows suit: it is strong, lively, unchallengeable, and full of energy.’

− Kathleen Stinnet, MCC, executive coach, and co-author of The Extraordinary Coach

‘Currently, at a time when leadership is in greater demand than ever before, it is especially refreshing to read Margareth’s fresh and insightful ideas. Leadership is not a trick or a show, nor is it performance. Real leadership is based on content and authenticity; that is to say, it is based on competence, passion, and organizational needs. The CPO model provides a fantastic benchmark by which every leader can consider how to further increase their own impact, as well as how their leadership can have a contagious effect on others.”

− Roger Dassen, CFO ASML

‘This book is published at a time where the world is experiencing a pandemic, and it is also evident that a special kind of leadership is required to navigate during a crisis period, be this crisis a health or economic situation This means that we cannot proceed with ‘business as usual’. Leaders’ behaviours should reflect the new mind set, one that is focused on driving a vision that inspires confidence in others and leads the way.’

− Professor Zwelinzima Ndevu, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

‘A true invitation to step out of our comfort zone and be the change to “Make Shift Happen”!’

− Maarten de Vries, CFO Akzo Nobel

‘I have known Margareth for almost a decade and her intellect, enthusiasm, and powerful communication have always impressed me in our many discussions—both internally and externally with clients in India—on augmenting clients’ leadership pipeline using Zenger Folkman’s leadership interventions. Her approach, which is based on the award-winning development tools from Zenger Folkman on enhancing personal leadership development, has helped many top organizations in India, both multinational and domestic. This book is a great guide, one that is buttressed with examples that enable leaders to understand their sweet spot and which facilitate their personal transition and their organisation’s transition through compassionate and inclusive leadership using scientific leadership tools.’

− Rontu Basu, Co-Founder/Partner Quest Partners, India

Making Shift Happen

Directing Impact

Margareth de Wit

Amsterdam University Press

This is an Academica LifeLong Learning and Amsterdam University Press publication. Academica is a knowledge institution that offers flexible and high-quality education. At Academica, leaders and professionals are supported in increasing their personal effectiveness and in developing a long-term vision that ensures strong employee engagement, an open and action-oriented culture, and continuous improvement of results supported by targeted innovation. Academica is the strategic certified partner of Zenger and Folkman’s global leadership programme in the Netherlands.

Originally published as: Margareth de Wit, Making Shift Happen: Regisseren van impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. isbn 9789463720168

Translation: Jonathan Hills

The timeline and chapter openings were drawn by Oliver Caviglioli.

Photo author cover: Gowan Genìs, Studio GO1

Cover design: Academia bv

Layout design: Crius Group, Hulshout

isbn 978 94 6372 026 7

e-isbn 978 90 4855 419 5

nur 800

doi 10.5117/9789463720267

© M. de Wit / Amsterdam University Press BV, Amsterdam 2021

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.

For my father

My father has had a considerable influence on how I see the world and my own life, but especially on how I act and make choices. I dedicate this book to him. He was my great example of how to live as a human being in this complex world. Until his death he was able to fascinate me daily with his boundless energy and unconditional love. ‘Don’t get annoyed, just marvel,’ was his adage. I try to convey his message with the same positive energy.

Table of Contents

Timeline

Foreword

Preface

Introduction: The playing field

Leadership and emotional contagion

Professional contagion on four levels

The balance between cognition and emotional engagement

Show your warmth before showing your competence

Is it better to be loved or to be competent as a leader?

Leadership and your transition

1. Leadership

A paradigm shift

Learning organizations

Is development possible?

Making Shift Happen

2. The sweet spot

The CPO model

Three scenarios

Good is not good enough!

Focus on strengths

Halo and horn effect

3. The quest for the holy grail

Effectiveness of leadership

Inspiring and motivating: is charisma the secret?

â€˜Silver bulletâ€™

You can learn to inspire

The core ingredients for inspirational leadership

High performing: focus on speed and quality

4. Impact on the team

Relationship and results

Six behavioural bridges

A positive work culture

New meaning to work and the organization

Trust as the basis for a positive culture

5. Transforming the organization

Culture as leverage

To change the organizational culture, the leader must also change

Leadership development: three points for improvement

Innovative culture

6. Feedback as an engine for development

Feedback: because you are worth it

Feedback: should I ask?

Responding to feedback: seven principles

Employees want feedback: giving feedback

Reinforcing feedback

Redirecting feedback

7. Leadership through the generations

Generation management

Generational effects in the workplace

Four generations

Baby boomers (year of birth: 1945â€“1960)

Generation X (year of birth: 1961â€“1980)

Generation Y/millennials (year of birth: 1981â€“1995)

Generation Z (year of birth: 1995â€“2010)

Leadership and generations

A closer look at Generation Y/millennials

What feedback does Generation Y want?

Engagement: extra attention for Generation Y?

8. Leadership male/female

The unconscious attribution of leadership competencies

Gender and self-confidence

Role model

The business case

Male/female leadership in education

Gender and our challenge

9. Inclusive leadership

Inclusion and diversity

Leaders have an impact on inclusion

How can a leader achieve inclusion?

10. Making Shift Happen!

Afterword

Notes

Bibliography

Timeline

Foreword

This is a unique book. A quick glance at it may lead you to believe that it is merely one more book on the subject of leadership and leadership development. But that is not exactly what it is. The author’s thesis is that the future depends on our ability to make appropriate transitions occur efficiently and effectively. Her aim is to prepare the reader to be a force in making these important shifts happen.

But it isn’t the thesis of the book that alone distinguishes this work. We think it is the ability of the author to bring an unusually broad perspective to the topic. We are honored that she has referenced our research and writings. One of the facts that our research highlights is the notion of powerful combinations. The idea is simple. One force or element by itself often has modest influence, but when put together with another element, these become an extremely potent force. For example, gunpowder and a spark make a powerful combination.

This book showers the reader with several powerful combinations. For example, it is at once a very personal book, with references to her family, her business, and her academic experiences. That is combined with research and quotations from a wide variety of scholars in multiple disciplines.

The book is a practical field guide, full of concrete examples of activities that enable the practitioner to help organizations and individuals make transitions. Yet, at the same time, it contains bundles of excellent theory and models that help explain the process of change. This is another powerful combination.

This work is also a fascinating combination of the timely and timeless. It cites examples of the impact of the world pandemic in year 2020. However, alongside these references to current events are insightful discourses on ancient philosophers. This combination of modern science juxtaposed with the best thinking from the past is another powerful combination.

Change and transitions can be viewed from widely different perspectives. It can be approached from an individual, psychological perspective. It can also be viewed from a much broader sociological and organizational viewpoint. This author almost simultaneously does both. The outcome is a far more insightful and useful treatise, if compared to one that primarily used only one of these perspectives.

We could go on, but we hope that the point is made. This is an eclectic book, written in a way that incorporates many dimensions. That’s what makes it unique. We promise the reader, you are about to embark on a good ‘read’.

Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman

Authors of more than seven bestselling leadership and leadership development books, and founders of the award-winning Zenger Folkman consultancy.

Preface

Success always depends on careful preparation;

without that preparation, failure is a fact.

‒ Confucius (551 BC–479 BC)

Life is a journey of discovery for everyone. Sometimes it presents us with unexpected, beautiful moments, sometimes it confronts us with experiences of deep pain and disbelief. Often, we already have some life experience by the time we realize how certain mechanisms work, what the impact of our actions are, and how other people can affect us. In the search for how we can best get together and collaborate with other people, we are increasingly aware of how ‘contagious’ the knowledge and energy we transfer to others can be. Just think of people like Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama – how infectious their behaviours have been and how powerful their influence remains today. Or think of certain other events and experiences that are remembered with such pain and disbelief due to the attitude of leaders such as Hitler and Stalin, or the impact of the slave traders on our current society.

In a time when everything is within reach and nothing can be hidden, and when imagery and sound can be manipulated or distorted so easily, there is an increasing need to take direct control of what we have in this world in both our professional and our private lives.

In the twenty-first century, we look with different eyes at everything we use and the way we organize it; for example, just think of our energy sources, the way we travel, and how we use our possessions. The means by which we can best use our resources is an important political and social issue. However, such utilization goes much further than, for example, the transition to using solar and wind energy as renewable energy resources. Should we, for example, continue with our current substantial consumption of energy? And, on a more personal level, what are the limits of the commitment and energy we put into our work? You can only spend your time once: and, in asking these questions, we see that we want to do more and more in less and less time. This creates pressure in regard to how we spend our time, and therefore places considerable strain on individuals. What was once a classic dilemma for people in their thirties – ‘what should I do with my life?’ – is now a theme that engages more and more people from an earlier age, and is often prominently featured on people’s personal agendas. ‘What am I responsible for?’, ‘What can I really take responsibility for?’, ‘What choices do I have?’, and ‘What do I want to, and what can I achieve?’ This shows the transition from a careless ‘things will go the way they will’ mentality to a ‘What can I do to contribute and help in this complex world?’ mentality.

In organizations, too, we now arrive at a point at which making a transition is necessary. We understand that we can and should relate to one another in a different way. But, as with all transitions, we are sometimes anxious or hesitant when trying to realize this in practice. Transition also requires choices as to where we should be heading: i.e., the process of transformation itself. Transition is about rules, laws, and systems. However, making a transformation necessarily concerns people’s attitudes and behaviours and is, therefore, complicated, and unruly.

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

‒ Nelson Mandela (1918–2013)

Despite still offering the ostensible safety of predictability, handbooks for established job profiles and HR protocols with rules dictated in great detail are increasingly losing their power – ‘I know exactly what to do; if I do it according to the rules, I will be doing it right’. However, such prescribed standard organizational processes no longer suffice to allow people to work together in order to achieve desired results, and this concerns both people and organizations. The ‘lean and mean’ approach, which led us to clean up bureaucratic processes from the 1990s onwards, has reached its tipping point, and now we are in danger of our quality being reduced.

Statements by philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, economists, political leaders, CEOs, religious leaders – as well as anyone else able to ‘take the stage’ – influence our ideas and the way we see and experience things on a daily basis. Formal leaders harness the power of contagion using their knowledge, ideas, and energy. We should all be more aware of the daily effects we have, as well as how we could use these to a greater extent in the future. Organizations’ search for better interactions by using everyone’s knowledge and skills is the key to understanding how we can make our own impact successful. The time of ‘them versus us’ has passed; now we are all responsible for a new transition and making the shift happen.

On the basis of my professional experiences over the past 33 years, as well as in the context of available scientific research, I describe the mechanisms by which professionals – both formal as well as informal leaders1 – can create an impact. Leadership is for everyone in the organization. I want to challenge you and provide you with tools you need to enable a conscious transition in your personal leadership, because it is worth making the difference for everyone.

Introduction: The playing field

When you smile, the world smiles with you.

‒ James H. Fowler (1970, American social scientist) and Nicholas A. Christakis (1962, Greek-American sociologist and physician)

If you are able to count yourself a happy person, then you can thank your partner and your friends. While you are thanking them, you can ask them to thank their friends, too. This is because we owe our happiness not only to ourselves, but also – if not especially – to the people around us. Researchers Fowler (University of California) and Christakis (Harvard Medical School) followed a group of nearly 5,000 people over a span of 20 years; they were able to demonstrate that experiencing happiness is a collective good that spreads through social networks (see Figure 1).2

Figure 1: The dynamic distribution of happiness according to the research of Fowler and Christakis (1983–2003). Each node represents a person: the circles are the women, the squares are the men, and the lines represent their relationships. The lighter the node, the more positive is the individual’s experience of happiness; the darker the node, the more negative the individual’s experience of happiness. (Source: New York Times, 2008)

The spread of happiness within a network can be measured up to three degrees of separation. This means that the happiness of one person leads to a chain reaction that not only benefits the individual’s immediate friends, but also the friends of their friends, and then the friends of those friends, too. When you have a friend who is happy, your chance of becoming happy increases by 25 per cent. This ‘contagion’ not only applies to happiness but also to depression, anxiety, loneliness, drinking, eating, and exercise. For example, Fowler and Christakis have shown that if your friends quit smoking, it will also be easier for you to quit smoking as well.

Rose McDermott (Brown University) shows in her collaborative research with Fowler and Christakis that divorce, too, can be contagious.3 She concludes that when close friends of yours divorce, you will be 33 per cent more likely to leave your partner yourself. The quality of your friends’ relationships influences – either positively or negatively – the duration of your own relationship.

Leadership and emotional contagion

Emotions and behaviours can therefore be said to be contagious. If we extend this phenomenon/theory to the influence of the behaviour and leadership styles of leaders, we can see that leaders play an important role in regulating the emotions of their employees and thus the social context of organizations.4 It is very important to be aware of this as a professional.

What does this mean for you and your environment? How do your moods influence your team, and your colleagues?

The idea that you are a good leader merely because you have good employees is not, in itself, illogical. To make this personal to you, allow me to invite you to ask yourself some self-reflective questions:

– Think back to the best supervisor and worst supervisor you have had and ask yourself: ‘What did this person mean to me?’, ‘How did I feel when I was working under their supervision?’, and ‘What did this person mean to me when I thought about my own development?’

– Similarly, ask yourself questions from the contrary perspective: ‘How did the worst supervisor affect me?’, ‘What mood and performance did this supervisor set and cultivate for me and the team in which I worked?’

If you start to think about the answers to these questions, you will notice that what you find important and what you expect from a supervisor influences the way you assess them and, indeed, the organization as a whole. It will also become clear to you that the ‘contagion’ of the dynamics between you and your manager went further than you initially thought. Indeed, ‘because of the manager’ is among the top three stated reasons given in exit interviews as to why employees leave their organization. This is something that should make us think.

Professional contagion on four levels

We can describe professional contagion within organizations on four levels (see Figure 2): the first level is that of reputation, the second level that of first acquaintance, the third level that of mutual exchange of information, and the fourth level that of reciprocal trust.

It is important that we, as professionals and leaders, are aware that the contagion of our daily actions extends beyond the direct contact we have with one another, and that we know how to manage this in a positive way.

Figure 2: Four levels of emotional contagion.

I will now briefly explain the four levels:

1. Our reputation may precede us, but we can nevertheless still have a positive influence on it. We see that people in public functions often seek advice and guidance in this regard. So-called spin doctors do their best to ensure that other people mainly or only see the good side of certain individuals. This can be compared to showing the ‘good’ side of your face when a picture is being taken – much like actor Robert Redford consciously did whenever he was photographed. What people already know about a person, group, or organization determines the selection of new information they take in. By keeping the focus on positive common values and goals of your organization, and by endorsing these values and goals, you can ensure that you do not go along with possible negative currents in unexpected personal conversations. Expressing negative personal feelings can have a major effect on the general perception of your image. Think of a spontaneous conversation that might arise between you and an acquaintance if you meet at a store at the weekend and they ask: ‘Are you okay?’ The tendency might be to immediately tell them what is on your mind and to ‘air your dirty laundry’. However, you should realize what this negative contagion can do to the image of you and your organization.

2. With the first acquaintance, we often quickly know whether something feels right or not. Application procedures are a good example of this knowledge. The first thirty seconds after meeting a new person can often make or break an image, even if you carefully prepare yourself before the applicant arrives so that you look and listen objectively, with the help of nice-looking statistical models and communication training. If someone does something that amazes you or that positively surprises you at first glance or when first shaking your hand, the tone can be set for the rest of your conversation. It is important that you are aware of such a ‘bias’, and that following the moment in which you draw a conclusion that you continue to ask yourself further questions. You may be wrong or find that you have already climbed the ‘ladder of inference’ (see the interesting work by Chris Argyris5 on this subject). We already draw conclusions from short impressions and supposed patterns that we recognize from past experiences. Additionally, it is important that we avoid uncomfortable subjects or humour in this first meeting; for example, when you, as a school leader, meet the parents of a new student for the first time. Sometimes well-meaning jokes can come across in an unintended or awkward way, with all the negative consequences this might entail. Remember, a negative first impression cannot easily be remedied or restored.

3. The level of mutual exchange is perhaps the most intensive. We are all part of a learning team, a project team, or a sports team; accordingly, we have to achieve something together. When in regular contact with other people, we have to be aware of the energy we transfer. Are you working towards a common ground? Do you share information with one another? Do you comment on your perceptions and how you see things? During this phase, providing honest feedback is necessary, but you must also be open to feedback from other people. Be aware that a major pitfall exists at this level: thinking that all matters and meanings are commonly understood and shared and that, therefore ‘they are clear to everyone’. It is essential to continuously communicate with one another about the why, the what, and the how.

4. Finally, there is the fourth level; that of reciprocal trust. We can only reach this level if we have gone through the previous levels successfully, and if we are also able – and have the desire – to deepen our relationship with one another. At this level we also show our personal interest in one another and ensure that we quickly resolve any ambiguities. Giving each other a lot of reinforcing feedback (also see Chapter 6) ensures continuous positive development within our respective relationships. The ‘maintenance’ of a relationship is also essential here; every relationship needs to be maintained, as nothing can continue forever unaided.

These four levels are important for the evaluation of your daily actions. Remember, your actions as well as your verbal and non-verbal behaviour have a direct effect on everyone with whom you interact. The energy you radiate and the way in which you are emotionally connected to your work – as well as to your organization as a whole – forms the basis for building a culture involving a shared vision and common goals. While a majority of organizations and their leaders claim they are aware of such connections, their focus nevertheless remains on the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of their employees, such as how they should be behaving in regard to the organizations customers, processes, and innovations etc. This is also called the cognitive culture of an organization. An organization’s cognitive culture is of undeniably importance, as it often determines the organization’s competitiveness and competitive advantages as compared with those of other organizations. This does not wholly determine the sustainable success of an organization, however.

It is at least as important to evaluate and map how people within the organization relate to one another, and how they express such relations – both inside and outside the organization. Indeed, we can clearly see when an emotional culture is not being properly managed and maintained; for example, when unexpected crises occur, such as the COVID-19 crisis, we immediately become aware of any lack or privation regarding proper management and maintenance. Think of employees in the healthcare sector: empathy and persistent kindness are essential, but worker outflow remains a significant issue, particularly as a result of the way in which work is organized and valued in conjunction with the emphasis of ‘doing more in less time’. A further example can be seen in education. Every day, educators are challenged with guiding all students through the learning process. However, teachers experience insufficient recognition for fulfilling such important and complex professional roles. Another example is found in organizations in which safety is paramount – such as the police, community support/service officers (CSOs), or those working in the emergency services – and where employees can experience aggression first hand. How do these people deal with their emotions and the resulting contagion of what we should and should not consider to be ‘normal’? Furthermore, what does this mean for the continuity of these essential service providers within society itself?

Regardless of this, the expression of our emotions is nevertheless increasingly shifting from non-verbal (passive) to verbal (active) forms. The protest actions of ambulance personnel due to their ongoing confrontations with violence, the yellow vests movement, anti-5G activists, demonstrations related to COVID-19 (COVIDSafe app, emergency laws concerning face masks, etc.), and youths attacking CSOs who are simply doing their job; these are serious signals in our society.

The balance between cognition and emotional engagement

Achieving organizational goals is a complex and holistic process: it involves searching for the right balance between cognition – that is, knowledge and skills – and emotional engagement. Employees must understand how they should behave within their respective fields and roles, based on their knowledge of their profession, and should also understand how such knowledge should be applied within their particular organizations. That employees know and experience why such applications are so important and meaningful is itself significant; what is more, employees must be able and willing to commit themselves fully to this task. Every professional has the responsibility to implement this, while it is the responsibility of the management to facilitate the culture and make it possible.

Leadership is challenged and utilized at every level if professionals are invited to function as part of a ‘learning team’. In order to make this possible, the leader must undertake the correct steps using their leadership and, in doing so, create a culture of trust that makes such teamwork possible.

In their research, Barsade and O’Neill (2016) analysed the influence of emotional culture within organizations.6 They concluded that emotional culture has a major influence on, among other things, employee satisfaction, burnout, absenteeism, teamwork and collaboration, and financial results. Positive emotions within organizations are related to better performance, quality, and customer focus; comparatively, negative emotions are associated with anger, sadness, and fear, resulting in performance deterioration and higher employee turnover.

The best leaders are loved and feared, but because it is difficult to unite both in one person, the next best option is to be feared as a leader.

– Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

Over time, we see interesting shifts in evaluating the importance of this emotional culture and the way leaders consciously use contagion for the success of their organization. While it still may have been a good option for a leader to be feared in Machiavelli’s time, today we see that certain other characteristics – such as being clear – are especially appreciated. An example of a leader who currently ranks high on the ‘sincere and loved’ metric is New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who received the highest score ever in the poll by market-research firm Reid Research in May 2020.

Show your warmth before showing your competence

Behavioural scientists Fiske et al. (2002) indicate that, when assessing leaders, we primarily focus on two characteristics.7 On the one hand, we focus on how warm, reliable, and relationship-oriented the leader is; on the other hand, we focus on how competent, terrifying, and powerful that leader is. Based on these qualities, employees then estimate their manager’s character and intentions.

When we form an image of another individual, we evaluate several of their qualities to arrive at a coherent and complete image of that person. However, the aforementioned characteristics of warmth and competence comprise more than 90 per cent of the (positive or negative) impressions we form of the people around us.

These two dimensions are described in a study by Fiske et al. (2002) according to the so-called Stereotype Content Model (SCM) (see Figure 3). In this model we clearly see that the evaluation of what we experience as being ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ represents a zeitgeist, one based on the dominance of a certain culture as well as the norms it has built up.

Figure 3: The Stereotype Content Model and the subdivision of competence and warmth into four scenarios.

This model has shown its reliability across various national and international samples and has provided consistent results from repeated measurements taken by the same researchers using the same instrument. Accordingly, the SCM is able to predict affective responses for different groups, regardless of their cultural differences. The model is also supported by empirical evidence in areas such as interpersonal perception. Interpersonal perception is based on our evolutionary predisposition to judge strangers, first according to the warmth dimension and, subsequently, according to the competence dimension. Warmth in this model is about our ability to trust one another; when we judge someone as warm, we often see ‘the other’ as friendly, reliable, moral, and empathetic.

Competence in this model concerns how capable someone is in carrying out their intentions; when we judge someone to be competent, we often see them as intelligent, decisive, and skilled. It is interesting that a person’s competence will only be assessed after their characteristics have been evaluated according to the warmth dimension. Dimensional combinations generated as a result of warmth and competence result in four stereotypical assessments (see box below).

Four stereotypical assessments

The first scenario concerns someone who is rated high on competence but low on warmth (the envious stereotype, according to the scheme). This person often appears cold and unfriendly to others, but at the same time evokes admiration because they are extremely competent. Others resent them, due to their competence, and so we are left envious. This evaluation assessment, which follows a judgment after only a quick evaluation, is often used in regard to affluent people, or fellow professionals or competitors in the field.

The second scenario is the exact opposite of the first: in this situation, a person is judged as having low competence but as being very warm (the paternalistic stereotype). This person often comes across as friendly, reliable, and sincere; their lack of competence is generally not seen as a negative trait, but does evoke a sense of compassion in some other people, especially those who feel superior in regard to their own competence. Think of this stereotype as employees who are marginalized because they are about to retire, or ‘stay-at-home mothers and fathers’ who are underappreciated.

The third scenario is when we classify someone as inferior; judging them low on the warmth dimension and low on the competence dimension (the contemptuous stereotype). People often look down on these people and are contemptuous of them. This stereotypical assessment is often used for drug addicts, people who have ‘failed at life’.

Machiavelli described the best leader as a person who is both loved and feared; unfortunately, this combination is not a common one. (Therefore, according to Machiavelli, the next best option for leader is for them to be feared.) Sometimes, this is referred to as the so-called halo effect (see also Chapter 2), where attributing a very positive quality suggests that other qualities are also present. This is the final scenario, wherein a person scores high on both competence and warmth (admiration stereotype). These people are often admired by us, and we accord them this talent due to the fact that they appear to us as being nice and reliable. Furthermore, they pose no threat to us. This evaluation assessment is usually given to those people who are closest to us.

It is important to emphasize that humans like to use heuristics and form stereotypes. The image employees have of their manager(s) is the truth to that employee at that moment in time, and this subjective truth ultimately influences their behaviour and performance. Leadership behaviour is undeniably contagious!

Is it better to be loved or to be competent as a leader?

A majority of individuals work hard in order to demonstrate their competencies because they want to appear both strong and skilled. Unfortunately, this approach is insufficiently effective within leadership. If leaders demonstrate their skills and strengths before they gain the confidence of their employees, they risk creating a culture of fear, thereby provoking dysfunctional behaviour among those workers they are trying to lead. It is important that the leader behaves in a morally correct manner; an amoral leader threatens the group as a whole because their behaviour is unpredictable.

Researchers Mayer et al. (2009)8 have studied the trickle-down effect of moral leadership. Moral leadership means that you are aware of those core values that are important to you and that you act with awareness according to these values. This includes and concerns specific values, namely what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’.

This study shows contagion from leaders occurs in this situation. Senior leaders who behave morally positively affect the moral behaviour of middle managers just as, subsequently, middle managers have a positive effect on the behaviour of their employees. In the research itself, these employees demonstrated greater commitment, undertook more tasks than were demanded of them according to their job description, and were extremely motivated towards achieving organizational goals.

Despite this, it is still generally believed that someone can be an effective leader without being loved. While this may technically be true, the chances of achieving high effectiveness while not being loved are very slim. In a study by Zenger and Folkman9 using more than 50,000 leaders, only 27 scored high on the ‘very competent’ metric but not on the ‘loved’ metric, meaning that the odds of being an effective but unloved leader are roughly 1 in 2,000.

It is therefore imperative to be competent as a leader but, in its behaviour and in all of its other expressions – including verbal and non-verbal expressions – leadership must be sincere, warm, and moral.

Leadership and your transition