From Good to Effective: Leadership in Focus

In December 2023, the Centre for Creative Leadership (popularly known as CCL), one of the most respected and thoughtful contributors to the practice of leadership published their twelve qualities of a good leader (many thanks to Julie Stokely Hussain for sharing their report on LinkedIn). Their results on these twelve qualities were based on extensive research across the world. Given below are the twelve qualities per CCL. https://lnkd.in/eQB8HqXJ

I have no argument with them in that we need good leaders, since, as they say, “…good leaders to help guide us and make the essential decisions, big and small, that keep things moving forward.” Much of which is not just relevant to be a good leader, but indeed, a portfolio of characteristics one should look for in any good person.

However, I struggled to reconcile the qualities described by CCL with the realities of the current business environment. Many a time a good leader maybe asked to do tough things, and it may appear contrary to the requisites of a good leader. But that does not immediately make a person a bad leader. Ultimately, in a business setting, a leader is not just evaluated on who they are, but how they perform and produce results for the business. While CCL offers one lens to the leadership equation, there are other important lenses, which, if we were to ignore, presents an incomplete and maybe even a skewed perspective on leadership. For me, therefore, the discussion should be about effective leadership, not just good leadership.

Many years ago, Noel Tichy offered that effective leadership in modern day organization consist of the head, the heart, and the guts. To this, I would add the CCL slant- the soul. Think of these as ‘four-doors’ The leader needs to decide which door or doors to open or close to drive the organization. At the risk of being simplistic, here is how the four doors open out:

The above list is by no means exhaustive, they are only illustrative. Nor do I claim that each characteristic fits in nicely in just one ‘door.’ However, the reason for dividing them into four ‘doors’ is to show that leaders need four different muscles to be effective. In this manner, my argument is that this four-door framework helps in taking the ‘good’ leadership characteristics and adding the ‘effectiveness’ component to it.

Here is another proposition: Though not a blanket generalization, Leaders need to focus on the head and guts doors to drive profits, while they need to focus on the heart and the soul doors to drive top line. In other words, the ‘hard’ characteristics (head and guts) will get you productivity and operational excellence, while the ‘soft’ characteristics (heart and soul) will get you innovation and creativity needed to drive top line growth. I am sure many will point out that there are leaders like Elon Musk or even Steve Jobs who have not exactly been poster boys of the heart and the soul and have been very innovative. I agree…but those are exceptions rather than the rule. As the world pivots post the pandemic, I see the demands of the leadership bending more towards a noticeably clear need for the heart and the soul characteristics to stand out, as CCL rightly points out.

The four doors all need to be balanced for effective leadership. Too much or too little of any of them could upset the applecart. Too much ‘head’ (Vision, strategy, business acumen) may mean that you have grand plans, but do not have the ability to pull them off. Too little head means that the organization has no clarity on its direction, or not enough in terms of performance. Too much ‘guts’ (tough calls, risk taking) could result in heartless bloodletting and exhaustion, while too little would mean tolerance to mediocrity and not being ‘tight’ enough as an organization. Too much ‘heart’ (and yes there is this possibility) means that it could mean being afraid to what it takes to move the organization and too little would result in control and bureaucracy. Finally, too much soul could possibly come through as weak while too little could come through as not being authentic. These are not black and white, and one needs to examine the organization at a closer level rather than take these as a given. There are merely illustrative of the possibilities what could happen if the leader does not balance all the four doors or knowing which door to close for how long and conversely which door to open for how long.

Bottomline, while the CCL framework for good leader is spot on, it is not complete for a leader to be effective. Instead, is it perhaps only 50% of the equation. The modern-day leader gets or retains their job by being effective, not just by being good.

Do you agree?