They need to practice personal leadership.

Defining Personal Leadership

Personal leadership is the leadership of the self.  In addition to the visible and interactive work of organizational leadership, personal leadership is the private, introspective part of leadership that takes place within. Personal leadership is an introspective process that requires focus and attention. Given priority, it can be transformational. In fact, Peter Drucker once called it “the only leadership that’s going to matter in the 21^st century.”

Putting Personal Leadership into Practice

So how does a leader actually practice personal leadership? It looks like this:

1. Take time to think. Leaders need to step out of the daily rush and think about what they’re doing and why. Doing so, they will find the clarity and focus they need to get back into the action in the most effective way.

1. Look inside. Instead of being driven by the demanding urgencies, leaders can discover their inner resources – their strengths, their values, and their aspirations.

1. Look for ways to align and integrate your life. We are who we are wherever we are. The closer leaders can tie their true selves to their leadership roles, the happier and healthier they will be – on all fronts.

The economic and business environment may be out of our control. Leaders’ ability to thrive within this environment, on the other hand, is very much in their own hands. Personal leadership gives leaders a way to fill themselves up with the motivation that will help them thrive again.

Joelle K. Jay, Ph. D., MCC, is an executive coach, speaker and author specializing in leadership development and executive education in Fortune 500 companies. She is the author of The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. For a Free Executive Summary of The Inner Edge, go to www.JoelleKJay.com. 

Dr. Roberto is an alum and former professor at Harvard Business School. He is now the Trustee Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Program Innovation at Bryant University. In addition to this course, Dr. Roberto has created a large contribution to the field, including numerous cases and the book Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes For an Answer – a worthwhile read as well.

Once again, there are very few articles on narcissism in the top Management and I-O Psychology research publications. But I do want to share the results of one very well done study recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology entitled “The Bright-Side and the Dark-Side of CEO Personality: Examining Core Self-Evaluations, Narcissism, Transformational Leadership, and Strategic Influence.” This study of 75 CEOs of Major League Baseball organizations over a 100 year period examined how positive and negative personality characteristics affected the individual’s leadership style and ultimately important outcomes for the organization.

Terms like confident, determined, optimistic, stable, persistent, and positive were associated with the bright-side of leadership, while terms like arrogant, boastful, conceited, egotistical, self-centered, show-off and temperamental were associated with the narcissistic dark-side of leadership. The authors of the study suggest the following five things based on their findings (pp. 1373-1374):

The Bright-side of personality

1. Leaders who have an overall positive self-concept are better able to articulate a vision in a manner that builds commitment to the organization’s goals.

2. Positive leaders may role model the efforts needed for the organization to be successful and are comfortable empowering others because they have a realistic sense of their own and their organization’s capabilities

3. Positive leaders are more comfortable with the focus being on the good of the organization rather than on their individual success.

The Dark-side of personality

4. Narcissistic leaders are unlikely to be concerned about developing equitable exchange relationships with members of their organization. When followers meet objectives, narcissistic leaders do a poor job of allocating recognition and rewards to reinforce desired behavior.

5. Narcissistic leaders are very unlikely to offer a compelling vision for the organization and inspire others to higher levels of morale and motivation.

Narcissistic leadership in this study eventually lead to more manager turnover, while positive leadership lead to higher attendance, a better winning percentage, and greater external influence in the industry (Major League Baseball).

Just like the advice to avoid hiring narcissistic employees, you should likewise avoid hiring and promoting narcissistic individuals into positions of management and leadership. It’s impossible for narcissists to see the best in others when they are so laser-focused on spotlighting the best they see in themselves. They won’t treat people fairly because it simply is not a concern for them, and their vision of individual greatness is unlikely to inspire others and may even expose the organization to competitive peril.

There is no guarantee that simply hiring and promoting positive people is a recipe for organizational success. But I think the research is pretty clear that narcissistic individuals, especially in positions of power and influence, are more likely to do harm than to do lasting good.

Bret Simmons is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. He has a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Oklahoma State University. Bret blogs about leadership and followership at his website Positive Organizational Behavior . You can also find Bret on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Related Posts on Positive Organizational Behavior:

Service-Profit Chain: Managers Matter

ACT Change: Inspire Others To Enact Their Best Selves

Liz Wiseman is president of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development center headquartered in Silicon Valley. She advises senior executives and leads strategy and leadership forums for executive teams worldwide. A former executive at Oracle Corporation, she worked as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development for 17 years. She is the author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. In this interview, we talk about how aspiring leaders can become multipliers with their people.

• 0:00            Introduction
• 1: 04            How did you come to find this multiplier principle?
• 3:30            What’s the difference between multipliers and diminishers?
• 7:37            What are the five disciplines of multipliers?
• 11:10            Can you give me some examples of well-known multipliers?
• 15:07            How can leaders become multipliers?
• 19:50            What are you reading now?
• 24:01            What’s next for you?
• 27:02            How can people get a hold of you?

Referenced Resources

Multipliers – Wiseman & McKeown

The Wiseman Group

MultipliersBook.com

Bury My Heart in Conference Room B – Slap

The Why of Work – Ulrich & Ulrich

Fired Up or Burnt Out – Stallard, Hommes & Pankua

Why is the organization’s purpose – not the “create a customer” purpose that Drucker would tell us, but the real motivation behind what the organization wants to do to change the world. Once a why is established, Sinek advises to place is squarely instead the “Golden Circle,” a model he uses to describe how once a core purpose is established, only then are instructions of what actions to take and how to take them well received by followers.

While positioned at current and aspiring leaders, Start With Why, reads more like a marketing book. Indeed, the majority of Sinek’s examples are of market leading products or companies, not leaders within those companies or movements. Occasionally, he does add renown leaders to his case. Nonetheless, the book gives insight into the human mind and, with considerable reflection, Start With Why, can teach leaders how to more effectively inspire and motivate their followers.

Transformational Leadership is a relatively new approach to leadership that focuses on how leaders can create valuable and positive change in their followers. James MacGregor Burns first introduced the concept of transformational leadership when studying political leaders, but this term is now used when studying organizations as well. Burns described two leadership styles: transactional and transformational.

Transactional leaders focus on gaining compliance by giving and withholding rewards and benefits. Managers are typically transactional leaders, charged with gaining productivity and compliance from workers. Transformational leaders, instead, focus on “transforming” others to support each other and the organization as a whole. Followers of a transformational leader respond by feeling trust, admiration, loyalty and respect for the leader are more willing to work harder than originally expected. Another researcher, Bernard M. Bass, added to the work of Burns by explaining the psychological mechanisms that underlie transformational and transactional leadership. Bass’ work established that transformational leaders demonstrate four factors: individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation (charismatic leadership) and idealized influence. If you’re called on to manage, then transact. If you’re called on to lead, then learn to be transformational.

Greater Than Yourself is built on three solid principles:

• Expand Yourself – creating a deep understanding of who you are and what you stand for in order to pass along those strong qualities to others.
• Give Yourself – giving yourself to others and making a meaningful impact in the lives of many.
• Replicate Yourself – encouraging others to “pay it forward” by challenging them to give of themselves.

Greater Than Yourself explains this within an interesting and intriguing story. But what does that have to do with leadership theory?

Lots.

Transformational leadership theory defines how leadership creates valuable and positive change in followers, with the end result of followers developing into leaders. Transformational leadership theories further explain the dynamics and factors of transformational leadership. Greater Than Yourself simplifies it. Farber’s parable is the “how-to” of transformational leadership. By following the three steps of GTY, you inevitably become a transformational leader, and develop followers destined to be transformational leaders.

Transactional leaders focus on gaining compliance by giving and withholding rewards and benefits. Transformational leaders focus on “transforming” others to support each other and the organization as a whole. Followers of a transformational leader respond by feeling trust, admiration, loyalty and respect for the leader are more willing to work harder than originally expected. Another researcher, Bernard M. Bass, added to the work of Burns by explaining the psychological mechanisms that underlie transformational and transactional leadership. Bass’ work established that transformational leaders demonstrate four factors: individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation (charismatic leadership) and idealized influence.

Useful Lies

Transformational leadership theory is supported by nearly 30 years of research correlating transformational leadership to positive performance outcomes including individual, group and organizational level variables. It also solidified the need to study followers in leadership research. Transformational leadership was the first developed and validate theory to emphasis morals and values in leadership. However, research on the theory is primarily based on the multifactor leadership questionnaire, which has produced inconsistent results. Research has also focused heavily on senior-level leaders. Transformational leadership also has the potential to be used negatively by leaders “faking it.” Regardless, transformational leadership theory is a valuable and widely used approach to studying and teaching leadership.

• Intro to Leadership Theory
• Why Theory
• A Word on Theory
• Trait Theory
• Skills Theory
• Style Theory
• Contingency Theory
• Situational Leadership Theory
• Path-Goal Theory
• Leader-Member Exchange Theory
• Transformational Leadership Theory
• Servant Leadership Theory
• Strengths-Based Leadership Theory