Are You A Star Performer?
Star performers may be CEOs or
politicians or even clerics; they may live in a forest or a city or a jungle.
But they all share certain traits.
“Star
performers are often a study in paradoxes – they are walking contradictions,” Manfred Kets de Vries, INSEAD Clinical
Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change, told INSEAD Knowledge
recently. He has put some observations of some 20 years of research and
management training with CEOs into a white paper entitled “Star Performers:
Paradoxes Wrapped Up in Enigmas”.
To hear Kets de Vries tell it, star
performing CEOs are super heroes as well as paradoxes. They can think long-term
and execute well short-term, they take calculated risks and take responsibility
for their actions, combine optimism with realism, have great tenacity and high
energy. The list seems endless.
“You need to be able to positively
frame things,” says Kets de Vries. “When the CEO says things are bad, if he or
she gets depressed, the rest of the team may get depressed because it is very
contagious. So you need to be positive but you also need to be realistic,
because if you aren’t realistic people won’t believe you any more.”
But being “positive” doesn’t mean
being an extrovert. Kets de Vries contends that many star performers are
essentially introverts – reflective souls who have learned to be extroverts
when it counts: addressing boards of directors, making speeches, leading the
charge when it comes to getting on with things.
Leading
the Team
And here’s another paradox: star
players have to be able to lead the team as well as play in it. What differentiates
them as leaders is in part – you guessed it - charisma. But there’s a downside:
narcissism, charisma gone amuck. Kets de Vries explains it’s not always easy to
tell insecure overachievers and neurotic imposters from the real thing.
“Star performers have charisma, but
charisma and narcissism get confused very quickly. We all need a solid dose of
narcissism in order to function, but if a leader is insecure, if he or she is
not secure in his or her skin, he or she can become a “reactive narcissist”, a
pain in the neck because everything becomes too much “me” and they want to have
too much recognition; they have too much of a need to be in the limelight.
Sometimes people seem to be pretty decent team players but the moment they are
in a position of power they derail and what used to look like a star performer
all of a sudden is becoming a psychopathic bully. To be effective as a
leader, you have to be a team player – and star performers who are too
narcissistic are not team players.”
How to spot a pseudo star performer?
A rising star destined to self-destruct, potentially leaving a trail of
wreckage in his wake? Kets de Vries goes beyond the 360-degree full-circle
commentary. “I do 720s,” he says. “I do not talk to just people from the
office, the business environment, but also people from their other world –
friends, family members, children, sometimes even parents, uncles, whatever.
And it’s very interesting. Due to this kind of feedback, some people may have
some bad surprises - the pseudostar performers who turn out to be psychopathic
bullies who are very good at image management and at managing upward, so the
people who first notice their bad behaviours are the people under them, not
over them.”
The
Infosys Example
One of Kets de Vries’ favourite examples
of star performance is Narayana Murthy, one of the founders of Infosys—its
Chief Mentoring Officer— “a giant role model for most leaders – a person of
many paradoxes. Due to his leadership, Infosys has built up specific values
such as hard work, ethical practices and living up to commitments. According to
Murthy, performance leads to recognition, recognition brings respect, respect
enhances power, and humility and grace in one’s moments of power enhances the
dignity of an organisation.”
But organisations can have bad
effects on star performers as well. “If you have an organisation with a toxic
culture, whatever you do, it can make a person sick. You can have a toxic boss
who can derail the star performer – maybe a boss who sees the star performer as
a threat and gets envious and then tries to put the star down or to demotivate
him. Many organisations are not glorious, healthy institutions, unfortunately.
I’ve had some executives in my courses who say they’ve learned from bad bosses
how NOT to do things, but it’s not the best way to learn a lesson.”
Women star performers face a few
more hurdles than their male counterparts. Kets de Vries concedes they have
more pressure on them, and the default model of most organisations is
masculine. “I think something should be done,” he opines in general terms “but
men (consciously or unconsciously) are very reluctant to let go” (of center
stage perhaps?).
Despite the similarities in stellar
performers, much depends on culture, environment and circumstances – where you
find yourself in time and space on the planet. Like there is no baby without a
mother, there is no leader without a context. “Being a leader in Malaysia is
very different from being a leader in Holland,” Kets de Vries points out.
“Running a steel mill is different from running a complex consulting
organisation.” Most stellar performers who come from conflicted backgrounds
reached out for support in their formative years: hopefully a parent, but
it can also a teacher, a friend, who helped overcome what may have been
difficult circumstances.
And star performers share another
common trait: self-awareness. As Kets de Vries points out, “The journey
to stardom begins inwardly.”
By Shellie Karabell, http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/talent-management/are-you-a-star-performer-2290?utm_source=INSEAD+List&utm_campaign=927ce968f7-Knowledge_Newsletter_Oct_2012&utm_medium=email
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