First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

by Gallup Press

great managers would agree with all of this advice — experience can teach valuable lessons; intelligence is a boon; and willpower, which great managers actually label a talent, is almost impossible to teach. But conventional wisdom stops there. It fails to take into account that there are so many other kinds of talents and that the right talents, more than experience, more than brainpower and more than willpower alone, are the prerequisites for excellence in all roles

Conventional wisdom assumes either that these behaviors can be trained after the person has been hired or that these characteristics are relatively unimportant to performance on the job. Both assumptions are false. First, you cannot teach talent. You cannot teach someone to form strong opinions, to feel the emotions of others, to revel in confrontation or to pick up on the subtle differences in how best to manage each person. You have to select for talents like these. We will explain why this is true later in the chapter. Second, talents like these prove to be the driving force behind an individual’s job performance. It’s not that experience, brainpower and willpower are unimportant. It’s just that an employee’s full complement of talents — what drives her, how she thinks, how she builds relationships — is more important.

No matter how carefully you select for experience, brainpower or willpower, you still end up with a range in performance.

There is range in every role, no matter how simple it seems. While experience, brainpower and willpower all affect performance significantly, only the presence of the right talents — recurring patterns of behavior that fit the role — can account for this range in performance. Only the presence of talents can explain why, all other factors being equal, some people excel in the role and some struggle.

You have a filter, a characteristic way of responding to the world around you. We all do. Your filter tells you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore — which to love and which to hate. It creates your innate motivations — are you competitive, altruistic or ego-driven? It defines how you think — are you disciplined or laissez-faire, practical or strategic? It forges your prevailing attitudes — are you optimistic or cynical, calm or anxious, empathetic or cold? It creates all of your distinct patterns of thought, feeling and behavior. In effect, your filter is the source of your talents.

Because every human being is guided by his unique filter, the same situation produces different reactions. What is ridiculously easy for one person is excruciatingly difficult for you. What is stimulating to you is tedious for someone else.

This filtering of their world is not a conscious, rational process. It does not happen once a week, allowing them the luxury of sitting back and weighing up all alternatives before deciding on the most sensible course of action. Rather, their filter is constantly at work — sorting, sifting and creating their world in real time.

Maybe you are speed-reading this so you can get to the end of the chapter before your flight ends. Maybe the flight has nothing to do with it; you are simply a compulsive speed-reader. Your filter is always working. Of all the things you could possibly do or feel or think, your filter is constantly telling you the few things you must do or feel or think. Your filter, more than your race, sex, age or nationality, is You.

The world’s great managers don’t share this perspective. Remember their mantra: People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough.

Despite his best efforts, the person who becomes less articulate the angrier he gets will never acquire what it takes to excel at debate. And no matter how much he understands the value of win-win scenarios, the intense competitor will never learn to love them. A person’s mental filter is as enduring and unique as her fingerprint. This is a radical belief that flies in the face of decades of self-help mythology. But over the last 10 years, neuroscience has started to confirm what these great managers have long believed.

We have learned that the causes of mental illness are as biological as any physical disease. We have learned why the neurotransmitter dopamine calms us down and why serotonin fires us up. We have learned that, contrary to what we used to think, our memories are not stored in one particular place but are scattered like clues on every highway and back alley of our brain.

By the time the child reaches her third birthday, the number of successful connections made is colossal — up to 15,000 synaptic connections for each of her 100 billion neurons. But this is too many. She is overloaded with the volume of information whirling around inside her head. She needs to make sense of it all. Her sense. So during the next 10 years or so, her brain refines and focuses its network of connections. The stronger synaptic connections become stronger still. The weaker ones wither away. Dr. Harry Chugani, professor of neurology at Wayne State University Medical School, likens this pruning process to a highway system: “Roads with the most traffic get widened. The ones that are rarely used fall into disrepair.”

Scientists are still arguing about what causes some mental highways to be used more regularly than others. Some contend that the child’s genetic inheritance predisposes her toward certain mental pathways.

By the time the child reaches her early teens, she has half as many synaptic connections as she did when she was 3. Her brain has carved out a unique network of connections. She has some beautiful, frictionless, traffic-free four-lane highways where the connections are smooth and strong. And she has some barren wastelands where no signal at all makes it across. If she ends up with a four-lane highway for empathy, she will feel every emotion of those around her as though it were her own. By contrast, if she has a wasteland for empathy, she will be emotionally blind, forever saying the wrong thing at the wrong time to the wrong person — not out of malice, but simply out of an inability to pick up the frequency of the emotional signals being sent. Likewise, if she has a four-lane highway for confrontation, she will be that lucky person whose brain just hands her one perfect word after another during the heat of a debate. If she has a wasteland for confrontation, she will find that her brain always shuts her mouth down at the most critical moments of a debate.

These mental pathways are her filter. They produce the recurring pattern of behaviors that makes her unique. They tell her which stimuli to respond to and which to ignore. They define where she will excel and where she will struggle. They create all of her enthusiasms and all of her indifferences. The carving of these pathways is the carving of her character. Neuroscience is telling us that beyond her mid-teens, there is a limit to how much of her character she can recarve.

Neuroscience confirms what great managers know. Her filter and the recurring patterns of behavior that it creates are enduring. In the most important ways, she is permanently, wonderfully unique. So are you. And, of course, so are the people you hire.

Great managers are not troubled by the fact that there is a limit to how much they can rewire someone’s brain. Instead, they view it as a happy confirmation that people are different. There is no point wishing away this individuality. It’s better to nurture it. It’s better to help someone understand his filter and then channel it toward productive behavior.

So if you can’t carve out new talents for your people, what, if anything, can you change about them? First, you can help them discover their hidden talents.

Second, a manager can teach her employees new skills and new knowledge. Here we come to one of the most profound insights great managers share: Skills, knowledge and talents are distinct elements of a person’s performance. The distinction among the three is that skills and knowledge can easily be taught, whereas talents cannot. Combined in the same person, they create an enormously potent compound. But you must never confuse talents with skills and knowledge. If you do, you may waste a great deal of time and money trying to teach something that is fundamentally unteachable.

The best way to teach a skill is to break down the total performance into steps, which the student then reassembles. And, naturally, the best way to learn a skill is to practice.

Your knowledge is simply what you are aware of. There are two kinds of knowledge: factual knowledge — things you know, and experiential knowledge — understandings you have picked up along the way.

Experiential knowledge is a little different. It is less tangible and therefore much harder to teach. Acquiring it is your responsibility. You must discipline yourself to stop, look back on past experiences and try to make sense of them. Through this kind of musing or reflection, you can start to see patterns and connections. You can start to understand.

Some understandings are more conceptual. Your awareness of who you are and how you come across to others is experiential knowledge. It comes with time, if you are listening. In the same way, your values — those aspects of life that you hold dear — are experiential knowledge. As you make your choices — sometimes compromising, sometimes holding firm — you come to realize that certain aspects of your life are more important than others. These critical aspects become your values, guiding the choices you make in the future. Some of these values will remain constant throughout your life. Others will change with time and reflection.

Talents are different phenomena altogether. Talents are the four-lane highways in your mind that carve your recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior.

A love of precision is not a skill. Nor is it knowledge. It is a talent.

we have found a way to simplify these diverse talents into three basic categories: striving talents, thinking talents and relating talents.

Striving talents explain the why of a person. They explain why he gets out of bed every day and why he is motivated to push and push just a little bit harder. Is he driven by his desire to stand out, or is good enough good enough for him? Is he intensely competitive, intensely altruistic or both? Does he define himself by his technical competence, or does he just want to be liked?

Thinking talents explain the how of a person. They explain how she thinks, how she weighs alternatives and how she comes to her decisions. Is she focused, or does she like to leave all of her options open? Is she disciplined and structured, or does she love surprises? Is she a linear, practical thinker, or is she strategic, always playing mental “what if?” games with herself?

Relating talents explain the who of a person. They explain whom he trusts, whom he builds relationships with, whom he confronts and whom he ignores. Is he drawn to win strangers over, or is he at ease only with his close friends? Does he think that trust must be earned, or does he extend trust to everyone, with the belief that most will prove worthy of it? Does he confront peo...

Striving, thinking and relating — These are the three basic categories of talent. Within each, you will have your own combination of four-lane highways and barren wastelands. No matter how much you might yearn to be different, your combination of talents and the recurring behaviors it create...

We will try to teach you a skill that will help you improve your pattern-finding performance. The skill has three steps: 1. Identify what seems out of place in the word. 2. Evaluate where it is in relation to the whole word. 3. Combine steps 1 and 2 to discover the phrase.

But if they lack these talents, all the skills and knowledge they have just acquired will be of little help. Their performance will suffer. The power of skills and knowledge is that they are transferable from one person to another. Their limitation is that they are often situation-specific. Faced with an unanticipated scenario, they lose much of their power.

If you have the striving talent of competitiveness, then almost any kind of contest can spark you. If you have the relating talent of empathy, then every emotion speaks to you. If you have the relating talent of assertiveness, then no matter what the subject, you will be able to state your case plainly and persuasively. The limitation of talent, of course, is that it is very hard to transfer from one person to another. You cannot teach talent. You can only select for talent.

Now that you know the difference among skills, knowledge and talents, you can use these terms to shed light on all the other words used to describe human behavior — words like “competencies,” “habits,” “attitude” and “drive.” Many of us assume that they all mean virtually the same thing. We use phrases like “interpersonal skills,” “skill set,” “work habits” or “core competencies” so naturally that we rarely question their true meaning.

So let’s look more closely at competencies, habits, attitude and drive. Which of these are skills or knowledge and therefore can be changed in a person? And which are talents and therefore cannot?

Competencies Developed by the British military during World War II to define the perfect officer, competencies are now used in many companies to describe behaviors that are expected from all managers and leaders.

Competencies are part skills, part knowledge and part talent. They lump together, haphazardly, some characteristics that can be taught with others that cannot. Consequently, even though designed with clarity in mind, competencies can wind up confusing everybody. Managers soon find themselves sending people off to training classes to learn such competencies as strategic thinking, attention to detail or innovation. But these aren’t competencies. These are talents. They cannot be taught.

If you are going to use competencies, make it clear which are skills or knowledge and therefore can be taught and which are talents and therefore cannot. For example, a competency such as “implements business practices and controls” is a skill. All managers can learn it to some minimum degree of proficiency. A competency such as “calm under fire” is a talent. You cannot teach someone to be cool under pressure.

“Habit” is another potentially confusing term. We have been told that our habits are second nature. We have been told that we can all change this nature and acquire new habits. Again, this advice is well-intended but inaccurate. Most habits are our first nature. Most habits are talents.

If you are habitually assertive or habitually empathic or habitually competitive, then you are going to have a tough time changing these habits. They are enduring. They make you You. It’s potentially disastrous to suggest that the only way to become more effective is to try to change your first nature.

You might choose to play to one talent more than another. You might combine your talents with relevant skills. You might learn to accept your unique combination of talents and so become less defensive or insecure. There is a great deal you can change.

But whatever you do, the beauty of this approach is that it relies on self-awareness rather than self-denial to help you become more effective. Some of your behaviors may have changed, but you haven’t been forced to contort yourself into someone else. You have simply cultivated your unique set of talents.

Many managers say they select for attitude — a positive attitude, a team-focused attitude or a service-oriented attitude. For the most part, they are right to do so, because a person’s prevailing attitudes are part of her mental filter. They are created by the interplay of her unique pattern of highways and wastelands. While managers can create attitudes through the conditions they establish for employees, attitudes are also reflective of talents.

None of these attitudes are necessarily better than any of the others. None of them will prevent a person from playing certain roles extremely well.

Managers may be able to change someone’s mood from one day to the next or to create engaging workplace conditions that raise general optimism. However, managers will always struggle to change someone’s prevailing attitudes.

“If I find myself telling the same person to ‘look on the bright side’ time and time again, I should take a hint. He’s not a bright-sider. He’s a dark-sider. I should stop wasting my breath and try to find a role where skepticism is key to success.”

Take the striving talent of competitiveness as an example. Some people have a four-lane highway for competition. Show them scores, and they will instinctively try to use those scores to compare their performance with that of their peers. They love scores because what you can measure you can compare. And if you can compare, you can compete.

people with a wasteland for competition will see the same scores and not feel any jolt of energy at all. Putting themselves on a level playing field, pitting their best efforts against their peers and winning means nothing to them. They rationalize their behavior by opining, “I don’t like competition; I prefer win-win scenarios,” or the classic, “I prefer to compete with myself.” But these comments are just signs that their filter is, understandably, trying to describe itself in the most positive light.

some people have a four-lane highway for constant achievement, a striving talent we call achiever. They may not have to win, but they do feel a burning need to achieve something tangible every single day. And these people mean every single day. For them, every day — workday, weekend, vacation — starts at zero. They have to rack up some numbers by the end of the day to feel good about themselves. This burning flame may dwindle as evening comes, but the next morning, it rekindles itself, spurring its host to look for new items to cross off his list. These people are the fabled “self-starters.”

A manager can never breathe motivational life into someone else. All she can do is try to identify each employee’s striving four-lane highways and then, as much as possible, cultivate them.