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

by Gallup Press

When describing human behavior, we advise you to stick with the clarity of skills, knowledge and talents. Tread carefully when using habits or competencies. They lump too much together rather haphazardly. Likewise, if you feel a need to use attitude or drive, be cautious. Remember that a person’s drive and her prevailing attitudes are reflective of talents, and as such, they are very hard to change. When you hear yourself telling someone to “get a better attitude,” watch out. You might be asking her to tackle the impossible.

This is interesting because I happen to think the opposite, not out of optimism, but because I’ve seen people turn a corner and develop completely new talents much later in life with the right motivations. It’s safe to say some people have a higher capacity for this than others, but I also see how it’s wise for a manager not to expect that a person will be motivated enough to change their prevailing talents or attitude for their company unless there's a strong emotional attachment. Best to just work with what you’ve got.

Everyone can change. Everyone can learn. Everyone can get a little better. The language of skills, knowledge and talents simply helps a manager identify where radical change is possible and where it is not.

Guided by their own beliefs and supported by recent scientific advances, great managers can now dispel two of the most pervasive management myths.

Myth #1: Talents Are Rare and Special There is nothing particularly special about talents. If talents are simply recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior, then talents are actually rather commonplace. Everyone has certain recurring patterns of behavior. No one can take credit for their talents. They are an accident of birth — “the clash of the chromosomes,” as ethologist Robert Ardrey described them. However, each person can and should take credit for cultivating his unique set of talents.

The best way to help an employee cultivate his talents is to find him a role that plays to those talents. Employees who find such roles are special. They are naturally able to do what someone is prepared to p...

Similarly, some people are fascinated with risk. This striving talent is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, although it can prompt some otherwise normal people to hurl themselves out of planes or swim with great white sharks just for the fun of it. However, if these people become anesthesiologists or surgeons, then their four-lane highway for risk becomes a positive. For them, the literal life-or-death quality of their work is a thrill, not a pressure. They are special, these people. They are “talented.”

Of course, in today’s highly specialized business world, finding the right fit between the person and the role is more challenging than it used to be. It is not enough to say, “This person has a talent for assertiveness. I think I’ll hire him to sell.” You have to know specifically what kind of selling you are going to ask him to do.

you have to love pushing for the close — a striving talent — and you have to know exactly when and how to do it — a relating talent. These talents, among others, are critical to an individual’s success in the role.

As a manager, your job is not to teach people talent. Your job is to help them earn the accolade “talented” by matching their talent to the role. To do this well, like all great managers, you have to pay close attention to the subtle but significant differences between roles.

Myth #2: Some Roles Are So Easy, They Don’t Require Talent The famous management theorist Oscar Wilde once said: “A truth ceases to be a truth as soon as two people perceive it.” All right, so Mr. Wilde was better known for his wit than for his management advice. Nonetheless, every manager should be required to remember this one remark. Although he phrased it in the extreme, Mr. Wilde simply meant that the only truth is your own. The world you see is seen by you alone. What entices you and what repels you, what strengthens you and what weakens you, is part of a pattern that no one else shares. Therefore, as Mr. Wilde said, no two people can perceive the same “truth,” because each person’s perspective is different. This can be both a blessing and a curse. You are blessed with a wonderfully unique filter but cursed with a systematic inability to understand anybody else’s. True individuality can be lonely.

Your ambitions, passions, likes and dislikes are not special or distinct. They are “normal.” So you are “normal.” In moments of calm objectivity, you may concede that your point of view is not the only one. But day to day, it is simply easier if you assume that everyone shares your viewpoint.

Great managers do not believe that their filter is common to everyone. Instead, when they select for a role, they are guided by the belief that some people are probably wired to excel at the role and to derive enduring satisfaction from doing it well.

In the minds of great managers, every role performed at excellence deserves respect. Every role has its own nobility.

Even if you know to select for talent, it is not always easy to identify those who have it. First, many people don’t know what their true talents are. They may be experts in their chosen field, but when it comes to listing their unique set of talents, they are stumped. As Peter Drucker, the elder statesman of management wisdom, says: “Even today, remarkably few Americans are prepared to select jobs for themselves. When you ask, ‘Do you know what you are good at? Do you know your limitations?’ they look at you with a blank stare. Or they often respond in terms of subject knowledge, which is the wrong answer.”

Your own skills and knowledge are relatively easy to identify. You had to acquire them, and therefore, they are apart, distinct. They are “not You.” But your talents? Your talents are simply your recurring patterns of behavior. They are your very essence. It takes a rare objectivity to be able to stand back from yourself and pick out the unique patterns that make you You.

Second, when someone applies for a job, he naturally wants to impress. Therefore, he will paint the few recurring behaviors he is aware of in as rosy a hue as possible. In the job interview, he labels himself “assertive,” not “aggressive.” He describes himself as “ambitious” rather than “pushy.” More often than not, these are not deliberate misrepresentations. They are his genuine attempts to describe himself to you positively. But whatever hi...

As a manager, you need to know exactly which talents you want. To identify these talents, look beyond the job title and description. Think about the culture of the company. Is your company the kind that uses scores to drive performance and that makes heroes out of those with the highest scores? If so, make sure that the striving talent competition is in your profile. Or maybe your organization emphasizes the underlying purpose of its work and confers prestige only on those who noticeably live the values of the company. If so, search for people who possess the striving talent mission — people who must see the greater purpose of which their efforts are a part.

Think about who you are as a manager and who will mesh with your style. Do you prefer to set short-term goals and check in regularly with each person to monitor incremental progress? If so, you need to surround yourself with direct reports who yearn for structure, detail and regular updates — people with the thinking talent discipline. Or are you the kind of manager who likes to hand off as much responsibility as possible and who sets long-term goals and then expects employees to orient themselves toward those goals without much help from you? If so, your direct reports will need the thinking talent focus.

Perhaps your organization has a strong human resources department that can give your managers detailed feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of each of their direct reports. In this case, you may not need to select managers who possess the relating talent individualized perception, defined as the ability to identify and capitalize on the uniqueness in people. Or perhaps your organization offers no HR support at all. In this case, relating talents like individualized perception or relator — the need to build bonds that last — or developer — the need to invest in other people’s growth and to derive satisfaction from doing so — will have to serve as the cornerstones of your desired talent profile.

Try to identify one critical talent in each of the three talent categories — striving, thinking and relating. Use these three talents as your foundation. Focus on them during the interviewing process. Mention them when asking people for referrals. Do not compromise on them, no matter how alluring a candidate’s résumé might appear.

Managers are far more articulate about service failure than they are about service success, and many still define excellence as “zero defects.”

You cannot infer excellence from studying failure and then inverting it. Why? Because excellence and failure are often surprisingly similar. Average is the anomaly. For example, by studying the best salespeople, great managers have learned that the best, just like the worst, suffer call reluctance.

He is blessed with another talent, the relating talent of confrontation that enables him to derive immense satisfaction from sparring with the prospect and overcoming resistance. Every day, he feels call reluctance, but this talent for confrontation pulls him through it. His love of sparring outweighs his fear of personal rejection.

Take time to study your best, say great managers. Learn the whys, the hows and the whos of your best, and then select for similar talents. In the end, much of the secret to selecting for talent lies in the art of interviewing.

Selecting for talent is the manager’s first and most important responsibility. If he fails to find people with the talents he needs, then everything else he does to help them grow will be as wasted as sunshine on barren ground.

After all, talent is only potential. This potential cannot be turned into performance in a vacuum. Great talents need great managers if they are to be turned into performance.

As a manager, you might think that you have more control, but you don’t. You actually have less control than the people who report to you. Each individual employee can decide what to do and what not to do. He can decide the hows, the whens and the with whoms. For good or for ill, he can make things happen.

All you can do is influence, motivate, berate or cajole in the hope that most of your people will do what you ask of them. This isn’t control. This is remote control. And it is coupled, nonetheless, with all of the accountability for the team’s performance.

Your predicament is compounded by the fact that human beings are messy. No matter how carefully you selected for certain talents, each of your people arrived with his own style, his own needs and his own motivations. There is nothing wrong with all this diversity. It is often a real benefit to have a team of people who all look at the world in slightly different ways. But this diversity does make your job significantly more complicated. Not only do you have to manage by remote control...