{"id":1083,"date":"2014-01-18T17:54:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T06:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2014-01-18T17:54:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-18T06:54:00","slug":"the-importance-of-social-skills-vs-results-focus-in-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1083","title":{"rendered":"The importance of social skills vs results focus in leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>chance of a results focused leader being seen as a great leader: 14%<\/li>\n<li>chance of a leader with strong social skills being seen as a great leader: 12%<\/li>\n<li>chance of a leader with strong social skills and results focus being seen as a great leader: 72%<\/li>\n<li>percentage of leaders with both social skills and results focus: 1%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a style=\"line-height: 1.5;\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.hbr.org\/2013\/12\/should-leaders-focus-on-results-or-on-people\/?\">http:\/\/blogs.hbr.org\/2013\/12\/should-leaders-focus-on-results-or-on-people\/<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"pageFeature\">\n<h1 id=\"articleTitle\">Should Leaders Focus on Results, or on People?<\/h1>\n<p>by Matthew Lieberman\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0 8:00 AM December 27, 2013<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"articleBody\">\n<p>A lot of ink has been spilled on people\u2019s opinions of what makes for a great leader. As a scientist, I like to turn to the data.\u00a0 In 2009, James Zenger published a fascinating survey of 60,000 employees to identify how different characteristics of a leader combine to affect employee perceptions of whether the boss is a \u201cgreat\u201d leader or not. Two of the characteristics that Zenger examined were<i>results focus<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>social skills<\/i>. Results focus combines strong analytical skills with an intense motivation to move forward and solve problems.\u00a0 But if a leader was seen as being very strong on results focus, the chance of that leader being seen as a great leader was only 14%. Social skills combine attributes like communication and empathy. If a leader was strong on social skills, he or she was seen as a great leader even less of the time \u2014\u00a0a paltry 12%.<\/p>\n<p>However, for leaders who were strong in both results focus\u00a0<i>and<\/i>\u00a0in social skills, the likelihood of being seen as a great leader skyrocketed to 72%.<\/p>\n<p>Social skills are a great multiplier.\u00a0 A leader with strong social skills can leverage the analytical abilities of team members far more efficiently. Having the social intelligence to predict how team members will work together will promote better pairings.\u00a0 Often what initially appear to be task-related difficulties turn out to be interpersonal problems in disguise.\u00a0 One employee may feel devalued by another or think that she is doing all the work while her partner loafs \u2013 leading both partners putting in less effort to solve otherwise solvable problems. Socially skilled leaders are better at diagnosing and treating these common workplace dilemmas.<\/p>\n<p>So how many leaders are rated high on both results focus and social skills?\u00a0 If this pairing produces especially effective leaders, companies should have figured this out and promoted people to leadership positions accordingly, right?\u00a0 Not hardly.\u00a0 David Rock, director of the Neuroleadership Institute, and Management Research Group recently conducted a survey to find out the answer.\u00a0 They asked thousands of employees to rate their bosses on\u00a0<i>goal focus<\/i>\u00a0(similar to results focus) and social skills to examine how often a leader scored high on both.\u00a0 The results are astonishing.\u00a0\u00a0<i>Less than 1%<\/i>\u00a0of leaders were rated high on both goal focus and social skills.<\/p>\n<p>Why would this be?\u00a0 As I describe in my book,\u00a0<i>Social: Why our brains are wired to connect<\/i>, our brains have made it difficult to be both socially and analytically focused at the same time. \u00a0Even though thinking social and analytically don\u2019t feel radically different, evolution built our brain with different networks for handling these two ways of thinking.\u00a0 In the frontal lobe, regions on the outer surface, closer to the skull, are responsible for analytical thinking and are highly related to IQ.\u00a0 In contrast, regions in the middle of the brain, where the two hemispheres touch, support social thinking.\u00a0 These regions allow us to piece together a person\u2019s thoughts, feelings, and goals based on what we see from their actions, words, and context.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the really surprising thing about the brain. These two networks function like a\u00a0<i>neural seesaw<\/i>. In countless neuroimaging studies, the more one of these networks got more active, the more the other one got quieter.\u00a0 Although there are some exceptions, in general, engaging in one of the kinds of thinking makes it harder to engage in the other kind.\u00a0 Its safe to say that in business, analytical thinking has historically been the coin of the realm \u2014 making it harder to recognize the social issues that significantly affect productivity and profits.\u00a0 Moreover, employees are much more likely to be promoted to leadership positions because of their technical prowess.\u00a0 We are thus promoting people who may lack the social skills to make the most of their teams and not giving them the training they need to thrive once promoted.<\/p>\n<p>How can we do better?\u00a0 For one, we should give greater weight to social skills in the hiring and promotion process.\u00a0 Second, we need to create a culture that rewards using both sides of the neural seesaw.\u00a0 We may not be able to easily use them in tandem, but knowing that there is another angle to problem solving and productivity will create better balance in our leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, it may be possible to train our social thinking so that it becomes stronger over time. Social psychologists are just at the beginning stages of examining whether this kind of training will bear fruit.\u00a0 One exciting prospect, one that would make the training fun, is the recent finding that reading fiction seems to temporarily strengthen these mental muscles.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t that be great \u2014\u00a0if reading<i>Catcher in the Rye<\/i>\u00a0or the latest Grisham novel were the key to larger profits?<\/p>\n<div id=\"jp-post-flair\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"articleFooter\">\n<div>\n<div id=\"articleFooterMoreBy\">More blog posts by\u00a0<a title=\"Posts by Matthew Lieberman\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.hbr.org\/matthew-lieberman\/\" rel=\"author\">Matthew Lieberman<\/a><\/div>\n<div id=\"articleFooterCategories\">More on:\u00a0<a title=\"View all posts in Leadership\" href=\"http:\/\/hbr.org\/search\/leadership\/0\" rel=\"category tag\">Leadership<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"pageFooterAuthor\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"80-matthew-lieberman\" src=\"http:\/\/hbrblogs.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/80-matthew-lieberman.jpg?w=80\" width=\"80\" height=\"80\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<h3><a title=\"Posts by Matthew Lieberman\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.hbr.org\/matthew-lieberman\/\" rel=\"author\">MATTHEW LIEBERMAN<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Matthew Lieberman PhD is a Professor and Director of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scn.ucla.edu\/\">UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience laboratory<\/a>. He is author of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Social-Why-Brains-Wired-Connect\/dp\/0307889092\/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top\">Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect<\/a>and a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NNhk3owF7RQ\">TEDx speaker<\/a>. He also consults with companies to leverage neuroscience techniques in industry. Follow him on Twitter\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/social_brains\">@social_brains<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>chance of a results focused leader being seen as a great leader: 14% chance of a leader with strong social skills being seen as a great leader: 12% chance of a leader with strong social skills and results focus being seen as a great leader: 72% percentage of leaders with both social skills and results &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1083\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The importance of social skills vs results focus in leadership<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-management-and-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1084,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}