The 5 most important traits of innovative leaders

Research conducted by

Anton Garibundiak, Dean of the Faculty of Psychology, University of Ljubljana

Stefanie Saunders, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, University of Sussex Business School

Yelena Supritskova, Deputy Director, Centre for Leadership Research, Geneva

Evdokimos Petrou, Managing Partner, EUSurvey

1st April 2016

This presentation summarizes the findings of a survey of 81 successful CEOs/Senior Managers/Directors and 752 Junior Managers or Employees of companies with over 2000 employees based in the European Union.

All companies surveyed were consistently profitable over the decade 1994-2013 and ranked in the upper quartile of international indicators of “innovativeness”. Fieldwork was conducted June 2015 – February 2016.

The authors are grateful to the European Office of Business Research, to the research assistants who carried out interviews and to the 833 persons who agreed to be interviewed for this study.

Detailed results, definitions and references can be found at the Archives of EUSurvey. In concordance with pledges to interviewees, individuals and companies surveyed will remain anonymous.

Trait # 1 Focus

Innovative leaders make fast decisions.

They act intensely on one priority at a time.

Trait # 2 Ego

Innovative leaders are egocentric with minimal sensitivity to others.

They take great pains to project a positive image of themselves.

They personally select areas of Corporate Social Responsibility and are themselves the major beneficiaries of related publicity.

Trait # 3 Duplicity

Innovative leaders rank “ethical standards” low among business values.

People who work for them report frequent disregard of the truth and liberal interpretations of laws and regulations.

Trait # 4 Physical attractiveness

Junior managers and employees score their own leaders very high on criteria such as “well-dressed”, “handsome” and “sexy”.

On the same criteria, the same people give significantly lower scores to leaders other than their own.

Trait # 5 Confrontational

Innovative leaders relish a fight.

Their aggression manifests itself in behaviour towards their own colleagues.

They use sarcasm and put-downs as a matter of course and they often raise their voices or have a tantrum.

This is all BS. These researchers don’t exist and the study never happened.

(but isn’t it uncomfortable when your leaders have mostly negative traits?) * in some countries lies and pranks are tolerated once a year, on April 1st.

Surprised?

Alas, much writing on leadership is rubbish

Good research should involve large samples. It must be duplicated and verified independently before its claims can be generalized.

Good research on leadership does exist of course. It is useful because it can help develop better leaders.

Expert tips can be useful too

Advice coming from people’s experiences should be taken for what it is: at best a snippet of wisdom

or a fresh perspective, at worst confusing rubbish.

My own 2 cents on innovative leadership

Be yourself. You can’t be a good leader by being someone else.

Embrace creativity. Develop your own creative self and create conditions for your people to be creative.

Perhaps one day good research will prove the valueof authenticity and creativity in leadership.

Thank you!• For the sinister side of leadership see books and articles by Manfred Kets de

Vries, professor of leadership development and organizational change at INSEAD.

• For the humorous side see Dilbert by Scott Adams.

• For a project, workshop or keynote on leadership, creativity or innovation, or

for a simple conversation, contact dimis@dimis.org