Author: Fred Greenstein
Source: Greenstein
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| A Six Factor Template for Evaluating CEO Competence |
| Developed at Princeton University |
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Fred Greenstein (Greenstein, 2000) provides us at Peabody Stybel Lincolnshire with a template with which to evaluate presidential leadership.
While his focus is on the U.S. Presidency, we find Greenstein's analysis appropriate for Nominating Committees of Boards seeking a template for evaluating CEO candidates.
Greenstein is Professor of Politics at Princeton University and Director of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School program in leadership studies. Analyzing Presidential leadership from FDR to Clinton, he articulates a six-factor model:
(1) Public communication---effectiveness in communicating with key constituencies.
(2) Organizational capacity---systematic approach to management; ability to forge a team and get the most out of it; proficiency in creating effective system arrangements.
(3) Political skill---using formal and informal power effectively.
(4) Vision---"event making" perspective versus reactive perspective. It also includes the ability to articulate overarching goals for the enterprise.
(5) Cognitive Style---conceptual ability to cut to the strategic heart of problems versus nibbling around the tactical fringes.
(6) Emotional Intelligence.
We use these six factors as frameworks for checking references of candidates. You might consider them as reference checking frameworks as well.
Standard job descriptions tend to focus on variables 1,2, 4, 5. It is rare that variable 3 gets explicit attention in business. But the CEO role requires mastery in the art of power. We have developed a series of reference questions that focus on this issue.
In our work with corporations, we find skilled communicators and highly organized managers overvalued by Boards.
And yet factors 1 and 2 may not be the most important factors. People may be great communicators in job interviews, highly organized, and still be ineffective leaders!
Factor 6 is hardly mentioned in job descriptions. And yet we all know it is totally critical. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton had emotional handicaps that impacted the United States in extraordinarily negative ways. Haven't we all seen emotional handicaps within a CEO crippling the total organization?
In our retained search work, we find the best way to get a handle on emotional intelligence is to carefully, carefully, carefully check references with with former subordinates. Good leadership creates good followership. In the case of U.S. Presidents since FDR, only Truman, Eisenhower, Ford, and George Bush had subordinates who praised their leader without reservation. Of the eleven Presidents evaluated, only these four stand out as fundamentally free of distracting emotional perturbations.
There is a correlation here!
How important is emotional intelligence as a factor in selecting a leader?
None of the U.S. Presidents surveyed were paragons. All had flaws in one or more of the six leadership variables. Most organizations can work around the leader's inevitable human weaknesses.
Professor Greenstein reminds us that the United States has survived and even thrived under less than perfect leadership. In the area of emotional intelligence, however, "beware the presidential contender who lacks emotional intelligence. In its absence all else may turn to ashes."
Laurence J. Stybel,Ed.D.
LINCOLNSHIRE STYBEL PEABODY
Sixty State Street, Suite 700
Boston, MA 02109
Tel: 617/371-2990
Fax: 617/371-2992
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