Leadership success may come down to these five natural characteristics we are born with

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Many of us believe that there is one single thing successful leaders do and if we can just learn that skill, we will ace our job. Various leadership books helpfully offer guidance but unfortunately, they usually disagree on the one key factor. Other leadership experts present a long list of skills, habits or practices that once learned will ensure success, such as Stephen Covey’s famed seven habits. An alternative path many choose is to read a biography of an acclaimed leader – be it from business or some other field, modern or historic – and try to emulate his or her approach.
Barry Conchie, who after working for the Gallup research firm founded a company in 2013 that carries out executive assessments for major corporations, believes all three of those methods for discovering the path to great leadership are deceptive traps that lack scientific rigour. “There is no single quality that makes a leader exceptional, nor is leadership an acquired skill. Ten thousand hours of practice will not transform an intrinsically weak leader into one who is world class. Rather, leadership is a compendium of talents that different people express in their own unique way. Among the highest performing leaders, no two are alike – there are no rigidly defined rules that they all adhere to. But there are definitely traits and characteristics that can help us discriminate those individuals who have the potential to perform at the highest level of executive leadership,” he writes, with organizational psychologist and consulting colleague Sarah Dalton, in The Five Talents that Really Matter.
Each talent is a measurable innate characteristic that a person demonstrates consistently in order to achieve high performance. The talents cannot be learned or taught, and are not habits. They are natural characteristics we are born with. And the five their research has isolated when comparing successful and unsuccessful leaders are setting direction, harnessing energy, exerting pressure, increasing connectivity between people and controlling traffic by managing the pace and complexity of activity so high performance can be achieved.
The 58,000 leadership assessments they studied also revealed:
That’s not a pretty picture, overall. As they studied the five talents, they also uncovered some sobering findings that can help us improve our own effectiveness.
In setting direction, leaders vastly prefer meetings where they get things done over those sessions where ideas, possibilities and plans are discussed. But balancing depth of thinking with speed of action is a vital managerial capacity. Breadth of thinking is also essential and leaders must expose themselves through reading to ideas that will enlarge their sense of the big picture. Mr. Conchie and Ms. Dalton warn their research revealed leaders talk to too few people when consulting before making decisions.
In harnessing the energy of others, leaders are hurt by their assumption everyone is motivated by competition when many people are in fact driven by a desire for personal achievement, giving their best according to their own standards. Managers, when measuring performance, too often are scoring likeability. When choosing who to spend their coaching time with, leaders should focus on improving good performance rather than get caught up with improving poor performers, where often they are only boosting such individuals marginally, to a level where they can then be more easily ignored.
With respect to exerting pressure, Mr. Conchie and Ms. Dalton warn against promising employees that a plateau of stability lies around the corner. “However undesirable and turbulent the present is perceived to be, pretending that the future will be more balanced and less pressured is a lie,” they write. High-performing leaders are “agents provocateurs,” fighting against the motto, “if it ain’t broke, why fix it?” Instead, they drive meaningful change and improvements in all aspects of operations. Persistence and persuasion are imperative.
For increasing connectivity, the best leaders they studied have a high level of self-awareness combined with an extraordinary ability to read other people and understand their emotional and psychological state. “The very best leaders build highly effective relationships that don’t compromise their objectivity. They are powerful coaches and mentors, and they help the most talented players perform to their highest potential,” Mr. Conchie and Ms. Dalton say.
The best leaders are like air traffic controllers, managing phenomenal complexity with flexibility and ability, as things change in real time. They don’t aim to reduce plane crashes to 8 per cent from 9, but adopt the goal of zero. To control traffic, they are adept at structural thinking, navigating organizational systems.
It’s not simple. But their work illuminates leadership – and where some of us might be falling down – through careful research on executives.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.