Successful Execs: Lions or Lambs?

A coaching group I belong to was going to discuss a Wall Street Journal article by George Anders yesterday about the leadership skills that are really important for success, but I couldn't make the conference call, so I thought I'd touch on the topic. A study out of the U of Chicago, led by finance and entrepreneurship professor Steven Kaplan, concluded that some soft skills weren't as "pivotal" in determining success as some harder skills. According to the study, "the traits that matter are persistence, attention to detail, efficiency, analytical skills and setting high standards, and the skills that don't count as much are strong oral communication, teamwork, flexibility, enthusiasm and listening skills." You can read the article to find out more about the research methodology and decide for yourself what you think about the approach. My concern is that this particular research can be misread. A balance of both hard and soft skills are needed in order to be truly effective. You can have great analytical skills and be extremely efficient, but if you can't communicate well and can't build good teams you won't be as successful as you could otherwise be. How one defines and measures success is also critical in determining what skills are critical. So we need to be careful about how we use and interpret research findings and make sure we apply them correctly.