DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

The Ballad of John and Steve

By Barry Stern, Ph.D.

As I've spent the last week working and vacationing in Tokyo and Kyoto Japan and falling in love with this country, I was surprised to have John Lennon on the brain.  Not only is Yoko Ono from Tokyo, but I have been surprised by how much the peace sign is alive and well here in the Far East. It seemed that tourists posing for pictures, young and old, east and west (mostly east as observationally at least tourism has not returned to normal following what they refer to as the “Eastern Japan Great Earthquake Disaster”) broke out into a spontaneous display of a vote for peace.  Echoes of John and Yoko pleading "all we are saying is give peace a chance" have been reverberating in my mind. John was an intimate partner to me, a man I never met who sparked a love for music that today still inspires me and bonds me with my children. When “Sgt. Peppers” came out I was hypnotized.  I still am.  And I remember with abundant clarity exactly where I was when I found out of his death in Dec 1980; the grass wallpaper on my parents' den wall, the ABC-TV newscasters name (Ernie Anastos) who read the announcement; the glassy-eyed vacuous stares of the throng outside the Dakota Hotel on the TV; the lump in my throat that lasted for what felt like years.

And, as I sit here typing on my iPad, I will also remember the night in Kyoto when I found out about the death of Stephen Jobs.  Another intimate friend never talked to.  The shrines to him evocative of those to Lennon; he melded business with art through the look and feel of his innovations and the now omnipresent sound track of my travels.  Of course I knew he was a very sick man and the rattle I feel in my 50s is much less than that of the emotional youth hearing about John.  

I was not surprised to hear that Lennon and the Beatles were very much heroes to Jobs as well.  In the end perhaps both men measured themselves not by their own recognition or wealth, but by their ability to, as Jobs put it, “make a dent in the universe.”  Perhaps their greatest success was nothing less than inspiring others to greatness, to innovate in ways never dreamt.  In our recent Global Leadership Forecast which included 1900 HR Professionals and 12,500 leaders in 74 countries, we found that only 38% of leaders felt the quality of leadership was acceptable, only 25% when we asked the same question of HR professionals. Further, we found that the leaders’ ability to foster creativity and innovation was one of the 5 critical leadership skills of the future, along with managing change and identifying future talent. 

We can’t expect every leader to be the genius that Jobs or Lennon were, but they can learn to be the spark that creates the environment for greatness. For example, they can learn to inspire insatiable curiosity, make it okay to challenge perspectives, and meld those with the discipline to get things done.  And, as Jobs might have said, that would certainly be “insanely great.”

Barry Stern Ph.D. is vice president, Consulting Services and Delivery for Development Dimensions International (DDI). Follow him on Twitter.

Yes, Of Course it Matters

This was excerpted from a guest blog Rich Wellins wrote for Great Leadership.

By Rich Wellins, Ph.D.

Does the quality of leadership matter?

Put 10 people in a room and ask them how they define leadership. Chances are, you’ll get a lively debate but not a lot of agreement. The word “leadership” can mean very different things to different people. Some believe that a leader’s key responsibility is to nourish and cultivate team members, while others believe that it is to drive growth and innovation. The reality, of course, is that both perspectives are true. Still, no matter how they define leadership, those 10 people will probably agree on one thing: Leadership makes a difference.

The difference between the impact that a top-performing leader and an average leader has on an organization is at least 50 percent, according to leaders participating in DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast 2011. In fact, this research demonstrates that organizations with the highest quality leaders were 13 times more likely to outperform their competition in key bottom-line metrics such as financial performance, quality of products and services, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction. Specifically, when leaders reported their organization’s current leadership quality as poor, only 6 percent of them were in organizations that outperformed their competition. Compare that with those who rated their organization’s leadership quality as excellent—78 percent were in organizations that outperformed their competition in bottom-line metrics.

In this study of 1,897 HR representatives and more than 12,000 leaders from 74 countries some of the global findings are . . . Read the entire blog on Great Leadership.

Rich Wellins, Ph.D., is a Senior Vice President at Development Dimensions International (DDI).

The Only Constant is Change Itself

By Jazmine Boatman, Ph.D.

Change. It was the  one overarching theme from thousands of leaders while conducting DDI's biennial Global Leadership Forecast. We heard from leaders and HR that the only thing constant is change itself.

Change may not be new news; however, what has been particularly astounding in recent years isn’t that change is occurring, but how fast it is happening. In today’s business environment, change is occurring at a blistering speed.

So how is leadership changing? And is it changing fast enough to keep up with the pace of business? Join us for a live TwitterChat Thursday, June 16 to talk about the results, and what you're experiencing in your own organizations. Follow #GLFChat at noon EDT (6/16) on Twitter to talk about these and other questions:

• What is the overall quality of leadership in organizations today? How does it compare to previous years?
• Do organizations have a sufficient supply of capable leaders to meet tomorrow’s business challenges?
• What can HR professionals do to revolutionize the development of their leaders?
• Is it time to radically innovate not only products and business models, but also the very way we manage?
• What impact can we have by moving the needle on leadership quality?

Join us on Twitter Thursday at noon EDT. More more instructions and a reminder email, register at http://www.ddiworld.com/glfchat.

Jazmine Boatman, Ph.D., is the manager of DDI's Center for Applied Behavioral Research (CABER).