Performance Programs welcomes this article by Robert Hogan, Ph.D., author of the widely used Hogan Personality Inventory, and founder of Hogan Assessment Systems, Tulsa, OK. Reprinted with permission. Learn more about Robert Hogan and the Hogan Personality Inventory.
Anomalous Leadership
By Robert Hogan
I follow athletics in order to test my ideas about leadership. I have uncovered an interesting anomaly about which I have been thinking for some time. This anomaly, properly understood, has important implications for evaluating and developing leadership competencies.
The current (2005) coach of the professional football team, the New England Patriots, a man named Bill Belichick, is widely regarded as the best coach in his business. He has been regarded as a football genius since the beginning of his career. His win-loss record is phenomenal. He obviously occupies a leadership role, so what are the keys to his success?
Return to Newsletter
He matches to perfection the four elements that define leadership from the observer’s perspective: (1) He is a person of great integrity—he keeps his word and never plays favorites; (2) He is decisive—he makes very sound decisions quickly and under pressure; (3) He is competent—all observers are impressed with his work ethic, his comprehensive knowledge of the game, and his creativity and forward thinking; and (4) He is faithful to the only vision his profession permits—winning (cf. Hogan & Kaiser, 2005).
At the same time, however, he treats his players in a distinctly impersonal way. He concluded as a beginning coach that it is a fatal error to become friends with his players. He apprenticed with successful coaches who were notoriously hard on their players. At least one observer, Tom Jackson of ESPN, says Belichick’s players hate him. It is widely reported that the major reason Belichick failed in his first head coaching job, at the Cleveland Browns, was that his players disliked him so much.
I have always thought an essential key to leadership is the ability to form positive relationships with subordinates. Indeed, this competency is one of the four pillars of our “domain model” (Hogan & Warrenfeltz, 2003). Red Holtzman, the legendary coach of the New York Knickerbockers, a professional basketball team and popular after dinner speaker, always argued that the first thing a coach needs to do is establish an effective relationship with his/her players. My personal hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson, one of the greatest military leaders of all time, was beloved by his subordinates.
How can we reconcile this apparent anomaly? The answer, I believe, is that professional football players in America have no options; if they want to play, they must be hired and retained by a team, and do exactly as they are told. If they don’t, they are labeled as intractable and essentially banned from the game. They have no real options for defection, and as a result, owners and managers need pay little attention to their relations with the players.
This leads to three conclusions. First, Belichick outperforms his competition because he is smarter and harder working than they are, and treating his players with respect would give him no competitive advantage in that business. Second, real leadership involves persuading people to follow an agenda or program, when they have opportunities to defect. And third, managers in the modern economy, regardless of the business sector, are rarely required to be leaders because they can coerce their subordinates into compliance using threats of dismissal. Nonetheless, treating subordinates as fellow humans is the right thing to do, morally and pragmatically.
References: Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.B. (2005). What we know about leadership. Review of General Psychology. Hogan, R., and Warrenfeltz, R. W. (2003). Educating the modern manager. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2, 74-84.
Performance Programs offers professional certification on the Hogan Personality Inventory, Hogan Development Survey, and the Motivation, Preferences, Values Inventory.
