Services

Achieving Leader Study

Breakthrough Research on Effective Leadership

  • Immediately improve leadership skills and organizational effectiveness
  • Learn to balance short term performance with long term leadership development needs
  • Define a clear organizational-wide language and model for effective leadership 
     

The evidence-based study shows definitively the common behavioral characteristics that the top achieving leaders employ to set themselves apart from their lesser achieving colleagues. These leaders were most highly valued by their respective companies and were promoted faster and given the most responsibility for managing their organization's assets and people.

- Warren Benniswarren bennis3

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

 

It proves leadership is not accidental.  There is a clear model and a language for effective leadership that exists and it can be learned by others.  

Summary of the Achieving Leader Study

  • Large sample of over 60,000 participants (approximately 16,000 managers and 48,000 co-workers)
     
  • Leaders are rated as HIGH, AVERAGE and LOW achievers based on a common standard called the Managerial Achievement Quotient (MAQ) which allows participants to be compared across companies--including for-profit, non-profit, government.
     
  • Using our validated instruments, each participants' behavior is measured in key areas:
    • Leadership Philosophy
    • Employee Involvement
    • Communication and Interpersonal Relationships
    • Work Motivation
    • Empowerment and the use of Power
    • Overall Management Style

  • Each participant is measured in all areas and feedback is also gathered from at least three of their direct reports for each of the above areas.
     
  • The study was conducted by Jay Hall, Ph.D., the founder of Teleometrics and includes the work by great names such as Douglas McGregor, Abraham Maslow, Robert Blake, Jane Mouton, Chris Argyris, Kurt Lewin, Rensis Likert, David McClelland, and many others.  
     
  • Previously, these groundbreaking studies of leadership and organizational behavior arose independently of one another with few researchers consciously building upon the works of the others.

The results?  The top achievers do indeed exhibit consistent behavioral characteristics across all aspects tested. More impressive is the fact that these leaders use these characteristics to create an environment of collaboration, commitment, and creativity that propel their teams to new heights of achievement.

How do they do it and what do they all have in common?

Using the High Achieving Leader as a leadership benchmark, we have developed a process whereby participants can learn to model the same behavioral characteristics used by top achievers.