The Mind at the Heart of Leadership

In November, 1994, Ronald Reagan disclosed he had Alzheimer’s. “Nearly 70 when he took office in 1981, Mr. Reagan became the oldest President, and throughout his two terms, a series of well-publicized memory lapses and a casual executive style had provoked uncertainty -- even ridicule -- about his mental competence.” (NY Times, REAGAN'S TWILIGHT: A President Fades Into a World Apart, By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, October 5, 1997) ( Quoted in http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com Wednesday, March 07, 2007; “Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents--"Call Me Incompetent But Don't Call Me Crazy") While none of the four White House doctors saw any indication that Reagan had crossed that line, one study suggests almost half our presidents met criteria for psychiatric disorders, and half of those evidenced disorders while in the White House. (The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease: January 2006 - Volume 194 - Issue 1 - pp 47-51, Mental Illness In U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974: A Review of Biographical Sources, Davidson, Jonathan R. T. MD; Connor, Kathryn M. MD; Swartz, Marvin MD.)

Whatever one’s criteria, it is almost impossible to argue that the mind is not at the heart of leadership. We our leaders to be of sound mind, even if the body grows infirm. In our advisory work with senior executives at The Clarion Group, we focus more at the upper end of the spectrum of mental capacity, not lower threshold competency. We work with executives who have already attained substantial success and still we ask the question: what differentiates those truly high performing, even extraordinary senior-most leaders?

We find it helpful to separate out four layers of knowledge, mental skills or attributes, ranging from those which are readily acquired through external sources down to those which are usually considered more innate. (Foresee^TM, The Clarion Group Leadership Assessment Suite, http://www.theclariongroup.com/) By design, the aspects we include are not intended to be a comprehensive spectrum of human attributes, but rather are more precisely focused on the highest level of business leadership:

1.  Capabilities: These are developable skills and knowledge-based elements acquired through education and experience. Capabilities are what people have learned to do, perhaps through formal education or on-the-job training, and include how people think and their knowledge on a variety of topics. At the senior leadership level examples include a variety of management practices, approaches to Problem Solving, Decision Making or Communication Skills.

2.  Characteristics: These are operating and interaction styles, skills such as Influence and Interpersonal Ability, Organizational Agility or Strategic Management. We all have stylistic preferences Characteristics, and although these are at least partially innate, they may be strengthened or modified to a degree through awareness, practice, reinforcement, or sheer determination.

• It is widely known that Mahatma Gandhi, the spiritual and political leader of millions, was in fact quite shy by nature in his youth.
• Candy Lightner was one who led a relatively normal life as a real estate agent and mother until her 13 year old daughter, Cari, was killed by a drunk driver in 1980. Driven by her anger and outrage, Candy seemingly overnight transformed into a prominent national figure, demonstrating remarkable influence and political and organizational agility, galvanizing a grass roots national movement that founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving and changed criminal law across the entire nation. (http://www.bookrags.com/biography/candy-lightner/)

3.  Capacities: The level of Capacities is primarily where this blog will focus. There are certain Intellectual, Environmental, and Emotional capacities, as well as a capacity for Openness, that seem to differentiate great leadership. These will be explained in greater detail in coming entries. For now, just one example to highlight the fact that we are talking about a range of mental capacities beyond IQ.

• Kim “Kim-puter” Peek was born November 11, 1951 with damage to the cerebellum, missing the bundle of nerves that connect the two hemispheres. While Kim has a below average IQ of 73 he also has a photographic memory. Furthermore, he reads a book in about one hour, reading the left page with his left eye, the right page with his right. He can recall the detailed content of some 12,000 books from memory (faster than Google) and has nearly total recall in 14 to 15 different subject areas. Kim Peek is a considered prodigious savant, a megasavant, and is the real life inspiration for the 1988 move “Rain Man”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek) (Scientific American, December, 2005)

But we can all attest to people we know or hear about who just seem to have more of certain mental capacities – a gift for languages, math comes easy for them, an enviable sense of direction. Of course what we are most concerned about here are those specific kinds of capacities that lend themselves to leadership acumen: more like being very strategic or visionary; a “second-sense” around timing in competitive ventures; indefatigable energy, passion and drive. For the most part we have come to think of these kinds of capacities as more “hard-wired”; companies tend to hire for these qualities and typically do not expect to develop them through any kind of training program. We will explore these assumptions much further.

4. Core Motives: Our motivations are also deeply rooted, so much so that at times they are beyond our own awareness or consciousness. Again it is not clear just how possible it is to change our motivational core. But it is critically important that leaders develop considerable self awareness around the motivational patterns that energize, orient, and impact their behaviors. It is important that they be recognized and managed constructively. Given again that our focus is specifically business leadership, we tend to utilize motivational theories most directly applicable, such as McClelland’s three types of motivational need – achievement, power (in self and others), and affiliation. (The Achieving Society, 1961).

From this it is easy to see that the mind at the heart of leadership encompasses much more than just thought or intelligence. More about this in the next entry.