Take a moment to think of the chief executives for whom you’ve worked. What impact did those leaders have on their senior management team? Were those top managers inspired to achieve ambitious goals because of their leaders’ influence? Were they more productive? Did they have a clear understanding of their own unique talents? What observable, positive difference, if any, did the chief executives ultimately have on the leaders they led?

The effective leader of leaders makes the kind of difference that improves individual performance and organizational outcomes. To discover how these top leaders create this impact, The Gallup Organization has studied “C-level” executives in organizations and how they respond to their top leaders. We asked chief nursing officers, chief operating officers, chief financial officers, senior vice presidents, and people in similar roles to describe their experience as a part of their leadership teams. Their candid, sometimes brutally honest, responses during interviews highlight a growing problem in organizations: Effective leaders are scarce. And leaders who are effective in leading other leaders are even rarer.

Sour sentiments
Few respondents in our database had glowing things to say about their leaders. Far more expressed sentiments similar to these:
• “I feel like I am back in the days when a woman was expected to be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen,” said one chief nursing officer of her boss’ attitude toward women executives.
• A COO lamented, “I came into this position with years of confident leadership under my belt. I leave it now questioning if I was ever a leader. I know it is partially my fault for staying with a president whose idea of leadership included coercion, subservience, and threats. He beat his senior team down on every occasion. His edicts were accompanied by threats and penalties. He rarely recognized good work. When he did recognize someone, it was used to point out where others on the team had failed.”

Sadly, in many organizations, stories like these are all too common. Every day, behind the closed doors of plush administrative offices and boardrooms, many senior managers are suffering the devastating impact of a “leader-bashing leader.”

The effective leader of leaders, however, is able to inspire senior executives and get superior performance from them. Here is what these great chief executives do differently.

They maximize the leadership capacity of senior executives
Effective leaders of leaders are keenly aware that as chief executives, they are ultimately accountable for the organization’s performance. They are also aware that they cannot achieve those outcomes alone. In their book, Co-Leaders: the Power of Great Partnerships, David A. Heenan and Warren Bennis sum it up this way: “In our hearts we know that the world is more complex than ever and that we need teams of talent — leaders and co-leaders working together — to get important things done.”

Important things get done, and done in a powerful way, when great executives create an environment where they capitalize on every ounce of talent of the leaders they lead. Take Bill for instance. The president and CEO of a large organization, he is one of the most insightful and innovative leaders in our study. When Bill took over a new team some time ago, he found that the executive team was, in his words, “Trampled down and depressed because they had been disrobed of the dignity, respect, and sense of calling that leaders need in order to succeed.”

Bill immediately set out to change that. He did what the most effective chief executives do: He fostered an environment in which natural leaders could come to the forefront. In a short period of time, Bill helped his senior managers understand their unique leadership talents, how to maximize risk taking, and how to clarify and implement their vision. Leaders who had been depressed, disillusioned, and performing under duress for years found new hope and incentive in Bill’s promise to them: “We will build a culture of excellence, where talented, engaged employees are recognized and rewarded for providing a healing, caring environment for our patients, their families, physicians, and each other.”

They banish the “leader-in-training” mentality
Effective chief executives expect — in fact, they demand — that co-leaders actually lead. They quickly rid themselves of “leaders in training” — executives who are just waiting for the real leader to tell them what to do next. Instead, they seek out people who have inherent leadership ability. Great chiefs are enthralled with those who have the talents — the natural wiring — to lead, who are anxious to lead, and who think like leaders.

To discover which members of his executive team were natural leaders, Bill took three very important steps. First, he spent a day with each of his senior managers to discuss their job functions, direct reports, and perception of their roles and to review the results they were achieving.

Second, Bill conducted in-depth Gallup leadership interviews with them to assess their inherent leadership talent capacity and to give them feedback.

Third, Bill set aside two days for a leadership development retreat. During this time, a management expert used data collected from each leader (Bill included) to outline the individual talents of each leadership team member and the collective talents of the team and to suggest how the team could work together to achieve maximum results.

Through this process, Bill made two important discoveries that inspired some crucial decisions. The first discovery came from the interviews, which revealed that most of his leadership team members were instinctive leaders in their roles. Three team members, though, were more like leaders in training, waiting for him to tell them what to do. Bill re-assigned them to areas where they could assume ownership — where they knew exactly what to do and wanted to do more of it — without his constant support and direction.

The second discovery Bill made was that his leadership team members had been oppressed for years by their previous leader. Simply put, they were not acting like leaders. Bill made a significant decision to give them the opportunity to design what their job functions would entail and how success in their roles would be measured. In fact, Bill was doing what other effective leaders of leaders do: He was creating the opportunity for his senior managers to develop their vision of the future.

They fire up vision and imagination
The effective leader of leaders looks to see whether his or her co-leaders have a big enough vision for their areas of responsibility. Great leaders know that the size of the vision determines the magnitude of the outcome — and the smaller the vision, the smaller the outcomes.

By spending time with his top executives, Bill came to understand that the previous leader had punished them for failure. What’s more, Gallup’s study of this organization revealed that the previous chief executive had coerced senior managers into spending too much time micro-managing; he had expected them to be involved with every decision, no matter how small, within their areas. One top manager stated that he was chastised for not knowing what time a staff member took lunch. At the time of the incident, he had five directors reporting to him; they in turn had 25 managers reporting to them. The staff member in question reported directly to one of the managers.

Bill realized he needed to re-ignite his senior managers’ willingness to act boldly before they could claim a big enough vision for their leadership area. He did this by removing the element of risk. “I told them that going forward, the only failure they needed to worry about was the failure to do something. ‘Do something; do anything, but do it big,’ I told them. ‘The risk is on me,’” Bill recalls.

Given this freedom to dream big, these newly emancipated executives identified more aggressive performance targets for their teams than Bill would have set for them. “I always wanted to set ‘out-of-the-park’ goals and felt that I could achieve them,” says Peter, one of Bill’s senior managers. “But I learned quickly that there was little reward for risk-taking and a lot of punishment for failure.”

They surrender control
The effective leader of leaders steps back and allows co-leaders to “own” their decisions for their organizations or departments. The hardest thing for many leaders to do is to let go of control. The most effective leaders, however, prefer to invest their time preparing their senior managers to take control.

Bill gave himself 90 days to shift responsibility and control to his direct reports. During that time, he worked to learn their talents, skills, knowledge, and experience, because, he says, “I need to know in whose hands I am willing to place my trust, my job, and my future.”

The effective leaders of leaders develop a team they can trust unequivocally. They don’t do this to be magnanimous; they do it out of necessity. Great leaders know that their success depends on the ability to identify co-leaders who are more talented, knowledgeable, and experienced than they are in their specific areas of responsibility.

As Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus noted in Leaders, “The problem with many organisations, and especially the ones that are failing, is that they tend to be overmanaged and underled.” Absolutely! This is especially true when so many chief executives fail to create an environment that encourages co-leaders to spend their time expanding and deepening their vision for the future of the organization. Great leaders understand that by positioning the leaders they lead for success, they help guarantee the success of the organization.

1. Don’t beat yourself up.
You did not cause the tough, changing times in your industry, and you could not have predicted all the changes coming down the pike. The nature of change is unpredictable.
For example, who could have predicted the change in fashion? Do you remember when clothing tags were worn on the inside? Now if you go to the malls, you will see many teenagers wearing them on the outside.

Who could have predicted the change in lifestyle behaviors between generations? Do you remember when safe sex meant your parents did not find out? Now some parents “equip” their kids for sex.
Or, who could have predicted the change in the marketplace? The great movie mogul, Harry Warner, couldn’t in 1922, when he said, “Who the —- wants to hear actors talk?”

The founder of IBM, Tom Watson, Senior, couldn’t in 1943 when he said, “I think there is a world market for about five computers.”
Ken Olsen, the President of Digital Equipment Corporation couldn’t in 1973 when he said, “There is no reason for anyone to have a computer in his house.”

So don’t beat yourself up for not being able to predict or prevent tough changing times. This will deflate you, and you need to be out there motivating your colleagues.

2. Keep your coworkers’ hope alive.
Effective leaders project an optimistic view of the future, even during times of change. Your colleagues need to know that you believe a better day is coming. However, you also need to provide a realistic assessment of the obstacles that your organization must overcome in order to reach that better day.

3. Keep your employees fully informed.
You must keep your employees fully informed. In downsizing environments, the levels of uncertainty run high amongst employees. You must reduce their confusion, even if that means sharing some bad news. As I tell my clients, newsletter readers, and members in my speaking audience, the certainty of misery is better than the misery of uncertainty.

Your employees have the right to know what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what the next steps will be. By not sharing information immediately, you’re allowing the rumor mill to churn out any number of ridiculous stories that do nothing but increase stress and decrease motivation levels in the workplace.

4. Tell the truth.
If you try to relieve your employees’ misery by saying things will calm down after the reorganization, you may be heading for trouble if that’s not the truth. Plus, the next time your organization announces a change your employees’ trust will take a nosedive. Employees need to be taught how to handle changes, not be told it will soon be over.

5. Continue to reassure your employees with your presence.
Dr. Bev Smallwood recently completed a best practices study on those companies dedicated to retaining their best employees. She discovered that sixty to seventy percent of employee retention is directly linked to management behavior.

In particular, managers that spend time with their employees and build relationships tend to keep their employees longer. If you want to retain your best employees during times of change, you must be visible. In uncertain times, seeing and hearing the leader is important. Too often managers or leaders only meet with other senior executives, or they disappear behind closed doors. Employees need to see and hear their bosses. So become accessible and make yourself available for questions.

6. Cut and simplify the work.
If you’re organization has downsized, you probably cut only the workforce, and not the workload.
There’s a time when “doing more with less” makes a lot of sense, but there’s also a time when it’s just plain ridiculous. There comes a point when “doing more with less” is not only impossible, it’s absolutely demoralizing to keep saying it.

So what can you do?
You can’t pretend things are the same. You can, however, reorder priorities on a task-by-task basis. You can cut extraneous tasks, forms, and procedures. You can encourage your associates to take shortcuts in non-critical, routine areas to make time for more important items.
You can also allow your associates to collaborate and figure out how the extra work will be handled. In fact, the sense of teamwork that comes out of collaboration can be a great motivator.

That’s what Ameritech did. Executives from corporate headquarter traveled from office to office, from department to department, in one city after another. They queried fieldworkers on the types of reports that are necessary to complete their day-to-day activities. By listening to their fieldworkers, they were able to cut out 6,000,000 pages of reports that no one needed and no one read.

No one likes to go through change, and no one likes all the sacrifices required by change. However, you can relieve the misery of uncertainty if you follow the six things you must do to become an effective leader in the midst of change outlined today.

By definition, managers have subordinates – unless their title is honorary and given as a mark of seniority, in which case the title is a misnomer and their power over others is other than formal authority.

Managers have a position of authority vested in them by the company, and their subordinates work for them and largely do as they are told. Management style is transactional, in that the manager tells the subordinate what to do, and the subordinate does this not because they are a blind robot, but because they have been promised a reward (at minimum their salary) for doing so.

Managers are paid to get things done (they are subordinates too), often within tight constraints of time and money. They thus naturally pass on this work focus to their subordinates.

An interesting research finding about managers is that they tend to come from stable home backgrounds and led relatively normal and comfortable lives. This leads them to be relatively risk-averse and they will seek to avoid conflict where possible. In terms of people, they generally like to run a ‘happy ship’.

Leaders have followers
Leaders do not have subordinates – at least not when they are leading. Many organizational leaders do have subordinates, but only because they are also managers. But when they want to lead, they have to give up formal authoritarian control, because to lead is to have followers, and following is always a voluntary activity.

Charismatic, transformational style
Telling people what to do does not inspire them to follow you. You have to appeal to them, showing how following them will lead to their hearts’ desire. They must want to follow you enough to stop what they are doing and perhaps walk into danger and situations that they would not normally consider risking.
Leaders with a stronger charisma find it easier to attract people to their cause. As a part of their persuasion they typically promise transformational benefits, such that their followers will not just receive extrinsic rewards but will somehow become better people.

Although many leaders have a charismatic style to some extent, this does not require a loud personality. They are always good with people, and quiet styles that give credit to others (and takes blame on themselves) are very effective at creating the loyalty that great leaders engender.

Although leaders are good with people, this does not mean they are friendly with them. In order to keep the mystique of leadership, they often retain a degree of separation and aloofness.
This does not mean that leaders do not pay attention to tasks – in fact they are often very achievement-focused. What they do realize, however, is the importance of enthusing others to work towards their vision.

In the same study that showed managers as risk-averse, leaders appeared as risk-seeking, although they are not blind thrill-seekers. When pursuing their vision, they consider it natural to encounter problems and hurdles that must be overcome along the way. They are thus comfortable with risk and will see routes that others avoid as potential opportunities for advantage and will happily break rules in order to get things done.
A surprising number of these leaders had some form of handicap in their lives which they had to overcome. Some had traumatic childhoods, some had problems such as dyslexia, others were shorter than average. This perhaps taught them the independence of mind that is needed to go out on a limb and not worry about what others are thinking about you.

Leadership is About Teamwork and Positivity
Leaderships built on hierarchies supporting a visionary personality polarise employees into blind loyalists and jaded workers. The alternative is a leader with an initiative to be positive. To create a positive environment, employees must be given the truth about the state of the business and their role in the company. With the current climate calling for change, this is a great opportunity to challenge people to suggest improvements. Leaders must also make sure that their employees can look forward to a brighter future.

As influential experts on negotiation who examine these questions from an economic perspective, Riley Bowles and McGinn believe that negotiation skills are crucial to closing the gender gap in leadership. Riley Bowles, who earned her doctoral degree from Harvard Business School, is an assistant professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. McGinn is a professor and a director of research at HBS. Below, excerpts from an interview.

Lagace: What is an example of an experiment you’ve conducted that looks at differences in how women and men negotiate?

McGinn: One of the interesting first pieces of data we looked at was job offers to MBA graduates. Once we controlled for a whole bunch of things such as industry and other variables, we found that men and women didn’t tend to negotiate very different salaries, especially in industries where salaries were normative. But men and women did negotiate differently for other packages. And a question comes up: Why would that be? Why, when women were going in and getting the top salary on the list when they knew what the range is, wouldn’t they be negotiating as big bonuses, as generous moving allowances, those sorts of things?

One of the big differences that Hannah first realized was that there are some situations that are much more ambiguous. If you go back into economic sociology studies and studies of wage gaps, you find that you can pull out those situations that are fairly unambiguous and say that there aren’t gaps. But if you go into those situations and industries in which there is quite a bit of ambiguity, you start to see wage gaps.

Q: What are the root causes of these differences in negotiation success?
Riley Bowles: What some studies do is look at salary and control for a whole bunch of things: How many years of experience the subjects had, what program they were from, what industry they went into, what job function they had, how many interviews they got, how many job offers they got, et cetera. And then you still find a gap. In the past, people thought, if there is still a gap and you’ve controlled for all these factors that might explain why people would get different salaries, it must be just: “Discrimination. How else would you possibly explain it?”

Instead of waiting for the tectonic plates of society to shift, we would rather ask what we can do in the interim. How can we change the situation through negotiation?
— Hannah Riley Bowles

We’re not saying gender discrimination doesn’t exist. But we are saying, you know, there’s a behavioral explanation to this as well.

We want to make clear: this is not to blame women. Our perspective is that, instead of waiting for the tectonic plates of society to shift, we would rather ask what we can do in the interim. How can we change the situation through negotiation? That’s a big motivation for us.

When we think about what might make women walk into a negotiation with, say, lower expectations than men, one of the explanations for that comes from social psychology. It’s called the entitlement effect. That research shows that in conditions of ambiguity, if you bring men and women into the lab and you say either one of two things: “Work until you think you’ve earned the $10 we just gave you,” or “Work and then tell us how much you think you deserve,” the women work longer hours with fewer errors for comparable pay, and pay themselves less for comparable work. But if there’s a standard [that men and women know], then this result goes away.

This entitlement effect is a little hard to understand. Some of it is linked to perceived deservedness: In ambiguity, women perceive that they deserve less than men.
Another explanation, though, is that men are a lot more likely to compare themselves to men, and women are a lot more likely to compare themselves to women. And so if you look around society and try to figure out how much to pay yourself, women are comparing themselves to a group that on average makes less money than the men. So in conditions of ambiguity when you’re trying to fill in the blanks, the standard that the women are looking at is probably lower, on average, than the standard for the men.

McGinn: I think another important factor is actually lost in most of the other research on this. There is not just an effect of ambiguity. There is an effect of ambiguity where there’s a “gender trigger” in the environment. We could argue for a long time where these triggers come from, but they tell women “You’re worth less,” or “This isn’t a situation where you should push.” Or, “Why don’t you let the guy do this one?”

In many situations, and importantly, in the situations of leadership that Hannah and I describe in the book chapter, those are very frequently gendered situations. They are situations in which the stereotypical leader—and all the historical leaders and the definitions of what you should be doing—tend to be masculine or male. And with those triggers present, if there’s ambiguity about who should be claiming resources, well, the environment tells you who should be claiming more resources. It’s him.

And in fact when I look around and see what the other women are doing, and this goes back to Hannah’s point that we tend to compare ourselves to others like ourselves—if I go into a situation and I compare myself to other women, well, I actually look like I’m being quite aggressive. So even if I am feeling entitled to those resources, I might put a check on my own behavior because of the triggers in the environment.

It is possible that at some point in time these triggers will be gone. … One of the premises in the chapter and involved in other research we do is that it is often expectations, attitudes, and values that follow behavior, rather than the opposite.

So to the extent that we can inform women about situations in which they should be hypersensitive to opportunities for claiming resources and claiming authority, then they might be more likely to do so and thereby start to change the beliefs and the values that go around [resources and authority]—with the hope that the effects on both ends go away: Women won’t see themselves as less entitled, and therefore aren’t treated as less entitled.

Q: How should women put this knowledge into practice?
McGinn: Be more prepared to the extent that you can reduce gender triggers. There are situations in which you can reposition the bargaining in a way that is not gendered. For example, if I see an opportunity for leadership, and believe that in that position of leadership I can attain additional value for those who would be working with me, then I can face the negotiation not as grabbing everything for myself but rather as an opportunity to increase the value for a whole bunch of people. That tends to demasculinize the situation.

To the extent that you can reduce gender triggers in the environment, organizations should do that for everyone.
— Kathleen McGinn

Even concerning salary negotiations, we hear women say, “I don’t want people to think I’m too aggressive.” But if you flip that around, the perception of you when you don’t negotiate is much more negative than the perception of you when you do negotiate. So in wanting everyone to look positively on our behavior—which is a stereotype—one of the things we can do is ask, “How am I really going to be perceived if I don’t negotiate?” If you don’t negotiate for your salary, they walk away happy that they paid you less but wonder why they hired you.

Riley Bowles: A root cause, in addition to entitlement, relates to social role or behavioral expectations within society. We do have a greater expectation of niceness from women than from men. There’s a body of research showing that when women step into the realm of stereotypically masculine behavior and need to use an authoritative or directive leadership style, or need to aggressively claim, saying, “You should give me more money and resources,” that this doesn’t feel right coming from a woman. There’s some research that shows there’s a backlash to women stepping into these masculine roles.
But another factor may be that the audience is the self. That you’ve got a way that you like to think of yourself behaving. Even if you’re not afraid of a backlash from somebody else, you may think of this as a category of behavior that you just don’t like engaging in. So one suggestion is that you might think about reframing the situation, and saying, “For me to do what I need to do for my team, I’m going to need X, Y and Z resources.” Or, go back to preparation. You can find benchmarks. Figure out, from whatever information is available, what the appropriate standards are for being paid at your level of experience or rank within the organization, et cetera.

Another avenue to feeling comfortable in the role or to get information is to think about your social network. Who are you connected to within or outside the organization? Are you connected to folks who can give you a sense of what people are paid in positions in different organizations and within your organization? And again, if men hang around with men, and ask each other what they’re making, and men are making more on average, then talking with their friends in their social network may lead them to naturally land on a different figure than if women are talking with women friends. You have to think strategically about your social network.

McGinn: Part of looking at benchmarks is recognizing that both men and women have socio-emotional support networks. It just happens that men’s socio-emotional support networks are the guys that they work with. Women have social networks with the guys that they work with, but those are not their socio-emotional support networks.
What ends up happening is that while I hang with the guys at work, those are not the people I talk to about how to negotiate this or that, nor do I ask, “What do you think I should get paid?” or say, “I’m having a rough struggle with this and that.” There is not the same kind of emotional bond across gender. It’s obviously difficult to have tight emotional bonds across gender.

Q: Given what you’re learning about gender and negotiation, do you think companies should use company policy to actively make allowances for different negotiation styles of men and women?

McGinn: Giving women more on their first offer is presuming a main effect. It is presuming that because this is a woman, she can’t do it for herself so “I’ll do it for her.” So in that sense, no, I don’t think organizations should have policies like that.
On the other hand, to the extent that you can reduce gender triggers in the environment, organizations should do that for everyone. I often say that I think men are actually the ones who have it harder in terms of expectations and a constant struggle to get to the top. Is that really what all men want? I think organizations should have ways in which the awareness is heightened to when those gender triggers are there.

Riley Bowles: There should be greater transparency with regard to the types of training, resources, and opportunities that people can seek out if they’re interested. It is something that will help all employees; that’s not a biased favor for women.
Organizations can think about people as whole human beings who have family lives as well as work lives. Try to think creatively about work arrangements that are more flexible. You’re only going to be enhancing all worker commitments. You’re likely to be better at retaining talent, too.

There’s a nice example of what organizations can do from work by Maureen Scully and Deb Myerson. They discuss a company that interviewed for positions. It was only a half-hour interview; and the one question asked of candidates was, “What’s your deal-making experience?” The organization was overwhelmingly male; men were doing the interviews. A half hour is only a brief period to draw out an impression of somebody. The type of experience they were asking for was from an experience base that is overwhelmingly male.

If you don’t negotiate for your salary, they walk away happy that they paid you less but wonder why they hired you.
— Kathleen McGinn

Scully and Myerson suggested lengthening the interview to forty-five minutes. They suggested asking, “What can you do for this company?” as opposed to “What’s your deal-making experience?” The company found that minorities and women rose to the top in the candidate pool from these very small changes.

So there are subtle things that organizations can do that don’t require radical restructuring or explicit affirmative action policies for women. Being thoughtful about the implicit signals that are embedded in the structure of the organization in terms of who is in what types of positions may be a way of getting more out of the talent pool that you have.

Q: What research questions are you working on next?
McGinn: We would really like to see if there are different definitions of leadership. As the chapter says, we’re moving into thinking about leadership as a negotiation for claiming resources. In the field, we’re trying to find out whether people come in with different definitions of what leaders are. Are they thinking about whether they need different kinds of resources for different kinds of authority? A lot of work on leadership says that you’re a leader because you’re good at leading. We contend that you’re a leader because you’re good at claiming authority.

Riley Bowles: We want to look in organizations and learn how people negotiate for resources and opportunities for leadership.

As we emphasize in the chapter, research is really clear at this point that leadership ability does not explain the gap in leadership positions between men and women. If anything, women are almost coming out ahead in studies of leadership ability.

There are barriers along the way. But we think this is a good news story in the sense that there are many things people can do. You don’t have to wait for society to change. You’re part of changing society. We don’t presume that the answer is necessarily that women need to imitate the men. This may be about developing women’s voice in a new way.

McGinn: [Author] Steven Lukes has a very radical view of power. At a surface level, power is the ability to get done what you want to get done. Women do not have an issue with that.

At a deeper level, power is the ability to get on the agenda what you want on the agenda. That has more to do with access to networks and resources.
And at a completely fundamental level, power is the ability to change what it is people should even be thinking about or asking for. That is a level at which, if women actually attain power, then these struggles of getting an extra $10,000 in salary are going to be obsolete.

If men and women change the expectations and beliefs about what it is that we’re allowed to think about, it is a hopeful story. That is our ultimate hope, that the question of claiming authority and claiming resources becomes, over time, “Do I want to in this situation?” rather than “Can I?”