Success is not just about emotional intelligence, charisma, or knowledge about the industry, says Justin Menkes, author of Executive Intelligence: What All Great Leaders Have. He says it’s true that emotional intelligence and knowledge of the industry are important, but he divided the big boss’s work into three areas:
- Tasks. The ability to identify problems, devise solutions, and exercise good judgment in pursuing those solutions.
- People. Recognize people’s agendas and motivations, and anticipate their likely reactions to what you do and say. Recognize stakeholder needs. It’s the important ability to see others’ viewpoints and be able to balance among competing views.
- Oneself. Encourage feedback to reveal errors in judgment and make corrections. Know when to acknowledge mistakes and change direction. Recognize your own biases. Try to understand why executives make decisions and why they sometimes don’t work out.
To help the reader understand how and why executives make decisions, and why they aren’t always good ones, Menkes asks you to consider this: The brain recognizes previous experience and relates it to the present. Sometimes it doesn’t work because it masquerades as logical reasoning. Sometimes people tend to give too much weight either to the most readily available information or the most recent they have heard. Menkes calls it the “last person to get the boss’s ear phenomenon.” Sometimes bosses see links and patterns that don’t exist. The mind develops short cuts and some of the time serves us well. But variations, when not recognized, can be harmful.