n a recent interview with The New York Times, James P. Hackett, the president and CEO of Steelcase, recalled a meeting in 1994 with J.W. Bill Marriott Jr., Marriott Corp.s chairman of the board. Hackett was a young chief executive, 39 years old, seeking wisdom and guidance from the seasoned Marriott. I had been struggling with this notion of identity, said Hackett. What does a CEO look like and feel like? As we were talking, I remember being struck by the look in [Marriotts] eyes. I understood in that moment that he knew who he was. I remember this like it was yesterday. Since then, the [CEOs] Im most impressed with have [that same] sense of peace and self-awareness. Hacketts intuitive observation is borne out by research. A multitude of studies have pointed to executive self-awareness as the bedrock of personal and corporate performance. The work of inuential psychologist Albert Bandura links self-awareness to self-efficacy, which he denes as a persons perception of his or her own ability to succeed in specic situations. In general, Bandura contended, the more you know about yourself, the more likely you are to feel condent in taking things on and seeing them through. According to Anthony K. Tjan, coauthor of Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck: In my experience and in the research my coauthors and I did for our book, there is one quality that trumps all, evident in virtually every great entrepreneur, manager and
weaknesses. Research shows that high performers in all elds, especially when under stress, instinctively double down on the core attributes that made them high performers in the rst place. Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger, cofounders of the talent management consultancy Lominger, were among the rst to link this phenomenon to executive dysfunction in their book Preventing Derailment: What to Do Before Its Too Late. They pointed out that poor executive performance is often not due to a weakness, but rather to a strength in overdrive: extreme condence careening toward
Everett Peck
Q2.2013
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Globally, professionals selected tablets (55%), cloud storage (54%), flexible working hours and smartphones (which tied at 52%) as office tools that are becoming more ubiquitous. Source: LinkedIn
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Q2.2013
Korn/Ferry