Residents of C-suites and boardrooms who exhibit the “Icarus complex” often initially soar but ultimately plummet from lofty heights and take their companies with them. Here’s how organizations can identify them and prevent disaster.
The media and Hollywood have romanticized the notion of personable and charismatic but ruthless executives running large organizations as in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Wall Street,” and “Boiler Room.” The congenial outward appearance often masks emotional coldness; exploitation; unethical and manipulative behavior; and grandiose self-importance that wreak havoc on management staff and employees. Such polish, charm and even-keel decisiveness often are mistaken as leadership qualities when they can just be the outward-facing appearance of darker personality traits.
Corporate executives harboring an Icarus complex with other dark tendencies often make decisions in isolation without input from others. Managers and other subordinates quickly realize that the Icarian exec doesn’t value their counsel. They become disengaged as the work environment becomes toxic.
Such a closed-loop approach can have costly corporate implications, says Don Hambrick, Professor of Management at Penn State. “… [N]arcissism in the executive suite can be expected to have effects on substantive organizational outcomes, potentially including strategic grandiosity and submissive top management teams,” he says.
These often are self-destructive personalities because they ignore their own limitations and other boundaries. They’re flames that burn twice as bright as others but only half as long.
Narcissists and behavior rationalization
If a situation deteriorates, narcissists will likely try to explain how everything is working exactly as intended. In fact, they often rationalize their own questionable behavior if the means serve the ends. Many leaders use these types of classic rationalizations to pass off their corporate behaviors and actions: “slippery slope”
(options backdating: “everyone’s doing it”), “king’s pass” (public achievements and philanthropy should overshadow the ethical errors in judgment), and “Hamm’s excuse” (patent infringement and revenue mismanagement: “it wasn’t my fault”.)
In an interview with Fraud Magazine, David Cotton, CFE, CPA, chairman of Cotton & Company, tells how some in the C-suite succumb to the power of position. “[It’s a ] given that pretty much everyone wants more money,” Cotton says. “And executives with ‘chief’ in their job titles are almost always in a position to override or circumvent internal accounting and fraud controls. So, pretty much every senior executive inherently already has two legs of the Fraud Triangle” (see illustration below).
Three sides of the fraud triangle
Some narcissistic CEOs might never have read Greek tragedies or Melville, or perhaps they failed to learn the lesson from the narratives. Others may have been willfully blind to events in their organizations. However, David Cotton believes there’s another reason: “Sociopaths and psychopaths do not need two of the three legs of the Fraud Triangle…they just need one: opportunity.”
Relating the fate of Icarus in 21st-century parlance, such individuals might have soared skyward initially, but eventually, they all flew their company jets too close to the sun.
Residents of C-suites and boardrooms who exhibit the “Icarus complex” often initially soar but ultimately plummet from lofty heights and take their companies with them. Here’s how organizations can identify them and prevent disaster.
In Greek mythology, Daedalus and his son, Icarus, escaped imprisonment on the island of Crete by fashioning wings made of feathers glued together with wax. Daedalus taught Icarus how to fly with the wax wings, but he cautioned his son not to soar too high or the sun would melt them. But Icarus ignored his father’s wise counsel and began flying higher until the wax began melting under the heat of the sun. His wings quickly fell apart, and he plunged into the sea and drowned.
Another literary tragic figure is Captain Ahab in Melville’s “Moby Dick,” who’s consumed with one mission: the white whale. Ahab is a most dangerous kind of leader. His narcissistic carelessness and destructive determination defeat him as he takes the whaling ship Pequod and her crew (except for Ishmael) down with him — the maritime equivalent of flying too close to the sun.
More than ever before, organizational leadership demands not just accomplished functional skills, experience and knowledge, but also personality and psychological stability. Emotional and influential illiteracy still plague many C-suites and boardrooms as do examples of recklessness, defiance of limitations and personal over-ambition. The figure on the next page illustrates a simple model of destructive leadership behavior and its relationship with subordinates and an organization.
(From “The prevalence of destructive leadership behavior,” by Merethe Schanke Assland, et. al., British Journal of Management)
Icarus complex
Harvard psychologist Henry A. Murray coined the term “Icarus complex” to characterize a specific type of hyper-ambitious personality that includes elements of narcissism, ascensionism (love of flying and heights) and extreme imaginary cognitive states. The person with an Icarus complex initially soars but ultimately plummets precipitously from lofty heights.
The Icarus complex shares many traits of personality disorders found in “dark psychology.” Individuals who consciously take advantage of others exhibit characteristics known as the “Dark Triad of Personality.” These traits include the tendency to seek admiration and special treatment (narcissism), to be callous and insensitive (psychopathy) and to manipulate others for one’s personal gain (Machiavellianism).
While a modicum of narcissism can be healthy for some charismatic leaders, excesses of dark psychology have given rise to “dark leadership.” Such disorders exhibited by corporate leaders can be dangerous to an organization’s financial and emotional health. One 2010 study of the Norwegian workforce found that destructive leadership behavior varied from 33.5% to 61%, which indicates that “destructive leadership is not an anomaly,” according to Merethe Schanke Assland’s British Journal of Management article.
Flying too high in the C-Suite
C-suite executives harboring Icarus complexes are a hazardous game changer for everyone in an organization, especially when risky decisions or fraudulent actions jeopardize employees’ livelihoods and those with financial stakes. “Our most important corporate regulation,” writes University of Pennsylvania law professor and author, David Skeel, “has always been enacted in the wake of stunning Icarus Effect collapses.”
See also “Flying the Corporate Jet Too Close to the Sun.”
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
Sherlock Holmes, The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
It’s nearly impossible to accurately predict a candidate’s future success on the job because of something called irreducible unpredictability. Any predictions would be based on incomplete historical/factual data supplied on the candidate résumé — some of which may not be totally reliable and honest — fail far short of providing reliable probabilities.
A 2008 study published in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Journal found that the variance in executive success accounted for by technical competence and psychological factors was 20% and 10%, respectively. However 70% of the variance was attributed irreducible unpredictability.
In a separate study, researchers found that managers placed more emphasis on competencies assessed by unstructured interviews (subjective, intuitive) than on competencies measured by different assessments (objective, defined).
The process of candidate assessment and selection involves considerable interplay of many psychological factors; yet many believe that as long as the candidate is the “right person for the job” and has been accurately assessed, success is certain. This belief fails to recognize that many elements of performance are unknown at the time of hire. The idea that it’s still possible to predict employee success ignores the fact that there is no such thing as perfect prediction in the hiring process.
A résumé with quantified accomplishments and achievements can lead one to believe that past history is an indicator of future performance. Such a candidate résumé will likely get on the short list for an interview—if there weren’t any social media red flags that would call into question that candidate’s viability as a quality hire.
When you’ve exhausted all legal/ethical avenues for evaluating a potential candidate, you’re still left with irreducible unpredictability. When you’ve gone as far as you can, you go with what you know and then intuition or “gut instinct” often takes you over that gap to help with making the hiring decision.
Experience Breeds Overconfidence with Prediction Accuracy
But there’s a problem there as well. The mistaken belief by many decision makers, hiring managers, and HR people is that the prediction accuracy of future performance improves through experience. This results in an overweighted trust in intuition and growing overconfidence. Overconfident people place too much trust in their own ability, easily dismiss factors or influences that may undermine their own perceived accuracy, and they underestimate others. As we gain experience, one would think that it would have a dampening effect on overconfidence, but quite the opposite happens: it increases.
Overconfidence can lead to complacency by not engaging the due diligence of critical thinking. Instead, we opt for a path of least logical resistance, bypassing other possibilities and rushing to judgment.
Neural Processing Shortcuts Can Introduce Noise and Bias
Our brains rely on mental shortcuts (called “System 1 processing”) to simplify making critical and non-critical decisions from all the sensory input we encounter every day. There are many neural processing short cuts, called “heuristics,” and each occurs in different contexts. The caution here is that because they are detours to longer duration neural processing (called “System 2 processing”), they can introduce errors and bias.
Unconscious bias refers to a prejudice of which we are unawareand which happens outside of our conscious control. (So-called “Overcoming Unconscious Bias” programs are really more about ensuring you can call up System 2 as a check on the effects of bias associated with System 1, though the efficacy of such programs remains questionable, according to many studies.) Unconscious bias occurs automatically and is triggered by our brain’s preference for neural processing shortcuts, resulting in quick judgments and assessments of people and situations (referred to as “thin slicing”). All of this is influenced by our background, cultural environment, and personal experiences.
But because System 2 takes more neural effort, it is easily distracted by competing demands. Stress, anxiety, fatigue, burnout all make it more difficult to access System 2.
Not all bias is unconscious. Not all bias is bias; it could be noise. As psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman writes in Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment:
Noise causes error, as does bias, but the two kinds of error are separate and independent. A company’s hiring decisions could be unbiased overall if some of its recruiters favor men and others favor women. However, its hiring decisions would be noisy, and the company would make many bad choices.
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Donn LeVie Jr. has 30 years’ experience leading people and projects for such Fortune 100 companies as Phillips Petroleum, Motorola, Intel Corporation; government agencies (NOAA), and academia (Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Houston Downtown College). Donn specializes at the intersection of leadership, communication, and performance, which means he works with organization leaders and executives through the doorway of coaching and consulting so that they get higher performance, higher employee retention, and richer financial results though programs in intelligent leadership influence.
More than ever, the employee hiring process has been a hot topic of conversation and controversy lately. Not only are there legal or ethical restrictions on what information hiring managers and decision makers can or can’t use to access candidates, the hiring process itself is fraught with bias and noise.
An article in the September-October 2021 issue of the Harvard Business Review “IdeaWatch” section admonishes decision makers to “stop screening job candidates’ social media” (the article’s title). The article, which is a synopsis of an academic paper, promotes the idea of embracing “evidence-based recruiting.”
Is Off-the-Clock Behavior Fair Play or Out of Bounds?
One of the original study’s researchers, a professor at the University of Iowa, believes that candidate screening should have a “clear distinction between what people do during work and what they do outside of work.”
In one of the studies, 266 Facebook profiles of job seekers were reviewed to see what they revealed about the candidates. Fifty-one percent contained profanity; 11% indicated gambling problems; 26% showed or referenced alcohol consumption; and 7% referenced drug use.
Would this information be diagnostic of a candidate’s future on-the-job performance? Only time will tell whether or not it has a dilution effect on the impact of quality information. However, the cascading effects of off-the-clock drug and alcohol use rarely remain outside the company entrance for long.
Atta Tarki, CEO of ECA Partners, a recruiting firm, warns hiring managers about digital sleuthing of candidate social media accounts: “If you let hiring managers screen social media profiles, it will result in bias,” he claims in the HBR article. ECA Partners use social media screeners—and not hiring managers—to look for unequivocal red flags in social media profiles. Those red flags are then reported to hiring managers, but the screening is done after candidate selection, not before.
A recent HBR article cited a study that researched questionable off-the-clock activities of many CEOs—from gains from possible insider trading and domestic violence to extravagant lifestyles and multiple DUI arrests. Wouldn’t it be prudent for board members to have access to such information prior to hiring a CEO?
Does such information call up bias? Of course it does, but often such bias serves as an “early warning system” to suggest a potential problem that remains hidden on a résumé. But more companies seem to prefer to emphasize avoiding hiring bias than they do ensuring a high-quality hire without hidden baggage that could be costly down the road.
For those responsible for making high-quality, cost-effective hiring decisions, shouldn’t a potential candidate’s actions and behaviors as seen on social media platforms fit the criteria as “evidence-based recruiting” for evaluating quality of hire?
According to a 2018 CareerBuilder survey, 70% of employers check out applicant profiles as part of their screening process, and 57% have rejected applicants because of what they found; 48% monitor employees on social media; and 34% disciplined or fired employees for social media content. According to the first referenced HBR article, the assumption was that this information was being used to predict whether a person will succeed on the job.
But the truth is: You can’t accurately predict a candidate’s future on-the-job success but take notice of the signs along the way.
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Donn LeVie Jr. has 30 years’ experience leading people and projects for such Fortune 100 companies as Phillips Petroleum, Motorola, Intel Corporation; government agencies (NOAA), and academia (Department of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Houston Downtown College). He specializes at the intersection of leadership, communication, and performance, which means he works with organization leaders and executives through the doorway of coaching and consulting so that they get higher performance, higher employee retention, and richer financial results though intelligent leadership influence.
Leadership is part art, part science and perhaps a bit of alchemy. Selecting individuals to lead companies has become more complex for boards of directors. CEOs must address the interests of all stakeholders — not just shareholders. Organizations should consider grooming honest and proven managers from within to better align with compliance controls, ethics mandates, and financial controls.
Old-school, C-suite executive recruitment failures have been in the headlines a lot in 2020:
As some executives climb corporate ladders, the harder it might be for them to maintain an ethical grip. Boards invest time and money recruiting leaders with the hope they can set visions, increase revenues and boost shareholder value.
Sometimes those hires backfire.
The U.S. 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act tightened corporate governance by prohibiting CEOs from loading boards with friends and associates. But legislation and corporate policy can’t prevent human behavior subtleties from intervening.
Bias in board decision-making
“Choice-supportive bias” is the tendency to stick to bad choices, such as hiring flawed CEOs, even as situations worsen. Boards can use this bias as a self-preservation mechanism to strengthen their resolve if they choose to stand by failing C-suiters. Board members can selectively recall positive accomplishments of CEOs’ tenures while hoping the fires in the boardrooms extinguish themselves.
We’d all like to think that opposing hard facts would adjust our thinking and challenge us to change our strong beliefs and opinions. Apparently, not so. Contradictory evidence tends to strengthen our deepest convictions — not reverse them. This suggests our brains prefer to set aside critical thinking in favor of faulty positions or beliefs. (See “The backfire effect.”)
Organizations compound their problems when they hire outside CEOs and other C-suite executives without appropriate due diligence.
Risks from hiring outside the organization
In Richard Steinberg’s seminal book, Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance,“ he writes that S&P 500 non-financial companies, in a 20-year study, appointed internal candidates to CEO positions who “significantly outperformed those that bring outsiders to the job.” The study also showed that the cost of attracting external candidates was much higher — by as much as 65 percent — than for internal CEO hires. Four in 10 CEOs recruited from the outside leave their companies after two years and nearly two-thirds exit by their fourth year with expensive golden parachutes easing the descent.
Organizations still debate the pros and cons of promoting managers to CEO positions or hiring externally. But if an organization needs a turnaround specialist or crisis management expert at the helm, the board might search the open market for likely candidates with those unique skills and experiences.
A major challenge for outsiders is building credibility, trust and rapport with board members. They probably haven’t worked together, so they need to take time to engage and become comfortable with each other — a process that can take months or years.
Incoming outsiders must be sensitive to how boards and others will scrutinize their early decisions or initiatives. However, it’s easier for an incoming outsider to overhaul or reverse prior decisions or move those who might have had a hand in implementing them. (See “CEO 1000: Insiders vs. outsiders.”)
Risks from promoting inside the organization
Incoming insiders have their own set of challenges especially when they change members of the management team with whom they might have enjoyed positive working relationships. An incoming insider needs to be sensitive to how colleagues might perceive these employment decisions, convey the importance of having the right team and get alignment from the rest of the executive team and/or board. (See tinyurl.com/y4pxy2d3.)
If one day you were a member of the team and the next you were its manager, you remember how your former peers had to adjust their perceptions of you in your new role. You might have had to have one-to-one conversations with some so they could perceive you as a highly capable leader, recalibrate their relationships with you and so they and you could communicate mutual expectations.
Let’s talk baseball for a minute
Board members who opt to hire CEOs from outside their organizations should read Michael Lewis’ 2003 book,Moneyball(W.W. Norton & Company) or see the Brad Pitt movie of the same name. This is the story of the Oakland Athletics’ baseball team that exploited — disrupted is a better descriptor — industry market inefficiencies to experience one of the best seven-year runs in franchise history.
Instead of traditionally loading the team with superstar athletes, the Athletics focused on developing the existing roster of lesser-known talent that could play more than one position well, and had overall position-by-position balance and depth off the bench — so all players at one specific position had equal talent. The Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros followed the same strategy, and each won World Series championships. (However, unfortunately, both teams were later caught cheating.) See “MLB reveals Red Sox’ cheating scandal, tainting yet another championship team“).
Bringing talent up through the ranks
Baseball teams have learned to develop talent by bringing players through minor league teams. They learn systems, work with teammates and team coaches, improve technical skills and increase knowledge of the game.
From my lifelong interest (and Little League involvement) in the sport, I’ve found that baseball players mature in structured environments. Their organizations mentor them to handle fame, fortune and distractions of the big-league bright lights. Individual players function better as a cohesive team rather than relying on the one or two home-run sluggers or the pitching ace throwing physics-defying sliders and curve balls at helpless hitters.
The baseball analogy parallels what happens when some organizations go outside their corporate walls to reel in superstar C-suite executives by dangling excessive compensation. In Moneyball, author Lewis tells of the relationship of insiders versus outsiders (organizations pay groomed insiders less than those they hire from outside) and the ever-increasing capitalist demands of market efficiencies — to which professional baseball isn’t immune.
Global leadership development is using Moneyball principles
According to a TechNavio market research report summary, the global corporate leadership training market from 2020 through 2024 is expected to post a compound annual growth rate of 14% or about US$26.7 billion.
TechNavio’s research also shows that organizations are increasingly spending on leadership training because it’s more cost-effective for organizations to fill senior positions from within their hierarchies rather than hire external resources. (See “Global Corporate Leadership Training Market 2020-2024.”)
That’s what I call “Moneyball Leadership,” which is about building depth, creating engaging relationships at all levels over time and strengthening positive influence throughout organizations. Organizations are quickly recognizing leadership succession training is essential to efficient functioning and financial health. (See the figure below.)
Old School Leadership Model (left); Moneyball Leadership Model (right)
However, all’s not rosy for succession planning because organizations might not always find their managers are willing to move into top positions. In 2019, DDI, a global leadership consulting firm, developed its Frontline Leader Project. The endeavor, which surveyed more than 1,000 leaders and executives, found that only one in 10 wants a seat in the C-suite, 34 percent of managers would like to move up just one level into an operational leadership position and 11 percent had no interest in steering the ship in a CEO position.
Organizations must recognize high-potential managers earlier in their leadership development processes, such as a first-base coach who shows promise as a manager. They must prioritize player growth into those ever-expanding roles and identify select candidates for higher leadership succession over their careers as team leaders, coaches, managers and perhaps even in positions in the organization’s front office.
Batter up!
Apply the Moneyball Leadership Model within your organization to:
Identify internal talent
Teach them your systems
Grow them into leaders who understand your people, culture and processes, and then let them shine
Share the why behind the how and vice-versa to help others receive the clarity of vision for moving forward
Keep asking others, “Are there any obstacles that might prevent you from achieving your objectives?”
Listen and pay attention to the sights and sounds that will help prevent and deter threats to the enterprise, such as fraud.
Ensure managers understand that building connections with others takes precedence over claiming authority over them. They can’t have faith in your organization without believing and trusting in who you are. Take the time to nurture your own Triple-A talent so they can more easily put together consecutive winning fiscal seasons rather than using the Wall Street scorecard of quarter-by-quarter (the equivalent of inning-by-inning) results.
After all, it doesn’t matter who’s ahead at the seventh-inning stretch; what matters is who’s winning playing by the rules at the end of the game.
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Leadership is a hot topic today and training and development budgets worldwide will be increasing through 2022 to better develop leaders. According to C-Suite executives, the most sought-after skills for future leaders are soft skills, and of those soft skills, leadership presence tops the list.
Presence defies a one-size-fits-all definition, but someone with presence has been described as “a feeling that person radiates when others observe how he or she gracefully or seamlessly interacts with other people, other environments, and different incidents and occasions.”
There are universal principles at play in our everyday activities – at work, at home, at play – that allow us to be both influencers and be influenced; and be persuaders and be persuaded. Learning these principles can move you toward profound personal change and serve as a driving force for your individual and business success.
Indeed, the skillful application of these principles can create a distinct advantage to those who understand how to use them
Over my 30-year career leading people and projects for Fortune 100 companies, I’ve identified four characteristics of leaders that exude presence: (1) They know how to engage others; (2) they know how to position their expertise and value; (3) they know how to use their expertise and value to influence decisions in their favor; and (4) they can easily convert other people to their position, their cause, their ideas, and their proposals.
E.P.I.C. Results™ Process
Engagement, Positioning, and Influence are three important characteristics of presence-driven leaders that combine to create allies, advocates, clients, customers, fans and followers. These elements form the foundation of my E.P.I.C. Results™ Process for successful persuasion strategies (see the illustration below).
Let’s briefly examine the strategy and specific tactics behind “engagementality and connectworking,” authority positioning, and social-proof influence that will elevate your leadership presence.
Most decision processes can be divided into three phases, with specific approaches for each phase: a Pre-Engagement, Direct Engagement, and Post-Engagement phases (see the table below). To establish a connection with decision makers, the pre-engagement phase uses approaches that rely on interacting through the social media channels of those decision makers. You want to establish familiarity, trust, and even a degree of likability with decision makers that makes it easy to directly engage (virtual or in person) with them.
The Three Phases of Engagement in Decision Processes
“Engagementality™” is a mindset to alway be in an engagement mode to discover opportunities for deeper connection. “Connectworking™” is similarly a mindset that takes traditional networking to a new level of effectiveness by serving as a “connector” among people in and outside of your network.
Authority Positioning
Authority positioning is using the elements shown in the table below to better position your branded value, expertise, and authority with decision makers. These elements are especially useful during the Direct Engagement Phase.
7 Elements of Authority Positioning for the Direct Engagement Phase
Social Proof Influence
We know from many studies that when people are uncertain, they seek out actions of others to guide their own actions. That’s why we read reviews of movies, restaurants, vacation spots. It’s faster and easier to rely on the opinions of others who have previous experience with our planned actions than have to personally investigate the many variables to determine what to watch, where to eat, and where to stay when travelling. More often than not, social proof is our friend rather than our foe; however, follow former President Reagan’s advice to “trust but verify” these short cuts when in doubt.
The following list of social proof examples are considered “weapons of influence” because we use them to persuade potential decision makers, clients, customers and others (relying on the opinions of others who have previous experience with our products or services) of our branded value and expertise.
LinkedIn endorsements
Client/customer testimonials
Awards and honors
Book cover blurbs
Articles in professional journals
Quantified achievements
Why Does This Work?
There are three major (and simple) reasons these weapons of influence work with others:
The brain’s capacity to create associations and strengthen them with repeated exposure…THAT creates familiarity, which leads to trust, which leads to access, which leads to brand preference, which leads to conversion, compliance, cooperation
We have a preference to be around people we like
We have a preference to be around people like us
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Watch for Donn’s book in 2021: You Can’t Lead an Infantry Charge If You Think You Look Funny Sitting on a Horse
All too often, so many candidates walk into job/contract/promotion interviews wearing fear on their faces and displaying anxiety in their body language. Hiring managers and other decision makers pick up on these unintentional signals and are already marking their scorecards just based on those first visual impressions. Influence wears a suit of confidence into such meetings.
Does this sound like you? You can change that by assuming control of and even influencing the interview process by (1) Being confident in your professional experience and expertise and by (2) realizing that you are interviewing THEM to determine whether their organization is a good fit for you and your career.
Most candidates when asked at job interviews if they have any questions, they typically respond with “Uh, no.” There’s one other strategy you can use to boost your chances of getting a job offer and that’s with three critical questions you ask the hiring manager. No, they aren’t “When do my options vest?”, “When do I get three weeks vacation?” or “Do you have a work from home policy?” The questions you ask must be structured to plant the seed of you already being hired and working at that company.
You must have a strategy for the types of questions that “pre-suade” hiring managers and other decision makers to extend offers to you as THE short-list candidate.
Interviews: Opportunity to Engage, Position, and Influence Decisions
There’s no doubt about it: That first visual impression will influence how the rest of the interview proceeds. Assume an air of professionalism and confidence accompanied by a smile, a firm handshake, and appropriate attire, and you’re off and running. You’ve researched the company, you know your résumé inside and out so you can provide articulate responses to questions from interviewers.
But have you prepared your “pre-suasive” questions and comments?
“Pre-Suasion” is the Art and Science of Changing States of Mind
Pre-suasion is a revolutionary technique to influence and persuade others, as detailed by Dr. Robert Cialdini in his book by the same title. It’s the artful channeling of attention that leads to positive outcomes by focusing someone’s attention just prior to requesting a relevant action. It’s placing that attention in a receptive state prior to a request or question being made. One of the most effective uses of pre-suasion is in interview situations where you can direct someone’s attention to a state or scenario to your benefit.
First Set Up Your Questions for Interviewers
Your purpose (obviously) is to get the job, contract, or promotion. There are strategies you can use to help lead hiring managers and decision makers along that path to extend an offer to you.
First, don’t just describe the types of projects or work you have experience with; anyone can do that. What decision makers are looking for is evidence of future value of expertise. You don’t do that by belaboring your past accomplishments; you turn the skills, knowledge, and expertise you used in those achievements into how they will contribute to the strategic direction of the organization going forward.
Example: “Have you experience with analytics software on large projects?”
Response: “Yes, I have used several platforms for BI on a few large projects…”
Better: “Yes, my proven expertise with BI analytics platforms such as yours has consistently reduced the time necessary to discover data patterns…” (implies a future value of expertise).
When It’s Time to Ask YOUR Questions
As you formulate your responses to questions that imply a future value of expertise, you are placing the interviewer’s attention in a receptive state to your branded value and expertise before you ask your questions. Here are three questions that are designed to place you AND the interviewer/decision maker in a future state of working together since you have already primed that individual’s attention to the future value of your expertise:
Question 1:“What is your highest priority project and how do you envision us working together on it?” (Speak to the crisis or situation, not the individual)
Question 2: “What is your greatest need on the team or project, and how do you see my expertise adding value there from Day 1?” (Speak to the crisis or situation, not the individual)
Question 3:“Do you have any other questions or concerns I can address right now about how I will contribute to these efforts?”
Bonus question if you REALLY believe in yourself: “If you don’t have any other questions of me, is there any reason why we can’t have a conversation now of a starting salary and a start date?” (They may say, “Yes, we have other candidates to interview,” but it shows that you are an assertive go-getter ready to get started.)
You have primed the decision maker during the interview process to be more receptive to the future value of your expertise. Continue the pre-suasion by asking questions that place you and the interviewer or decision maker working together in the future, you’ve established three things:
You have maximized the Continuum of Belief™ in the future value of your expertise (“Continuum of Belief” is the idea that the further along you proceed in an interview process, the stronger the belief others have of your expertise and ability to deliver).
You have created a Mindworm Contagion™ in the mind of the interviewer/decision maker (“Mindworm Contagion” is when some element of your brand/expertise remains top of mind with decision makers, like a song “earworm” you can’t get out of your head) such that the value/expertise associated with your name will be at or near the top of the job-offer list.
You have minimized Irreducible Unpredictability™ in the hiring process (“Irreducible Unpredictability” is the point where – given all expertise, experience being equal among candidates – the offer is likely extended to the person with the highest “likeability” factor).
Such influence and persuasion strategies are used in all types of negotiations; in fact, influence strategies and language is what keeps the business world moving each and every day.
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The biggest challenge people have when working toward professional advancement is understanding how to communicate the value their expertise and experience can bring to decision makers. Whether it’s a new job, a promotion, or signing on a new client or customer, the message must be about how your expertise and value solve their problems.
When someone asks you, “What do you do?” do you simply recite your job title? Do you parrot your job description? That’s how most people answer that question, but both responses fail to extend the conversation that was started. It’s possible that somewhere hidden in that conversation that didn’t happen, a golden opportunity could have presented itself for a job or signing on a new client or customer.
We’ve all heard the advice about creating an “elevator pitch” — that 30-second persuasive sales pitch you’ve mastered about your product or service. Trouble is, the elevator pitch doesn’t work very well in the 21st century because it’s too self-serving and reeks of sales. Nobody likes to be pitched to anymore (unless you play baseball).
The elevator pitch has become marketing speak with such terms such as “value proposition” or “unique selling proposition” which only adds to the confusion. Do you even really care about being able to express the value you bring to current and potential client, customers, or manager? (Your response should be “Yes!”)
Regardless of whether you are a first-line manager, a director, or any other role, we all should have a way that more clearly communicates the value of that experience we provide to others — and that value can be something as simple as a brief talking point. Talking points are far more effective when they are divided into two parts: First is a setup statement that is offered in response to the question, “What is it that you do?” or “What line of work are you in?” Your response to the setup statement must be designed as a “hook” to get the party to ask, “How do you do that?”
Here’s an example: I was at a conference networking event last year when I was approached by an individual who started some small talk. I could see by his name badge he was director-level executive. I asked him, “So, what are you looking to take away from this conference?” and his response gave me information I could use for possible followup. He asked me what I did and I replied, “I help executives just like you lead smarter, act faster, and get breakthrough results while being heard and getting noticed.” He then asked, “How do you do that?” which then opened the door for me to convey the value and brand experience my programs provide to executives.
Three important characteristics you need to be a presence-driven leader
Leadership is a hot topic today and training and development budgets worldwide will be increasing through 2022 to better develop leaders. According to C-Suite executives, the most sought-after skills for future leaders are soft skills, and of those soft skills, leadership presence tops the list.
Presence defies a one-size-fits-all definition, but someone with presence has been described as “a feeling that a person radiates when others observe how they gracefully, or seamlessly, interact with other people, other environments and different incidents and occasions.” Leadership presence embraces the elements of emotional intelligence, and more.
Engagement, positioning and influence are three important characteristics of presence-driven leaders that combine to create allies, advocates, clients, customers, fans and followers.
Working with setup statements and talking points will accelerate the ongoing development of your own platform of value and expertise. The hard work comes after where you’ve spent hours developing and fine-tuning your setup statements and talking points to paint a picture of the brand experience clients, customers, and others get interacting with your company, your product, or your service.
Understanding how to: (1) apply engagement, positioning, and influence strategies to strengthen your leadership presence and, (2) designing those “pre-suading” questions to ask decision makers that place you in a future scenario of being hired and working together with them is the pathway to leadership success.
Influence is the grease that keeps business moving every day
Over my 30-year career I’ve had the opportunity to speak with other Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 executives and leaders. I’ve asked them “what’s the one thing you look for with stellar talent – someone with natural leadership potential – that makes a candidate stand out?” and almost to a letter they say, “It’s presence.”
When I ask them “what is presence” they tell me, “Well, presence is a feeling you get when you observe how someone gracefully or seamlessly interacts with other people, other environments, and different incidents and occasions.” It’s what the French call “je ne sais quoi” — it’s a “special something” that almost defies satisfactory explanation. You can’t measure it; it’s something that somebody has.
Is presence innate? Can we acquire it? Many of the people that we admire, that we follow – maybe we’ve been mentored by – we can incorporate some of those qualities into our own process of leadership moving forward. But I believe that truly focused presence leadership, that high-level leadership with presence, is part of an individual’s personality.
Describing presence is like trying to describe a summer breeze: you can feel it on your skin; you can hear it as it rustles leaves in trees; and you can observe its effect on laundry on a clothesline, or a flag waving on a flagpole. You can only describe how a breeze affects things it comes in contact with and not “the breeze” itself.
Over my my career, I’ve identified four characteristics of leaders that exude presence: (1) They know how to actively engage others; (2) they know how to position their expertise and value; (3) they know how to use their expertise and value to influence decisions in their favor; and (4) they can easily convert other people to their side of the table or their side of the argument or their side of the issue.
Influential and persuasive intelligence is a personal quality that enhances emotional intelligence (the arbiter between the rational brain and emotional brain), and evokes in others (subordinates, stakeholders, peers, potential clients, customers, family members, etc.) a mostly voluntary desire to comply with, to follow, or to align with that person’s vision, position, beliefs, or policies. It is the beneficial application of influential intelligence, along with emotional intelligence.
Influential and persuasive intelligence is too often confused with power and position when, in fact, it is the beneficial, positive, and intelligent application of engagement, influence, and persuasion in stewardship roles. Adlai Stevenson III once said, you can’t lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse; in other words, you have to know and believe you have that “special something.” We could probably use the term “charisma” to capture what presence is to a certain degree, but charisma is also part of that emotional intelligence that strong leaders will also embrace.
Charisma allows you to put forth your thoughts, position, or your beliefs in front of other people and maybe convert them to your side of the issue. Presence-filled charisma is what allows you to do so by making those people also feel like the most important people in the room. And nothing feels better than making someone else feel validated, acknowledged, and interesting.
Presence really is influential intelligence because that’s the way it manifests itself. There is no “ten things to do to build presence” recipe; there’s no “Top ten presence checklist.” Presence is more like your shadow than a suit you put on or take off at the end of the day. It’s always with you presence, will always be with you when you’re in the light or outside of the light in the shadows.
Want to learn how to implement Influential Intelligence in your leadership development?Schedule a conversation with me and let’s see how I can help your organization accelerate out of the chaos.
Employee Disengagement and Lost Productivity May be Greater During the COVID Pandemic
While the basic corporate operational and infrastructure challenges going into the New NOW may crowd meeting agendas for some time to come, such focus and priorities are essential, but there’s more to it than that.
Companies everywhere must still address the issues that have plagued profitability and shareholder value for years—and will continue to do so in the New NOW:
There’s more to it because you still must retain your high-performing employees
There’s more to it because you still must address employee disengagement and lost productivity
There’s more to it because you still need emotionally intelligent leaders
There’s more to it because you must still develop innovative cultures
There’s more to it because leadership succession planning is still a challenge
There’s more to it because there’s more pressure from social-conscious investors for you to work closer with stakeholders vs. only shareholders
There’s more to it because disruptive technologies demand rapidly evolving strategies
There’s more to it because of the need for whole brain (analytical and soft skills) leadership
There’s more to it because you still need influencers and thought leaders at the executive leadership level
Frontline leaders are the primary bond between your company and your people, where they manage more than 80% of the workforce. These people are the defining factor between success and failure. What’s more, according to Development Dimensions International (DDI), the global 60% of frontline leaders have never received training for their role, so they’re likely feeling anxious, frustrated, uncertain, and unprepared. And that’s without the added stress of wondering what the New NOW will look like.
Get ahead of the curve by aligning your leaders with strategies for emerging from and accelerating out of the chaos. If you’d like to discuss some ideas for how to do that, let’s talk. You can schedule a conversation with me here.
Donn LeVie Jr. STRATEGIES, LLC MB 