Do We Equally Value Warmth and Competence in Leaders?

Do We Equally Value Warmth and Competence in Leaders?

December 11, 2018

This question sparks great debates in my leadership classes. Many argue that competence is critical to “getting the job done” so as a skill it must edge out warmth. Others rebut that without warmth, do we really want to work with that leader? After all, leaders can’t get much done alone. So, warmth plays an important part in the mix to the extent that it must be an equal partner. Or, is it more than equal?

Warmth as Giving

In his book, Give and Take, Adam Grant (Wharton University) describes researcher Shalom Schwartz’s findings on the values and principles that matter most to people cross-culturally:

• ·         Helpfulness (working for the well-being of others)
• ·         Responsibility (being dependable)
• ·         Social justice (caring for the disadvantaged)
• ·         Compassion (responding to the needs of others)

In Grant’s view, these behaviours together reflect an orientation toward giving. In the many case studies he describes, such influencing behaviours are contagious in groups and teams. They create an environment of reciprocity which in turn boosts collaboration and productivity.

Warmth as the Conduit of Influence

Harvard University’s Amy Cuddy in her book Presence concurs that warmth is the conduit of influence –the medium through which trust develops and ideas travel. We seem to have a built in survivor and belonging sense that consistently picks up words and signals linked to warmth faster than to competence. Yet we tend to evaluate ourselves on competence first but others on warmth! According to Amy Cuddy, if we put competence first, it undermines relationships, the necessary bonding essential for real teamwork. Thus, the balance is toward a genuine caring for others (warmth) that fuels a strong partnership with competence. 

Grant characterizes this as powerless communication used by great coaches in various sports arenas and successful leaders anywhere. Why? It sparks the sharing of ideas, innovations and ultimately group performance. The skills show up as asking for advice, showing vulnerability (not being a know-it-all with a big ego), and being genuinely interested in learning from and supporting others. Those who also study leadership effectiveness echo Grant, using the terms humility and curious to describe how warmth impacts others.

Will AI Supplant Warmth?

As we move increasingly toward an AI era of robots, self-driving cars and big data management in general, how will the balance of warmth and competence play out? Columbia University’s Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, an International guru on leadership development, predicts that the soft skills will become even more crucial. In his view, AI will increasingly take care of the raw cognitive processing of facts and information. The agile parts of leadership - curiosity, emotional stability, humility, adaptability, vision and constant engagement (with, for example, front line workers who likely know more than you do) will supplant an “I am the decider” leadership. 

The Tango

What’s the take away then? Of course competence is critical. But without being leavened by warmth, competence will have less opportunity to grow and be in sync with what people want and need to bring their best selves to any challenge.

Perhaps the warmth/competence relationship is like dancing the Tango. It is a partner dance with diverse influences from African, Native American and European cultures. The Tango’s origins - musical gatherings of slaves and the lower classes in Argentina and Uruguay in the 1880s – speak to the need for belonging, inclusion and community. To this day great Tango dancers entertain, inspire, lift spirits and bring people together. Prowess at the Tango for its best effects thus is essential. But, without a huge dose of warmth, how could anyone competently dance the Tango? 

Linda Pickard is an organizational psychologist, experiential educator and coach.

Take a read break

I’ve been an avid reader forever probably because my mother is. As a young child, I couldn’t help notice she perpetually had her nose in books. To this day she is the same. For comfort and a break from the stresses of life, books were and are her escape. Is there something in this for any of us whether leaders, managers or members of the vital teams that power all organizations?

Various research sources indicate that vast and deep reading helps us to connect disparate ideas thereby adding to the creative journey. For example, I’ve been told that when I am in front of groups as a facilitator-teacher, I seem to effortlessly pull out stories and all manner of peripheral and supporting information on the fly, depending on the direction of the class discussion. I don't even know what I know until a trigger comment from someone. Then, I have to watch that I don't lose my audience by deviating too long from where we were on the agenda! At the least reading broadens my thinking and helps me “entertain”.

But there is a real benefit to reading that it often overlooked – its stress-reducing power. According to John Coleman’s August 15, 2012 HBR blog, “For those who want to lead, read”, six minutes of reading can reduce stress by 68%.

Now that’s an attractor in today’s far too fast-paced work environments! But it all depends on what one is reading, doesn’t it? Heavy duty reports don’t qualify.

So all you managers out there, take out your novel and set an example that reading breaks - fiction or non-fiction - contribute to productivity not the other way around. Water cooler gatherings have finally gained respectability as they help social cohesion, innovation, employee engagement and well-being. Now it's time to put read breaks of any kind in that same category.

The Semicolons in Our Lives are Doing Battle with Our Twitter Brains

Evolution has hardwired us to read but there is no genetic map for it. The “expert reading brain” comes into being through parents, teachers and self-study. Its thickly branched and interconnected cells are the result of deep, focused attention and concentration on the pages of a non-networked book or article. According to Nicholas Carr (The Shallows) and a chorus of neuroscientists, hyperlinked reading triages our attention inviting multi-tasking and the potential for a “techno-brain” less able to deal with complexity.


Should we be worried? Yes, because the problems we face are “swampier”. These “semi-colon” situations have no technical recipe upon which we can draw. We have to learn as we go and that requires a deep thinker type of brain and skill.

Our workplaces past and present have never been very friendly to slow, concentrated thinking. Packed agendas and back-to back meetings in a hurry up, make-a-decision-fast atmosphere, most often create too much noise for creative thought. In the not-too-distant past, holidays, evenings and weekends offered some respite for re-charging and reflection. But, now the 24/7 social media tsunami is escalating the battle with our evolutionary need to concentrate to survive. Or is it?

We are evolving as did our ancestors. How we do so might be more the point.

Personally I am a Twitter and blog fan. I find those media stimulating and information-rich. I am learning more because of my interconnections with others. These links are not distracting. They instead spark all kinds of ideas which I record. They lead to research pathways I might never have discovered. Put simply – I have added to not subtracted from my thinking brain.

However, I do follow a structure which helps my “expert reading brain” to stay alive:

1. I seldom click on hyperlinks until I have read the whole article;

2. I take notes highlighting key points and then adding my own thoughts about their meaning for my habits and challenges;

3. If I don’t have time to concentrate when I encounter the new information, I set aside time in the evening or morning – about an hour every day – to review and focus on the ideas flowing through Twitter and other sources;

4. Although I have a Kobo, I plan to mix reading “regular” with e-books. Apparently the hands-on nature of a “real” book, like handwriting, is a more efficient and possibly meaningful route to our brains.

Nicholas Christakis, professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University, claims that we are in the very early stages of the new biosocial science. It is helping us to understand why we behave for better or worse.

At the heart of the matter is wisdom. Without it, we are only left with information. To quote Confucius:

Wisdom can be learned by reflection, the noblest; imitation, the easiest and experience, the bitterest.

We need all three.

Can You Improve Your Personality? Yes, and...

I am often asked about the nature of personality. What is it? Am I stuck with it? Can I change it if I want to? By association, can leaders and managers make improvements in their personalities? That is, can a terrible boss become a wonderful boss? Well, that might be asking for too much unless the boss has an epiphany…and…there is some wiggle room for improvement.

I like Manfred Kets de Vries take on personality in his book, The Leader on the Couch:

Personality is the same as character, the sum of deeply engrained patterns of behavior. It’s the stamp impressed on us by nature and nurture, a composite of habits we choose and develop and that gradually drive us. It is central to the way we perceive and present ourselves. Personality (character) shapes ideals, values, beliefs, patterns of information-processing, moral compass and leadership style.

Whew! Rather all-encompassing. This is going to take some work to change.

De Vries is quite optimistic in this regard. You can de-script the unhelpful parts of your “inner theatre”. You can change your perceptions and habits from both your genetic inheritance and early experiences. You can liberate yourself somewhat from the confines of your “programmed” personality, if you wish to.

Twin studies confirm de Vries research. You can seize the opportunity for personal growth because personality has a large “nurture” component. Although how smart you are is significantly determined by the genes from your parents, personality is only about 45% heritable, according to Robert Plomin, Professor of Behavioural Genetics at King’s College, London. You can become smarter in your relationships, beliefs, how you assess information, your ethics and your habits overall. In short, you tweak your personality in good ways.

You can become more conscious. That’s the really good news. Just takes some work at thinking about your thinking and then practicing new habits until they stick.

Are You the Salad Bowl or the Salad?

Finally brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on those things.

---Philippians 4:8

In Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

I was introduced to the salad bowl/salad concept many moons ago when immersed in an intense personal growth exploration phase. It goes like this:

When confronted with an issue or a conflict which provokes emotionally-charged views, do you get right in there and fight with the cucumbers and tomatoes or do you take the role of the salad bowl, holding the entire salad in place for the sake of all?

The Tucson, Arizona shooting rampage reminded me of the significant role of any leader and any person in setting and managing the emotional tone of each and every difference of opinion. This is the least we should expect from our political leaders. Better to be the salad bowl with the aim of making everything work than inciting riots among the salad ingredients.

Our deep limbic system, the seat of our emotions, is much older than our rational brain. It generates our first reaction to all that goes on around us. At the same time, it is directly connected to our executive brain, the pre-frontal cortex which helps us with judgment, sifting and sorting information, thinking about our thinking and ultimately with good (or bad) decision-making. But when the deep limbic system is in overdrive, reason goes out the window. We know from our family environments, that one upset leads to another at times spiraling our of control. The opposite is true too. So is the case in an organization or a nation.

Leaders do set the emotional tone. Each of us sets the emotional tone. Will it be rhetoric twisting the truth to bash those with whom we differ?Or, will it be issue-focused, not person-focused, with the aim of finding good solutions to shared, vexxing problems with no obvious solutions?

Dacher Keltner, author of Born to be Good emphasizes that self-interest, competition and vigilance have been built into our evolutionary makeup to survive. But, he explains that these tendencies are only half the story. "Homo reciprocans" is a more apt description of our social nature with emotions as the glue that binds. Emotions trump facts and figures. They are infectious, especially positive ones which open minds up to possibilities. Fear or negativity makes for more closed minds, reducing novel approaches to intractable problems. How does a leader deal with this responsibly to bring about change for the whole, critics and supporters alike? 

The "Jen ratio" is a tool that can help us cultivate being the salad bowl holding the whole rather than being one piece of the salad having no impact or inciting riots with other pieces, so to speak. "Jen" means "humane". The numerator (the salad bowl) refers to acts of kindness, compassion, awe, love and gratitude. It implies, "I am responsible" for the process and the results. The denominator (the salad) embodies the "bad" action when establishing one's character in relation to others. Such a person, who is "in the salad" is disdainful, critical, condescending and contemptuous. Each of us can track our "Jen ratio" and make improvements consciously.

So can leaders of nations. Keltner further explains in his book that "nations whose citizens bring out the good in others thrive because it generates trust". Trust facilitates "economic exchange with fewer transaction costs, adversarial settlements, discrimination and economic inequality."

Americans are united in grief now over the attack on Congressman Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people. But they are not united in responsibility. Time will tell. If politicians and pundits alike can choose the salad bowl as a stance for action, rather than the salad only and a positive Jen ratio as a continuous goal, always in need of calibration, issue by issue, conversation by conversation, the emotional tone in America might shift for the betterment of all.

Does fact-free leadership have to be a common fact of life?

I am a scientist at heart. Being curious all my life, I have pondered big questions and small. For example, if the universe did not exist, would there be nothing? But, what is nothing? Stephen Hawking and many other physicists have enlightened me somewhat but the nature of the universe still seems highly mysterious to me.

OK. That’s a little deep. Nevertheless, I get pretty riled up if it’s obvious that our leaders, particularly those in the political realm, fail to be like a scientist exploring all relevant facets of a situation.

For example, I watched an interview of Lawrence Martin recently about his book Harperland. He could hardly contain his exasperation at the extent to which under Stephen Harper’s leadership facts in any realm are routinely ignored, unless they align with his view. The foundation of Martin’s training in journalism is to seek the truth as it is currently understood and verify with multiple sources. Although knowledge is always in flux, looking for the best of what we know is a fairly good strategy for anyone, including those in leadership and management positions. Otherwise we risk going down pathways that can come back to haunt us.

Lawrence’s bottom line is that democracy is weakened when our political leaders do not pay attention to evidence when shaping policy and strategy. Since organizations in which we work are of necessity becoming more democratic in order to manage risk, innovate and survive, “fact-free” leadership at the political level let alone in an organization can cause unnecessary problems. Not being democratic in approach as a leader seems odd and out of synch with the prevailing view that leaders and managers benefit from being “adaptive” in light of “swampy” problems.

Much has been written on the role of personal bias in decision-making. It plagues us all and is particularly dangerous in organizations as numerous management researchers have documented. While we have some companies that are hundreds of years old, such as The Bay, Stora and Twinings, most fail in 50 years or less (Aries de Geus, The Living Company). Poor decision making is at the root of most failures.

Our cultural upbringing, education and experiences over time all conspire to blind us. To make good decisions requires hard work and time usually though teamwork. As we perpetually live in time-constrained environments and are faced with a vast universe of conflicting knowledge, it is easier to fall back on conventional wisdom until something disrupts it.

So, how do we test conventional wisdom before it boxes us in? How can we challenge our biases when we are not even sure what they are?

Richard Neustadt and Ernest May in their classic book, The Uses of History for Decision Makers offer a methodology:

1. What do you know?

2. What is unknown?

3. What are you presuming?

4. What is the situation like (from past history)?

5. How does the situation differ from others in the past?

6. What is the action supposed to accomplish?

After studying decisions both good and bad made by American Presidents in the 20th century, Neustadt and May concluded that past conditions can offer clues to future possibilities. Look back to look ahead, so to speak. A little bit of critical thinking can go a long way towards better decision making.

The ability to do critical thinking and problem-solving is one of the seven basic skills most often cited by educators for students to succeed in the knowledge economy according to Tony Wagner, a Harvard-based education expert and author of The Global Achievement Gap. Two others are collaborating across networks and curiosity with imagination. These apply equally well to the desired skills for people in the workplace especially for managers and leaders.

Fact-filled leadership with imagination will certainly help fill the global achievement gap. Einstein was right when he said that “the formulation of a problem is often more essential than the solution”. But this cannot happen without an open mind which counterbalances “fact-free” leadership.

It turns out that such openness can enlighten us, educate us and, as a consequence, change our minds. Such a journey is transformative or in Nelson Mandela’s words, “Education is the most powerful weapon with which you can change the world”. It is also a daily endeavour.

Leading in an Interconnected World: Black and White is Out, Wild Cards and Probabilities are In

The “revolutionary physics” of our world can’t be managed by thinking in black and white. Are we convinced yet?

The relentless onslaught of “surprises”, such as the Mexican swine flu, underscores that big brains are needed. Not just among leaders and managers. All of us. Whether we like it or not, we are being forced to anticipate, adapt and act speedily in the face of surprises and work harder and smarter on the anticipation part.

Educators have long recognized that the world is in dire need of and has a severe deficit of adaptive learners. The May-June 2009 Futurist has devoted almost the entire issue to anticipating and preparing for “wild cards”. As a backdrop, it reports that the Association of American Colleges and Universities is highlighting more than ever that critical reasoning and integrative thinking must be at the top of the skills list for all graduating students. While always an important goal, the drumbeat is getting louder.

Putting this into the context of leading and managing, we need a rapid escalation in the numbers of leaders and managers who are “adaptive”. These are men and women who can function well when conditions are not optimal or when situations are unpredictable. They can get on with the task demands when the problems are messy and require “thinking out of the box”, improvising and negotiating with others to seek out shared interests.

These capabilities are inherent requirements in high risk jobs in societies around the world. Military personnel, firefighters, police, airline pilots and paramedics, for example, know they must “think on their feet”, value the team and loosen up on hierarchy. Now, the rest of us must get on with adding “adaptive leadership” to our tool kit.

Where does one start? Based on what we know from leaders who succeed in the long run, the first step is to be open to this way of being. Not all of us have “open personalities”. Barack Obama does. George Bush did not to the degree necessary given the situations he faced. Openness is correlated with curiosity, creativity and love of learning. These can be cultivated. Messy situations provide perfect places in which to practice.

The dynamic forces of our world societies today better suit a leader like Barack Obama. He’s an outsider. He embraces “geeks”. He doesn’t separate the world into winners and losers. He’s on the lookout for what works. He’s ready to listen and learn. He knows he will be held accountable for mistakes that occur on his watch. He doesn’t fight unpredictability, he embraces it. He understands and works with probabilities.

Joshua Cooper Ramo expresses this way as a “quantum view” coined by the famous physicist Niels Bohr. In his book, The Age of the Unthinkable, Ramo describes the signal for activating the quantum view when you face something strange and “mad” in your environment such that your mind says, “Are you kidding?”

Ramo likes the gardening analogy for leadership used by Friedrich von Hayek in his acceptance speech for the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics. Hayek was quite disconcerted with our simple treatment of complex phenomena. He urged us not to try to bend history as “the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate growth by providing the right environment, in the manner a gardener does for his plants.” To do so requires a revolution, letting go of our view as architects or builders controlling a system to gardeners cultivating a living ecosystem.

From a leader-manager vantage point as well as a citizen of the world, “wild cards”, surprises, messy situations and probabilities become the welcome drivers of change.

Antidotes to Uncertainty: Adapt and Innovate

Financial history is a roller-coaster ride of ups and downs, bubbles and bursts, manias and panics, shocks and crashes.

---Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money

We are learning from our current worldwide financial crisis that the assessment of risk and uncertainty are two different concepts, two different thinking modes. Risk relates more to what we already know projected onto a number of future scenarios. As Niall Ferguson explains, risk is measureable uncertainty. That leaves real uncertainty as unmeasureable and thus as unknowable. Ferguson quotes John Maynard Keynes from his 1937 book General Theory: “There is no scientific basis upon which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know.” If only more of us were Ph.D. trained mathematicians!

Because surprises do happen despite our best efforts, leaders are in a bind. If the “long view” generated through strategic and scenario planning is limited (yet still relevant for mitigating risk), what can a leader do to off set disaster (uncertainty)? Darwin long ago gave us hints—adapt to our environment or perish. “The wild rewards the capable, adaptable and instinctive” explains Gino Ferri, professor at Laurentian University author of The Psychology of Wilderness Survival.

Anyone who has taken survival training knows that adapting is no easy matter. It’s down right scary. Leaders need some help!

Given the difficulty of figuring our how to adapt, one predominant message for leaders is to surround ourselves with great people who are diverse in expertise and who do not necessarily share our point-of-view. If “a team of rivals” worked well for Abraham Lincoln, as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin contends, then it should work now. This means reaching out to one’s broader network and replicating the “team of rivals” at other key nodes.

A second important message is to set up an environment for innovation. But, people can’t innovate well in an environment of fear. With daily job losses everywhere in the world, it’s hard not to feel anxious. The “team of rivals” approach fits well with setting the stage for novelty in thinking according to creativity researchers. The depth and breadth of knowledge elements available with minds from different disciplines and experiences increase the opportunity for unusual possibilities from which to choose---for real innovations. They suggest, in addition, that leaders consciously develop a positive emotional environment of surviving and thriving despite uncertainty to foster the creative spirit.

According to Teresa Amabile and others, there are spin-off bonuses to an emotionally positive work environment. The effect lasts for days. If the leader works at stoking the fires of hope and possibility, the positive feelings can last indefinitely, as well-documented in current brain research. These are greatly assisted by the joy individuals feel when generating ideas. It seems our brains and our beings thrive in such environments.

There is ample evidence from the history of long-lived organizations that adapting and innovating are central to survival. This is encouraging for all leaders grappling with the chaos we are facing.

Arie de Geus’s template for survival in a turbulent business environment provides further guidance. In his study of long-lived organizations (The Living Company), some more than 400 years old, he found four “habits”:

1. Sensitivity to the environment (learning and adapting)
2. Cohesion and identity (building a community with a cause)
3. Tolerance (ability to build constructive relationships with other entities within and outside itself)
4. Conservative financing (ability to govern its own growth and evolution effectively)

If, as Ferguson observes from his study of the history of money, that booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility, then, the lessons from surviving the “wild” can temper such ups and downs in our favour. This takes leadership of the right kind. Not greed. Not self interest. Not every “man” for himself. Instead, it heralds leadership which trumpets teamwork, respect for each other, including divergent views, and the certainty that together we can adapt, innovate, survive and prosper.

Paying Attention Goes a Long Way When Leading During Crises

Every interaction is a form of confrontation---a clash of priorities, a struggle of dignities, a battle of beliefs.

--- P. Koestenbaum, In LaBarre, 2000, p. 222

White water rafting is an apt metaphor for surviving in our current environment. Times of crisis, which keep rolling in one after another, starkly show whether a leader can adapt or not. Times of crisis test the leadership within each of us regardless of position. Many don’t make it because of an unwillingness to let go of old assumptions and beliefs and be present to the new. Where are you as a leader in this regard?

For the majority of us, turmoil first comes as external and beyond our control. But, whether we like it or not, our adaptation challenge is the same as those who are in the depth of the chaos: we are left to scramble without having been there before. How can we get beyond the fear and atmosphere of negativity from the terrorist attack in Mumbai and the continued turmoil in financial markets around the world? How can we help those around us both at work and at home cope with the escalating level of uncertainty?

This is the ultimate test of leadership: dealing with the emotional upheaval (yours and that of those who look to you for guidance) and the lack of information and best practices upon which to draw.

Paying attention helps. Robert Quinn in his book Building the Bridge As You Walk On It calls this “detached interdependence”. It means paying attention to what’s happening, transcending a need to control and allowing others to find and express their full capacities. It means being humble and strong and open to others’ views, yet not being attached to whether they like us or not. Underneath the stance of “paying attention” is clarity of our purpose---personally and organizationally. People “get” leaders and managers who are inspired by a reason for being no matter how dire the external circumstances are. They will rise to the occasion.

That’s why it’s fascinating to watch what various leaders do in these unusually turbulent times. What they do is typically a direct expression of their leadership beliefs in relating to people and getting the job done. What they do becomes an internal moral challenge: to serve one’s own interests or those whom they serve. It is a challenging polarity, as Quinn likes to remind us.

An example is the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods. In confronting his firm’s role in causing people to die from an outbreak of listeriosis in August 2008, he demonstrated this moral choice. Michael McCain quickly closed down the suspected Toronto plant and apologized profusely. He repeatedly used words to the effect that “the buck stops here”. McCain did not finger point and he kept the lines of communication open with the media. His pain was obvious, showing his own vulnerability but at the same time his resolve.

In the December issue of the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business McCain said he was doing what was right. “The core principle here was to first do what’s in the best interests of public health, and second to be open and transparent in taking accountability.” Although he emphasized that the handling of the situation was very much about his team not only himself (“It’s just what we are”.), he was reluctant to identify the obvious---his team was dependent on his core values and his willingness to be adaptive.

There is much more to the Maple Leaf story yet to be told. How McCain discovered the greatness within himself to “do the right thing” will become another interesting layer. How he struggled and the mistakes he made while trying to figure his way through the horrible situation will be most informative for preparing others when calamity strikes.

Quinn has some tips and comments related to leading and adapting during great uncertainty which likely mirror some of what McCain did:

--recognize that excellence requires you to go where you have not been before
--understand that leaving the comfort zone is terrifying
--in high uncertainty, you cannot rely on knowledge
--you must surrender your sense of control and begin to learn in real time
--in uncertainty and learning, you must continually clarify the desired result
--keep it simple. Establish a few operating rules, and move forward
--the learning process is improvisational; you must create as you go
--you launch a thousand ships knowing most will sink
--it is normal to be scared
--listen carefully to criticism
--forget self-interest and focus on collective success
--give yourself time to process feedback and get through the emotions
--trust yourself and others

If paying attention is a primary tool for stabilizing a crisis and leading effectively in general, being prepared is equally important. The Mombai massacre unfortunately revealed that India was not prepared, especially at the local level. The Taj hotel burned for more than three hours before firefighters arrived. Numerous police personnel were killed. The soldiers struggled for three days to gain control.

The recent crises in India (terrorism), the United States (financial implosion) and Canada (listeriosis outbreak) make one thing very clear: smart strategic and tactical planning and good governance are essential parts of a leader’s tool kit. Adaptive leadership is the thread that binds.