7 Habit of
Unsuccesful
Executives
from Eric Jackson and Forbes.com
www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/02/the-sevenhabits-of-spectacularly-unsuccessful-executives/
Habit #1
They see themselves and their
companies as dominating their
environment
Why Problem: Unlike successful
leaders, failed leaders who never
question their dominance fail
torealize they are at the mercy of
changing circumstances.They vastly
overestimate the extent to which
they actually control events and
vastly underestimate the role of
chance and circumstance in their
success.
Habit #2
They identify so completely
with the company that there
is no clear boundary between
their personal interests and
their corporation’s interests
Why Problem: Instead of
treating companies as
enterprises that they needed to
nurture, failed leaders treated
them as extensions of
themselves. And with that, a
“private empire” mentality took
hold.
 They think they have all the answers
Habit #3
 Why Problem: Leaders who are invariably crisp
and decisive tend to settle issues so quickly they
have no opportunity to grasp the ramifications.
Worse, because these leaders need to feel they
have all the answers, they aren’t open to learning
new ones.
Habit #4
 They ruthlessly eliminate anyone
who isn’t completely behind
them
 Why Problem: The problem with
this approach is that it’s both
unnecessary and destructive. CEOs
don’t need to have everyone
unanimously endorse their vision
to have it carried out
successfully. In fact, by
eliminating all dissenting and
contrasting viewpoints,
destructive CEOs cut themselves
off from their best chance of
seeing and correcting problems as
they arise.
 They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed
with the company image
Habit #5
 Why Problem: The problem is that amid all the
media frenzy and accolades, these leaders’
management efforts become shallow and
ineffective. Instead of actually accomplishing
things, they often settle for the appearance of
accomplishing things.
They underestimate obstacles
Habit #6
Why Problem: Part of the allure of being a CEO is
the opportunity to espouse a vision. Yet, when
CEOs become so enamored of their vision, they
often overlook or underestimate the difficulty of
actually getting there. And when it turns out that
the obstacles they casually waved aside are more
troublesome than they anticipated, these CEO
have a habit of plunging full-steam into the abyss.
They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in
the past
Habit #7
Why Problem: Frequently, CEOs who fall prey to
this habit owe their careers to some “defining
moment,” a critical decision or policy choice that
resulted in their most notable success. It’s usually
the one thing that they’re most known for and the
thing that gets them all of their subsequent
jobs. The problem is that after people have had the
experience of that defining moment, if
theybecome the CEO of a large company, they
allow their defining moment to define the company
as well – no matter how unrealistic it has become.
Summarizing
the 7 Habits
 Unsuccessful executives do not seek out new
information and are not open to this information
when it arrives. Consequently, their competitors
find success to be much easier!
Competence: Is
Your Boss Faking
It?
FROM JEFFREY KLUGER OF TIME MAGAZINE
H T T P : / / W W W.T I M E . C O M / T I M E / H E A LT H / A R T I C L E / 0 , 8 5 9 9 , 1 8 7 8 3 5 8 , 0 0 . H T M L ? C N N = Y E S
F RO M A S TU DY P U B L ISHE D IN TH E JO U RN AL O F P E RS O NALITY AN D S O CIAL P SYCH OLOGY
( B Y C A M E R O N A N D E R S O N A N D G AV I N K I L D U F F )
How to be a Leader?
Social psychologists know that one
way to be viewed as a leader in any
group is simply to act like one.
Speak up, speak well and offer lots
of ideas, and before long, people
will begin doing what you say.
Experiment
Four teams (either all-male or all-female) are given the task of
organizing a non-profit. Whoever does best gets $400.
After the teams performed their work for a fixed amount of time, the
members of each group rated one another on both their level of
influence on the group and, more important, their level of competence.
The work sessions were videotaped, and a group of independent
observers performed the same evaluations, as did Anderson and Kilduff.
All three sets of judges reached the same conclusions.
Consistently, the group members who spoke up the most were rated
the highest for such qualities as "general intelligence" and "dependable
and self-disciplined." The ones who didn't speak as much tended to
score higher for less desirable traits, including "conventional and
uncreative."
Second Test
"More-dominant individuals achieved influence in their groups in part
because they were seen as more competent by fellow group members,"
Anderson and Kilduff write.
But so what? Maybe they were more competent. Isn't it possible that
people who talk more do so because they simply have more to
contribute?
To test that, Anderson and Kilduff ran a second study with a new team
of volunteers in which the skill being tested was a lot more quantifiable
than forming a nonprofit green group. This time it was math.
Second Results
Once again, the volunteers were divided into fours in competition for a
$400 prize, but now their assigned task was to work as teams to solve
computational problems from previous versions of the Graduate
Management Aptitude Test (GMAT).
Before the work began, the participants informed the researchers —
but not their team members — of their real-world scores on the math
portion of the SAT.
When the work was finished, the people who spoke up more were
again likelier to be described by peers as leaders and likelier to be rated
as math whizzes.
Finding Pretenders
…any speaking up at all seemed to do. Participants earned recognition for
being the first to call out an answer, but also for being the second or third
— even if all they did was agree with what someone else had said. Merely
providing some scrap of information relevant to solving the problem
counted too, as long as they did so often enough and confidently enough.
When Anderson and Kilduff checked the participants' work, however, a lot
of pretenders were exposed. Repeatedly, the ones who emerged as leaders
and were rated the highest in competence were not the ones who offered
the greatest number of correct answers. Nor were they the ones whose SAT
scores suggested they'd even be able to. What they did do was offer the
most answers — period.
"Dominant individuals behaved in ways that made them appear
competent," the researchers write, "above and beyond their actual
competence." Troublingly, group members seemed only too willing to follow
these underqualified bosses. An overwhelming 94% of the time, the teams
used the first answer anyone shouted out — often giving only perfunctory
consideration to others that were offered.
from Justin Kruger and David Dunning
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1999)
 People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social
and intellectual domains.
 The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because
people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only
do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate
choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to
realize it.
 Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom
quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their
test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the
12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several
analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the
capacity to distinguish accuracy from error.
 Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their
metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their
abilities.
There is an inverse
relationship between a
person’s assessment of
their own competence
and their actual
competence level.
What Can We Do?
• Behavioral Economics teaches that if
we understand how our mind works
and the pitfalls we face, we can work
to overcome these.
• In other words, knowledge is
power!!