News & Insight

WJM’s Executive Leadership Behavior Model draws on over 15 years of experience assessing executives from many top corporations and partnering with our Faculty of over 700 of the best leadership development consultants in the world. This new model represents a renewal of WJM’s Characteristics of Effective Leaders published in September 2007 into a full behavioral success model for leaders. It is benchmarked to the most widely used and validated competency models and is highly correlated with foundational research in the field of leadership and leadership development.

What’s Different About This Model?

We believe that a leadership behavior model offers key benefits as a good “leaping-off” point for identifying and developing current and future leaders. However, too often talent management professionals fall into the trap of building leadership development programs around a “master list” of necessary leadership characteristics, only to be ignored by business leaders who view the programs as HR bureaucracy, divorced from the line organization and the realities of actual business decision making.

Ineffective leadership coaching is costly and impedes development, according to the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp)

The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), a research organization that focuses on practices that drive market performance, has released new research that reveals that organizational ineffectiveness at coaching future leaders is potentially costing companies and shareholders in a big way.

The human face tells a fascinating story about the nature of physiology and psychology. As a mode of communication, the amount of information that the human face relays through facial expressions is endless. While the face can display over ten thousand unique facial expression combinations, there are only a handful of specific expressions that are proven to communicate the same universal emotional meaning. Happiness, anger, sadness, contempt, disgust, surprise, and fear make up the 7 basic and universal emotions that all people regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, gender, religion, and age express using the same specific muscle combinations on the face.

Our facial expressions are designed to communicate our most basic yet necessary emotions for survival. Consider the emotion of sadness for example. In a state of sadness our bodies become depressed, the energy is depleted and our ability to respond or defend are incapacitated. The facial expression of sadness becomes the primary communication mode that signals to others that we need help. Looking at a grief stricken parent who has lost a child will easily trigger for most observers an overwhelming sensation of empathy. On the other hand an angry expression often serves as a warning sign and in certain situations can be a life saving forewarning especially in physical attacks.

Background Case

It is well known, throughout the site, that the drug discovery team is broken. They have been through their third team leader in three years. Their meetings are characterized by disagreements, hostile remarks and passive aggressive behavior. Team members are not completing their assignments or even their monthly reports. And some members have asked to leave the team. What is wrong here?

In spite of the team’s issues, when we looked behind the curtain we found a number of strengths. All the members were well paid, and were working toward a drug that had real market potential. They were competent in their respective scientific disciplines and most kept up with the research in the field. And in spite of the economy, the company is solid and the members’ jobs are relatively secure.

An Assessment Center is an excellent tool for identifying leadership potential, executive development or succession planning. Assessment Centers can be made up of job simulations alone or combined with other tools such as psychometrics, 360-degree feedback and a competency-based interview. Where the aim is development only, self-report questionnaires and periodic feedback during the program are also useful.

To be effective, an Assessment Center needs to mirror a target job or level in the organization. It needs to present participants with stretching challenges similar to those they would face in that job or at that level. Assessment Center exercises are simulations of the most critical challenges that must be dealt with effectively at the target level.

​WJM talks to WJM Faculty Member Cassie Solomon about her new book written with Gregory Shea, Leading Successful Change: 8 Keys to Making Change Work (Wharton Digital Press, February 5, 2013)

Why do so many change initiatives fail?

We read studies going back about 20 years, and the findings are alarming – between 50-70% of change initiatives fail; people who describe what they are trying to accomplish as “culture change” report the highest failure rates of all. This is all hindsight, of course. When companies launch these initiatives there is so much energy, commitment and resource committed upfront – so much emphasis placed on the “big launch” and on motivational beginnings, the appearance of the CEO – we know that it’s not commitment or hard work or energy that’s missing. But when you ask people to reflect back six months or a year later, they report that after the initial excitement has died down, a lot of these efforts have just petered out and they didn’t get the real benefits they were seeking. It’s heartbreaking.

What does it take for someone from a technical background, a scientist, an engineer, or a computer specialist – to become an effective leader of people? Many executives I work with in my coaching practice come from backgrounds in science, bio-tech and life sciences, technology, communications, etc., and are at various stages in their development as leaders.

The biggest differences between effective scientists, engineers and technical experts who become effective leaders and managers of other people and those that are not as effective can be described in a single phrase: the ability to navigate a different altitude. This is the ability to switch gears between different modes of operation; as well as, aspects of their personality.

On 12/12/12, 2020 Women on Boards chapters, affiliates, friends and supporters will hold lunch events in cities across the U.S. to share ideas, strengthen and grow our networks, and change business for the better. 12/12/12 luncheons will promote the work being done to increase the number of women on U.S. company boards and will raise critical funding for the 2020 Women on Boards national campaign.

Studies by Catalyst and McKinsey, among others, have shown that increasing gender balance on boards leads to better decisions and company performance. Corporations that do not bring more women onto boards will fall behind their competitors who tap into the expanding pool of talented women. The mission of the national campaign 2020 Women on Boards, www.2020wob.com, is to increase the percentage of women on U.S corporate boards from currently 15.6% to at least 20% or greater by 2020. Campaign supporters include individuals, organizations and companies that embrace the principle that diversity in the boardroom encourages good corporate decision-making. Chapters are being launched in major cities across the U.S. 2020 Women on Boards publishes the annual Gender Diversity Index which reports on the gender diversity of Boards of Directors in Fortune 1000 companies.

More and more people these days are facing the exciting, challenging, and, yes, frightening life event we call “retirement”.

While WJM Associates has been coaching and advising senior executives for the past 16 years on developing their leadership competencies and their careers, increasingly we are asked to assist leaders in productively exploring all aspects of this somewhat daunting transition to the next chapter of their lives. We help the individual develop and examine possible answers to such questions as:

BC Forbes, one of the greatest business leaders of the past century, was famous for stating, “victory is often nearest when defeat seems inescapable.” Resilience is the quality we need to rely on when our lives and businesses are most challenged. In the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, resilience has been an important characteristic for people to embody. As you can see from the news, many people are facing very difficult times that make them feel vulnerable, unsafe and out of control. Unsure of their future, people respond in various ways - with heightened stress, anger, emotional imbalance, or in extreme cases by completely shutting down. These are times where we need to find our resilience.

Resilience is defined as our ability to “quickly” recover from difficulties. Research has shown that our struggles can define our lives. When asked to recall important emotional events, people remember the negative ones over the positive. It is in our struggle that our true character is defined. Anyone can be a good sport when they are winning. But it is in losing that the true measure of our strength is revealed.