Why Powerful Leaders Fail

According to recent social science research, powerful people and leaders can fail as they will not collaborate.

NPR had a recent broadcast on this concept. Researcher Angus Hildreth and Professor Cameron Anderson from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business concluded that often when these powerful people get together they have to decide who is in charge. As I listened to this I recalled my life in the corporate world and it rang true of many interactions I saw with senior people.

As part of this research, during a demonstration at a company, they divided the team into groups of four. The first group had the four most powerful people in it; the second group had the next four most powerful people, and so on. Each group was given different candidates for a high-level position and had to reach a consensus on whom to hire. Hildreth said the groups with the less powerful people reached a consensus much easier than the most powerful people did.

Hildreth also said that in the group exercise with the candidates the high-powered group:

• Tended to focus less on what was going on in the task
• Talked about other things
• Vied for position
• Argued over who should lead different parts of the task
• Didn’t disclose all the information they had about his or her candidate to the others.

The researchers said that high-powered people also have problems with creativity. While typically giving an individual power makes him or her more creative, in a group, that power creates obstacles and less creative ideas.

This rang true for me. When I was a Senior Vice President in my last corporate role, when people asked what I did all day. I used to reply ‘I play chess’. Why chess? It was all about politics. In truth, people couldn’t care less about the Customer. All they cared about was their political position and how much power they had.

Powering around the Powerful

As part of our consulting philosophy, we encourage a cross-functional team to champion the Customer Experience. We do this to encourage, you guessed it, the collaboration between departments to facilitate buy-in from their teams. Many times, the lead of the division is who is included in these cross-functional teams.

So, as you can see by the results of this study, it takes more than a team effort to get things done. You might say, it takes a little manipulation and ego massaging to get what you need in these situations.

To that end, here are four workarounds you can use to power around the powerful:

1. Have a solution already started so they have less to work out together.

NPR Social Science correspondent Shankar Vendantam explained that when Congress wants to reach a deal, they have the lower-ranked people meet first and set up the framework before the influential leaders get together.

2. Play to their need for attention.

Find ways to steer the project into each of your dominant participant’s wheelhouse, allowing them to take the floor as it were in their area of expertise. Often, that can enable them to put the ego aside and work with others.

3. Give them the short version.

For creative projects, put together a brainstorm before the session and choose the best ideas to present to the authoritative group. For example, if you are looking for a solution for an operations function, bring in three to five of your lower-ranked team’s suggestions for a solution and have the team start there instead of at the beginning.

4. Pad the timeline.

Despite all your best efforts here, you might still suffer the delays and lack of consensus you seek. Allow for this in your schedule to reduce stress and pressure for everyone involved. (When you don’t have the pad available, start begging for extensions!)

5. Make them look a hero!

If you are not worried about the prestige and the politics, make the people that you need to influence the hero. Normally, the people ‘in the know’ will understand that it is you who are pulling the strings anyway so this doesn’t hurt in the least.

Needless to say, when you need collaboration done, done well, and done on time, putting your most powerful people on the task isn’t your best strategy. However, it is an undeniable fact that you will likely find yourself facing this situation at some point at work and to make progress you will need to have a strategy to work around it..

How do you deal with people who do not want to collaborate?