January 12, 2007

What makes a manager a high flyer?

High flyers - those who reach a senior management position in a relatively short space of time - are more broad thinking, challenging of norms, open to doing things in new ways and more capable of understanding themselves and their colleagues emotions, than their senior management peers.

That's the conclusion of research by Troy Jensen of Kaisen Consulting, who assessed 800 senior managers with known career paths using psychometric tests on a range of personality traits including openness, conscientiousness and extraversion.


Managers were considered to be 'high flyers' if they had reached a senior management position within eight years of starting their career.


The study, which was presented at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference, found that high flyers do significantly differ from their senior manager peers on a number of personality and thinking dimensions.


Broadly, they were found to be higher on many levels of effective social functioning, as well as on breadth and creativity in thinking.


Mr Jensen said: "Our research suggests that effective social and emotional functioning may be an important component of what separates 'high flyers' that rise quickly from other senior managers, especially as we found that analytical ability is similar in both groups.


He continued, "Whilst research into 'high flyers' has tailed off over the past few years, it seems, based on our findings, that there may be a case for further investigation with a view towards differentiating between high-potential employees who succeed and those who are derailed.
..

From: http://management-issues.com
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Indeed, we would like to know what happened with the 'derailed' ones, and what went wrong with 'breadth and creativity in thinking'.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is in an ideal world. In a real world, they are opportunists, parasitic, sneaky, and use under hand strategies.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon said...

Something about being surrounded [the academic and teachhing staff] by chikens or hens [some managers and bureaucrats], and then being asked to fly like an eagle...

Anonymous said...

This manager uses other researchers' input while referencing only those he wishes.

www.ifi.unicamp.br/ceneh/WICaC2006/PDF/12_DavidHart.pdf

In the presentation entitled “Imperial College/England - Steps to Establish a Worldwide Hydrogen Infrastructure”, a number of concepts are presented without proper referencing. Some of the material presented was developed in 2005 that neither Dr David Hart nor any of the people mentioned in his presentation contributed to. Only, Mr Marcello Contestabile was party to the research that generated the graphs on page 13, but is not the person who did so.

Dr. David Hart does not give credit to the project that funded the research and that yielded the graphs on page 13, nor to the researchers who carried out the work and the analysis, upon which he derived parts of his presentation.

This type of behaviour causes the complainant grieve and wastes people's time.

Anonymous said...

...more jealousy less competence behind the above behaviour

Anonymous said...

'...Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave, eats a bread it does not harvest, and drinks a wine that flows not from its own winepress.

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

Pity the nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block.

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking.

...'.

Gibran, The Garden Of The Prophet

Anonymous said...

Just a quick update on the third comment above.

My name has now been added to the acknowledgement list.

www.ifi.unicamp.br/ceneh/WICaC2006/PDF/12_DavidHart.

This was not an isolated incident of lack of referencing. Corrections to many more projects and documents are still required. The fight continues.

Anonymous said...

Just a quick update on the third comment above.

My name has now been added to the acknowledgement list.

www.ifi.unicamp.br/ceneh/WICaC2006/PDF/12_DavidHart.

This was not an isolated incident of lack of referencing. Corrections to many more projects and documents are still required. The fight continues.