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Why do some talented executives fail? And why do some others often fail to be as effective, or as successful, as they could be?
These are questions psychologists James Waldroop and Timothy Butler have grappled with repeatedly over the years as consultants and executive coaches at many Fortune 500 companies.
In their new book, Maximum Success: Changing the 12 Behavior Patterns That Keep You from Getting Ahead, Waldroop and Butler identify 12 behavior patterns — what they call "Achilles' heels" — that can harm or at least hinder someone's career.
The book describes the Achilles' heels and the four main psychological issues underlying them. The authors present clear strategies for managers to help themselves — starting with recognizing their own behavior — and to manage those who work for them.
HBS Working Knowledge staff writer Martha Lagace met recently with Butler, Director of MBA Career Development Programs at the Harvard Business School, to discuss the effect of Achilles' heels on executive careers, the far-reaching impact on companies and coworkers, and the ways that executive coaches can help.
Lagace: Are there any behavior patterns or "Achilles' heels" that are particularly easy or difficult to identify in individuals?
Butler: Clearly there are, because some of the patterns have dramatic consequences for the organization that are more immediate.
Take a pattern like what we call the Hero, someone who "does too much, pushes too hard." That pattern has dramatic consequences for an environment. When you're working for a hero, you know it. And the problem, typically, is that the Hero is a power-holder. The voices of people who are being affected are not as powerful, so it may be hard to change the behavior.
Sometimes you know a Hero from looking backward and looking at the record of turnover in the business area of someone with a Hero pattern.
Another example would be the Rebel. We all know about Rebels from people we've worked with: the person who would take a contrarian position, almost predictably, in a situation.
There are other patterns that are less obvious. The most dramatic of these is when we write about the pattern of "never feeling good enough": the Acrophobe. That notion that you're way out ahead of yourself; you don't belong with this group; you come from a different background from the people you are now working with. You've internalized messages of not sticking out too much. It's almost a private pattern.
The typical experience of working with such an individual is to think, "Here's a really competent person who's really focused and really works hard, with good results." So that's a pattern where there's irony or paradox, because the individual's internal experience of the pattern is so different from the perception of people around him or her.
One that's a little more subtle is the Peacekeeper pattern, the person who avoids conflict at any cost. That pattern is more of a style rather than a dramatic expression of problematic behavior. Day in, day out, that person avoids situations that might get messy, that might be conflictive. I think that if you know someone well, you can say, "Yeah, so-and-so really doesn't like to get into a heated debate, doesn't like to take an unpopular opinion and push for it."
Q: Are there particular behavior patterns that are more common in business than in other fields — in science or medicine, for example?
A: Most of our work is in business. And most of the individuals we've worked with are in business organizations. When we look at the 12 patterns, we're looking at patterns that are drawn from our dataset and from the people who've been involved in our research projects. We've certainly worked with scientists and engineers, but after they've become managers.
Q: I wonder if Peacekeepers are less likely to be working in business.
A: In business there is a lot of conflict. Business is about groups of people trying to figure out the best way to move forward and having different points of view. The idea that "up" is the only way to go is so much a part of business.
Q: Your book mentions that when you work with an individual in a company, that person often denies there is any problem with his or her behavior. How is your role explained to them, first of all, and how is it explained to their colleagues?
A: Over the years we've learned that there's an ideal set-up for working with a business professional. It is when they get a very clear message from their boss that they are in serious trouble. And we virtually insist on that now when we're working with somebody.
I don't mean to be cynical, but I think that most of the time what it takes for real change is some pain. Pain in the sense that someone is really seeing that there are real consequences to their behavior, and that it's something that can't go on.
Ideally, when we're brought in, there's a three-way conversation with us, the individual we're going to work with, and the boss; and the message is, "If this behavior can't change, we're going to have to think about you not being in the organization."
As far as how we relate to other people in the organization when we're working with an individual, we introduce ourselves as executive coaches. We say we're working with so-and-so to help him or her improve performance. Obviously, we don't share information about what the issues are or how serious the situation is.
Having executive coaches is more and more a common circumstance, certainly in larger organizations. It doesn't carry a stigma, in our experience. It can be seen almost as a perk: "Wow, this employee is so important that the organization is paying these folks to come in and help him or her be more effective."
Q: How much time would you spend with an individual?
A: When we work with someone we often work with him or her over a long period of time, six months to a year. A year is actually more frequent. In the beginning, the involvement is very intense. We meet multiple times with the individual and his or her boss; we do a psychological assessment. We provide feedback on how we see the situation: what we see the dynamics of the situation as being, what we see the patterns as being, what is going to be required for change. We outline what an action plan would be.
Early on, there's quite a bit of communication within that triangle. Then the work focuses. We go to meetings with the individual. We talk with people who are in their environment — peers, people in superior positions — to get a sense of how that person is really being perceived from many different perspectives in the organization. And then we begin to work on the action plan.
We have very specific behavioral assignments at times. We always discuss personal issues, and they may become a feature of the work.
We deal with interventions for behavior change. We also deal with issues that are just coming across that person's desk, and help them see how they think through and respond to situations. We pick out those issues with them and talk through how they might see [those issues] from different perspectives.
Our contact after this intense beginning phase tends to become less intense. We may meet on a weekly basis and then reduce it from there, and it may intensify again if issues come up and the action plan is not being operationalized or the work done. We really adjust the level of contact in the middle and end phase depending upon whether the work that's needed is being accomplished or not being accomplished. But it's an intense program.
We work with people in many organizations, and they're not even necessarily MBAs. We also do career counseling.
Always, career counseling situations involve taking a look at the entire life context. There's no real separation between life and work.
Q: There are sections in Maximum Success where you write about how to handle someone's "Achilles' heels" when you are that person's manager. What if your role is subordinate to that person or if you are direct colleagues with him or her?
A: The book is addressed primarily to individuals, anybody, any of us who have behaviors that are problematic. And that's virtually all of us. A large percentage of us will recognize at least some part of ourselves in the book.
The secondary audience is the manager. It's a book for managers, too: How to work with and be more effective with people with these patterns. We don't speak directly to peers who are working directly alongside someone like this.
But, when you read the book, you probably know someone like this or like that. Knowing their pattern, recognizing it, being able to anticipate it, maybe paying attention to some of things we direct to managers. Advice we give to managers would also apply to subordinates or peers.
Q: When someone displays a particular behavior pattern —is a "Bulldozer," for example — how can a company heal the wounds within the organization that have been created by that kind of person?
A: Wounds are hard to heal in organizations. If you've got a reputation for behaving in a certain way, and predictably so, and you've been in an organization for several years, it's going to take some time for that perception to be changed.
And it will be some time after you've actually changed your behavior. There is a considerable lag before this element of trust is reestablished. We human beings tend to stereotype. We look at an individual and come up with a mental picture of that person; this is not necessarily fully conscious. And we predict behavior so we can adjust our response and our reactions when we interact with that person. That mental map or that image that we form is pretty strong.
It's going to take a lot of evidence to begin to rearrange the components of that picture to make us really begin to think about, feel about, and behave differently about an individual.
So the first work, and the hardest work, is to begin to look at behavior change. It's like steering a big ocean liner. You're making a correction; you actually do it. But it takes quite some time to make that boat swing around.
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