90th Percentile Leadership: Insights. Backed by Data.

Most managers want their employees to be curious and experimental, to take the initiative and develop new products and solutions. But, as it turns out, managers also like to micromanage and control outcomes through safe, predictable processes. As a result, managers end up stifling the very experimentation they want to foster. In this episode, Sara Critchfield shares four things managers can do to encourage team members to take more risks and stop playing it safe.

Register for Zenger Folkman’s upcoming webinar Risky or Reckless: Develop the Behaviors that Support Taking Risks.

Harvard Business Review Article- How to Push Your Team to Take More Risks and Experiment, by Sara Critchfield.

Guest BioSara Critchfield is Vice President of Global Outreach for the Fetzer Institute. Sara has a successful track record of forwarding social movements by developing highly shareable, social good content, attracting millions of unique visitors, and effectively positioning organizations and businesses as credible leaders in the market. As founding editorial director of Upworthy.com — named the fastest-growing media site of all-time in 2013 by Fast Company — she grew Upworthy’s traffic from 0 to 50 million visitors and gained 8 million subscribers in just 2 years. Spanning a broad range of sectors, Sara has advocated for social change in Washington DC and Europe, fought for economic fairness for millions of US-based consumers and food security in developing countries, and has played lead roles in starting three successful startup ventures. She holds a Master of Science in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania and resides in Los Angeles.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and join in a conversation about their latest research in leadership development. Find out more information and register here.

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No one expects ever to be described as an arrogant or complacent boss. Most leaders we know have the assumption that their career will be akin to a musical crescendo. It may start quietly and slowly, but they believe that as they age, more responsibility will come. And because of their years of experience, they will continually improve at making decisions and inspiring those they work with. And yes, most also assume that their value to an organization will steadily increase so that their final years of work will be the highest paying. But something that they may not expect is the bad habits that leaders may develop along the way. In this episode, we are looking into the warning signs and how to fix some of the bad habits of leaders before it’s too late.

Register for Zenger Folkman’s upcoming webinar, The Leadership Edge: Developing Your Company’s Hidden Talent Pools. 

Two bad habits of leaders. We’ll define arrogance as one person’s belief that their ideas and opinions are more valuable and define complacency as an attitude of self-satisfaction that leads to people automatically and mindlessly following a routine.

The twin demons of arrogance and complacency appear to have an accelerating negative impact. Based on 360-degree feedback data from 65,253 managers, ZENGER FOLKMAN found the following:

While some leaders manage to ward off this plague, the majority do not. We found that as leaders age, their willingness and skill at asking others for feedback and taking action to improve declines significantly.

Deliberately change some behavior. Remember that improved leadership does not stem from reading books or listening to lectures for new information. Leadership improvement can only be evidenced by new behavior.

Open the feedback spigot. Increase the amount of feedback you receive by overtly asking for it

Create a mechanism that relentlessly holds you accountable to implement the change you seek to make. 

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar monthly, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and talk about their latest leadership development research. Find out more information and register here.

The Antidotes for Arrogant and Complacent Bosses– Article by Jack Zenger

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Habits are things you automatically do every day. It’s your morning routine, how you make your favorite drink, or the fact that you always leave every cabinet door open when you leave a room. It is the actions you perform without thinking because they are ingrained into who you are. Researchers at Duke University estimate that habits account for 40% of daily behaviors. In this podcast episode, we’re looking at the ordinary habits of highly effective coaches.

Download our eBook, The Extraordinary Coach.

The least effective coaches had direct reports with engagement at the 23rd percentile, while the most effective coaches’ direct reports were at the 73rd percentile.

Our research validates that the most helpful feedback is more positive and reinforcing than negative and corrective. Highly effective coaches focus on the positive!

The best coaches create an environment where direct reports want to do something extraordinary and make a real difference. They create energy and excitement.

People often believe that having a higher position gives them the right to behave differently than they require or expect others to behave. The best coaches are role models and know how to walk their talk.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and join in a conversation about their latest research in leadership development. Find out more information and register here.

7 Ordinary Habits of Super Effective Coaches– Article by Joe Folkman

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Executives in every company we work with express concerns about their ability to attract and retain managerial talent. The solutions for most organizations are to either recruit young workers directly from school and invest in their development, pirate leadership talent from competitors, or find it internally. Of these alternatives, we strongly advocate that organizations first take a close look inside. This 90th Percentile Podcast episode discusses what organizations can do to discover and develop hidden talent pools.

Register for Zenger Folkman’s upcoming webinar, The Leadership Edge: Developing Your Company’s Hidden Talent Pools. 

• Organizations need to examine four hidden talent groups of highly talented and underutilized individuals who would be strong candidates for these future leadership roles: women, young supervisors, STEMM workers, and individual contributors.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and talk about their latest leadership development research. Find out more information and register here.

Discover and Develop Hidden Reservoirs of Talent– Article by Jack Zenger, Joyce Palevitz, and Joe Folkman

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The audiobook version of The Trifecta of Trust: The Proven Formula for Building and Restoring Trust is on sale at AUTHORS DIRECT.

The audiobook can also be purchased on AUDIBLE, NOOK, GOOGLE PLAY, KOBO, CHIRP, AUDIOBOOKS.COM, and SCRIBD.

If you devote a third of your life to your job, then it is worth focusing on the one trait that will significantly increase your speed. This chapter explores the direct link between trust and speed. Leaders who were the least trusted (the 1st through the 9th percentiles) had a speed rating in the 22nd percentile, while those who were most trusted (the 90th to 100th percentiles) had speed ratings in the 79th percentile. But are the speed bumps that get in the way of trust?

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and join in a conversation about their latest research in leadership development. Find out more information and register here.

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Due to the pandemic, the past few years have ushered in the past century’s most significant shifts in working environments.  According to data scientist at Ladders projections, 25% of all professional jobs in North America will be remote by the end of 2022, and remote opportunities will continue to increase through 2023. We have had a couple of years to work the kinks out of this new way of work, but is it really going as well as we think it is? We looked through our leadership database to issue a report card on how leaders are managing remote/hybrid workers.

• In our dataset, we had 261 leaders working in offices and co-located with their direct reports and 207 working remotely.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and talk about their latest leadership development research. Find out more information and register here.

The Remote Work Leadership Report Card- Have We Improved?– Article by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman

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Download the new eBook, Inspiring in the New Era. A lot has been written about what inspiring leaders DO.  From their moving speeches to their magnetic ability to connect. How could you dismiss their powers of persuasion? We often picture inspiring leaders as fearless and attractive because we see them in the movies defeating all odds. But inspiration comes in many forms, through many behaviors and varying approaches. If you look, you will see its influence in both big and small ways. In this episode, we’re discussing the effects of inspiring leadership and what OTHERS BECOME as a result of that inspiration.

Download the new eBook, Inspiring in the New Era.

Inspiring leaders create a climate that allows people to experiment, feel ownership, and reward initiative in ways that allow this behavior to flourish.

Optimism can be learned and magnified through practice.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and join in a conversation about their latest research in leadership development. Find out more information and register here.

Sustaining Hope in Uncertain Times– Harvard Business Review Article by Dane Jensen

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Why do managers avoid giving praise? When talking with managers about giving feedback, we often hear comments such as, “I did not sleep the night before,” “I just wanted to get it over quickly,” “My hands were sweating, and I was nervous,” and “They don’t pay me enough to do this job.” Because of this anxiety, we find that some managers resist giving their direct reports any critical feedback. But what’s worse than that is that we discovered a larger problem than the lack of corrective feedback because even more managers avoid praising. This podcast episode explains the data behind why managers are avoiding praise, what this is doing to individuals and organizations, and how to make a course correction.

• 37% of the people who took our self-assessment conceded that they don’t give positive reinforcement.

It’s OK if it’s brief – it just needs to be specific, rather than a general remark of “good job,” and ideally occurs soon after the praise-worthy incident. Of course, it’s also best when it’s sincere and heartfelt.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and talk about their latest leadership development research. Find out more information and register here.

Why Do So Many Managers Avoid Giving Praise?– Harvard Bsuiness Review Article by Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman

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Conjure up the term “bad boss,” and what comes to mind? Scenes of red-faced people berating subordinates in public. Smarmy souls taking credit for other people’s work or saying one thing and doing another and cutting remarks. Yelling. Feel free to continue — we’re sure you can. In this podcast episode, we’re digging into what really constitutes lousy behavior and if you might be entering that category.

• We analyzed the behavior of 30,000 managers, as seen through the eyes of some 300,000 of their peers, direct reports, and bosses on 360-degree evaluations; we found that the sins of the bad boss are far more often those of omission, not commission.

Our research shows that increasing trust magnifies every other leadership competency. We also discovered that without trust, everything slows down. Trust reduces friction in the organization.

Fatal flaws in a bad boss are difficult to see — they’re not the kinds of flaws we instantly recognize in others or ourselves. And they’re not the kinds of things people call out since there’s nothing explicit that draws attention.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and join in a conversation about their latest research in leadership development. Find out more information and register here.

Are You Sure You’re Not a Bad Boss?– HBR Article by Joe Folkman and Jack Zenger

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The variety of shortages causing major disruptions has rippling effects that seem to grow more consequential daily.  But the one shortage that is the most concerning to us is HUMAN ENERGY. Every employee is under constant pressure to perform as we are being asked to do more with less–to be more productive and effective and to reach greater levels of profitability. Languishing. The great resignation. The great re-evaluation. Quiet quitting. How many more movements do we need to recognize workforces are struggling to get back to “normal”?   In today’s episode, we are tackling one of the biggest tasks facing leaders today: renewing energy.

• To discover these energizing capabilities, we analyzed data from direct reports of 73,503 leaders. In addition to the 60 measured behaviors, each direct report was asked about the extent to which they agreed with the following statement, “My work environment is a place where people want to go the extra mile.”

.Our research shows that increasing trust magnifies every other leadership competency. We also discovered that without trust, everything slows down. Trust reduces friction in the organization.

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Zenger Folkman hosts an exclusive live webinar every month, where you can meet Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman and join in a conversation about their latest research in leadership development. Find out more information and register here.

How Leaders Generate Energy– Article by Joe Folkman

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