The High Price Of Aloof Leadership; Forbes, 12/27/13

Jack Zenger, Forbes; The High Price Of Aloof Leadership: "There’s a common belief about leaders’ necessity to maintain a distance between themselves and the rest of the organization. The idea traces back to the military, where an officer might be called upon to send subordinates into grave danger; and the assumption was that being too psychologically close could make that responsibility extremely difficult. From data we’ve collected from more than 50,000 leaders and roughly a quarter million of their subordinates, we’ve seen a very clear pattern. Leaders with warm, close relationships with their subordinates are consistently seen in a much more positive light by all of their colleagues. Where we’ve been able to match that behavior with business outcomes, they are also the consistent winners. They produce high customer satisfaction, superior employee commitment and engagement, higher sales revenue and ultimately higher profits for their organization... Why does that happen? One way to view this phenomenon is the large psychological distance that had been created between the top executives and the staff... It is virtually a “Wizard of Oz” phenomenon in which the lack of easy interaction creates images of the senior leaders being unapproachable and frightening and causes senior people to be uncomfortable with those at lower levels of the organization... The leaders who roll up their sleeves and mix with their people are significantly better leaders. Employees have a great deal of discretionary effort that they can tap or can hold in reserve. There’s something about the leader with sleeves rolled up that brings sanity and comfort to the organization and tends to put things back into perspective. Indra Nooyi, Chairwoman of Pepsico, was recently asked about her predictions regarding corporate leaders of the future. Her conclusions in a nutshell, were this: great leaders will become “more human, less distance, and more accessible to others.”"