Leadership Lesson - If Not Humility, Try Realism

I recall being at a gathering of about 120 mid-level and up leaders who were asked to declare how they rated their performance when compared to their peers. We declared this with our eyes closed, of course, so no one would be able to see how each other viewed themselves. The results: 100% of those attending believed themselves to be in the top 30% of performers when compared to their peers. 65% that day believed themselves to be in the top 10 percent!

So much for a normal distribution (or the bell curve). Was I really there that day with such an extraordinary group of people or was something else, perhaps leadership arrogance and self-deception, at play?

This was a very vivid demonstration of how wonderful managers perceive themselves to be compared to everyone else. But the truth is, leader performance is all over the map or normally distributed. A small percentage perform very very well, a small percentage perform very very poorly. Most fall somewhere in the middle.

That's my leadership lesson for today. Maybe even an awakening pinch for us all. To supplement I've provided an article below that points out how much is out there that is yet to be known, how much we don't know, and how much we haven't learned. Hopefully we can take ourselves down a few notches, if only for today.

Awakening Pinch from a Mysterious New Crustacean.