Don't Shoot the Messenger: Lessons From Successful Executives

What makes the most successful executives successful?

Our research on over 120,000 managers and executives, published in the Harvard Business Review, sheds light on how the most successful executives interpersonally manage the flow of information in the enterprise.

We found that executives who themselves reap the greatest financial rewards are highly engaging and interactive with others. They don’t pound the desk or bludgeon others with their own ideas and points of view. They don’t freeze the hearts of subordinates with ice-queen-like stares when presented with unpleasant facts. Rather, they go out of their way to welcome input, respond with interest to others’ viewpoints and suggestions and, generally, put people at ease where information comes forth willingly.

These qualities reflect what we call a person’s interpersonal role style. You can think of the interpersonal role style as the decision-making style we use when around other people and we feel the need to put our “best foot forward.” It is the combination of how much we utilize four decision-making styles, resulting in a unique profile for each person. Among the thousands of top-level executives we studied, we found a great contrast between the profiles of the top 20% income earners and the bottom 20% – you could say that these two groups have very different views of what the “best foot” is!

Figure 1 shows this contrast point. The horizontal centerline shows scores on the four styles for the average of all 120,000 managers and executives, and the blue and red line the most and least successful executives, respectively. At a glance you can see where the two groups deviate from average in their use of each style. The most successful executives use much less of the practical, task-focused and direct Decisive style, and much more of the outgoing, approachable and interactive Flexible style.

The influence of the Flexible styles allows executives to gather more information; people are much more at ease coming to someone with a Flexible interpersonal style because they don’t fear being told their information is of little value, ridiculed, or ignored. Why is this so crucial? Consider that executives must make critical decisions – often about complex issues and ill-defined circumstances – whose impact can reach far into the future. To make decisions such as these, and to make them well, requires information in large quantity and of good quality.

Keep in mind that Figure 1 shows the interpersonal decision-styles of the executives. So, the graphs portray the ways these executives present themselves in public. How they actually think and make decisions when not in the public eye, can and does differ. That’s true for most people, not just executives. In the case of the 20% most financially successful C-Suite executives, their actual Operating decision-making styles are composed of the more analytic and complex Hierarchic and Integrative styles of thinking. This is useful for the C-Suite, where one must be able to comfortably sort through large amounts of information to generate good, long-range decisions for the enterprise.

When it comes to the focus of our conversation, the Interpersonal Role Style, you might be wondering why, though, if the Flexible style is good for information gathering, isn’t it dominant in all successful tiers of the corporate ladder, such as among lower-level managers? At the lower reaches of management, it isn’t any particular mystery where one gets information from. If one needs information for decisions typically made at entry-level management, one has only to look, relatively speaking. Pertinent information is likely to be readily available, immediate and unambiguous. However, this is less and less true as one marches up the corporate ladder.

At the higher reaches of the ladder, information needed for decisions is more dispersed, less obviously available and increasingly vague or ambiguous, and even more subject to interpretation. One cannot just reach out and grab a handful of this information. Instead, one must reach out to others to gather the information needed. Better yet, one will already have relationships with peers and subordinates that encourage people to come forth with information, including even subjective estimates of how things are going and might yet go. This is why a senior level individual in the C-suite, should take care to not frighten off others. Frightening others, or shooting the messenger, is the surest way to scare information into the nooks and crannies, far from the light of day.

In reflecting on these ideas, we invite you to consider your own decision style profile. How well does it fit with the decision-making situations and information management requirements of your situation? Are you a taskmaster who makes sure that your subordinates stick to their immediate jobs? Are you a logician capable of impressing others with your own ideas and your command of facts and detail? If so, your best fit might be at a middle or lower level of management. Or, instead, are you an engaging and interested thinker with an open-door policy? Do you put people at ease? When people approach you bearing information, what sort of reception do they expect? Do they think you will welcome their input? Do they believe they may actually influence your decisions and have an impact on the enterprise themselves? If these are the expectations that others have developed from interacting with you, you most likely already are a master of managing information through people, and you very likely fit C-executive position requirements quite comfortably.