Bosses who read novels may excel at work, study reveals

In 2009, James Zenger published a fascinating survey of 60,000 employees, that sought to identify how different leadership characteristics combined to affect perceptions of whether a boss was a “great” leader or not. Two of the characteristics that Zenger examined were “results focus” and “social skills.”

Results focus combines strong analytical skills with an intense motivation to move forward and solve problems. And yet if a leader was seen as being very strong on results focus, the chance of him being perceived as great by staff was only 14 per cent.

Social skills combine attributes like communication and empathy. If a leader was strong on social skills, he was seen as a great boss even less of the time – a paltry 12 per cent.

However, for leaders who were strong in both results focus and in social skills, the likelihood of them being seen as great shot to 72 per cent.

Social skills are a great multiplier. A leader with strong social skills can leverage the analytical abilities of team members far more efficiently.

Having the social intelligence to predict how team members will work together can also promote better pairings. Psychologists say it is a skill worth learning, and an on-going study is suggesting that reading fiction can be useful.

NEURAL SEESAW

Often, what initially appear to be task-related difficulties turn out to be interpersonal problems in disguise.

One employee may feel devalued by another or think that he’s doing all the work while the partner loafs, leading both to put in less effort to solve otherwise solvable problems. Socially skilled leaders are better at diagnosing and treating these common workplace dilemmas.

So, how many leaders are rated high on both results focus and social skills? If this pairing produces effective leaders, companies should have figured this out and promoted people to leadership positions accordingly, right? Not hardly.

David Rock, the director of the Neuroleadership Institute, and Management Research Group, recently conducted a survey to find out the answer.

They asked thousands of employees to rate their bosses on “goal focus” (similar to results focus) and social skills in order to examine how often a leader scored high on both. The results were astonishing. Less than one per cent of leaders were rated high on both goal focus and social skills.

How could this be? Well, our brains have made it difficult for us to be both socially and analytically focused at the same time. Even though thinking socially isn’t radically different from thinking analytically, evolution built our brains with different networks for handling each.

Regions of the brain lying on the outer surface of the frontal lobe are responsible for analytical thinking and are highly related to IQ.

In contrast, regions in the middle of the brain, where the two hemispheres touch, support social thinking. These regions allow us to piece together a person’s thoughts, feelings and goals based on his actions and words, as well as the surrounding context.

Here’s the really surprising thing about the brain. These two networks function like a neural seesaw. In countless neuroimaging studies, the more active one of these networks becomes, the more the other one quiets down. Although there are some exceptions, in general, engaging in one kind of thinking makes it harder to engage in the other.

It’s safe to say that in business, analytical thinking makes it harder to recognise the social issues that significantly affect productivity and profits.

Moreover, employees are much more likely to be promoted to leadership positions because of their technical prowess. We are thus promoting people who may lack the social skills to make the most of their teams and not giving these leaders the training they need to thrive.

REWARD BALANCE

How can we do better? For one, we should give greater weight to social skills in the hiring and promotion process.

Secondly, we need to create a culture that rewards people who use both sides of the neural seesaw effectively. We may not be able to use them in tandem easily, but knowing that there is another angle to productivity will help us produce leaders with more-balanced skills.

Finally, it may be possible to train our social thinking so that it becomes stronger over time.

Social psychologists are at the beginning stages of examining whether this kind of training will bear fruit.

One exciting prospect is the recent finding that reading fiction temporarily strengthens these mental muscles.

Wouldn’t it be great if reading the latest John Grisham novel was the key to larger profits?

The writer is a professor and director of the UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. He is the author of “Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect”