Blog Marjon Oosterhout: What are our drivers for success

Last week I counted the number of blogs and articles in my Twitter and LinkedIn with a title like:
“the 5, 7, 10, things that highly effective leaders do”.

Adding them all up, there were 32 of these blogs with a total of 195 “things” these effective people are
supposedly doing . (And this is just what reaches my inbox.)

The”things” or habits ranged from work-life balance and sleeping habits to ways to lead change,
impact culture, encourage innovation and show resilience.

I would be very interested to meet a person who does all these things, though I fear this will never
happen.

What really surprises me is this focus on what highly successful people have in common.
Let me compare this with product/brand identity. Which companies are focused on identifying the
similarities of their top range products with those of their competitors?

To avoid any misunderstanding, I’m not suggesting that leaders are each others competitors. But I do
believe that unique, differentiating characteristics are the source of their success.

Recently I asked a successful CEO how similar he was to his, equally successful, predecessor.
His answer: “Not at all”. I also asked him how they assess talent. The answer: “against a competency
model”. When I asked how they identify the unique talents, those not part of the model, he was silent.

Of course there are some competencies/traits that are common and a requirement for success. But they
are most definitively not the “things” that makes special talent stand out.

What are your unique talents? How do you identify these talents in the people working for you?

Eerder gepubliceerd door Marjon Oosterhout, www.marjonoosterhout.com