- Lambs (terrible label, I know) - these are the emotional inteligence experts. They are easy to work with, they are open to feedback, know how to deal with people, etc. These guys are loved from the ground floor to the board room. And they have a very nice success rate: 57%.
- Cheetahs - they are fast, agressive, work hard and demonstrate persistance. Their success rate? 100%.
100%? (this is not an statistical rounding error)
Don't jump to the wrong conclusions, been good with people still matters. Acording to the article:
Emotional intelligence is important, but only when matched with the propensity to get things done. Too many executives have fallen into the trap of accentuating their lamb skills at the expense of their Cheetah qualities. They work hard to stay in tune with their employees. They’re well liked on the shop floor and in the boardroom. There’s only one problem: they don’t produce value at anywhere near the rate Cheetahs do.
This isn’t to say that Cheetahs lack soft skills. To the contrary, they are talented people whose soft skills played a critical role in their ascent to the top job. The difference, though, is that Cheetahs know when it is time to stop asking for feedback and to attack a target to achieve key outcomes that move a company forward.
I am for sure trying to get more lamb skills, but is it messing up with my cheetah skills?
What do you think about all this mess?
Read the original blog post: What type of CEO makes money for investors
I actually think you can be both lamb and cheetah. it is important to know how to adapt to each situation. but even cheetahs need to have people skills and even lambs need to be aggressive sometimes :)
ReplyDeleteI totally agree: not having emotional intelligence is a huge draw back. I think that's exectly what you said: you cannot be 100% cheetah or lamb, you need a little of the other to be successful.
ReplyDeleteBut, in my interpretation, which might be very wrong, a cheetah with no lamb skills would be more successful than a lamb with no cheetah skills.
While in my opinion, again I might be wrong, the cheetah with a basic lamb fountation would always win over the lamb with a basic cheetah foundation.
does that make any sense?