You’ve seen the type—always the first to arrive and the last one to leave. These folks have total 24-7 connectivity to the office with the latest techie gadget. They walk around with Blackberries in their ears while sipping on a Cappuccino with the Wall StreetJournal folded under their arm. They talk 90 mph, interrupt others, hog conversations, and always seem to be on the “cutting edge.” What you don’t see is their insecurities, doctor bills, broken relationships, lack of social life, and few friendships. Scott Spreier, Mary Fontaine, and Ruth Malloy in their article, “Leadership Run Amok” in the HBR June, 2006, issue describe six styles of leadership that leaders use to motivate, develop, and direct their employees: directive, visionary, affiliative, participative, pacesetting, and coaching. They studied 21 senior managers at IBM with responsibility for large global accounts and multimillion dollar revenue accounts. They found that strong, aggressive leaders relied on achievement motives and were visionary, affiliative, participative, and coaches to their direct reports. In contrast to assertive leaders, neutral or demotivating climates also used achievement motives to meet targets but their primary leadership style was pacesetting. The “pacesetter” uses leadership by example; they set high standards for themselves. It is a typical “go-to” style for overachievers but only works in short-term, crisis environments. Coaching, on the other hand, works better in long-term, lower stress situations where continuity and cross-training are important to the organization.

Gone are the days of the “John Wayne” heroics in management. You’ve seen this pacesetter. He or she is given the reins to achieve a short-term goal, typically cost cutting prior to a merger or selling off assets. They ride herd on direct reports with the finesse of a hand grenade hurled into Monday morning’s meeting. These leaders do not care about participative management, making friends, having a personal or social life. Their marching orders come directly from the Board of Directors and this “take no prisoners” managerial approach creates confusion that keeps direct reports in a frenzy until they crash and burn. Ross Perot at EDI and Jack Welch before he retired from GE are the paragons of this approach. These leaders are intelligent, charismatic, charming, and can politic with the best.

But today’s corporations are multinational and incorporate different cultures and decision-making styles. Imagine the President of SONY kicking butt to increase market share taken over by Samsung. A softer, coaching style is more suited to the business climate of the 21 st Century and Spreier et al found that the coaching style increased by 17% at IBM over the past several years, while the pacesetting style decreased by 5%. Collaboration and teamwork replaced heroics, although IBM executives remained high achievers. In other words process is key, not product. Group culture remains a powerful tool against overachievers and the results from sociological research of industrial plants in the 1900s still rings true today—no one likes a “rate buster.” Peer group pressure has been a powerful influence on our lives since junior high school. Achievement motivation has been around since McClellan coined the term in the 1950s. But overachievement can be just as debilitating as underachievement.

Helpful Hints:

1. Pick out the overachievers in your own work setting and gauge their overall influence in your own work group.
2. Spend ten minutes each work day helping someone with a work assignment and gauge your effectiveness by the number of times people come to you for advice.
3. Look at the project leaders in your company and write down ten adjectives that describe why they are effective leads.

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