A financial times article on leadership  (subscription required) argues that “Managers need the S-factor to set workers’ hearts a-flutter.” The s-factor you ask? S is for scary.

Based on research done by a fellow named Roderick Kramer, a psychologist at Stanford, the article makes the case for leaders to use fear and intimidation as a key tenet of their interactions. The gist seems to be that by keeping people on their toes, they will perform better.

My favorite bit is where Mr. Kramer makes some suggestions for being  scary:

• Intimidate people by invading their personal space.
• Get angry. Even if you aren’t really angry that some idiot is wasting your time, then you pretend to be angry, which is easy enough.
• Keep people guessing by acting sullen and silent. This means you can change your mind completely (which leaders do all the time) without losing face.
• Know the facts, and even if you don’t, pretend you do. Make them up when necessary and use with complete conviction. People will go along with you.

It’s an interesting script. And some of it may be valid. It seems to me that great leaders know how to adjust their posture depending on who they are managing. Some employees need to be scared into doing good work. Others may have a violently negative reaction to managers who pretend to know the facts (as in #4 above) when they clearly do not.

I also don’t think great leaders follow fad-ish leadership mantras as in this and the previous post. They know who they are and how to leverage what they have to rally people around them and towards a cause.

An article at CLO magazine takes on the topic of leadership. It’s message: that authenticity is a crucial factor in successful leadership.

The idea that a willingness to be openly human makes people better leaders resonates with me. The people I’ve worked with who attempt to control or hide their humanity usually do it out of lack of self confidence. They are afraid to appear fallible. The effect is worse. Instead of appearing human, they come across as overconfident know-it-all jerks. A characterization that doesn’t breed loyalty or respect.

From the article:

Truly authentic leaders will selectively show their weaknesses. No one is perfect, so the old way of looking at leadership development, to point out good traits yet focus on those that need improving, can make someone forget about traits that make him or her special and encourage frustration as the leader in training chases after perfection, which doesn’t exist. “We all have weaknesses,” Jones explained. “And by weaknesses we don’t mean things that are central to your role performance. We mean that all of us have individual foibles, which in some organizations we’ve been encouraged to hide. Selective revelation of weakness or foible has a humanizing effect, and followers want to be led by a human being. We want people to be able to selectively and skillfully reveal weaknesses, which are real, perceived relevant to context, and which convince followers that they’re being led by a person.

So what if your first interview for a job wasn’t with HR, or the hiring manager, or even a human being? What if you got interviewed by a computer? Enter the Nemesysco HR1 Automated Integrity Profiling/Risk Assessment System.

By analyzing the emotional content of a person’s speech, it purports to pick up on such key personality elements as ethics and morals. Basically, using a telephone handset, the computer asks you questions on topics from “loyalty and honesty to drug usage, theft from a place of employment, bribery, kickbacks, fraud and deceit.”

It’s an interesting presumption – that a computer can pick up on more subtle speech cues than a human by analyzing patterns in the voice. It sounds like a beefed up lie detector to me, but perhaps the future of  the interview, or better yet, the phone screen.

Here’s a link to an article about the device

In the context of a conversation on outsourcing comes this piece on which HR employees have to be worried about their jobs (Via Gautam).

According to the post, if you are…

“in the area of liasoning with recruiting agencies, shortlisting bio-ds, co-ordinating interview schedules, ensuring people attend training, organising training schedules, ensure people comply to policies, ensuring performance forms are filled by everyone and so on, then in the first place you need to realise that you are involved not in an HR job but an admin job.”

And those who by this definition have admin jobs should be worried about having their jobs outsourced. Administrative work is almost always better off done by “technology or processes.”

So who doesn’t need to be worried? In short, those who pursue the strategic objectives of aligning, motivating and maintaining their workforces.  It’s another perspective on the “seat at the table” argument that we hear about so often. The HR execs that get the seat are those who are focused on true business goals and not administrative ones.

Turns out you were right. According to this survey outlined at Management Issues, nearly one third of the 555 senior executives interviewed rated HR as the lowest performing area of their businesses. Curiously, that bests (or worsts)even IT (22%).

Curious as to your thoughts on where this comes from?