The Illusion of Invincibility. Paul Williams

insight and gut feeling really are as good as we would like to believe. One of our interviewees, a highly experienced leader and human resources expert, gave us food for thought.

      From Dr. Alexander von Preen, CEO of Intersport eG:

      I don’t think that this sense [a reliable first impression of candidates] stays with you forever. The longer you are in a position of authority (let’s say ten years), the more time this intuition has to decay and wither. You start making poor decisions. Your antennae get rusty and stuck in time. Society changes a lot, different age groups tick differently, life conditions change, education changes, values change, etc. I see this over and over again, also among top managers. Your instinct for people can deteriorate over time and you have to be aware of this.

      Wise words, indeed. And let’s be very frank: Can you ever really “know” another person? If the answer is yes, then it certainly is a process that normally takes a number of years. And a colleague who excels in his current job can just as easily fail in the next. We all know the classic example of the good performer who’s been moved into the wrong job for the wrong reasons—the best salesman who is rewarded with a promotion to a management position and fails abysmally. The change is detrimental to the company and very tough for the individual, yet it happens over and over again.

      From Christine Wolff, multiple board member:

      I come from the engineering sector, mainly working with engineers, scientists, etc., technically top-notch people. And I have made the basic error of not being careful enough about moving very good technicians into management roles. It’s a mistake to assume that a good technician is also automatically a good manager. Some are, but some aren’t and don’t even want to be—and it’s a mistake that can potentially do damage to the business.

      In my case, it was different. I am an average scientist, but I have better leadership skills. Hardly a week had gone by in my job and I had pulled together my first team and worked with groups to achieve good results. It wouldn’t have helped the company much if I’d carried on working on the technical side. Others can do that better.

      This is a straight-to-the-point and very succinct example of putting the principle of “talent before seniority” into practice. Unfortunately, the idea is frequently turned on its head when proven specialists are rewarded with management positions. Company loyalty and good performance over an extended period of time in a specific position is rewarded, rather than considering what a person can do best and whether this is what is actually needed in the future role. Anyone who closely monitors when and where colleagues blossom and flourish, and where they do not, is somewhat better placed to avoid such mistakes. In order to fill leadership positions with the right people (those with the best chance of success, see below), it would be helpful to move away from the idea that career progression is solely defined by how many people report to you or the size of the budget you control. Do we really value specialist skills enough? The Incas used to elevate proven craftsmen to the central court. How do we show that we value colleagues who are “only” experts, but whose expertise is critical to the company’s success? Anybody who understands the basics of motivation knows it’s not principally a question of money, but rather has to do with recognition, appreciation and being seen to have the right status in the organization.

      Returning to the topic of assessing colleagues, it has long been known that human perception and judgment are highly unreliable and subjective. But how many of us fall into the trap of believing that these frailties only apply to everyone else? Perhaps it’s worthwhile to take another look at the seven common causes of poor judgment:

      1.Our perception is highly selective. We cannot process all the information our senses pick up. That’s the reason the police are generally skeptical about eyewitnesses, as five bystanders at the scene of a crime have probably seen five different-colored cars. Black, blue, or maybe gray? And how often do you actually see your team members in action? Do you really know what they do well or what they are not so good at? And who do you focus your attention on during team meetings?

      2.Perceptions and judgments are guided by our expectations; we see what we want to see, and this can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. US psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore F. Jacobson conducted a famous experiment in the mid-1960s. They led some primary school teachers to believe that, with the help of scientific testing, they had identified the 20 percent of pupils who were just about to begin a development spurt. In reality, the children had been chosen at random, but at the end of the school year this group had, in fact, outperformed their classmates, presumably because they had had more attention and affirmation from the teachers. So, does that mean, for example, that so-called “high potentials” are our beacon of hope because they really are better? Or is it because we expect them to be better?

      3.We allow ourselves to be blinded by one characteristic or attribute which outshines all others—the “halo effect”—for example, above-average height suggesting assertiveness, good looks suggesting intelligence, or self-assurance suggesting a higher readiness to work hard and be committed. Did you know that height and income are correlated? Or that most CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and most US presidents (about 90 percent) are taller than average? So much for intrinsic values.

      4.We prefer people who are like ourselves; it’s the “similar-to-me effect.” Someone with a similar background, maybe even somebody who went to the same business school: well, she must be good! Psychologists say that sympathy is essentially perceived similarity. Who could disagree with giving a promotion to a pleasant colleague? Sociologist and elite researcher Michael Hartmann goes further. Talking about how top jobs in the economy and society at large are filled, he states that social background and appearance are more important than skills and performance. Furthermore, in an increasingly global work environment, self-awareness of the phenomenon of ethnic bias is becoming ever more important.

      5.We always look for confirmation of first impressions, and first impressions are made subconsciously and in a flash. Since our perceptions are selective (see point 1 above), it is extremely easy to then confirm our expectations. Look how long it took to see Bernard Madoff, one of the biggest investment fraudsters of all time, in the right light. Although there had been plenty of indications for years, nobody wanted to believe that the former chairman of NASDAQ and member of the NASD Board of Governors could have been capable of such dishonesty. Due to his extremely confident and convincing manner and his numerous donations to charities and cultural institutions (including many board positions in theaters, foundations, and schools), many philanthropic organizations entrusted him with their money; only after it became more and more clear that he had embezzled over sixty billion dollars and had ruined about 4,800 investors did the full extent of his duplicity become visible. He was sentenced June 29, 2009, to 150 years of imprisonment.

      6.All sorts of things can influence how we assess people—general beliefs, prior experience, kitchen-sink psychology—and sometimes this works out well enough, but not always. In fact, we often draw conclusions which are, to put it bluntly, devoid of any logic whatsoever: “If someone demonstrates he really wants the job during the interview phase, then he’s bound to make a big effort later on as well,” or “Someone coming from a family of entrepreneurs is much more likely to be driven and ambitious than someone whose father was a civil servant,” and there are plenty more examples like these.

      7.We generalize our own view of the world and project it onto others. So, somebody who has enthusiastically taken on leadership responsibility can quickly fall into the trap of believing that this must also be the dream of every other colleague or candidate. Or someone who enjoys being praised in public cannot imagine that another colleague might find such an experience unpleasant and embarrassing.

      All in all, we tend to overestimate our objectivity when assessing others, something psychologists call “the illusion of sound judgment.” With this in mind, it seems pretty rash to be taking an important hiring decision almost off the cuff, following a sixty- to ninety-minute discussion. And yet the job interview remains the most popular way of making hiring decisions. After all, who really wants to spend long and intensive days at an assessment center? Admittedly, it is possible to learn a lot about a person in the course of a well-prepared and properly structured conversation, even more so if the questions are well thought through and derived from a clear description of the position.