Why There Isn’t and Never Will Be a Single Universal Profile of an Effective Leader

Haiku:

We all hope for one,

But there are really many,

All context-dependent.

Abstract: Leadership effectiveness is highly context-dependent, making the search for a single, universal leadership profile useless. Early research attempted to identify common leadership traits across successful leaders, but no single profile accurately described them all. Leadership requirements shift based on industry, organization type, business phase, and external conditions—leading to near-infinite context variations.

To help navigate this complexity, the STORI framework (Strategic, Technical, Operational, Relationship Management, International) helps define leadership needs. Most senior leaders excel in one or two STORI dimensions but must build strong teams to cover all five. However, many leaders struggle with relationship management (EQ skills), hindering their ability to build an aligned team.

Leadership teams should adapt and reconfigure as business environments evolve based on shifting STORI profiles—yet this rarely happens. While we once hoped for a one-size-fits-all leadership model, modern leadership demands situational agility, team-based strengths, and adaptive decision-making in response to an ever-changing landscape.

I spent the first half of my talent management career looking for THE profile of an effective leader. Even in graduate school, we reviewed the typical study. Take many agreed upon leaders, dead or alive, document (estimate) their KSAs or characteristics, put them all together and divide by the sample size and voila, a net list of leadership characteristics that describe the sample. That type of study is still being done and published today.

In the second half of my career, Mike Lombardo pointed out that those studies are not useful. He said to take any leader from the sample and compare them to the resulting universal leadership profile. What you will find is that each of the twenty leaders is unique. None of them fit the resulting profile. Mother Teresa, GE’s Jack Welch! Nelson Mandela, and President Clinton. Harold Geneen of ITT and Jamie Dimon. Every leader in the sample has some of the net traits but not all. So, the resulting profile doesn’t really describe but a few in the sample. Why is that?

Because it all depends on context, situation, phase, stage, and many other variables.

Later, Mike conducted another study of our database, which resulted in two findings that were relevant to this article. First, he found that it took about 13 to 15 competencies, characteristics, practices or KSAs to be able to describe the skills needed to be successful for a number of senior jobs.  But you didn’t need to be good at all of them.  You needed to be excellent at a few to be promoted.  And okay at the rest but none at the derailment level to perform well.  Full self-knowledge would increase the chances.  Team building skills to cover your flat spots in key skills also help.  Even in identical jobs and roles, he found people can lead in different ways and be equally effective.

We saw the beginnings of it depends in Situational Leadership (Hersey and Blanchard, 1969).  We also saw it in the Managerial Grid (Blake and Mouton) and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, among others.

In the beginning of it depends, the solution most of the time had two or three variating factors. That’s not complex enough.

From there, we went into complexification. There are near-infinite different factors that would make a difference in the requirements for an effective leader in any specific case.

We, at TalentTelligent, have created leadership profiles for the twenty-three most common leadership roles. Overlap, yes; the same, no.

Along a parallel track, we got better at assessing people. Assessment centers, 360’s, card sorts, questionnaires, and surveys.  We are now capable of a pretty good estimate of any leader’s or ‘to be’ leader’s individual profile. 

At the same time, we have been working to get better at estimating the requirements for leaders in specific (context and situationally different) roles and jobs.

So now, we have the beginnings of triangulation. What’s the context? What are the requirements? Who best fits the profile?

Any leader has to create mission, vision, values, and strategy and specify organizational KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure performance.

It depends on categories might be for-profit, non-profit, military, education, government, or religious. It could be private or public. It could be domestic or global or partly global. Could be large or small. Could be in different countries and cultures. It could be in different sectors.

It could be maintaining an already successful enterprise, saving a failing one, or building a small one into a bigger one.

Could be managing a merger or divestiture. Managing an activist investor who wants to break up the organization into pieces. An activist Board with a retired founder.

In addition to a Black VUCA Swan (COVID, recession, Bird Flu, new competitors) landing in the fountain outside the headquarters building.

And on and on. Near infinite context differences. Total complexification. Every role or leadership position is unique. Unmanageable. Few leaders could do anything.

Can we find some parsimony to get it down to something more manageable?

John Kotter of Harvard has suggested that the top 2% makes 80% of all material decisions in organizations of the population. Strategy, tactics, business model, KPIs, M&A, PR, Wall Street communications, senior hiring and firing, etc.

We looked at the top 2% roles and jobs across several kinds of organizations in our database. We asked, what are the main tasks leaders in those roles are doing. There were five buckets of tasks:

o   Strategic – Vision, Mission, Values, Culture, Strategy, High-level Tactics

o   Technical – Core Technologies that drive success of the Enterprise

o   Operational – Execution of the Strategy and Plan.

o   Relationship Management – PR, Shareholder Management, Customer Service, Government Relations

o   International - Adapting Strategy and Tactics to align locally and executing

Being an effective leader in any of these task areas is different. Overlap, yes; the same, no. Different enough to make a difference.

For memorability, STORI for short. Telling a “story/STORI” of a job, role or task and the leadership characteristics needed. Any senior job can be profiled, giving you the requirements for being effective in the job. Candidates for any senior job can be profiled to determine who might be the best fit. High Potentials can be developed for any future profile.

In succession management, we have found that most successful leaders have one strong element of the STORI KSA characteristic set. Maybe one backup element that’s strong enough and lower in the rest.  No one has them all. Legendary leaders build a team of senior leaders to address all five elements, especially to cover their shortfalls.

Managing a strong STORI coverage team is a difficult task because, typically, the elements don’t always work smoothly together.  The strategists and the operators. The technical and the relationship management leaders. The global internationalists and the operators. All reluctant collaborators.

Then there is the catch-22.  Many senior leaders stumble or actually fail due to weak relationship management or EQ skills. Most are strongest in S, O, and/or I. Most lack listening, delegating, micro-conflict management AND team building and management skills. The catch-22 is that if they are weak in the typical EQ skills, they will not build a strong team with the right STORI coverage.  They might clone themselves and have too much of one element and not enough of another. They might be threatened to bring A players onto the team.  If they don’t build a profile matching STORI team and try to do it all themselves, we will see more derailment. Expensive turnover at the top.

We are told in every powerpoint presentation that change is normal and that the rate of change is accelerating. Timely VUCA response is mandatory. So, the STORI profile context can and does change over the weekend. Materially change. What should happen is the senior team should be reconfigured to work against the new STORI profile. Maybe the CEO (strong S) needs to step back to being the head of strategy and the Operator (strong O) needs to take over the CEO job.  It rarely happens. New context, new team.

We hoped for a clean simple one set of characteristics for all leaders, then realized it’s at least two or three context factors. Then realized it was an unmanageable set of infinite context differences to the possibility of a five-factor STORI solution.

Bob Eichinger and LM Hanson

www.talenttelligent.com