People Are More Complex Than a Type, a Score, or a Label

We humans like things to make sense.

We look for patterns. We create categories. We prefer explanations that are clear, straightforward, and easy to remember.

Most of the time, that tendency serves us pretty well. Our brains have an enormous amount of information to process, and simplifying the world helps us navigate it.

But there is a downside.

Our preference for simplicity can lead us to mistake a simple explanation for an accurate one.

A recent article, “Human Mind Prefers Simple Explanations Over Complex Truths”, highlights research showing just how strongly people can favor simpler explanations—even when reality is more complicated.

For those who want to go directly to the underlying research, the original study is available here.

This tendency has implications for all kinds of decisions and judgments. But because so much of our work at MRG, and so much of the assessment and development field, is focused on leaders, it raises an important question:

What happens when our desire for a simple explanation collides with the complexity of human beings and leadership?

The Appeal of the Simple Answer

It’s easy to understand why simple models are attractive.

Wouldn’t it be convenient if there were a particular personality type that made someone a great leader? Or a handful of characteristics all successful executives shared? Or a score we could point to and say, “This is what good leadership looks like”?

It certainly would make development easier.

But easier isn’t necessarily more accurate – or more useful.

At MRG, more than four decades of research have taught us something very different:

There is no one right way to lead.

Effective leadership depends on the leader, the people around them, the work to be done, the resources available, the outcomes that matter, and the context in which all of that is happening.

What helps one leader succeed may limit another.

What a leader needs to do more of at one stage of a career may be precisely what they need to do less of at the next.

A behavior that is enormously useful in one environment may be ineffective, or even counterproductive, in another.

That makes leadership harder to reduce to a simple formula.

It also makes our understanding of leadership much more useful.

Development Shouldn’t Be About Becoming the Ideal Leader

This is where assessments can either help us resist the urge to oversimplify or unintentionally reinforce it.

An assessment can give someone a label that feels satisfyingly clear:

This is what you are.

Or it can provide information that opens a much richer conversation:

This is how you tend to approach your work. This is what motivates you. This is how others may experience you. This is what seems to be working in this situation. And here are some choices available to you.

Those are very different experiences.

We don’t believe the purpose of development is to mold people toward a single picture of what a good leader should look like.

Instead, the goal is to help people understand themselves with enough depth and accuracy that they can make thoughtful choices about how they want, and need, to lead.

That means moving beyond questions like “Is this characteristic good or bad?” and encouraging the leader to ask better questions:

• What am I trying to accomplish?
• What does this particular situation require?
• Who are the people I need to lead and influence?
• Which of my natural approaches are serving me well?
• Where might greater flexibility help?
• What could I do differently, not because there is something inherently wrong with how I lead, but because a different approach might produce a better outcome here?

Our Research Keeps Bringing Us Back to Context

Again and again, MRG’s research reinforces the danger of assuming there is a universal leadership formula.  Here are just three examples that reinforce the rejection of some version of ideal leadership.

1. What Works at One Leadership Level May Not Work at the Next

Our research on leadership transitions demonstrates that being effective through the progression of more senior leadership positions isn’t simply about doing more of whatever made someone successful previously.

Different organizational levels create different demands. Leaders often need to increase some behaviors while deliberately decreasing others.

And our research shows that the shifts in approach to leadership become significantly more complex as career progression moves to senior leadership.

You can explore that research in our white paper, Stepping Up: The Behaviors Leaders Need to Increase and Decrease as They Climb the Ranks.

2. The Somewhat Surprising Behaviors that Influence a Leader’s Ability to Deliver Results

Strong performance does not require every leader to behave in the same way. Different combinations of leadership behaviors contribute to different successful outcomes.

For example, when we look at the behaviors associated with leaders who are highly effective at delivering results – while our findings, not surprisingly, show that setting ambitious goals is important to delivering results as a leader – thinking strategically, tracking and monitoring progress and having a level of subject matter expertise all appear to be even more important.

For a deeper look, you can download our research on leadership behavior patterns associated with effectiveness in delivering results.

3. Are Compassionate Leaders Effective or Just Kind?

While compassion is generally considered valuable in human interactions, can leaders be both compassionate and effective? 

While compassion is sometimes dismissed as a “nice to have”, or even viewed as too soft for serious leadership, our research tells a different story. Compassionate leaders are rated highly across several critical leadership competencies. And yet, despite its apparent value, compassionate leadership remains relatively rare.

Our research on this topic is explored further in How Can We Incorporate More Compassion Into the Workplace?.

Different leaders. Different demands. Different contexts.

The purpose of research shouldn’t be to erase those differences in search of a cleaner answer. It should help us understand them.

Good Assessments Make the Picture Bigger, Not Smaller

This is one reason we believe so deeply in assessments that preserve complexity rather than flatten it.

People contain contradictions.

Someone can be highly independent and still deeply value support from others.

A leader can be collaborative in one setting and highly directive in another.

Someone can have qualities that are tremendous assets in one part of their role and create difficulty somewhere else.

That isn’t inconsistency.

It’s humanity.

A good assessment gives practitioners and their clients enough information to explore those nuances rather than rushing past them.

Of course, the objective isn’t complexity for complexity’s sake. No one benefits from an assessment report so complicated that the person receiving it has no idea what any of it means or what to do next.

The challenge is to respect complexity while creating clarity.

That is very different from creating simplicity.

People Deserve to Be Seen Fully

Perhaps this is the part that matters most.

When someone agrees to complete an assessment, they are allowing us into something personal. They are giving us information about how they see themselves, how others experience them, what matters to them, or how they approach their work.

We owe them more than a type.

More than a score.

More than a label.

And certainly more than a judgment about how closely they resemble some predefined ideal.

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Tricia Naddaff  is the President of MRG Assessments and she has been advising and inspiring individuals, teams and organizations for over 30 years. Tricia works regularly with leaders around the focused on improving their effectiveness in their roles and the quality of their lives. She is a contributing author to the book “Enlightened Power” and a TedX Dirigo speaker.