Instead of talking about how good leaders lead, or focusing on what makes great leaders, or anything like that, they looked at the opposite. Based on two research studies on executives and leaders, they examined those who failed and developed a list of the ten things most commonly missing in bad leaders. As they write, “every bad leader had at least one, and most had several.”

According to their work, the worst leaders:

• Lack energy and enthusiasm
• Accept their own mediocre performance
• Lack clear vision and direction
• Have poor judgment
• Don’t collaborate
• Don’t walk the talk
• Resist new ideas
• Don’t learn from mistakes
• Lack interpersonal skills
• Fail to develop others

The authors further note that the bad leaders they studies often were unaware of these behaviors.

This is interesting because the vast majority of the literature on leadership has been focused on the positive traits and behaviors of good leaders. This look at the flip side of the coin provides fresh perspective (even though some of the factors outlined above might seem somewhat obvious).

Being a good leader might be as much about exhibiting the good traits and behaviors as it is about not displaying the bad ones. Read the full article for the details.

While essentially a research-related article, I found it valuable for marketers in general to consider what Neveril writes in the context of marketing communications. He writes that it is common in his field to find dissonance between what people tell you about themselves (and what they do) and what they actually do.

He proposes that in order to cut through all the “clutter” of a description of what a person thinks about the brand or their desire and intent to purchase it, for example, we can discover the real person by focusing on actual behavior. “Actions do speak louder than words,” he writes.

The article goes on to recommend three practical approaches to gathering behavior data, defined by the elapsed time between the behavior and its recording. The best approach, he concludes, it recording the behavior as it happens, which is usually associated with ethnographic research. The reason it’s the best approach is because the researcher doesn’t need to rely on the consumer’s memory, but rather the data are recorded in real time.

In the end, Neveril reminds us that past behavior remains the best (albeit imperfect) predictor of future behavior. He writes “if you want to know how your customers will behave in the future, don’t ask for more of their opinions; just take a look at their behavior.”

I submit that direct marketers have known and leveraged this for generations. In direct marketing, it doesn’t much matter if a consumer claims to have that elusive “purchase intent” or if they are in the “consideration stage” of the purchase process. What does matter is if the consumer takes a measurable action.

Only when the consumer exhibits a behavior can a direct marketer safely measure and predict future actions. Think of it this way. Instead of asking a bunch of consumers if they’re interested in Brand X, let’s measure how many respond to an offer for more information about Brand X. In the first case, we’d know what consumers said about their interest in the brand. In the second case, we’d know consumers actively got off their butts and acted by saying “hey, I’m interested, please send me more information.”

I would argue that more valuable is the second instance where there is actual hard (quantifiable) data about hand-raisers. That’s one of the beauties of direct marketing. There’s little need to do research in the traditional sense of the word. We just test in market with real environmental variables in place. What works we keep, what doesn’t we don’t.

Paraphrasing Neveril, to know what’s going to happen, just do what direct marketers do and look at what’s happened before to determine what will happen in the future. When that’s not available, don’t ask consumers what they think they’d do. Make them an offer and see what they actually do.

The authors submit that some companies produce a steady supply of strong managers because instead of focusing on building up the strengths of individual people, they concentrate on developing a “broad organizational leadership capability.” That’s what they call a Leadership Brand.

Firms that have leadership brands use an “outside-in” approach to develop their executives. That is, they look outside at what they want to be known for by clients and customers and then link that with required management skills for their executives. For example, Lexus takes it “The pursuit of perfection” tagline and translates it into an expectation that its leaders excel at managing quality processes. The outside-in approach helps companies develop a reputation for high-quality leaders whom clients can trust to deliver on the company’s promises.

The authors looked at 150 companies with reputations for strong leadership and found that those organizations follow five strategies. Those strategies are:

• Ensure managers master the basics of leadership—for example, setting strategy and developing talent.
• Ensure that leaders internalize the’ high expectations of clients.
• Incorporate client feedback into evaluations of executives.
• Invest in programs that help managers hone the right skills by tapping clients to participate in them.
• Track the success of efforts to build leadership bench strength over the long term.

What results, the authors conclude, is “outstanding management” that persists even when individual executives leave the company. In fact, companies with the strongest leadership brands often become “leader feeders” and generate executives who go on to head other companies. Examples of these firms are GE, PepsiCo, P&G, Disney, Toyota, and Kraft, among others.

The authors actually provide a list of companies that they consider leadership brand companies and their P/E ratio compared to their category (they used the past ten years’ worth of data). The chart below shows that consistently a leadership brand is correlated with higher P/E ratios versus the category.

How do you rate? The following graphic shows a short assessment test that will help leaders determine their company’s leadership branding capability.

24 or less: Start working on the fundamentals of leadership. 25 to 34: Select one or two dimensions where you’re not yet strong and focus on improving them. 35 to 44: You are well on your way to becoming a leadership brand company. 45 or higher: You’re sitting pretty, pat yourself on the back.