I recently did some guest teaching in the graduate studies program command At the University of Indiana Weslian. There was a lot of discussion, questions and answers with a variety, bright and achievement of graduate students. They had many comments, notes and difficult questions. One question has emerged and we all thought: “Why does it seem (based on notes) that most leaders/managers are humble – neither really good nor really bad?

I have never asked this question, and he motivated a lot of thinking (and continuous discussion) for two days. After a lot of thinking, here are my thoughts:

Is the leader’s effectiveness usually distributed?

My first response was to consider the intended leader. If the leader’s effectiveness is a roll of the poor to a large/wonderful extent, then the mediocrity in the middle. As a psychiatrist, I immediately thought about the normal distribution-a well-known bell curve. If the leader’s effectiveness is usually distributed, the bulk of the leaders in the middle – approximately 68 percent of them.

Famous psychologist Robert Hogan confirms that 65 to 75 percent of managers are bad. With this natural distribution in mind, where is Hogan drawing the line between good and bad managers? Most likely in the average range, the majority of the average leaders are linked to approximately 16 percent of the leaders who are at the low end for the distance of the effective effectiveness usually.

Although this may answer the immediate question about the reason for the appearance of most medium leaders, it is more complicated than this.

Perhaps this is the leader, but the followers

Driving is created by the interaction of leaders and followers. When the leaders fail, this may be due to the lack of efficiency of the leader/ineffective, or perhaps their followers – the team members – to blame. (Well, we blamed the leader, and now we blame the followers?!)

This leads us to the issue of how to assess the effectiveness of the leader. Effective leadership leadership/group achieve results. Therefore, one of the ways to determine the effectiveness of the leader is to focus on achieving goals. However, as we have just seen, this has a relationship with the followers – leaders and followers synergy pursue a ceremony towards achieving the goal.

Another way to determine the effectiveness of the leader is to focus on the leader’s mistakes – what is usually called “angel”. (Hogan, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2011). This is a large part of Hogan’s confirmation about many bad/failed leaders. Viewers include a wide range of leader’s mistakes that usually lead to the leader’s release and/or his replacement.

Perhaps the golden standard for evaluating the effectiveness of the leader is to focus directly on how to lead the leaders, and to place them through an administrative or leadership evaluation center (Kleinmann & Ingold, 2019). This includes a series of leadership/management tasks, and leaders are evaluated on their ability to successfully accomplish tasks. Of course, this is an expensive and time -consuming methodology, but it leads to a good understanding of the leader’s skills and competencies.

One of the most common ways to assess the effectiveness of the leader is to demand followers to assess the effectiveness of the leader, and this is likely to be more related to the original question. In the 360 degrees assessments (and other classifications for direct supervisors), followers measure their leader’s effectiveness on a variety of dimensions. These assessments are commonly performed as part of the manager/leader’s performance review. First of all, self -classification and perhaps biased. There is evidence that these classifications are linked to the admiration of the followers of the leader. Another issue is how followers imagine the classifications. Do they keep their leader according to unrealistic high standards? Are the followers excessive and subject to the intensity of “the lack of a leader-to some extent” prejudice? And with many followers/direct reports, the average/average is often the resulting scale, but followers may differ greatly, with some very high classifications and some very low classifications (this result = mediocrity).

What is the answer?

Well, there is no specific answer. To understand the effectiveness of the leader, we clearly need to consider the entire “driving system”, which consists of what the leader and Followers bring the driving equation. We also have to consider the situation – context. Sometimes, the context presents a “not winning” position as the collective is a failure regardless of his joint ability to drive.

From the perspective of leadership development, the best answer to the question question is clear. If many leaders and followers are modest, the best strategy is to help them develop, improve leadership and follow -up. This is what is about the development of the leader (and the dependent/team) – which leads to a needle and pushing these medium leaders and followers towards the positive end of the series.