Personality and leadership: a benchmark study of success and failure

Does the top‐level management team make the difference between a company’s success and failure? By using two different assessment tools (developed on the model of the Head‐Heart‐Leg work of the personality) to map the personalities of the members of two management teams, including the top executive managers, and by following the development in the companies’ results over a period of five years, it is shown that the personality of the executive manager and the team he is selecting is the key to understanding a company’s rise or decline in the market. Managers with an average level of cognitive skills tend to select managers with the same or lower level of cognitive skills and style. Therefore, when an executive manager is recruiting managers to his team, be sure that someone with authority is a part of the process to ensure that he is not selecting clones of himself.