Why leadership strengths reverse in a new environment

A trait only shows when the job calls for it

Robert Tett and Dawn Burnett set this out as a formal model in 2003. In their model, a trait turns into performance only when the situation offers cues that call for it. A conscientious manager in a job with no deadlines looks much like anyone else. Put the same manager in charge of a process where one skipped step reaches the customer, and the trait shows up in every result.

P×E describes the situation on two conditions. Threat is how severe the consequences are when something goes wrong. Stability is whether the operating rules hold steady or keep shifting. Taken together, the two conditions give four arenas, and each one rewards something different.

The same trait, measured in two kinds of job

The clearest evidence comes from studies that measure one trait across many settings. Rustin Meyer, Reeshad Dalal and Silvia Bonaccio pooled studies of conscientiousness and job performance in 2009. They used US Department of Labor (O*NET) ratings to score each occupation on two things. The first was how far rules restrict what a worker can do. The second was how serious a mistake is. They then estimated the correlation at the two ends of that scale. For an occupation like barber, with wide latitude and errors that rarely do serious harm, it was .23. For one like nuclear equipment operation technician, where procedure regulates behavior and a mistake can hurt people, it was .09.

Meyer and his colleagues combined the rules and the stakes into one score. Timothy Judge and Cindy Zapata separated them in 2015 and tested all five traits across 125 studies. The first was job structure. That covers how much of the job is set for the worker, how free they are to decide, and how varied it is. Structure changed the value of all five traits. The second was the stakes: how serious an error is, and how much responsibility the job gives for other people. The stakes changed only two traits, agreeableness and openness. So across those 125 studies, job structure affected more traits than the stakes did.

A strength can change sign

In some settings the effect of a trait reverses. Adam Grant, Francesca Gino and David Hofmann studied store managers in a pizza chain and then ran the same test in a lab. Extraverted leaders got better results from passive teams, because someone had to set the direction. With proactive teams, the same leaders got worse results, because they were less receptive to the ideas the team was already bringing.

The trait was the same in both cases. The team was different, and in this research that difference was enough to turn the trait from an advantage into a cost.

A capable force in the wrong arena

General Stanley McChrystal took command of the special operations task force in Iraq in October 2003. By his own account, it was losing in 2004. Its raids were precise, planned with care, and approved up a chain of command. In August 2004 it ran 18 of them across the whole country. The insurgency it was fighting adapted faster than that process could.

In P×E terms the task force was in a Chaotic arena, with high threat and shifting rules. McChrystal's methods had been built for steadier conditions. Careful preparation, information passed up a chain, and thorough analysis before each decision had worked for him for twenty years. In Iraq each one slowed the force down.

McChrystal stopped making each decision himself and pushed decisions to the people closest to the problem. He put the agencies in one open hangar at Balad and placed liaison officers inside partner agencies. By August 2006 the task force was running about 300 raids a month. By 2007 its daily video brief was open to thousands of people in up to 72 locations. Right Leader, Wrong Arena treats the result as coming from two changes together. McChrystal changed how he led, and he changed the conditions around the task force.

Why more effort makes it worse

A capable leader who meets resistance often works harder, and working harder means leaning on the habits that built the reputation. If those habits are the source of the friction, the friction grows. Talent lets a leader cover a mismatch for a long time. The longer they cover it, the harder the habit is to change.

Ask a narrower question

Ask when a tendency such as decisiveness helps, what cues set it off, and where the current role punishes it. The answer is a bounded change. That is a different response to a specific demand, tried for a set period, with a signal that shows whether it held.

A mismatch describes how a leader and a set of conditions interact, so it is a finding about the pairing.