Very few official social gatherings would go without someone mentioning that 'Mr. John is a very good guy but I don't think he will be promoted to a Vice President of Marketing position' OR 'I hate to see that Mr. Smith is being promoted as a Vice President of Customer Relationship Management. He is the worst person I have ever met.' We all hear these kinds of comments all the time. At times we contribute to the spicy discussion by sharing our own perspective.
If we try to go to the root of these messages, what we are hearing is that someone who is a good human being can't really be a good manager. Or on the other side someone who is a good manager can't really be a good human being. Now that's a very harsh abstraction. Isn't it? Well some of us would say, yes by and large it may be true but we can't generalize it. Some would prefer to say well I didn't say that, I know good managers who are good guys, this one that I mentioned may be an exception.
So is it then that it is just a Myth, something similar to what is used on a lighter note as 'beauty and brains' can't go together?
I did a qualitative analysis of number of such comments picked up in various social gatherings, one-on- one discussions, counseling sessions with individuals from across all the industry verticals. I observed few common patterns that would help us understand this 'Bad Guy = Good Manager..' hypothesis. It is not that all the Bad Guys are good Managers or all the Good Guys are Bad Managers. Other two possibilities viz. Good Guy - Good Manager and Bad Guy - Bad Manager do exist.
I also looked at the personality traits and managerial traits that are common to individuals in these four different groups. In the process I prepared a four quadrant chart and mapped the individuals as follows.
Quadrant 1: Individual is a bad human being & a bad manager
Quadrant 2: Individual is a bad human being & a good manager
Quadrant 3: Individual is a good human being & a bad manager
Quadrant 4: Individual is a good human being & a good manager
When I looked at the scatter of all the cases, I observed that quadrant 2 and 3 had relatively larger concentration.
Try and map managers around you in one of these 4 quadrants. For ease of mapping, whenever you are analyzing a manager use 'successful manager' phrase in place of 'good manager' and 'unsuccessful manager' phrase in place of 'bad manager' to avoid conflict between 'Good' as in personality trait and 'Good' as in Managerial trait.
Do you see results supporting 'Bad Guy = Good Manager&' hypothesis? i.e. do you see lot of concentration in Quadrant 2 & 3?
